Samson

Armstid tells his wife Martha that Lena Grove "says that somebody down at Samson's told her there is a fellow named Burch or something working at the planing mill in Jefferson" (16). The reference doesn't provide a definitive explanation for what "Samson's" is, but in the previously published As I Lay Dying Samson himself appears, and narrates a section in which he locates himself in relation to both "the barn" (114) and "the store" (112), so it seems possible that he is both a farmer and the owner of a country store, with the store known as "Samson's" in the same way that Varner's store in many other fictions is known as "Varner's."