How to WIN at figuring the arithmetic of NECESSARY EVIL with a 4th grade education
How ironic that on the first day of September of 2023, the first day of the month that stands as the 75th anniversary of the publication of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, I discover that newspapers-dot-com now includes DOTHAN newspapers more current than 1963!
from the August 29, 1948 DOTHAN EAGLE
posted by robertoreg at 9:19 PM
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Dougie Bailey took a line from a Shakespeare play and used it to name his novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD. He could just as well used four similar words which were part of the vernacular of all the characters in his turn-of-the-19th-century novel. Those words would be DEVIL FOR US ALL as in the old expression, "Every man for himself and the devil for us all." This colloquialism was the law of the streets in Bailey's fictional southeast Alabama town of Aven. Bailey's main character, Buck Bannon, rationalizes his treachery by claiming "whatever I do, you know it ain't just for myself" (page 191) but Buck is in reality an island to himself whose competitive spirit could be summed up as "Screw everybody else. Take care of yourself before they take care of you." Aven was a world with little spirit of cooperation and where grievances were often wiped out in blood as proven by Buck's last statement to his younger brother, Hearn,"Words won't help. I'd have killed any other man, maybe any other of my brothers. You'll just be lucky to walk out."
The novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is the three decade story of how one man comes to dominate the brand-new southeast Alabama town of Aven after he discovers that the secret to unlimited wealth without having to work for it comes to those who can commercialize and exploit the lowest instincts of human nature. The reader follows the private life of the main character, Buck Bannon, after he leaves the family farm and develops the Midas touch by helping Aven's male citizens satisfy their lust for liquor and lewd women with the money they receive from Buck's high interest payday loans. In the end Buck learns that even though his wealth might be able to buy him the whole world and everybody in it, his money can't buy the one thing that this kind-hearted white-collar criminal with a fourth grade education desires most: his own self-respect.
The novel is composed of 13 sections which cover a period from 1887 to 1915 in the life of the novel's main character, Buck Bannon. Each section is made up of multiple chapters and an interlude which the author uses to advance his timeline. No dates are used in the novel but Chapter 1 through Chapter 15 ,which make up the first seven sections of the novel, cover the period from 1887 until the early 1890s. INTERLUDE 7 advances the action ten years with the fictional town of Aven going from a frontier boom town into a small urban area with paved streets, a water works, power plant, telephone company and all the other innovations of a turn-of-the-century urban area. Each of the 33 chapters is a short account of an amusing or interesting incident from Buck Bannon's perspective. The 12 interludes describe Buck Bannon from the viewpoint of two railroad brakemen, Jake and Bascom, who observe that Buck's love of liquor, gambling and lewd women never interfere with his ability to come out on top in every commercial and political challenge he encounters on his way through his life in Aven. Together the 33 chapters and 12 interludes paint a concise portrait of the main character, Buck Bannon.
Only after the publication of a second edition of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD in 1989 did the public discover that the author's original ending for the novel went unpublished due to the fact that the publisher's editors wanted a happy ending. This original ending causes the reader to speculate upon the author's true opinion of the vivid character of Buck Bannon he created for his novel.
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As the town is the nation in seed, (The southeast Alabama town of Aven becomes a character itself as this novel unfolds an almost 30 turn-of-the-century year story (1887-1916) which saw a fallow wilderness introduced to the American Industrial Revolution. Growing from a population of less than 200 to almost 10,000 in a few years, it is a tale about how a solitary frontier Wiregrass "dirt road sport" with a fourth grade education and an unquenchable thirst for domination went from a side job as a teenage pawnbroker to become a corporate psychopath who expanded his power to the point where he was able to control the entire population of Aven through finance, politics and property ownership. Imagine Aven as one of the novel's most important characters who the protagonist Buck Bannon "adopts" as one would an orphan and proceeds to guide this surrogate human as it grows and matures.)
so is a strong man the kernel of the town.
(The novel never leaves the point of view of the character of Buck Bannon, a man whose values were forged through the childhood trauma produced by a life dominated by preparing, planting, nurturing and harvesting a field of cotton every year for the first eighteen of his life. With his actions and inner monologues over the course of 34 chapters and 12 interludes, we experience Buck's unsentimental vision of urbanization manifest itself.)
The life of the strong man is the beam from which the vigor of the town is projected, and, since the progress of man is by nature episodic, so a town may leap one year and stumble another. Robust in peak times, bloodless in the valleys, the commonwealth ebbs and flows with the temper of its men.
The lusty, always greedy, sometimes fumbling fingers of the strong man enrich the country in spite of his motives, as the earthworm's blind and selfish groping mellows the soil. (Just as the earthworm was born to instinctively consume waste and turn it into the black gold of fertile soil, so Buck Bannon's innate lust for power enriches those who share the streets of Aven with him. The unintended consequence of Buck's profit seeking is the growth of Aven which enriches the entire population of the town.)
Those other men, those who grovel and hesitate, live only within the boundary of their fears, in a dusty husk of a world, until the strong man comes, saying,
"I will build for myself, and if the public harvest follows my private vice, then join me at the board and leave it gratified." (In the novel's last chapter, Buck described his deep insatiable hunger to his wife, "The town's growing and I'll build more stores and buy more land, and make more money, as long as anybody makes it. I'll get mine all right, even if there are more face cards in the deck nowadays."
ROBERTOREG's Critical Comments on Chapter 1
SECTION 1
DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is not structurally complex. The events in each chapter occur chronologically from about 1890 until 1915; however, the author employs 12 asides called Interludes to move the timeline forward rapidly so that the novel can cover over 25 years of Buck Bannon's life within its 33 chapters. Each Interlude is a confidential conversation between two railway brakemen who always discuss the consequences of Buck's actions in Aven which have been described in a few previous chapters. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and the first Interlude make up the first of these 13 major divisions of the novel. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 describe Buck's life on the family farm, Buck's first impressions of Aven and how he got into the position to make his fortune on his first morning after waking up in town. The first Interlude has the brakemen discuss how the action in the first two chapters has shown how Buck became Aven's first teenage loan shark and on the road to riches a little over a year after arriving in town.
