Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True Part 2

And he was right. It was a life-size, fully operational mechanical beaver. Cunningly made of corset ribbing, fencing wire, and the spokes from two umbrellas, with gears and chains cannibalized from a range of devices (including the late grandfather clock), it inched across the floor in a kind of waddling crawl and, every two steps, raised and lowered its tail. The detail was remarkable-right down to the prominent incisors, which took the form of old piano keys.

The arrival of the mechanical creature caused pandemonium to break out (which, among other results, led to Reverend Lightbody's stepping into the rabbit pie). Everyone knew who was responsible and all eyes turned to Rapture and Hephaestus, who had been taken as much by surprise as the rest of them. Lloyd was nowhere to be seen, but in the minds of many people in that room it was his presence that animated the beaver, not the gearwheels and the clicking chainworks. It was just like that little Sitt.u.r.d to show up the other children, people thought. "I don't want my Andy a-goin' to school with him!" Clara Petersby hollered. "That boy is evil!" Obedict Renfrew p.r.o.nounced.

Lloyd's parents slunk out of the hall. The beaver was not so fortunate. It was not quite crushed, but it was beaten into mechanical submission. Stalwart Crane, the furnace man at the kiln, had the decency to return it to the Sitt.u.r.ds that evening. He took off his slouch hat in respect when he knocked on their door to hand over the trashed contraption to Hephaestus. Lloyd was hiding just out of sight when the visit was paid.

"I just want you all to know," Crane said. "Not ever-body thinks like ever-body else. I reckon this is-or it was-a d.a.m.n fine thing. Opened my eyes, it did. Doan you fret about them that says 'the Devil's work.' They're just green with the demon of envy. If I could make something like this, I'd set it loose, too. And the h.e.l.l with the consy-kwences. This little critter gave me some new hope. I hope it duddn't bring you all more trouble. Try not to let it."

Oh, but that was easier said than done. The next morning, old Tip was found dead in the barn. Most likely it was just chance-the dog was very old and there were no signs of violence. But the timing was suggestive. Rapture saw "homens." Had one of the infuriated townspeople taken his revenge? The intentional poisoning of animals was not an uncommon way of making a point in places like Zanesville. Lloyd wanted to do an autopsy, but Hephaestus insisted on keeping Tip's dignity and body intact. He was an old dog that had lived a good life. Maybe it was just his time to go. Besides, if anyone was to blame...

Despite Crane's good-intentioned support, which would not have been popular just at that moment if it had been voiced in public, Hephaestus felt inclined to reprimand his son for causing such a ruckus when they were in such heavy debt. But the compulsive inventor in him was curious about how the boy had made the creature. Lloyd shrugged, as if there were no more to it than making a daisy chain. He showed no sign of regret, and felt none, although he was angry and depressed about Tip. He retreated into his own labyrinthine section of the barn-the lamentable workshop designed to restrain him, which he had turned into a subtle machine and in which he had constructed the beaver every bit as easily as he said he had.

It was at the burial of dear Tip, with fleas still departing the carca.s.s like the proverbial rats fleeing a sinking s.h.i.+p, that Lloyd conceded that immunity from Time was beyond his present capabilities and Hephaestus announced his plans to curtail work on the Ark. "Let's hope Farmer Miller got his arithmetic wrong."

When the old dog was in the ground, wrapped in his favorite blanket, Hephaestus, Rapture, and Lloyd, with the help of Pegasus, their splay-backed cream draft horse, tugged the Time Ark across the wreck of their farm and, on Lloyd's suggestion, toppled it into the pit where Grady Smeg had endured his enforced therapy.

Lloyd insisted that the moment should not be considered a defeat but a release, and so the family filled the sphere with items that had been important to them during their latest trials. Rapture added some of her root bags, Hephaestus the broken clocks and one of his old wine jugs. Lloyd laid the remains of the beaver to rest inside. It was a kind of time capsule, in the end, and it tumbled into the earth as if it were pleased to be there, free too, at last, reprieved from grand ambition.

