The Golden Book of
Yoknapatawpha County

Father of Jody Varner and many other children. Proprietor of a store in Frenchman’s Bend in 1919. Also worked as a horse physician. Set Cash Bundren’s broken leg in June 1927, seeing that a man aint so different from a horse or a mule, come long come short, except a mule or a horse has got a little more sense.

Born 1888. Eldest child of Bill Varner.

Died after 1929. Mother of Popeye. Lived in Pensacola, as the daughter of a boarding house keeper. Her first husband was a strike breaker who left her before Popeye’s birth. Her second husband left her robbing her of her fourteen hundred dollar in savings. Her mother perished in a house fire she herself had started (after three earlier such attempts) when Popeye was three, causing her to break down mentally. She was thereafter supported by Popeye’s foster family, even after he was put into a home for incorrigible children. Believed Popeye to earn his living as a night clerk. Survived him.

Born 25 December 1900, Pensacola, died August 1929, Birmingham. Born without eyelids, impotent and allergic to alcohol, which in his own words made him sick to his stomach like a dog. Did not learn to walk and talk until he was four, did not gain hair until five. Injured at age three in a house fire started by his grandmother. Thereafter cared for by doctors and — in the afternoons and on holidays — by a foster family, until he was sent to a home for incorrigible children upon cutting up alive first a pair of lovebirds and three months later a kitten. Released after five years of impeccable behaviour. Then moved to Mobile, New Orleans and finally Memphis, telling his mother that he was a night clerk, but in fact becoming rich trafficking liquor.

In the years leading up till 1929 joined Lee Goodwin at Old Frenchman Place, shipping liquor from Goodwin’s still back to Memphis.

On 12 May 1929, raped Temple Drake — who had become marooned at the Old Frenchman Place the previous day — with a corn cob, and killed Goodwin’s associate Tommy, who had attempted to protect her. Subsequently detained her in Reba Rivers’s Memphis brothel, repeatedly pimping her to Red, a bouncer at his night club, himself watching the act. Killed Red on 17 June in Joe’s dancing venue. Arrested in Birmingham, on his way to his mother, for the unrelated murder of a policeman in an Alabama village also on 17 June. Wrongfully convicted and hanged in August.

Generally called people Jack.