Chapter 1
In the opening scene of the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, the reader is introduced to young Buck Bannon behind his plow "blinded by the sun" with sweat stinging his eyes and burning as it soaked into the raw places on his neck chafed by his mule's reins but none of that mattered because "he was eighteen and he was following a mule for the last time." Popping a sweat in the early morning sunshine reminded Buck that it was time for this "dirt road sport" to leave the farm and try his luck in town. He had a twenty dollar gold coin burning a hole in his pocket and the time had come for him to make his big move.
The label "dirt road sport" coming in the first paragraph of the second page of the novel holds much portent for this novel. The author's use of the word "sport" to describe his main character refers to the "sporting man culture" which is defined by Wikipedia as involving "men leading hedonistic lifestyles that included keeping mistresses as well as excessive eating, drinking, smoking, gambling, and big game hunting. It is applied to a large group of middle- and upper-class men in the mid-19th century, most often in Great Britain and the United States." The "dirt road" part of the label refers to Buck's isolated rural background. Once he leaves the family farm in Chapter 1 and in each subsequent chapter, the reader sees Buck adopt a Gulf South version of "sporting man culture" and after the first few chapters, only gains clues as to the precise methods used by Buck to quickly amass the great fortune necessary to support such a lifestyle and at the same time provide financial support to his 12 younger siblings.
To begin to build the better life required Buck to take his hard-earned $20 gold coin and to head to Aven, the new boomtown a few miles away from the Bannon farm. Suddenly rising out of the South Alabama piney-woods wilderness, the new town consisted of a railway station with a small row of tin-roofed stores and unpainted houses.
Not only does Buck trust his younger brother Jeff to drive him to Aven on the family wagon but also felt "it's high time you'uz learnin' the way to Aven." Buck goes on to reassure his mother, "You'll all have to be comin' in town to see me, and Jeff can drive you." Buck's last words of warning to Jeff before walking into town shows Buck expects Jeff to take his place in the family, "Don't let Papa make you plow the big mule, boy. Big John'll pure pull yore arms out at the sockets. But you got to quit sleepin' in the cotton rows when you ought to be choppin'."
The DEVIL MAKE A THIRD Appendix
Chapter 1: Buck Bannon leaves the family farm for the new railroad town of Aven.
This was probably in the spring of the year when land was being plowed for planting.
page 11: Buck's new furrow was cutting across fresh-plowed dirt, but he didn't notice it.
from the May 12, 1887 MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER
page 11: She was wearing the shapeless dress she always wore when she was going to have another baby. Buck felt a sudden lurch under his ribs as he remembered that he was the first of twelve children. He could call back to mind the births of the last eight.
from the September 2, 1888 EUFAULA DAILY TIMES
from the December 7, 1954 DOTHAN EAGLE (the Dan Baker obituary)
Chapter 2: Buck Bannon wakes up at the Aven depot, walks across the way to the single row of stores and gets his first job.
page 23 (the railroad is still under construction): "Who's boss here?" he said, before he turned around.
"I ain't," the red-faced man said quickly, "but if you're any kind o' hand with a pick, we'll take you."
Buck shook his head and hefted the box under his arms.
"Much obliged," he said, slowly, "but I ain't aimin' to dig in no more dirt."Railroad survey crew arrives in Dothan in spring of 1887. (from the February 23, 1887 EUFAULA DAILY TIMES)
page 23: "Like bees in a hive," he muttered, and his eyes strayed on, following the careless streets that branched off from the row of stores. It seemed to Buck that the streets ran of their own free will in any direction wandering aside sometimes, but always leading to richer homes that wore paint. Some streets were shorter than others.
"Them short ones," Buck thought, "look like they just can't make it past them painted houses."
page 24: "It ain't much," he said to himself, "but God knows it ain't no older'n little Coke. It'll grow, but right now it looks like somebody just flung it out there because they didn't have no use for it."
from the August 15, 1929 DOTHAN EAGLE
page 24: Buck was so busy thinking he nearly walked into a small tow-headed boy holding the tie rope to a heifer in front of a good-sized general store. Buck scuffled his palm over the boy's head and cocked his eye to the side so he could spell out the name of the store.
"Green's General Mdse," he said, slowly, then looked down at the boy. "Looks like I'll eat counter vittles, boy. Shore ain't no other place."
from the January 10, 1913 DOTHAN EAGLE
from page 29 and 30:
They walked in silence for a moment, until Jake suddenly grinned.
"What the hell," he said, "it's pretty good to have a place to go, though. When you got to have it, I mean."
The other pushed up the bill of his cap.
"It'd be all right," he admitted, "if the danged fool handn't learnt us railroadin' men can't work unless we got our watches. Someday, by God, I'm a 'goin' to leave him stuck with mine and buy me another'n."
"He'd just sell it for a profit," his friend said. "Nope," he went on, "we're stuck. Borrow two dollars and pay fifty cents interest ever' week. Why he don't even want the two dollars. Just that damned fifty cents."
The moon was riding high and shining half-way through the length of Green's store when they got to the shuttered doors, and looked through the small windows.
They could see the light in the back, and by it, the quiet figure, leaning against a counter making marks in a little book, and scuffling his feet at mice that were no longer afraid of him.
Jake suddenly laughed.
"Son of a gun's figurin' how much all us railroaders owe him," he said. "Been there ever' payday for over a year."