William Miller was indeed proved wrong, as many had been before him. October 22, 1844, arrived, and with it the Great Disappointment for Millerites around the world. In November, the dark-horse candidate from Tennessee, James K. Polk, was elected to the presidency on the platform of annexing Texas for the purpose of expanding slavery. Lloyd turned six and had his first wet dream.

But the Sitt.u.r.ds' world kept ending. A cold Christmas came, and the family dined on their last pig and was forced to break up and burn much of their furniture to stay warm. Even Lloyd's airs.h.i.+p got laid on the fire, much to Hephaestus's distress.

"It won't be the last one I make," Lloyd said to console him. The old man may occasionally have been miffed at the boy's precocious abilities, but he had always been proud of them, too. Or, perhaps, just in awe.

At last there came a hint of spring. For the Sitt.u.r.ds it brought an eviction notice for failure to pay their land tax, threats of seizure of property and chattels to repay debts-and a gut-shot Anglo-Nubian goat. There was no mistaking that sign. Perhaps Miller had been right after all, at least as far as the family was concerned.

That same week a traveling Methodist minister came to town, or at least a man who called himself a minister. He delivered no sermons. He did, however, deliver a packet that took their minds off all other matters, for its contents were exceptional in the extreme: a small knotted bag of gold, a hand-drawn map, and a letter addressed to Hephaestus from Captain Micah Jefferson Sitt.u.r.d of the Texas Rangers, dated eight months earlier, from "Forever the Great Republic of Texas." It read: Dear Brother,I pray that this missive will promote kind thoughts towards myself. If you have heard little from me in recent years, or if the little you have heard has caused you unhappiness, it is with my regrets.The fruits of my labors have been few and bitter, but I have at last built for myself a kind of home, a simple property of some three hundred acres that lies halfway between the western border of the Indian Territory and the settlement known as Kixworth, northeast of Amarillo.Some would think it barren, bleak country, but it has some artesian water and soil that suits a committed agriculturalist experiment such as a hardy drought-resistant strain of cattle. I have named it Dustdevil, on account of the sudden funnels of wind that appear. I have a deed in perpetuity for this land, signed by Sam Houston himself and countersigned by Juan Herrero and the great Chief Buffalo Hump, leader of the Comanches. Of course, no t.i.tle to any land can ever be secure, especially in this troubled region-and not without heirs. Hence this letter to you.You are my only living relative, and should anything happen to me I would desire that you take possession of the property. I have found within it something of extraordinary interest but far beyond my poor powers to interpret or explain. My training has been as a soldier, not a scientist. Faced with such a riddle, I am out of my depths.I know that you are rooted in Ohio and that perhaps you have a family now and a bright, happy life you would be hard put to abandon. But perhaps not. Perhaps something of our father's restlessness, which I seem to have inherited in disproportion, is also at work in your heart. If so, I offer you and yours a chance for a new beginning, and the guarantee of something exceedingly curious that will stir your excellent mind. If not, then I still ask you, as my brother, to consider coming.It is not an easy task I set for you. It is a long and difficult route and not without danger. Yet I still ask. Come, Hephaestus. Beyond my own selfish desire to share something of this life with you before I am gone, I have a suspicion that if you were to take up residence on this property and hold it you would find that it holds more value than I can speak of here. I have enclosed what money I have to offer to help you afford the journey, or to use as you see fit. Set out as soon as you can if you are able, or forget me and carry on with your life with my blessings.MJSPS. You may inquire of me at the trading station in Perryton and head south to the Canadian River. A man named Bloxcomb will a.s.sist you.

CHAPTER 3.

