Unnamed Friends and Associates of Boyd Ballenbaugh

For several years before "Hand upon the Waters" begins, Boyd Ballenbaugh has been hiding at his brother’s place in Yoknapatawpha, though he is hiding "not from the police but from some of his Memphis friends or later business associates" (76). Both the mention of the police and the fact that Boyd is in hiding seems to suggest that, like many of the characters whom Faulkner's fictions locate in Memphis, these men in "Hand upon the Waters" are members of the underworld, and their "business" some kind of criminal activity - but that is not made explicit.