The "editor" of the local newspaper in "Death Drag" also does print jobs, like the handbill advertising the air show that Ginsfarb asks him to print (190). He expresses skepticism about the details of the performance, and when he demands payment in advance - "I ain't in this business for fun," he tells Ginsfarb - the job gets cancelled (191).
The people in the "good crowd" (198) watching the barnstorming show in "Death Drag" react variously to what happens, especially at its aborted climax: some express disbelief and shock; some of the women faint. Children are also present, and there's a mix of town and country people. One "countrywoman" is repeatedly and vocally skeptical about the authenticity of the show: "You can't tell me" this or that, she says, but is last heard demanding to be taken "right home this minute" when the show's final stunt goes wrong (199-200).
In "Death Drag," Jock goes to see Jones, "the secretary of the Fair Association," for permission to use the air field for a barnstorming show (188). There is no indication of Jones' day job, but his civic title suggests he belongs to the middle class of respectable "groundlings" in the story (188).
In "Death Drag" Ginsfarb is the barnstorming wing walker who performs the aerobatic stunts suggested by the story's title. His characterization emphasizes his Jewish ethnicity, sometimes in very stereotypical ways. Although he is a "short man," his "nose" would "have fitted a six-foot body" (187); he is so greedy for money that he can't be trusted to negotiate with the small towns the team performs in: "he'd stick out for his price too long" and so might well attract the attention of "anybody that might catch them" running the illegal show (195, 194).
In "Death Drag" these "Fourth-of-July holidayers" died when, "about two years ago," Jock was forced to crash land the plane he was giving them a ride in, breaking the gas line, and one of them "struck a match" (194).
Calvin Coolidge was the thirtieth President of the United States. He is mentioned peripherally in Sanctuary and The Town, but becomes a peripheral character in "Death Drag" when Ginsfarb bitterly describes the role Coolidge played in his own life, as the antagonist who "ruined" his former business and making him a barnstorming dare-devil to survive (192).
The narrator of "Death Drag" refers to him only as "the driver" and "the driver of the car," but we learn his name when one of the boys whom he lets ride with him by standing on the car's running boards calls him "Mr. Black" (189). He gives the three barnstormers a lift from the airfield to town.
In "A Justice" these undescribed "white people" call Sam Fathers "a Negro," as distinct from "the Negroes [who] call him a blue-gum" (343). This group may be whites who live near Sam and the Negroes on the Compson farm, or the phrase could refer to all white people who know Sam.
This "whisky-trader" in "A Justice" who visits Doom's plantation "each summer" is the only white man Sam Fathers sees until he is twelve years old (346.. Presumably he trades moonshine whiskey to the Indians, in exchange for animal skins or other commodities.
When first seen in "A Justice," these "three white men" are guarding the grounded steamboat, planning to claim it for their own; they are willing to trade it for ten of Doom's slaves (351).
