As in many other Yoknapatawpha fictions, the "people in our town" collectively play the roles of curious spectators to and choric commentators on the story of Mrs. Gant and her daughter Zilphia (381). "They" think and speak as a group (371). As a group they are nosy rather than concerned, more judgmental than helpful; in the end they accept Miss Zilphia on her unconventional terms, though they "still call her Miss Zilphia Gant" even after she tells them the story of her (second) marriage (381).
The people who live in the Bend alongside the Gants are, like many other groups of people in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, a nosy, gossipy bunch. When Gant's assistant goes to the local store to complain about his treatment, he finds them "gathered at the store" already talking about "the pistol incident" - that is, about Mrs. Gant borrowing a pistol before she left town that morning (370).
The "oldish" man in "in the background" at the tavern where Gant stays is vividly described as a drunkard "with cunning reddish pig's eyes and matted hair which lent a kind of ferocity to the weak face which they concealed," but beyond that his place in the narrative remains vague (368). It's likely that he is Mrs. Vinson's husband or father, but all the text says about their relationship is that they are occasionally heard "cursing one another in the back" of the tavern (369).
Mrs. Vinson "conducts" the business at the tavern where Jim Gant stays (368). A "youngish" woman, "with cold eyes and a hard infrequent tongue," she may be the wife or possibly the daughter of the "oldish" man in the background of the place (368), but she runs off from there with Gant. Together, they get as far as Memphis before Gant's wife catches up with them and kills them both.
Helping Jim Gant in his work as a trader is "a hulking halfwitted boy" (368). It is he who tells Mrs. Gant that her husband has left her, when he tries to collect the $1.75 he loaned to Gant; when she refuses at gun point to give him any money, he becomes "an ancient mariner in faded overalls" as - "wild eyed and drooling a little at the mouth" - he relates his grievance repeatedly to the other people in the Bend (370).
The other men who frequent the tavern where Gant stays on his trips to Memphis are described as "rough, unshaven, overalled men" who "eat coarse food and drink pale, virulent corn whiskey and sleep in their muddy clothes and boots on the puncheon floor before the log fire" (368). Some of them, at least, are probably mule or horse traders like Gant - they arrive in "other caravans similar to his" - but others make their living in "more equivocal" but unspecified ways (368).
Mrs. Gant "borrows a pistol from another neighbor" when she leaves the Bend to get revenge on her husband (369). We know this 'other' neighbor is not the woman with whom she leaves Zilphia, but that is all the text makes explicit; that this neighbor's is male is our assumption.
The tavern on the route that Jim Gant takes from the Bend to Memphis is described as "a rambling log house with stout walls and broken roof"; the men who stay in it are "rough" and "unshaven," they drink "corn whiskey" and sleep in "their muddy clothes and boots," and "about the whole place lay an air of transient and sinister dilapidation" (368). The place is "conducted" by Mrs. Vinson, the woman whom Gant leaves his wife for (368).
When he marries again, the painter who married Zilphia is living "in a neighboring state" (379). Mississippi is bordered by Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee. Tennessee is the most likely of these, in part because the newspaper where Zilphia learns of his new marriage is probably a Memphis paper, and also because the detective agency she hires to keep tabs on his new life is in Memphis. For these reasons we have put this location in Tennessee.
