Read A Place in Time for Free Online

end of the world was at hand. They shot off both at once like their tails were afire.
    I swear I had no idea I was going to need a handhold as quick as I did. Just as I was starting backwards off of my bucket, I grabbed a double handful of Big’s pants, and down they came.
    He said very conversationally, “Burley Coulter, damn your impudent hide.”
    But he stood to his work. He had to, of course. He made the drive past the Cordles’ as magnificent as you please, proudly and calmly in control of his spirited team that was plunging on the bits, with his pants down around his ankles and his shirttail flying out behind. As we went past, I glanced up at Annie May and, so help me Jesus, she was smiling and waving—a good-hearted, patient, forgiving, well-fleshed girl, just right for Big.
    Well, old Big did keep his team in hand. He never let them out of a short lope. Pretty soon he stopped them and got his pants back up more or less where they belonged, and took the long way home so he wouldn’t have to pass the Cordles’ again. He never looked at me or said a word. He wasn’t speaking.
    But when we finally got back to his place and had put away the mules, which were a good deal better broke by then, I felt obliged to have a serious talk with him.
    â€œBig,” I said, “you’re going to have to ask that woman to marry you, after you’ve done showed yourself to her the way you have.”
    You couldn’t beat him for good nature. He just grinned, clean back to his ears. He said, “All right. I reckon I will.”
    So he was speaking to me again. And afterwards he told me all about it. He was giggling, red in the face, and absolutely tickled almost to death.
    He gave up all his clever notions about courting, and was forthright. When he saw Annie May in town next time, he said, “Come here. I want to talk to you.”
    She followed him out of earshot of the other people, and he said, “Well,you’ve done had a look at my private life. Don’t you reckon me and you ought to get married?”
    She looked straight back at him and laughed. She laughed right into his face like the good old gal she was.
    She said, “I would like to know why not !”

Burley Coulter’s Fortunate Fall (1934)
    It has been a long, long time since old Uncle Bub Levers was called on to pray at the Bird’s Branch church for the first and last time in his life, and he stood up and said, “O Lord, bless me and my son Jasper. Amen.”
    The Lord must have thought that was a good idea. For with His help, maybe, Jappy Levers grew up and got himself educated for a lawyer. When he hung out his sign in Hargrave, he wasn’t Jappy Levers any more. He was J. Robert La Vere, Attorney at Law. That might not have been all put-on. Some say that La Veres was what the Leverses were before they turned up around Port William. People in Port William don’t say things they haven’t heard of. They never had heard of La Veres. They had heard of levers.
    With the Lord’s help maybe, maybe not, Mr. La Vere got to be a rich man. Getting rich, you know, does not always meet with everybody’s approval. There was always somebody, or several bodies, in Port William who would tell you confidently that Mr. La Vere got rich by finding out where the money was and helping himself to a good deal more than his share. In fact they didn’t know, and I don’t know. To find out how such things are done, you will have to ask somebody besides me. Maybe you can do like Mr. La Vere, who gaveth the credit to the Lord, at the same time keeping a good deal of it for himself, the Lord maybe not minding, maybe.
    Anyhow, the Lord either did or didn’t bless Mr. La Vere with the moneyhe scraped together by the time he was forty-five or so, when he bought the biggest house in Hargrave with a front porch two stories tall. After Uncle Bub died, Mr. La Vere kept the old Levers home place out on