The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

This is the person in Light in August who, sometime after Grimm fires the shots that kill Christmas, covers the five gunshot holes in his body "with a folded handkerchief" (464). It seems safe to say that this "someone" is a man, but not even that is explicitly said.

A "hulking youth in the uniform of the Western Union" (459). His bicycle is commandeered by Grimm.

Because he holds "the equivalent of a commissioned rank," this young man is appointed by Grimm as the "second in command" of the platoon he forms (456). He is the one who, on Grimm's orders, turns on the "fire alarm" after Christmas escapes (458).

The American Legion was organized in 1919 for veterans of the First World War. It is to the local members of this organization, now civilians working in "stores and offices" in Jefferson (453), that Grimm turns for volunteers to preserve peace and order after Christmas is arrested. Despite the initial resistance of the American Legion Commander, some American Legion members, and Sheriff Kennedy, he gets enough volunteers to create "a fair platoon" (453).

When Grimm asks the "commander of the local Post" about organizing a group to preserve the peace in Jefferson after Christmas is arrested, the commander says no. "I couldn't use the Post like that. After all, we are not soldiers now" (452).

"Bystanders" is the way the narrative refers to the people who watch Percy Grimm lose a fist fight with an "exsoldier" and, despite the veteran's request, refuse to break it up (450). These same people later remember the fight when they see Grimm wearing "his captain's uniform" as a member of the National Guard (451).

This veteran of the First World War remarks that if he had it to do over again "he would fight this time on the German side" (450). When he adds that he would fight America too "if America's fool enough to help France out again" (450), he is attacked by Percy Grimm.

A "hardware merchant" in Jefferson, Mr. Grimm thinks his son is lazy and unlikely to amount to anything (450).

This is the "old negro woman" who sits, "smoking a pipe, her head wrapped in a white cloth," whom Joe Brown calls "Aunty" when he asks her to help him get a message to the sheriff (433-34). At first she refuses, saying that the one black man she knew who "thought he knowed a sheriff well enough to go and visit with him . . . aint never come back" (434).