He tapped on the glass and saw the figure push away from the counter, still looking at the book, and walk slowly towards the front.
page 31: He leaned forward unconsciously, somehow finding inside a small pulling for the little engine, and he listened again for the urgent howl. It came, different this time, riding towards him in triumph, trumpeting the news that the rise had been topped and the hollows of Aven lay at the foot of the grade.
"That's Jernigan on the cord," he said to himself. "Many times as I've heard it, the last sixteen months, I won't never forget the way he gives it that laughin', wheedlin' twist."
from the December 27, 1953 DOTHAN EAGLE
from page 31 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD:
"Couldn't forget Jernigan." His mouth twisted wryly. "Or Bascom Wooten." Wooten coming that night so many months ago and tapping on the small window at the back of Green's store. His great raw slab of a face screwed up with embarrassment as he held out his heavy railroading watch, and his coarse rumble. "You kin hold this watch for the two dollars an' git three back on payday." Buck felt again the quick urge to be generous, to say, "Keep your watch and just pay me back the two," because Wooten was a friend. Then, again, came the quick knowledge and the awe that he had found the short cut; and again he knew the bite of shame as he had known it when he carried the watch slowly back towards the lamp that sat on the goods box at one end of his cot.
"OUT OF PAWN" (from the December 30, 1946 DOTHAN EAGLE)
Page 32: His eyes wandered back over towards the body of Aven, where the homes and stores and blacksmith shops and lumber yards nudged each other. It was built too tightly and he knew it. It didn't matter now, but the time would come when store fronts would have to be pushed back to widen the streets. "It's growin' crazy as a gourd vine flingin' out a creeper now and then and stores and houses hitchin' on whenever they feel like it."
(from J.P. Folkes October 5, 1907 Letter to the Editor of the Dothan Eagle reprinted in the October 27, 1953 DOTHAN EAGLE)
(from the January 9, 1898 MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER)
(from the August 15, 1929 Dothan Eagle)
from page 32: He
tightened his grip on the neck of the plain paper bag in his hand, and
held it closer against his leg, scowling uselessly as the small clump of
stores that had volunteered in the last year. "Half a mile from the
railroad," he thought, "just to get closer to the spring and the
distillery." He shook his head to clear it and started up the walk,
swinging his arms and hitting the gravel good solid licks with his
heels. "By God, business may leave where I am now, but it'll find me
where it's going when it gets there.
(from the April 16, 1931 DOTHAN EAGLE)
(from the August 18, 1899 COLUMBIA BREEZE)
page 39: Even the sudden high-pitched yells from the Puddin' House were muted and sounded farther away than they really were. They always yelled in the Puddin' House. It was the only place for colored folks alone. A scuffle and a giggling laugh in the bushes near the narrow street came to Buck like an echo that had no beginning.
from the February 27, 1938 DOTHAN EAGLE: "There are not and never have been 'jouks' for Negroes in this section. The colored patrons, themselves, prefer the more descriptive definition of 'puddin' house. "
By page 45 of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, Buck Bannon has acquired a fashionable wardrobe, a new rubber-tired buggy and he's set his sights on marrying the richest man in Aven's daughter. (from the April 16, 1931 DOTHAN EAGLE)
ROBERTOREG'S NOTES
SECTION 1
DEVIL MAKE A THIRD is not structurally complex. The events in each chapter occur chronologically from about 1890 until 1915; however, the author employs 12 asides called Interludes to move the timeline forward rapidly so that the novel can cover over 25 years of Buck Bannon's life within its 33 chapters. Each Interlude is a confidential conversation between two railway brakemen who always discuss the consequences of Buck's actions in Aven which have been described in a few previous chapters. Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and the first Interlude make up the first of these 13 major divisions of the novel. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 describe Buck's life on the family farm, Buck's first impressions of Aven and how he got into the position to make his fortune on his first morning after waking up in town. The first Interlude has the brakemen discuss how the action in the first two chapters has shown how Buck became Aven's first teenage loan shark and on the road to riches a little over a year after arriving in town.
Chapter 1
In the opening scene of the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, the reader is introduced to young Buck Bannon behind his plow "blinded by the sun" with sweat stinging his eyes and burning as it soaked into the raw places on his neck chafed by his mule's reins but none of that mattered because "he was eighteen and he was following a mule for the last time." Popping a sweat in the early morning sunshine reminded Buck that it was time for this "dirt road sport" to leave the farm and try his luck in town. He had a twenty dollar gold coin burning a hole in his pocket and the time had come for him to make his big move.
The label "dirt road sport" coming in the first paragraph of the second page of the novel holds much portent for this novel. The author's use of the word "sport" to describe his main character refers to the "sporting man culture" which is defined by Wikipedia as involving "men leading hedonistic lifestyles that included keeping mistresses as well as excessive eating, drinking, smoking, gambling, and big game hunting. It is applied to a large group of middle- and upper-class men in the mid-19th century, most often in Great Britain and the United States." The "dirt road" part of the label refers to Buck's isolated rural background. Once he leaves the family farm in Chapter 1 and in each subsequent chapter, the reader sees Buck adopt a Gulf South version of "sporting man culture" and after the first few chapters, only gains clues as to the precise methods used by Buck to quickly amass the great fortune necessary to support such a lifestyle and at the same time provide financial support to his 12 younger siblings.
To begin to build the better life required Buck to take his hard-earned $20 gold coin and to head to Aven, the new boomtown a few miles away from the Bannon farm. Suddenly rising out of the South Alabama piney-woods wilderness, the new town consisted of a railway station with a small row of tin-roofed stores and unpainted houses.