The Necessity of Adventure HEPHAESTUS CONFIRMED THAT BOTH THE LETTER AND THE MAP were evidence of his brother's handwriting. None of the Sitt.u.r.ds could sleep or eat (which was just as well, because there was precious little for the pot). The proposition that the letter advanced, with its combination of familial support and an invitation to adventure, was, in their current state of finances and mind, irresistible. Still, it left them with what Rapture could not stop describing as a "big'un recishun!" were evidence of his brother's handwriting. None of the Sitt.u.r.ds could sleep or eat (which was just as well, because there was precious little for the pot). The proposition that the letter advanced, with its combination of familial support and an invitation to adventure, was, in their current state of finances and mind, irresistible. Still, it left them with what Rapture could not stop describing as a "big'un recishun!"

Despite their avowed intention of mulling over the matter in detail, come the next morning, by the time Rapture had prepared their daily dose of tansy bitters to keep off the ague, Micah's proposal had been embraced by the whole family with the unquestioning conviction that desperation can bring. There was no "recishun" to be made. They had to leave Zanesville. That Texas lay a long distance away, and a war with Mexico could break out any day, did not dissuade them. This was an offer and a request that could not be refused. Not in their present circ.u.mstances-and not in Hephaestus's heart, either. There was about the communication a suggestive timeliness and a hint of redemptive possibility that hooked him as cleanly as the sturgeon he used to pull from the head of the falls.

With a door of refuge open, it was their lot "ta tek 'e foot een 'e han," as Rapture put it (which was not a concept that Lloyd thought was sound from an engineering point of view). What to try to salvage was not so clear. The gold that Micah had sent was sufficient to cover only the debts they felt most honor-bound to pay, and, given the financial claims their neighbors wanted to impose upon them, removing any of their remaining possessions would technically have been stealing. None of their farm animals would make it out of Ohio except the draft horse Pegasus, and the one suitable vehicle was an old humdinger night-soil wagon that Hephaestus had traded for a pile of corncob coal. The wagon had been airing out among the snares and spring-loaded traps of Lloyd's minefield maze garden all winter, but it still retained a pungency that announced its history well before arrival. No matter. If embarking on a journey to a promised land (however "sabbidge" and under threat) had to be started in a cart that reeked of dung, so be it. Better to risk life, limb, and olfactory discomfort than remain in Zanesville as outcasts and debtors.

They considered rafting down the Muskingum to its intersection with the Ohio River at Marietta and catching a steamboat to Louisville and then St. Louis (if they could earn some money along the way). Hephaestus could get work in the cities, and with any luck they could save enough to take a steamboat along the Missouri River to somewhere like Independence and head south across the wild Indian country from there. But the Muskingum was a difficult river to navigate in spring, running high with ice melt and p.r.o.ne to flood, plus unsavory folk were rumored to live along its banks waiting to prey upon the flatboats and their cargoes of grain, lumber, and livestock. The other obvious alternative was the National Road, or the Old Pike, as it was called-the original interstate-which ran through Columbus all the way to Vandalia, Illinois.

Fearing that their creditors might try to pursue them on so open a route, they opted for the more difficult but less predictable plan of making for Cincinnati overland via the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, which had been a place of good luck for them in the past-the place where Lloyd and Lodema were conceived, back when nothing but love seemed to be in the air and hope grew like the sparrowgra.s.s. Pegasus and the humdinger could get them that far, Hephaestus felt. After that, they were in G.o.d's hands.

They took blankets and oilskins and the drunkard's path quilt Rapture had made. For provisions they took a sack of cornmeal and one of flour, a small side of bacon, a bag of snow apples, one jug of wolf-mint tea, one of homemade whiskey, a bottle of taproot beer, coffee, sugar, salt, some bottled preserves, and taters. They took their old Kentucky rifle and the horse pistol that Parson s.h.i.+de had used in his famous duel with the alcoholic tobacconist Daniel Christ (who later cut his own throat with a razor in his smokehouse), which Hephaestus had been paid in return for repairing a mill wheel, along with powder and shot, and what Rapture called, "de t'ings fuh mek we libbin'."

