John McLendon|Jackson McLendon

This man appears in four texts under three different names; in all four he is associated with World War I, but in very different ways. In "Dry September" he is John McLendon, a decorated veteran who takes command of the lynch mob; he has a "heavy-set body," an aggressive temperament, and a wife whom he violently abuses (171). He plays a much smaller role as McLendon in Light in August: a customer at the barbershop who was there when Christmas "run in and dragged [Lucas Burch] out" (87). In The Town he is Jackson McLendon when he organizes and commands a company of volunteers from Jefferson during World War I. In his final appearance, in The Mansion, he is Mack Lendon, "one of a big family of brothers in a big house" (205). A "cotton man, a buyer for one of the Memphis export houses" (207), when the U.S. enters World War I he organizes a group of local volunteers into the Sartoris Rifles, of which he is the original Captain. But according to Charles Mallison, he was "such a bad company commander that he was relieved of his command long before it ever saw the lines" (206). (If we take into account the version of "Dry September" that appeared in Scribner's magazine, he actually has a fourth name: John Plunkett.)