Varner House (Location Key)

"With the exception of" Mrs. Littlejohn's boarding house, Will Varner owns the only house in Frenchman's Bend with "more than one story" (The Hamlet, 11). It is mentioned in 5 stories. It is probably where Will conducts his veterinary practice, referred to in As I Lay Dying, though the only 'animals' we ever see him work on have two legs. Because he is the local "justice of the peace," it is where Bookwright goes to turn himself in after shooting Thorpe in "Tomorrow" (90). But the house figures most prominently in the fictions as home of Eula Varner, and the place where, once Eula Varner turns fifteen, "about a dozen" of the young men of the Bend - and some older men from further away - show up every Sunday to tie their mules to "the Varner fence" and spend the afternoon "sitting-out" - courting - "on the veranda" of the house (Hamlet, 145). Near the house is the "cabin" in which the Varners' cook lives (158).