In addition to the richness of Rapture's phraseology, they took Hephaestus's blacksmith tools (except for the anvil), his main woodworking tools, an ax, some rope and drag chains, a bolt of twill plus needles and thread, and matches, candles, a lantern, Rapture's midwife bag, and Lloyd's notebook. The rest of his dreams and inventions the boy had to leave behind-but, unlike Hephaestus, he felt that he carried them with him in his mind. All these provisions they loaded on the humdinger, but Lloyd's mind was more loaded still.

Early one morning, while the mist was still rising from the pastures, like the ghosts of all their memories, they each said a silent goodbye to the family farm that was no longer theirs. One last look behind the muddy, rutted road that led either into town or into the woods and the past was gone...a final farewell to the animals buried on the property, the vegetable patches, and the shrouded fruit trees...to Lodema...the hidden Time Ark and its tragic treasure trove.

Even with the promise and the challenging journey ahead of them, Lloyd's mind lingered behind long after the bend that took the farm out of sight. He vowed that he would rebuild Lodema's shrine in Texas. He would one day build a city in her honor-a city of cyclones, so full of energy and life it would be. A place where only marvels were allowed.

If anyone saw the family leave, they didn't shout or wave. The whole countryside had a sleeping, dead stillness to it, so that the wheels of the humdinger and the steady clop of Pegasus's heavy hooves echoed in the mist.

By the time the sun was high enough to burn away the dewy fog, they were on the poor excuse for a post road through the rolling Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, corduroy at the best of times, now sloppy and treacherous with the slow spring thaw.

Calamity after inconvenience beset them as they made their way through pastureland into thin forest and then into rugged stretches of hardwoods. Sometimes they had to chop down small trees and hitch them to the hind part of the wagon to slow their descent down hills (an endeavor that left Rapture "skaytodet"). Skirting creeks and ravines, they pa.s.sed mounds and prehistoric earthworks. The trees and undergrowth were fleeting with reemerging wildlife-white-tailed deer, gray foxes, pileated woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, and hosts of woodland songbirds-but they saw few people: an Indian who vaporized into the budding trees and a mean-looking white man in dirty clothes, who looked as if he had been startled answering the call of nature. Whenever they grew tired or afraid they pulled out the letter from Micah (which Lloyd was given charge of) and savored the enticing conundrum of promise that lay ahead for them in Texas-if they could get there.

It was this hope that got them through the woods and back into farmers' fields and pumpkin patches and down to the Great Serpent Mound, which was in what is today Adams County, near the town of Locust Grove. Three times the cart had threatened to overturn. At every moment they expected trouble. But they arrived.

Still, it did not fill them with the joy and renewal they had hoped for. Both parents were shy and b.u.mbling, recalling the pa.s.sionate lovemaking that they had once known there-that had brought Lloyd into being, and Lodema almost.

Lloyd, meanwhile, went into a deep funk after their visit to the Mound, which Rapture attributed to some hypersensitive connection with his "sperit" twin. Hephaestus was of the view that constipation was the cause, and that a large dose of cod liver oil would help. In truth, both parents noticed that the boy was less fixated on Lodema-as if the connection had been broken by their removal from Zanesville. Perhaps that was a good thing, Hephaestus thought. Rapture was less sure, knowing from her own experience how helpful a relations.h.i.+p with ghosts could be. Lloyd kept his thoughts to himself and said not a word to allay their apprehension. In truth, he did not know himself what bothered him. It was some indefinite form of foreboding-as if they were being followed by something of much greater concern than had ever plagued them in Zanesville.

The rains came and they got bogged down for two days, only to pull free of the sucking mud and resume their journey to be struck with another violent thunderstorm and a las.h.i.+ng downpour that forced them to huddle on what high ground they could find while they watched their possessions get drenched. Several they were forced to leave behind. They had overpacked and did their best to keep their optimism from being ejected, along with soaked salt beef and ruined tea leaves.

