Turl

The Negro fireman who works the night shift at the Jefferson power plant is named "Turl" in "Centaur in Brass" and "Tomey's Turl Beauchamp" in The Town, which re-tells the story of Flem Snopes' attempt to create a rivalry between him and Tom-Tom, the Negro fireman who works the day shift. In The Mansion's reference to this episode in the town's - and Flem's - history, both these men are referred to together as "them two mad skeered Negro firemen" (183). In the first two texts Turl is well-known locally for his amorous adventures: as the short story puts it, he has "prowled at least once (or tried to) every gal within ten miles of town" (160). It is his dangerous but comically portrayed affair with Tom-Tom's wife that creates the 'centaur' of the title. (In Go Down, Moses, published 15 years before The Town, "Tomey's Turl" is the name of the enslaved, illegitimate and incestuously conceived character from whom all the black Beauchamps descend; he was born in 1833, whereas the Tomey's Turl in The Town must have been born after 1880. The relationship between these two characters with the same name is never explained.)