At one time a railroad brakeman and at another a sawmill foreman, in Light in August Doc Hines is a man "whom time, circumstance, something, had betrayed" (127).
Joe's biological father in Light in August is called "a fellow with the circus" who tries to ride off with Milly Hines on a dark rainy night, but is shot and killed by Milly's father (374). He and Milly are together long enough for her to get pregnant. His legacy to his son, who is given the name Joe Christmas in the Memphis orphanage, is the mystery of his own racial identity. Doc Hines is convinced he is a Negro, i.e. in the racist world of segregation, has "nigger blood" (374). Milly apparently tries to tell her parents "the man is a Mexican" (374).
In Light in August, Miss Carruthers was the organist in Hightower's church when he preached there, but has now "been dead for almost twenty years" (366).
In Light in August, Lucas Burch is "tall, young. Dark complected" (55). One of the "sawdust Casanovas" among the Doane's Mill workers, Lucas Burch impregnates and deserts Lena Grove in Alabama (6). He finds his way to Jefferson, where, unimaginatively changing his name to "Joe Brown," he takes a menial job in the planing mill, but he quits to join Christmas as partner in a bootleg whiskey business.
One of the major characters in Light in August, Bryon Bunch is a "small man who will not see thirty again" (47). He came to Jefferson seven years before the novel begins, and leaves the town before it ends. The bookkeeper at the planing mill where he works calls him a "hillbilly" (413). While in Jefferson, for six days every week he is a steady, dependable worker in the mill; every Sunday he directs a country church choir. Scrupulously honest with himself and others, Byron is also a sweet-tempered man.
In Light in August, Deputy Buford discovers "traces of recent occupation" in the cabin beyond Joanna's house (290) and "reckons" that if there is anyone living in that place, they would be Negroes.
In Light in August, Miss Atkins is the dietitian - "young, a little fullbodied, smooth, pink-and-white" - believes the five-year-old Joe Christmas is "going to tell" of her sexual episode with the young intern (120, 124). She calls Joe a "little nigger bastard" and raises questions with the matron about his racial identity so that he will be removed from the orphanage before exposing her (122).
In Light in August, Bobbie comes from a brothel in Memphis to the railroad town where she works for Max and Mame, by day as a waitress "in a small, dingy, back street restaurant" and by night as a prostitute. She responds to the romantic advances of 18-year old Joe Christmas, even though "she would never see thirty again" (172).
