Paralee's Cabin (Location Key)

While most of Jefferson's black population live in the residential section called the Hollow and Freedmantown (38), Paralee, the Negro who has been a servant in the Mallison and possibly the Stevens families for a long period of time, lives in a cabin behind the white family's house. This arrangement is similar to the way, for example, Elnora lives behind the Sartoris mansion or Dilsey lives behind the Compson place. In those cases it is likely that the cabin was originally built for the slaves the white family owned, and was part of a larger slave quarters - as is made explicit in the description of the cabin where Joe Christmas lives behind the Bundren place. There is no suggestion in Intruder in the Dust, however, that the Mallison property was ever a working plantation. Chick Mallison "had spent a good part of his life" in that cabin in the back yard (11), eating meals there "together" with Paralee's son Aleck (12). It was in that cabin, too, that the narrative says he grew accustomed to the smell of Negroes as "a rich part of his heritage as a Southerner" (12). (See the entries for Sartoris Plantation Slave Cabin, Compson Place: Dilsey's Cabin and Hamp Worsham's Place|Negro Servants' Cabin in this index.)