Unnamed Tenant Farmer

In his reconstruction of Flem moving his money to the Bank of Jefferson, Gavin imagines him being "stopped on the street one day" by this share cropper, "one still in the overalls and the tieless shirt . . . attached irrevocably by the lean umbilicus of bare livelihood . . . to the worn-out tenant farm" (281). He looks at Flem "with envy and respect (ay, and hatred too)" for having "wrenched himself free" of "the overalls and the grinding landlord" that define the costume and the world of a tenant farmer. Inadvertently, this "well-nigh nameless tenant farmer who probably never came to town four times a year" (290) gives Flem the idea for his revenge on Manfred de Spain.