Unnamed Negro Railroad Fireman

Mink sees the fireman "crouched dim and high above the hissing steam" beside the engineer as a night train pulls into the Jefferson station in The Mansion (39). In this context, the 'fireman' is a man who keeps train's boiler hot by shoveling coal into its firebox. The text itself provides no further information him, but given the historical patterns of the segregated South and the 'firemen' who appear elsewhere in Faulkner's fictions, it seems safe to assume the man Mink sees is a Negro.