Hawkhurst is the plantation owned by the Hawk family to whom John Sartoris' wife is related. It is about one hundred miles from Jefferson, in northwestern Alabama, in a fictional county named "Gihon" (59). Hawkhurst is described in more detail in the earlier Unvanquished short story "Raid," which includes an account of the visit there that Bayard recalls in this story.
The spring that Drusilla retreats to after she is forced to put on a dress is uphill from the creek bottom and downhill from the cabins. Bayard refers to "the big beech" tree beside it (67).
John Sartoris built the first "big house" on his plantation in the 1830s. This mansion was burned by the Yankees during the Civil War, as described in the earlier Unvanquished short story "Retreat." The remains of the structure are still there, but "the house" that is referred to at the beginning of "Skirmish at Sartoris" (58) must be the former slave cabin behind the big house that Drusilla now occupies. As described in the story, the reconstruction of the mansion is in its early stages: they are still felling timber and cutting boards to rebuild it.
The man who owns the "abandoned brick-kiln" once used the land around it as a pasture, but he stopped doing that after "one of his mules" went missing in one of the "vine-choked vats without bottom" (179). He is presumably a farmer, though he might be a mule-trader instead.
The "hunting camp on the river" that is the site of the "annual bachelor's party" that the bank cashier who once dated Minnie Cooper attends each Christmastime may not be the same as the one that Major De Spain owns in other Yoknapatawpha fictions, but in the absence of any indication about where it is other than beside on a river, we have chosen to plot it on the map in that location.
The ditch between the Compson property and Nancy's cabin plays a major role in the story. When the Compson children are sent to fetch Nancy, they always stop at it, "because father told us to not have anything to do with Jesus" (290). Nancy tells both Dilsey and Mr. Compson that she can feel Jesus "laying yonder in the ditch," waiting to attack her (297). Quentin describes it at the end of the story, as Mr. Compson takes his children home from the cabin: "We went down into the ditch. I looked at it, quiet. I couldn't see much where the moonlight and the shadows tangled" (309).
The road that leads from the "highroad" to the abandoned brick-kiln in described as "narrow" and "rutted with disuse" (179). The ditch beside it into which Hawkshaw jumps is filled with "dust-sheathed weeds" (179).
The ditch between the Compson property and Nancy's cabin plays a major role in "That Evening Sun." When the Compson children are sent to fetch Nancy, it's as close as they go to Nancy's, "because father told us to not have anything to do with Jesus" (290) - a deliberately provocative phrase: the Jesus in the story is Nancy's disreputable boy friend, not the Christian savior. Later, after Jesus has left town, Nancy tells both Dilsey and Mr. Compson that she can nonetheless feel Jesus "laying yonder in the ditch," waiting to attack her (297).
