Texas in The Town (Location)

Texas is referred to as a destination or origin several times in the novel, usually in connection with frontier lawlessness or uncivilized behavior. For example, when Eula Varner gets pregnant, her three suitors "left the country suddenly by night too, for Texas it was said, or anyway west, far enough west to be longer than Uncle Billy or Jody Varner could have reached" (7). Eula herself goes to Texas with her new husband, Flem, to have the child. Flem's return from Texas coincides with the arrival in Frenchman's Bend of the spotted horses or "wild unbroken plains ponies" come from "somewhere in the west," and in charge of them is a man "who was obviously from Texas" (7). Texas is also the generic place to which Byron Snopes flees after robbing the Sartoris Bank, and El Paso, Texas, the specific address from which Byron sends his four wild children to Flem Snopes.