Walter Thomas

Walter Thomas is one of the two village wags who anchor the store-porch banter, trading barbs with Lige Mosely while the men chew cane and pass around a mule's hock-bone. He is the one who says the dead mule was so skinny you could do a week's washing on his ribs, and later the one who notes that Teet used to be fat as a butterball and is now too skinny. His humor is quick, a little cruel, and deeply social — it polices who is admired and who is mocked. He gives the play its comic rhythm and its sense of a community that talks about everyone.