The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The narrator of "Two Soldiers" mentions that "the feller wound the door shut and the bus began to hum" (87). He is referring to the driver of the bus from Frenchman's Bend to Jefferson that his brother, Pete, is taking on his journey to enlist in the army.

Vernon Tull's daughters are mentioned by the narrator of "Two Soldiers"; he notes that his brother, Pete, also left him behind when he "went sparking them girls of Tull's" (83). Tull's daughters are mentioned in three other texts, but only two of them are ever named: in As I Lay Dying the Tull's have two daughters, Kate and Eula.

Res Grier is a farmer whose shiftlessness is remarked upon by both of his sons; he is perpetually behind on the farm, which does not seem to bother him terribly. He does not want his son Pete to enlist; "the country ain't being invaded," he says, and besides, he spent almost eight months during the first World War in uniform in Texas, which should be "enough for me and mine to have to do to protect the country" (85).

Mrs. Res Grier - or "Maw," as the narrator calls her - does not want her son Pete to go to war, but accepts his decision to do so. Through her tears, she sends him off with mended and clean clothes and "a shoe box of vittles" (85). She also functions something as a family bridge between the World Wars, as her brother served in World War I, and her son is getting ready to serve in World War II.

The wife of Mr. Killegrew, a farmer in Frenchman's Bend; her first name is not provided. Her disability explains why the Grier sons go to the Killegrews' to find out what's going on in the world beyond Frenchman's Bend: because she is "deaf" (presumably, very hard of hearing), her husband "runs the radio as loud as it would run," and so the boys can "hear it plain . . . even standing outside with the window closed" (81).

Old Man Killgrew is a married farmer who lives near the Griers in Frenchman's Bend. He owns a radio, which the Griers do not.

Pete Grier, the oldest of the two Grier sons, enlists in the Army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Before that he was a farmer in Frenchman's Bend. The "ten acres" of land he farms was given to him by his father "when he graduated from the Consolidated" (82). According to his younger brother, who idolizes him, Pete was a very hard worker: "He never got behind like Pap, let alone stayed behind" (82). Pete's death in combat is reported in "Shall Not Perish."