Uncle Dick Bolivar

"Uncle Dick" is white, so the honorific "Uncle" in his case has a different connotation than it does for the Negro 'uncles' in Yoknapatawpha. In "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard," and again in The Hamlet, where the story of hidden treasure at the Old Frenchman's place is re-told, he is "a shriveled little old man . . . with a long white beard" (144, 379). He wears "a filthy frock coat," lives in "a mud-daubed hut" in a swamp, and is reputed to eat "frogs and snakes [and] bugs as well" (144, 381). He "cares nothing about money" (146, 384), but makes a living of some kind making and selling "nostrums and charms" (144, 381). Suratt hires him to dowse the garden at the Old Frenchman's place, which he does successfully using a spent cartridge containing a "gold-filled human tooth" dangling from "forked peach branch" (145, 381). He is obviously a kind of conjuror or medicine man, but his speech is full of references to "the Lord."