Not only does Buck trust his younger brother Jeff to drive him to Aven on the family wagon but also felt "it's high time you'uz learnin' the way to Aven." Buck goes on to reassure his mother, "You'll all have to be comin' in town to see me, and Jeff can drive you." Buck's last words of warning to Jeff before walking into town shows Buck expects Jeff to take his place in the family, "Don't let Papa make you plow the big mule, boy. Big John'll pure pull yore arms out at the sockets. But you got to quit sleepin' in the cotton rows when you ought to be choppin'."
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 opens on Buck's first morning in Aven with him resting on top of a baggage truck beside Aven's railroad depot. The strict order of the chapters does not prevent the author from taking an excursion into the past. The first three pages of Chapter 2 describe, through Buck's dream-like stream of consciousness, his impressions of two of his younger brothers and his parents. Buck judges his new bed on top of the baggage truck to be superior to the pallet which he had shared with two brothers on the floor of their parents' house during the nights before arriving in Aven. This view of the two younger brothers through Buck's mind's eye shows the reader the characteristics of Jeff Bannon which will lead him to become Buck's life-long business partner and the flaws of Hearn Bannon which will result in Buck finally telling his despicable brother in Chapter 27, "I'd have killed any other man. You'll be lucky to just walk out."
After thoughts of his brothers fade, Buck then recalls a philosophical expression his mother used to describe the fear she held for the future of her family: "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves." This popular 19th century expression was used to describe the phenomenon of one generation of a family that overcame poverty by accumulating wealth having the family's fortune destroyed by the poor decisions of future generations who refuse to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain the family's assets. Jeannie Bannon's doubts about her sons' ability to hold on to what she and her husband Joe had accumulated during the tumultuous years during and immediately after Reconstruction scares Buck and drives Buck's ambition making him strive to show his mother that she has raised a farm boy who uses his rural experience to conquer every obstacle that the growing young town of Aven puts in front of him.
This chapter introduces the reader to the newly constructed town of Aven consisting of "a row of tin-roofed store buildings lining the street nearest the railroad" and a few unpainted houses. At the end of some trails leading off from the one business street could be found a few painted houses owned by the village elite. Buck sees Aven's new buggies and painted houses and knows he has to find a way so he can own a new buggy and a new house . As the novel progresses, this "germ of a town" grows along with Buck's business success and just as Buck appears to adopt Aven as his home at first sight, the people of Aven will also adopt Buck as one of their own and will extend the opportunity for him to express his commercial and political genius in every chapter of the novel that follows this one. Buck's obsession with guiding Aven's growth is a major force in moving the novel's action forward but Buck's first impression of the town is that "right now it looks like somebody just flung it out there because they didn't have no use for it."
Buck's dream-like stream of consciousness is interrupted by the yells of a railroad clerk who ends up offering Buck a laborer's job as soon as he wakes up. Buck declines saying,"Much obliged but I ain't aimin' to dig in no more dirt." Buck bids the clerk goodbye and hops off the baggage truck to begin his first walk down Aven's single business street. He's hungry and he wants a job "long as it ain't handlin' a tool."
Buck's short journey ends in front of a general store where he encounters a family from the country who have come to town intent on trading a calf for seed and tobacco. As Buck and the family wait for the owner of the store to finish taking care of his customers, Buck decides he'll do the owner of the store a favor and see if he can be of service to the waiting family himself. This results in Buck trading a sack of seed, two plugs of tobacco and a stick of licorice candy for the calf. Both Buck and the family are pleased with the trade and the family leaves the store with the goods and with Buck in possession of the calf.
When the store owner finally gets the time to wait on Buck, he is enraged to find out that Buck has taken such liberty with his merchandise but when Buck offers to buy the calf in order to cover the cost of merchandise he traded to the family, the owner declines the offer because he knows the calf is worth twice as much as the goods Buck traded for it. Buck asks for a job and the owner agrees and shakes on the deal before he and Buck ever discuss salary.
Their salary negotiations result in Buck getting the money he wants plus the owner agrees to allow Buck to live in the back of the store. Living in proximity to the source of one's cash flow is a theme repeated for the rest of the novel. The new store's business is so hectic that the owner understands he needs an employee like Buck and allowing him to live in the back of the store frees him from having to open up in the morning. During these negotiations, Buck takes the liberty of eating a couple of the store's bananas so Chapter 2 ends with Buck accomplishing everything he set out to do on his first morning in Aven,"Food comes first. Then I got to get me a job-job where a man don't have to use a tool." And Buck does it all without ever breaking his $20 gold piece.INTERLUDE #1
An interlude is a literary device where the author breaks from the narrative to insert a story that somehow connects to the theme of the novel. Twelve times through DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, the author breaks the flow of the narrative to give the reader an intimate conversation between two railroad brakemen, Jake Willis and Bascom Wooten. This first interlude is concurrent with the plot but moves the action forward 16 months.
From their first conversation we learn that the past year has been a lucrative one for young Buck Bannon's after-hours loan business @ Green's Store. By charging 25 % interest per week on a $2 loan, Buck spends his time making Aven's citizens his loan customers instead of making them his friends. In the case of Jake and Bascom, both of their lives of debt peonage to Buck Bannon began the day they were broke before payday but wanted to go the whorehouse. By pawning their watches and borrowing two bucks from Buck so they could go see Aven's girls, each one of the pair, in the words of Tennessee Ernie Ford, "sold his soul to the company store"; "The company store" in this case being a nineteen-year-old entrepreneur who only wants his loan customers to ignore their mounting debt and to cover their loan's interest every payday, insuring that they live the rest of their lives making Buck Bannon a profit.
Both of these brakemen feel like idiots when they have to give this new kid in town money every payday but Bascom has the added guilt of knowing "I'm the damned fool that started it all. 'F I hadn't borrowed the first dollar from Buck Bannon, he'd never o' made a loan. I was itchin' to get to Mabe's place and didn't have a copper. By God, I had to tell him how much interest to charge, and I offered to put up my watch."
