Varner's Store in The Town (Location)

Located at Varner's Crossroads (288), the only store in Frenchman's Bend is one of the many properties owned by Will Varner. The store is both the place where the many tenant farmers on other Varner lands are expected to buy all their supplies, and the hub of the hamlet's social life. The gallery (or front porch) of the store appears to be constantly occupied by a number of men who never buy anything, but are simply there for conversation. In his hypothetical account of Mrs. Varner's visit to the store in Chapter 17, Gavin Stevens provides a very concrete description of its interior: "the racks of hames and plow-handles, the rank side meat and flour and cheap molasses and cheese and shoes and coal oil and work gloves and snuff and chewing tobacco and fly-specked candy" (307).