SartorissInUNV

The focus of this story is on Rosa Millard's own method of engaging the Union Army in order to take care of the plantation and the people of Yoknapatawpha while her son-in-law, John Sartoris, is fighting the Yankees in a more conventional way. Her campaign relies heavily on Ringo's intelligence and initiative, and Bayard's narrative implicitly acknowledges how the breakdown of the traditional social order and the absence of white males as a consequence of the war creates a space for a woman and even a slave to grow into new positions of authority. Rosa and Bayard now live in a slave cabin - Yankees destroyed the big house in an earlier story - but the color line remains in place; although Bayard notes that Ringo "had got to treating me like Granny [i.e. Rosa] did," there is still no suggestion that the two growing boys might be related (78), and in church Ringo sits with the other blacks in the "slave gallery" until Granny calls him down to help distribute the profits from her campaign (84).