Buck Bannon missed out on attending a university's school of commerce so the dusty streets of Aven became his classroom and every railroad payday found him marking his account book, collecting his loan payments and "figurin' how much us railroaders own him. Been there ever' payday for over a year." Buck's successful first year living in town taught him many tricks of his new trade but he also learned to acquire some of same habits that afflicted his loan customers. Jake and Bascom took satisfaction in knowing that they were there when Buck, the green country boy who just walked out of the piney woods, was introduced to Aven's sketchy adult entertainment provided by the whores down at Mabe's Place. As they laugh about the memory, Jake imitates Buck's slow drawl as he stood goggling the elaborate curtains and mirrors inside the fancy foyer of Mabe's place, "Jake, them's white girls."
With this first mention of the race of Mabe's prostitutes, the author lets the reader know that Aven is a segregated society and during the course of the novel, the author never makes comments nor condemns Aven's discriminatory customs which condemned many of its residents to a life of toil for which they received little compensation. There are no strong Black characters in the novel and in the twenty or so places where Blacks make an appearance, they work in menial jobs such as waiters, bellboys, cooks, shoe shine boys, maids, cooks, chauffeurs, or farm laborers. The closest the author gets to an enterprising Black character is a street corner preacher who has some goats to sell. The legacy of slavery is mentioned only once and that is part of an elaborate rationalization concerning his rich former father-in-law which Buck creates to justify his own greed, "I got no guilty feelings. Maybe I've squeezed a mortgage too close and maybe I've shaved off a little for myself when I bought for the city. Folks forget anyhow. They've forgot how old Longshore's folks trafficked in slaves so they could raise him in a big white house in the middle of ten thousand acres of sandy loam. Maybe forty-fifty years from now, some Bannon'll be oozin' religion at the church door and folks won't remember that Buck turned his eyes off while his hands gathered a crop they didn't make."
In these first two chapters and the interlude, Dougie Bailey establishes most of the characters from which all of the novel's action will emerge and gives the reader a vivid portrait of a railroad boomtown's commercial environment which produces all of the obstacles that the character of Buck Bannon will conquer. There's no idealism or striving for social justice in Devil Make A Third. It is a down-to-earth story of how one country boy leaves home to move to a strange place armed only with a $20 gold coin and an optimism which allows him to confront everything that stands in the way of his progress and to overcome every challenge.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 begins the next segment of the book sixteen months after Buck's arrival in boomtown Aven. Aven hadn't progressed to the point of actually having a bank so negotiations for Buck's first business loan would occur on the front porch of Amos Longshore's big house. While working up the courage to ask the richest man in town for a loan, Buck reflected upon his new life as he stood on the street in front of the Longshore's house. Aven had grown from a row of wooden shacks across from a railroad depot. Fresh water from a spring a half mile away from the depot had led to the construction of a whiskey distillery and with it a new commercial district emerged to compete with the one by the depot where Buck worked.
The hick from the sticks who'd never even seen a train a few months before now recognized each engineer's whistle and pawning those railroad men's pocket watches was the new crop country boy Buck was tending now. Harvest time was every railroad man's payday and Buck knew he was on the path to riches because he's "willin' to live like a hog in the back of Green's store, and stayin' lonesome because you can't make money by lendin' to friends."
Buck's short loan business was only part of his commercial education in Aven. Months of serving Aven's public at the counter of Green's store had honed Buck's powers of persuasion and convinced him that he'd found a way to make money so he could get ahead in the world but "getting ahead" for Buck meant more than just becoming a well-to-do counter clerk. Buck wanted to be lead wolf in the pack that ran the town. Buck's exaggerated individualism in Aven's developing urban environment was forged on a cotton farm where each day had seen the Bannon family struggle for existence.
CHAPTER 4
Chapter 4 opens with Buck finishing off a glass of whiskey in Aven's only saloon, a "Jim Crow" enterprise with a double ended pine bar that separated the races by means of a thin partition across the middle of the bar and serving its Black customers through a curved slot cut into the flimsy wall which allowed the banjo music from their end of the bar to entertain the saloon's entire crowd.
No matter how intelligent 20 year-old Buck might have been, Aven's corn liquor was guaranteed to help him do something stupid so he had sense enough before beginning his drunken evening to deposit in the saloon's safe the $500 down payment he'd taken to Longshore's house for the mortgage negotiation. As the bartender pours Buck one more for the road, he reminds Buck of how liquor stirs evil passions by paraphrasing a proverb from the Bible, "It stingeth like an adder and biteth like a serpent." This biblical reference may not be the only one in this chapter.
Buck had a lot on his mind. Not only was he going to close on his first mortgage the next day but he was now sitting on a bar stool lost in lust while his mind's eye attempted to recall every detail of Longshore's gorgeous daughter. There was no way Buck was going to accomplish anything listening to the saloon's banjo music and dreaming about the blonde-headed eye candy he'd just left at Longshore's house. Buck's barroom boredom could easily be eliminated with only a short walk from the saloon through Baptist Bottom to the place where Buck's payday loan customers spent the money they borrowed from him: Mabe's whorehouse. Buck's customers were also the customers of Mabe's girls and on this night Buck decided to get stupid just like the rest of them and to seek satisfaction in the arms of one of Aven's lewd women. As Buck told the bartender before he left the saloon, " I'm a'goin' to Mabe's Place and kiss all the girls and run climb a tree an' wait for them to cut me down."
Like
the moon on that night when Buck first walked into Aven sixteen months
earlier, the moonlight on this foggy evening filled liquored-up Buck
with a sense of the potential power he'd discovered which assured him
that he would one day achieve his destiny and make a fortune from Aven's
populace but the corn liquor he'd consumed guaranteed that this late
night stroll was not going to contribute to his future fortune. Like the
maxim "nothing good ever happens after midnight", Buck's evening ramble
to Mabe's Place would never fulfill the promises the moonlight was
making.
