This man is the character who protests, "in diffident deprecation" (122), that the town must do something about the smell coming from the Grierson house.
The blacksmith shop is across the road from the general store where Ab's suit against De Spain is heard; a "spring branch," i.e. a small creek, runs behind it (19). The horse lot seems to be in the same area along the road. They are combined into an "event" here: the way Ab spends the day after the Justice fines him ten bushels of corn for damaging De Spain's rug.
This icon represents the unnamed men who sit upon or stand along the "tall rail fence" beside the horse lot next to the general store and blacksmith's shop, who spend the Saturday afternoon unhurriedly "swapping and buying" horses (20).
Referred to only as the "third man" along with Ab Snopes and the unnamed blacksmith, he "squat[s] on his heels" in rural fashion while taking part in their unnarrated, desultory conversation about "crops and animals" (19).
Although Ab Snopes has his wagon worked on at the blacksmith shop across the road from the story's second general store, all we see the smith himself doing is "talking or listening" with Snopes and "a third man," about "crops and animals" and Snopes' earlier life as a horsetrader (19).
The blacksmith shop in "Barn Burning" is across the road from the general store where Ab's suit against De Spain is heard; a "spring branch," i.e. a small creek, runs behind it (19). There's a horse lot nearby.
Submitted by sek4q@virginia.edu on Fri, 2012-08-17 12:01
This is the "weed-choked roadside ditch" near the De Spain plantation into which Sarty "hurls" himself to keep from being ridden down by De Spain (24).
Submitted by thagood@fau.edu on Thu, 2012-08-16 13:24
This is the "weed-choked roadside ditch" in "Barn Burning" into which Sarty Snopes "hurls" himself to keep from being ridden down by De Spain (24); it's near the De Spain mansion that Sarty earlier believed embodied "peace and dignity" (10).
