From the middle of the novel - really the heart of the story. The day Joe Christmas became a man:

He stepped from the dark porch, into the moonlight, and with his bloody head and his empty stomach hot, savage, and courageous with whiskey, he entered the street which was to run for fifteen years.

The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene, broken by intervals of begged and stolen rides, on trains and trucks, and on country wagons with he at twenty and twentyfive and thirty sitting on the seat with his still, hard face and the clothes (even when soiled and worn) of a city man and the driver of the wagon not knowing who or what the passenger was and not daring to ask.

It doens't get better than that. This one of the best books I've read.

The structure of the novel is like a wheel, wheels and roads are two of the primary symbols throughout.

The outside wheel is Leena Grove - an unwed mother who is looking for the father. The father ran off. She's tracking him down -

She's walked from Alabama to Missiissipi "a fur piece". She takes a ride into Jefferson, stopping along a road looking at the wagon. Same imagery as Joe Christmas who is at the center of the novel. The hub.

The spokes is a former preacher named Hightower, who was also drawn to Jefferson. But by his own boyhood folly and romanticism over his confederate grandfather's death in the War.

This novel is about isolation and community. About trust (Lena) and distrust (Christmas).
Christmas is a dark Christ figure. Faulkner has to be very direct on the comparsions because Christmas is not a good person. His name and age 33 and his time in Jefferson - 3 years are the key links to the Christ figure status.

Great read.