The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The unnamed barber takes Hawkshaw's place at the barber shop after Hawkshaw marries Susan Reed and leaves Jefferson.

The people who live in the small hamlet of Division are one of the sources of information about the Starnes family that the narrator draws on. Once all the Starneses have died, these residents expect their Alabama kin to claim the house. Division folks also note Hawkshaw's annual April visits to "clean up that empty house" (141), and in between they helped themselves to the house's picket fence for firewood.

The narrator refers to the people of Jefferson several times, usually in connection with rumors and gossip about Susan Reed. The people who "cast the usual aspersions" on Susan's origins are, according to the narrator, "women mostly" (131). The men who frequent the barbershop believe Susan was one of "the bad ones" (135); out of respect for Hawkshaw's feelings, however, they don't talk about her in front of him.

These young fellows in "Hair" are "loafers that pitch dollars all day long in the clubhouse yard" (141) while waiting to flirt with the young girls who walk by. ("Clubhouse" is almost surely a misprint for "court house"; see the Location entry for Courthouse Square.)

These young girls come "giggling down to the post office and soda fountain in the late afternoon" (141) to flirt with the young fellows.

The unnamed narrator mentions his daughter in passing: when he says women "can't help it" if they "grow up too fast," he adds "I have a daughter of my own, and I say that" (133).

The school girls, with Susan Reed among them, pass the barber shop every morning and afternoon going to and from school.

These customers are shaved by Mr. Maxey and Matt as they gossip about Hawkshaw and Susan Reed.

The Starneses in Division have "kin" (140) elsewhere in Alabama. The storekeeper and other neighbors in Division wonder if these folks will claim the Starnes house after Mrs. Starnes' death.

Bidwell is the storekeeper in Division who has the key to the Starnes's house; he shows the narrator around it, and "opens the Bible" which records the mortgage payments Hawkshaw made (146).