As he walked through muddy Baptist Bottom, a stumbling, drunken Buck encountered a street corner preacher who was just ending the sermon he was preaching to a crowd gathered on the street in front of a honky tonk called the Puddin' House. Buck immediately requests that the reverend "Preach me some hell-fire and alligator teeth."
The Black preacher, an experienced salesman, immediately sizes Buck up and begins a series of questions, each one ending with the preacher calling Buck, apparently a total stranger, the "boss." By calling Buck "boss", the preacher was going through all the motions that showed him to be a "good, humble Negro" while at the same time setting Buck up to purchase "a pair o' fine billy goats, Boss, which'd make mighty pretty pets" for the whores Buck was about to meet at the brothel just beyond Baptist Bottom.
Possibly as an allusion to the bizarre biblical story in Genesis of Judah promising to pay for the services of the Bible's first prostitute with a goat, the author of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD has his protagonist tugging a pair of billy goats into an elaborately decorated den of iniquity. Taking goats inside a whorehouse is a prescription for disaster and the destruction the charging goats' horns made of the bordello's mirrors and vases ends this chapter with the brothel owner telling Buck, "Even a whore has got feelin's and if a fellow can't earn the name of a gentleman in a whorehouse, he won't get it nowhere."
Stung by the insult, Buck sobers up a little and makes a prophetic statement on this night before he was to sign his first mortgage with Longshore , "There'll be a man out here tomorrow mornin' to fix your place back. I don't give a damn about bein' a gentleman, but, by God, I'll be payin' my debts, till I die."
No doubt that the man who would show up the next morning to repair Buck's damage to Mabe's Place would also be one of his payday loan customers who was trying to settle up some of his debt by doing day labor for Buck. Buck's repair job and his replacement of the broken furniture also had him investing in Mabe's lucrative sex-trade business and subsequent events would show that Buck's attempt to make right his senseless destruction would enhance his reputation with Mabe as well as with the girls who worked for him. Buck's drunken stunt would enable the young entrepreneur to seamlessly transition into a more vertically integrated business plan.Each of the novel's 12 INTERLUDES moves the novel's plot forward in time. In the case of INTERLUDE #2, the action occurs four months after Buck's visit to Mabe's Place the night he struck a deal with Longshore for the mortgage that enabled him to buy Green's store. Twenty year-old Buck is now two years along in his successful business career.
The tragicomedy quality of Buck's billy goats' visit to Mabe's Place in Chapter 4 continues in INTERLUDE #2 as the story opens with Jake's arrival at the Aven freight depot aboard the No. 54 train from Albany. Jake is so hungover that simply walking is painful for him and not only that, he's broke and late paying on his loan from Buck. Jake meets his fellow brakeman, Bass, who brings more bad news by informing Jake that his watch is gone because Buck has left town. Jake tries to process this information and exclaims, "Wheeoo, watch gone, job gone."
Jake's sad conclusion, causes Bass to show his railroading friend some sympathy and to reassure Jake that all is not lost and that Buck will soon return from his short trip back home. This news lifts Jake's spirits momentarily but as he contemplates the future of his watch, Jake says, "I don't like this. He'll lose it, or break it, or, by God, he'll swap it off for a rubber-tired buggy."
Again Bass reassures Jake that Buck simply has gone back home to convince his parents to leave farm life and to move the entire family to Aven. This information only worsens Jake's bleak attitude because he knows that the demands of Buck's family will mean that Buck will become an even greedier pawnbroker and payday loan shark.
INTERLUDE #2 ends with Bass finally agreeing with Jake's conclusion that the future of Jake's watch, as well as his brakeman job, were indeed rather gloomy simply because Buck "left in a rubber-tired buggy, all right."
In each of their conversations, Jake and Bass discuss their grievances with Buck but they also discuss how Buck gives back to the same people he exploits. In the case of Jake, a hopeless victim of Buck's usurious lending practices, the years that this failed railroad brakeman spends working off his debt to Buck may give him status in the Aven community by Jake being one of "Buck's men" and of having the reputation of being commercially associated with Aven's most important decision maker, Buck Bannon.
The characters of Jake and Bass only appear in the novel's 12 Interludes and the progress of their lives and relationship gives the reader another window into the intimate details of Buck's life. Both of these undisciplined railroad brakemen allow their appetite for liquor and fast women to sink them into debt to Buck with no hope of recovery. The consequences of Buck's financial robbery are quite severe for Jake. INTERLUDE #2 will be the last time the reader will see Jake on a train. For the rest of the novel, Jake will never return to railroading and he will spend the rest of his time working odd jobs for Buck in order to pay off his debt. This form of debt slavery doesn't totally annihilate Jake's autonomy, however, his financial bondage to Buck will limit Jake's options and his only escape from continual debt would to be to move out of Aven and to run away.
The last line of INTERLUDE #2, "He left town in a rubber-tired buggy, all right,"also gives us insight into Buck's motivation. One of the first things that impressed Buck during his first morning in Aven was "a small neat buggy with new harness." That Buck chose to visit his parents' farm in a "rubber-tired buggy" shows that Buck is adapting to life in Aven by acquiring all of the status symbols associated with his small town business success.
The events described in Chapter 5 take place where most of the events of Chapter 1 took place, on the Bannon farm a few miles outside Aven. In fact, Chapter 5 reintroduces all of the characters the reader encountered in Chapter 1: Joe Bannon, Jeanie Bannon and two of Buck's younger brothers, Hearn and Jeff. Buck's return to the Bannon farm takes place about 1889, two years after Buck made the decision to move to Aven when he turned 18. Times have changed on the Bannon farm. Even though Joe Bannon is still a prosperous farmer, time and hard labor have taken its toll on old man Bannon and as he loses his strength the Bannon farm risks falling apart because when it comes to Buck's younger brothers "ain't neither one of them too much hand to work."
