Finally got back to work on SECTION 4 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD: 

Section 4 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is made up of Chapter 6, Chapter 7 and Interlude #4. This section describes the Bannon family move to Aven, Buck's scandalous relationship with Big Vic and Buck's leadership in laying out the street plan for the town of Aven. It's about August of 1890 so Buck is only 21 years old but in the three years since leaving home, Buck's general store and payday loan business in Aven have already made him a wealthy young man. 

Chapter 6 opens with Buck daydreaming while leaning up against a tree located across St. Simon Street from the big unpainted house he just finished building for his family to move into when they roll into town on their wagons later that afternoon. Buck served as architect, building materials supplier, construction supervisor and interior decorator for this project and he's justly proud of his accomplishment because the location of the Aven city block of land he bought to build it on was across the street from his store so he was able to work on the house without it interfering with business at his store. Buck tells himself,"A man oughtn't to live over two hoe handles from his business." 

Buck's life on the streets of Aven never changes the rural aphorisms that pepper his thoughts and his speech. "A hoe handle away" or "half a hoe handle away" was an expression familiar to most 19th-century American rural folk coast-to-coast to indicate close proximity.  For the rest of the novel, the contrast between "life in the country" and "life in Aven" will be highlighted by the Aven residents preferring their rural vocabulary and table fare to whatever current food and fashion that's being offered by their newly founded railroad town. Eighteen chapters later in the novel, this preference for "all things rural" by early Aven residents begins to drive the novel's action after Buck's mother receives notice that she has a terminal case of cancer.

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