In Light in August this man is killed by Nathaniel Burden, after claiming that Nathaniel stole his horse. The messenger who reports this event to Nathaniel's family says that "Folks claim the Mexican never owned no horse" (244).
After Joe Christmas escapes from the deputy outside the courthouse, his pursuers include "three men" in a car. They follow Christmas and Grimm into Hightower's house and watch as Grimm castrates Christmas. One of them vomits at the sight. The narrator of Light in August says that these men "are not to lose it," will never be able to forget what they saw (465).
The "clump of men" sitting in Max's restaurant the first time Christmas goes there in Light in August are described as "not farmers and not townsmen either"; with "their tilted hats and their cigarettes and their odor of barbershops," they look like they "had just got off a train," "would be gone tomorrow," and do "not have any address" (178, 174).
The group of men at Varner's store in Light in August are there on Saturday morning to watch as the pregnant Lena Grove descends from Armstid's wagon. They are described as "squatting" and "already spitting across the heelgnawed porch" (25). They "listen quietly" as the tells her story, and are all sure she will never again see the father of the child she carries (26).
On the fourth day of his flight in Light in August Christmas smells breakfast cooking at a farm house, but waits to approach it until he sees "the men" of the farm finish eating and "go to the field" (332).
On the "Sunday morning" after Mrs. Hightower's scandalous death in Light in August, Hightower's church is beset by swarm of "Memphis reporters taking pictures" (67). They even "follow him into the church" (68).
After Hightower refuses to resign from his pulpit in the Presbyterian church in Light in August, members of other churches in Jefferson come to see him "out of curiosity for a time" (69). The other main denominations in Jefferson are Episcopalian, Baptist and Methodist.
In Light in August the old men and women, pillars of the church, are among the first to "astonished and dubious" about Reverend Hightower's obsessions (61). Others increasingly view his behavior and preaching with suspicion, and gossip about him and his wife - though they also raise funds to pay for Mrs. Hightower's treatment in a sanatorium and cook meals for him during her absence.
The phrase "Grand Jury" suggests "something" "secret" and "of a hidden and unsleeping and omnipotent eye" to Percy Grimm's platoon of peace-keepers (456). In Light in August the "Grand Jury" that is empaneled to consider the charges against Joe Christmas does remain mysterious. The narrator, for example, says that "the Grand Jury . . .
When the men chasing Christmas in Light in August are led by the dogs to the Negro woman "wearing a pair of man's shoes," one "member of the posse" identifies the shoes as the fugitive's (329).