Chapter 5 opens with Buck loosening the reins on his little red mare so he can speed his shiny new rubber-tired buggy down the road toward the Bannon family farm. He's wearing a derby hat and dressed in his Sunday best coat and tie but protected from the road dust by a driving coat. 20 year-old Buck has now acquired all the hallmarks of a successful businessman but it's hard to imagine that a former farm boy who'd never left home during his first eighteen years of life would move to a town only a few hours wagon ride away from his childhood home and then wait two years before returning to visit his parents and twelve brothers and sisters at the old home place but once the reader understands the purpose of Buck's mission, his absence begins to make sense. Buck hasn't visited his parents in two years because Buck was too busy making money and now he plans on using that money to create a better life for his large family. Buck senses that the new growing season will be his father's last cotton crop but Buck believes he has a way for his father to avoid the grave, to cease his hard labor and to enjoy his last days by leaving the Bannon farm and moving to Aven. Buck feels he can successfully convince his parents to make such a drastic change because he's now made enough money in Aven to make it happen.
It had been four months since Buck closed the deal to buy Green's store in Aven and by this time, he'd accumulated enough cash from that enterprise along with his payday loan business to accomplish his mission which according to Bascom in Interlude #2 was "to argy his folks into movin' to Aven." There will be one person in the Bannon family who Buck won't have to convince to move and that's his brother Hearn who, upon Buck's arrival at the Bannon place, sees Buck's latest fashion and brand-new rig and exclaims, "Look here, Buck. Take me back when you go. Maybe I can get a buggy, too." Convincing Buck parents to leave the family farm and move to Aven was going to be a lot more challenging than convincing his little brother.
Buck had taken on a great challenge when he decided that after a two year absence, he would return to the Bannon farm and reframe reality for his family by convincing his parents to leave their farm. If experience is the measure of a life then the commercial life of a railroad town beats the Bannon farm every time but if the measure of one's life is love and companionship, then the family farm beats the Aven rat race every time. Buck understands this as he approaches the Bannon place in his new rubber-tired buggy. He reminisces about the smells and tastes of his childhood, saying to himself, "Hey, Lord, a little eatin' like that will make me forget the grubbin' I been doin'. Sellin' and buyin' all day and lendin' and collectin' most of the night. Worth it, though, ever' minute of it." In Chapter 1, Buck let his parents know what he thought of their farm when he joked that the hump in his nose "comes o' rootin' for vittles in this here sorry clay." Now in Chapter 5, Buck has sharpened his argument when he tells his father, "Farmin' right now ain't helpin' you none." To his Mother, Buck is even more brutal in his opinion of the Bannon farm's future, "Sell it, or throw it away. Do anything, but get Papa off it."
One of Jeanie Bannon's favorite expressions is, "Shirtsleaves to shirtsleaves." This 19th century maxim refers to the tendency of the children of those who have escaped poverty to squander what wealth their parents have accumulated and to see the family return to a state of poverty. Buck shares the same fear as his mother and his attempt to create his own commercial empire in Aven is his way to avoid catastrophe because Buck knows that he will never take his father's place on the family farm and he also knows his brothers will never succeed at farming. As he tells his mother, "...they won't never put out enough on this place to help Pa much. This ain't no one horse farm. It needs good labor and lots of it."
Buck has an alternative to farming. Buck proposes that the family move to Aven so they can "farm" the farmer. Buck asserts to his mother,"Look, pore farmers have got to be furnished and somebody's got to furnish them...See here, the man that does the furnishin' makes more'n the farmer. You know that. Rent him his land, sell him his tools, seeds, guano, anything he wants. He'll owe you and he won't like you. He'll cuss you, but you'll have to take it. He may kick you, but take it. Then, by God, if he makes a crop, take it."
Aven's dishonest commercial world which Buck describes to his mother abounds with every social evil associated with greed gratification but Buck's argument makes an impression on Jeanie Bannon. She knows that the farm's future is unsustainable. As she tells Buck, "A man breaks land for forty years but the land don't break a man but once." But Aven's ways aren't the Bannon ways and Mrs. Bannon cannot imagine selling her family's hard earned land and moving to a town where "them pickpockets'll fight over you." Buck ends his sales pitch to his mother before it turns into an argument by saying, "You all muddle it out tonight. It won't hurt." With that mother and son call it a night and go to bed.
From his pallet on the floor in the children's room, Buck finds himself unable to sleep. Laying there, Buck listens to the sounds coming from his parents' room. When he hears his mother get out of bed and walk into the kitchen to the back porch, Buck gets up and follows her outside and whispers, wanting to know what his father said about moving to Aven. His mother replies, "What did he say? What he said don't count. It's other things. It was him- fumblin' at the ham tonight, and hackin' it up when he used to cut it like butter. It's me havin' to button his shirt and make out like I'm doin' it for fun. It's them things, them, and him turnin' over in yonder and flingin' his poor stiff hands out in his sleep. They're the things that'll move us."
Buck knows that his mother is the decision maker in the family and that this is one decision that she doesn't want to have to make. Buck leaves his mother on the back porch but before closing the door, he overhears her prayer which she whispers as she stands on the porch looking up to the heavens, "Please don't let me be scared of all them folks."
Mrs. Bannon understands that there is no alternative to leaving the farm so the family will move to Aven but she will never forget the cotton farm. She and her family's memories of the good things about farm life will become an Edenic myth. In modern Aven the Bannons will preserve many of their rural customs and continue to eat their country cooking as reminders of the happier and more harmonious life they lived but lost when they left the farm.
