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.
In "Hand upon the Waters" Nate is a Negro farmer who lives in a cabin near the path to Lonnie's camp, and the owner of the "Negro voice" that "answers" Stevens when he asks him to let people at the nearby store know if he, Stevens, isn't "back by daylight" (79). In response to his wife's misgivings, Nate "murmurs something" - but readers never hear what Nate himself says, either to Stevens or to her (80).
One of the four men - the others are Ike, Matthew, and Jim Blake - who load Lonnie Grinnup’s body onto a wagon for transfer to Tyler Ballenbaugh’s truck in "Hand upon the Waters."
One of the four men - the others are Ike, Pose, and Jim Blake - who load Lonnie Grinnup’s body onto a wagon for transfer to Tyler Ballenbaugh’s truck in "Hand upon the Waters."
The eldest of the four men - the others are Pose, Matthew, and Jim Blake - who load Lonnie Grinnup’s body onto a wagon for transfer to Tyler Ballenbaugh’s truck in "Hand upon the Waters." There's no sign of a connection between him and the two more significant 'Ike's in the fiction: McCaslin and Snopes.
According to "Hand upon the Waters," "the last of the Holston family" - one of the three first (white) families in Yoknapatawpha - died "before the end of the last century," i.e. sometime before 1900 (70). This story does not connect the family to the Holston House, the Jefferson hotel that survives into the 20th century. This contradicts the account of the family provided in The Mansion, one of Faulkner's last novels.
In "Hand upon the Waters," Blake is one of the four men - the others are Ike, Pose, and Matthew - who load Lonnie Grinnup’s body onto a wagon for transfer to Tyler Ballenbaugh’s truck.
In "Hand upon the Waters," Tyler Ballenbaugh is "a farmer, married and with a family and a reputation for self-sufficiency and violence," and for having won large "sums" as a gambler (75). That reputation returns with him from the time he spent "out West" (75). After his return to Yoknapatawpha, he continues to gamble, by speculating in "cotton futures" and even betting on Lonnie's Grinnup's life expectancy (75). He is cool and levelheaded in comparison with his younger brother.
Tyler Ballenbaugh's "family" is mentioned when he first appears in "Hand upon the Waters," but no other details about them are given (75). The fact that Tyler is "married," however, means the family includes a wife (75).
In "Hand upon the Waters," Boyd Ballenbaugh is Tyler Ballenbaugh’s younger brother. After a brief career in Memphis, where he worked as a hired guard during an industrial dispute and then got involved in undisclosed but apparently criminal activities with a set of "associates," he returns to his brother's house in Yoknapatawpha to hide out (76). A drunkard and a braggart, he is hotheaded and violent. Because he resents having to work for his brother "about the farm" (76), he comes up with what he thinks will be a quick - and murderous - way to make money.
