The Negro maid who works in Miss Reba's Memphis brothel appears in four novels. In Sanctuary, where she is named Minnie, she is a kind of confidant and guardian to Temple - either because Popeye pays her, or because she is afraid of him. This role is made explicit in her next appearance, in Requiem for a Nun, where she is not named: Temple describes her as both her guard and the one person with whom she could "talk" (111-12).
Varner's store is a gathering place for the people who live in Frenchman's Bend. In The Town there are two references to the groups of men, specifically, who are found there. Gavin's hypothetical account of Mrs. Varner's visit to the store refers to the "few loungers" whom she chases out - these men "should have been in the field," since it's "planting time" (307). Later "the men squatting along the gallery" (388) - whom Ratliff also describes as a "few neighbors" (384) - rush off to rescue Clarence Snopes from Byron's children (388).
In Light in August the group of men at Varner's store who watch as the pregnant Lena Grove descends from Armstid's wagon 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).
At almost any time of day, apparently, the porch in front of Varner's store serves as the gathering place for groups of men from nearby farms in "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard." While sitting on the porch they discuss local events and characters.
According to the story Quentin Compson heard and recalls in The Sound and the Fury, it takes three Memphis policemen to subdue the naked Negroes who disturb the peace in the throes of a religious trance.
In Light in August the police in Memphis arrest the drunken man in Mrs. Hightower's hotel room after her death and also find the pieces of paper on which she wrote and tore up her "rightful name" (67).
In the short story "Gold Is Not Always," and also in the revised version of the story in Go Down, Moses, Roth Edmonds expects to find evidence that his missing mule has been loaded into a truck and taken to Memphis, an so intends to report her as stolen to the Jefferson sheriff and the Memphis police.
In "Pantaloon in Black" and again in Go Down, Moses, McAndrews is the first identified white character to appear. He is "the white foreman" at the sawmill where Rider works (244). Only in the deputy sheriff’s retelling of events is McAndrews referred to by name.