Back on the road, a filthy-faced man with a spongy goiter and a woman without teeth tried to beg from them. Rapture made hardtack for them, but they continued lurking about, so that Hephaestus had to take a potshot at them with the horse pistol. By lantern light they discovered weevils in the flour.

The next day the horse pistol wasn't enough. Coming into a clearing, they were surrounded. It was more an extended backcountry family than an organized gang of robbers, but robbery was what the interlopers had in mind. As outraged and aggrieved as the Sitt.u.r.ds felt, they were all in silent agreement that it was a blessing that the clan had no more malicious intent, for given the number of them and their pocky, lice-ridden appearance, their desires might have taken a very different and considerably nastier turn.

The leader, a gnarled salt-and-pepper-bearded git with a scar that ran from his left temple deep into his mess of grizzle, spoke in a broken-toothed accent they could barely understand, like a wild hill preacher, directing with a musket a weasel-quick boy of about sixteen and two older men with gopher teeth and eyes like toads, each armed with long, cruel skinning knives shoved in their rope belts.

With an unsettling politeness, they plundered the wagon of food and the best and most important of Hephaestus's tools as three moonfaced women in sack dresses and threadbare shawls, and another fidgety male with an eyepatch, looked on without expression down the long barrels of well-used squirrel guns, and then melted back into the woods as suddenly as they'd appeared.

When it was over, Rapture burst into tears and stamped her feet, while Lloyd's locked jaws clicked with fury. Hephaestus summed up the situation. "We're still alive. Let's keep moving. While we can."

And so they did, making do with what they had left, eating wild game they caught along the way, and pus.h.i.+ng hard to get through the hill country.

Easter found them in Cincinnati, or Porkopolis, as it was being called-a booming new metropolis of 150,000 energetic souls, many of them German immigrants, Irish, Scots, and Poles. The family was able to find temporary lodging and employment with a man named Schloss, who made knockwurst and sculpted pigs' heads of offal and jellied marrow. Lloyd's grasp of German came in handy, and he was a.s.signed the task of taking orders and a.s.sisting with deliveries. Rapture did laundry and cooking, while Hephaestus got work with the Cincinnati Steams.h.i.+p Company repairing machinery. At night they snuggled amid the pork fat and candle smoke and pored over Micah's letter, which Lloyd kept hidden in his precious bag along with his notebook.

For three weeks they lived above Schloss's meaty-smelling slop kitchen in a frame-house-and-vegetable-plot district running up from the river, where the smell of kettles full of boiling s.h.i.+rts mingled with the fumes of schnapps. The sounds of polka music (which was relatively new then) alternated with the lieder and the occasional hatchet fight. During that time they sold Pegasus and what was left of the humdinger to an Irish-Shawnee giant named Mulligan Hawk. Despite his fearsome appearance, he gave the impression of knowing horses and appreciating animals. Their goodbye to this, their last living friend from the farm, was less moody as a result. Old Pegasus would be looked after-perhaps much better than they would be.

The combined sale, along with a good word from the giant, yielded enough money for rough-deck keelboat pa.s.sage in the company of a cable-armed Serb named Holava, who carried a bowie knife strapped to his belt that he called a "genuine Arkansas toothpick," and made his living hauling coal, nails, timber shake, and sacks of milled corn to Louisville.

Just over 110 miles of twisting river, it was. Sometimes swollen and foaming around them, other times snagged and vicious with overhang from the banks. The flow could rise three feet in the night, frothing with driftwood, fallen timber, and rubbish. And the bizarre people! Jug-swilling maniacs calling out from fortified bluffs-the last of the beaver trappers drifting like leaves in long birchbark canoes-flatboats covered in skins, writhing with children and clattering pots.

