Unnamed Negro Boon Shoots

Neither the Negro man whom Boon shoots in "Lion" and again in Go Down, Moses nor the cause of the quarrel between the men is explained. In "Lion" Quentin describes the man in terms that, like the entire episode, will make a 21st century sensibility wince: "They said he was a bad nigger, but I don't know" (189). When the scene was revised for the novel, the third-person narrator calls him a "negro" instead (223). In both texts this man is armed with "a dollar-and-a-half mail order pistol" that misfires (189, 223). Boon "hits" him "in the face" with his last shot in the story - which explains why we say he 'dies,' though that's not made explicit; in the novel he misses the man entirely. (When this episode is described again in The Reivers, the man is named Ludus.)