The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

His insignia identifies him as belonging to the Second Marine Division, which saw heavy combat during World War I; he expresses his contempt for Horace's Y.M.C.A. uniform, which marks him as a non-combatant, by "making a vulgar sound of derogation" and spitting, "not exactly at Horace's feet, and not exactly anywhere else" (158-59).

This is the employee inside the train's baggage car. His race is not specified, and his reply to Horace's concern about the fragility of his glass blowing equipment makes it hard to determine it. Linguistically he sounds 'black': "All right, colonel. . . . we ain't hurt her none, I reckon. If we have, all you got to do is sue us" (157). But his unsubmissive attitude toward the white Horace suggests he is 'white' himself.

The porter who helps Horace with his luggage when he returns to Jefferson from France.

He greets Horace Benbow warmly upon his return to Jefferson from World War I.

The employee of the white horse trader who owns the stallion Young Bayard tries to ride; according to the trader, Tobe is the only person the horse allows to handle him.

"A horse trader by profession," with the usual unscrupulousness of that profession (127). He is described with a few vivid details: the "cheap nickel watch" he displays; the "shaven beard" that is "heaviest from the corners of his mouth to his chin; the way he "looks always as though he were chewing tobacco" (127). The fact that "he was usually engaged in litigation with the railroad company over the violent demise of some of his stock by its agency" makes him very similar to I.O. Snopes in "Mule in the Yard." (In Flags in the Dust I.O. runs Flem's restaurant.)

She manages the boarding house where Byron Snopes stays, until he moves in order to escape the persistence of her son Virgil. In Light in August, it is another Byron who lives in her hotel - Bryon Bunch.

The "young woman" who works for Doctors Alford and Peabody as a receptionist. In her exchanges with Miss Jenny, she is alternately a trained professional and a deferential southern girl.

The Benbows' cook. She expresses a sort of maternal concern about Horace's welfare. Narcissa tells her that "Nobody can make chocolate pies like yours" (309).

Although the narrative does not describe this "youth" in any detail, it does specify the "practical joke" for which he was expelled "from the state university": "he had removed the red lantern from the barrier about a street excavation and hung it above the door of the girls' dormitory" (186).