Hephaestus read, whittled, and chewed to pa.s.s the time (trying to keep ideas for new inventions from filling his mind),while Rapture would point out to Lloyd the hollyhocks and the yellow spikes of toadflax.

By the time they reached Louisville and Holava had traded in some of their Ohio cargo for a load of burley tobacco and cured meat, Lloyd had filled his notebook with elegant scribbles of ospreys with shad clutched in their talons and an idea for a huge barge to be pulled by swimming buffalo.

But the farther the family got from Zanesville the more strained their sense of family became. Hephaestus missed his tools and his inventions. Rapture missed her herbs and concoctions. Lloyd missed his secret link with his dead sister, and the ability not just to draw things but to make them. Texas seemed a world away. They reread the magical letter and hardened themselves for the next phase of their journey, each of them wondering where the elusive presentiment of deepening shadow came from-whether it came from within them or moved on larger, darker wings across America itself.

There was something in the wind that no one quite understood, and so could not talk about in any of the melange of languages that swirled around like junk in the river.

The Sitt.u.r.ds were puzzles to themselves even. Were they intrepid adventurers reaching out for the bounty of a new day? Or cowardly bankrupts fleeing like frightened beasts?

It is sometimes hard to tell the pilgrim from the fugitive, just as dawn always has a hint of the gloaming. In every opportunity, there is an invitation to failure and defeat. And in every defeat there is an opportunity...for...

CHAPTER 4.

River of Secrets, River of Mercy LOUISVILLE WAS A TOWN OF EXTREMES. THE THICK SMELL OF horse p.i.s.s alternated with gentle sniffs of blooming wisteria. Newly rich planters mixed sugar into their bourbon while slaves hauled tobacco and cotton crops to market, and the streets flurried with open-air stalls that sold live animals along with dried catfish, mud turtles, and skinned rabbits swarming with yellow jackets-a sight that fascinated Lloyd and disgusted Hephaestus (stirring memories of Phineas the rabbit). There was a friend left behind in Zanesville that the family never spoke of, and the blacksmith rather feared that Lloyd gave more thought to the mechanical beaver he had made than to the life he had taken. horse p.i.s.s alternated with gentle sniffs of blooming wisteria. Newly rich planters mixed sugar into their bourbon while slaves hauled tobacco and cotton crops to market, and the streets flurried with open-air stalls that sold live animals along with dried catfish, mud turtles, and skinned rabbits swarming with yellow jackets-a sight that fascinated Lloyd and disgusted Hephaestus (stirring memories of Phineas the rabbit). There was a friend left behind in Zanesville that the family never spoke of, and the blacksmith rather feared that Lloyd gave more thought to the mechanical beaver he had made than to the life he had taken.

Desperate again for funds, the family hocked most of their remaining possessions for food and lodging, and for raising enough money to cover waterline pa.s.sage on a stern-wheeler called the City of Paducah City of Paducah all the way to Cairo, where the Ohio melds into the Mississippi. There they found planks and piers, mule-lined dust streets, and frame houses peering across the river to Kentucky. all the way to Cairo, where the Ohio melds into the Mississippi. There they found planks and piers, mule-lined dust streets, and frame houses peering across the river to Kentucky.

Amid hanging sides of bacon and buckets of nails that smelled like dirty rain, the Sitt.u.r.ds negotiated pa.s.sage to St. Louis on board a paddle wheeler that had been christened the Festus Festus in a Memphis s.h.i.+pyard but which its prudent new owners had renamed the in a Memphis s.h.i.+pyard but which its prudent new owners had renamed the Fidele Fidele. The steamboat was crowded with all manner of unusual pa.s.sengers, but none who intrigued Lloyd more than the man with the silver hand.

The possessor of the mechanical prosthesis was supposedly named Henri St. Ives and while he claimed to be from Vicksburg, he had the aura of those who habitually obscure their origins. It was at a card table in one of the parlors on the upper deck, surrounded by a stack of coins and greasy notes, that young Lloyd officially made his acquaintance.

