MacCallumsInKGB

Rafe McCallum, one of the twin sons of Virginius MacCallum in Flags in the Dust (1929), and his twin nephews, introduced in "The Tall Men" (1940), are the McCallum family members who appear in this later work. This pair of twins is merely mentioned, but Rafe plays a more consequential role in this narrative of a foiled murder plot when he willingly sells a vicious stallion to the young man who intends to use the horse as a weapon. In Flags one of the ways in which Faulkner establishes the MacCallums as the embodiment of traditional Southern virtues and a kind of agrarianism is Rafe's association with horses, given emphasis by a scene in which he resists the lure of young Bayard's sports car, a powerful modern racing machine. Here, however, Rafe's connection with horses leads toward violence and destruction instead of stability and tradition. Rafe himself, however, is linked to the story's protagonists, not its putative villain.