INTERLUDE #3
When you owe money, you don't own yourself. You may not be in a condition of actual slavery but your "chains" are disguised under a form of contract labor and peonage or debt slavery. Your lender has a mortgage on you. This is the tough lesson that Jake Willis finally learns in Interlude #3. In the first two interludes, Jake is working as a brakeman on the railroad but a late payment on Jake's payday loan caused his creditor, Buck Bannon, to foreclose on Jake's railroad watch and as Jake says in Interlude #2, "Wheeoo, watch gone, job gone." In the novel's final eight interludes, Jake never returns to his railroad job and lives the rest of his working life doing odd jobs for Buck or for one of Buck's political cronies. Toward the end of the novel, Buck gives Jake his watch back but Jake's too old to go back to work on the railroad. As a consequence of a single payday loan, Jake Willis spends his entire working life as Buck Bannon's "mule." As Jake says in the novel's last interlude, "Me, I'm a damned mule. I just drag along, gee or haw."
ROBERTREG'S CRITICAL COMMENTARY on SECTION 4 & CHAPTER 6
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.
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.
Buck's innocent daydream about his family's future in the big house he's built for them is interrupted by a question asked by a curious member of Aven's business community, an old mule trader. He asked, "Plannin' to fill it up someday?" Buck assures the old fellow that the house will certainly be filled but the children will be his brothers and sisters. Buck's success in town brought him to the attention of Aven's commercial interests and Buck's future prosperity will be insured by these commercial and political ties.
When the Bannon family arrives at their new home, Joe Bannon is more impressed with the soil of his house lot than he is with the house Buck built for him. He tells Buck,"Somethin' ought to grow there," pleased with Aven land's potential for gardening. Mr. Bannon goes on to tell Buck about the next crop that would be harvested on the land they just sold before moving to Aven, "Boy, you ain't never seen nothin' like the way that land was yeastin' when we sold. I figure the crop to come was what got us the price." Buck replies, "It was pretty good dirt." This comment is significant because it's the first time in the novel where Buck ever complimented the Bannon farm.
ROBERTOREG'S NOTES DEVIL MAKE A THIRD includes many descriptions of neighborhood landscaping in Aven (fictional town modeled on Dothan).
#1. from page 31 (Buck is about to make his first big business deal with his future father-in-law) He closed his lips tightly, remembering, and trying not to remember, as he faced around to the big white house up the precise gravel walkway that parted two squares of green lawn. "No time to drag around,' he muttered, and took two steps again, staring in a puzzled frown at the lawn. "More and more folks here lettin' grass grow in their yards." He shrugged slightly. "Mother wouldn't have it."
#2. from page 188-189 (circa 1906 description of the 1897 standpipe reservoir still standing across from the depot in Dixie) They walked in silence for a moment, Buck looking from bottom to top and then back down along the tall straight-up-and-down standpipe reservoir. It still shone with newness and the small triangular plot of ground was bare again although it had been sodded with St. Augustine grass.
"Ain't as bulky as New York's," Buck said abruptly, "but man for man it'll hold as much as any in the world."
#3. from page 326: She would have had the sanded yard swept until nothing showed but the short slanting scratches that followed the stroke of a homemade yard broom.
#4. from page 335: His eyes had seen it for years, rain-washed and rutted, so that hardly a stalk of dog fennel would fight its way up though old buggy axles, tin cans, jars and bottles half full of brackish water, and his mind had only said, "That lot ought to be cleaned up."
#5. from page 347: They saw instead the slow picture of high-piled cotton wagons grinding
slowly down limbs whose weight dragged them down into tired arcs. And
they saw the now even alignment of the homes on each side of the streets
as new builders took sight of their neighbors' fronts before they laid
foundations for their own. And the flowers- azaleas blazing a dusty
reddish orange against the white of a low fence, forsynthia hedges
throwing bright yellow bells up in challenge to the sun, Cape jessamine
shrubs dotting green lawns and mellowing the night, a pansy-bordered
walkway dancing with velvet browns and purples and yellows, dogwood
trees and redbuds teasing with white and pink petals the salty southwest
wind.
"Hey, Lord, they're puttin. silk stockin's on a reg'lar whore of a town."
#6. from page 369: "This town has meant a lot to me- it's been my friend and it's been my good companion. It's given me more than a man deserves, and in giving it, it's come a long way. All the way from a cold-water spring in a grove of poplars to paved streets and a power plant. It's come to fine homes and flowers brought in from Mobile- azaleas to bring something besides work to all of us. I hope this opera house will do the same thing the flowers did for us- make us forget for a while that we're building a town and then remember stronger that we are growing with it, and be thankful to the town. I'm grateful to Aven because it took me along for the ride."
#7. [not pertaining to residential
landscaping but to suburban Dothan] from page 197: "Give me a shot
quick," he said, "I think I swallowed some of that rain."
"Phew!" he said, looking back up at Buck. "I can't do worth a cuss with
her. Jeff, he can sit still and look picked on and get what he wants. It
looked like I kept her riled up so I came on down."
"Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves," Hearn said, suddenly, without smiling. "That's what she kept saying."
His mind suddenly was back to the first night he had spent in Aven, a
night when the fear had found him alone. That fear- part of the fight
between man and cotton, or man and land, or man and grass. Bermuda
grass, lacing a foot deep into the richest soil, holding it against the
heavy washing rains and fattening the topsoil for the day when a man
would need it. Bermuda grass, friendly at first, then a part of the
fight, dirt banker for the man, then making him earn it, making him go
in there with a steel beam and a bull-tongue scooter and a mule that was
willing to burn itself out alongside of a man. He shuddered, then
looked back up at Hearn.
"Shirtsleeves," he said, softly,"in three generations."
"She says it looks like we're fixin' to do it in one."
posted by robertoreg at 8:06 PM
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