The boy had been attracted to the drawing room by the smoky male voices of the players, punctuated by the ping and rustle of money and cards on the thick felt cloth. Once in position, Lloyd had refused to leave, standing so steadfast that the general conclusion around the table was that he was simpleminded.

The game was straight poker, and it was clear that St. Ives's fellow players were becoming disgruntled and a little suspicious about his run of luck. After he swept another pot, several unkind remarks were made, to which the maimed man replied, "Gentlemen, please. Good and bad fortune finds us all in its own time." He then raised his s.h.i.+ning left mitt with a flourish and, one by one, the other men at the table grunted their acceptance and chipped in their money.

Another hand was dealt and then another, both won by St. Ives. By this time, one of the men had suffered such losses that the presentation of the artificial appendage and its suggestion of some past catastrophe was no longer sufficient to ease the tension. The man, a plump horse doctor named Fundy, lurched up, almost capsizing the table, and shouted, "I don't know how you're doing it, but I know a cheat when I see one!"

St. Ives remained impa.s.sive, save for a lightning wink at little Lloyd.

"Good sir. Here you've been allowed to play at the gentlemen's table, which, given your level of skill, is a gift. Now sit down and wager or make a dignified retreat."

A roped vein in the accuser's forehead began to throb and his skin reddened. "Retreat?"

The bl.u.s.tering quack then drew from his coat a tendon scalpel, which he carried for protection. The lethal nakedness of it gleamed for all to see.

St. Ives's face did not blanch, but his silver hand came alive. With a click like the lock in a drawer, from out of the index finger snapped a dagger that doubled the length of the digit-and then, with a flick of the wrist, as if he were flipping a card into a hat, St. Ives doubled the length of the blade yet again, so that he was able to slice the ribbon that held the man's pocket watch in place without stirring from his chair.

Flabbergasted, Fundy clutched his paunch as if to make sure his entrails had not spilled out across the table. St. Ives laid his cards facedown and nudged the severed timepiece forward.

"Now, my friends, if any of you feel similarly discomfited I am prepared to meet you man to man on the afterdeck to settle this affair with honor. Alternatively," he rasped-and the silver hand clicked and expanded again to reveal a set of razor-sharp claws, one from each finger-"you can learn what justice comes from molesting a helpless cripple. It's your call, gentlemen. I am at your pleasure."

This last remark was uttered through an unwholesome smile that the pudgy accuser would never forget. Faced with such an unexpected display of weaponry, the poker players decided in unison to yield the table, and when their chairs were empty the claw blades retracted and the gambler eyed the young boy.

"You think I cheated? You think me a scoundrel?"

Lloyd shook his head. "You count the cards. You calculate in your head. You have a method. It merely gives you an advantage."

"Hah! Do you know how to play the gentlemen's game, then?"

"I think I do now," the boy replied.

"How do you mean?" St. Ives puzzled.

"I watched. I listened."

"That you did, lad. I could feel your glance penetrating me like one of my own fingers. But have you ever played? Do you know the rules?"

"You just taught me. All of you...by how you played," Lloyd answered.

"Pos.h.!.+" declared the gambler.

"Would you care to bet your winnings to find out?"

St. Ives smiled. There was something about this child, preternatural and unnerving-and yet engaging, too. "I like your manner, lad. Always up the ante."

At this point a burly steward with great muttonchop sideburns barged into the drawing room and jabbed a muscular digit into the gambler's chest.

"See here, charlatan. And don't think of taking a swipe at me with that fancy stump. I don't like your kind. Gambling is only allowed when it's honest and aboveboard."

With that the steward reached out and seized a wad of the notes that still remained on the table.

"Is that your commission for overseeing the play?" St. Ives jibed.

"That's the price a cheater pays."

"He didn't cheat," Lloyd piped up behind the man. "I was watching."

