"Chapter 1: Buck left the farm when he was eighteen."

The novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD opens with young Buck Bannon behind the plow "blinded by the sun", with sweat stinging his eyes and burning as it soaked  into the raw places on his neck chafed by the mule's reins but none of that mattered because "he was eighteen  and he was following a mule for the last time." The reader has no idea whether Buck had spontaneously made this momentous decision or whether it was made after careful planning. One thing is for certain, the main thing on Buck's mind is how he's going to tell his Mama he's leaving the old home place forever and moving to the nearby town of Aven.