The steward withdrew his finger from St. Ives's chest and whirled around.

"What are you?" he demanded, noticing the boy for the first time. "His hired monkey? A poker table is no place for young'uns. Get along with you! Or I'll throw you to the bilge rats, you little s.h.i.+t."

"I don't know if the captain would be pleased to know you're taking that money," Lloyd returned without moving. "He might want some of it himself."

A spark of anger and resentment flared across the steward's face, mingled with a flush of surprise that someone so young could be both so astute and so matter-of-fact. But the boat's whistle blew just then and some other pa.s.sengers waltzed by, so that he became fl.u.s.tered and chucked the money back on the table and stomped out.

"Well, Monkey," St. Ives said, grinning. "What a good team we make, eh? Here. Here's your share. Rightfully earned and, from the look of you, rather needed."

St. Ives swiped the notes the steward had returned to the table and stuffed them into the boy's eager hands.

"If you are the savant you appear to be, who knows what we could achieve?" the gambler mused. "As partners."

"Equal partners?" Lloyd inquired. "That's the only kind of partners.h.i.+p I think works."

"Right you are." St. Ives smiled. "There's wisdom in you, too."

And so their little conspiracy began.

There was a sign in the dining saloon that St. Ives enjoyed. It read, IF YOU NEED TO CARRY LARGE SUMS OF MONEY, WEAR A MONEY BELT. AVOID GAMES OF CHANCE ON RIVERBOATS IF YOU NEED TO CARRY LARGE SUMS OF MONEY, WEAR A MONEY BELT. AVOID GAMES OF CHANCE ON RIVERBOATS. Thanks to the gambler, Lloyd made a new friend and had something to look forward to other than reading his uncle's letter yet again. He also made some much needed money. His parents were glad to have a little privacy, as their intimate life had suffered in recent times, and so let the boy wander the boat at will. Lloyd, meanwhile, was careful to keep the banknotes he acc.u.mulated for helping St. Ives hidden from his parents.

The Sitt.u.r.ds' stateroom was in a sorry state, six feet square with crimson moth-eaten curtains, a narrow slat bed, and a mothball-scented dresser, but it was considerably more luxurious than the bales and boxes the deck pa.s.sengers were forced to share with animals ranging from horses to chickens, all sheltering among the walls of crates they arranged, and all scrambling for s.p.a.ce as cargo and pa.s.sengers came and went and the manure was scooped.

A blasted and recently repaired boiler (which had scalded a billy goat and one of the crew members) required continuous adjustments and seemed to inhale fuel, so that there were regular and lengthy interruptions to the journey to allow for wooding parties to scour the sh.o.r.eline. One of the pa.s.sengers, who volunteered to a.s.sist with such an expedition in order to reduce his fare, was stricken with heart failure and had to be buried in a tea chest, while another was bitten by a snake. Then a cow leaped off the deck and tried to swim home to the Illinois side, only to have the bucktoothed lad whose family owned it make the mistake of trying to swim after it. Neither the hefty milk cow nor the overbite boy was seen again.

The fine packet boats operating between St. Paul and New Orleans were famous for their excellent cuisine. This was not one of those. Salt pork, mutton, and boiled potatoes and beans were the usual fare, although wine, stout, porter, and brandy could be found in abundance. Like stage drivers, steamboat captains tried to make the most of the daylight, pulling in toward sh.o.r.e when darkness fell. Dead trees, snags, and sandbars, not to mention smaller craft without illumination, posed a constant threat to travel at night, although most captains would run at reduced steam if the moon or starlight allowed. The crew was a blind barrel mix of Irish, German, blacks, and those St. Ives referred to as "pure muddy." Fleets of rafts, with their cook shanties puffing out greasy odors of fried fish, could be seen en route to the sawmills. Not infrequently, what appeared to be the body of a man or a ga.s.sy inflated horse drifted by and, once, a dollhouse with a ginger cat aboard.