sadism that the book merchant found despicable.
Deciding that Lloyd’s education required something other than scientific literature and handbooks of magic, the humped man provided an illustrated volume on Greek mythology. On the way back to the stable after closing, Lloyd trapped a wharf rat, which he named Theseus. The next day he built a maze for the rat to explore, but when the rodent failed to extricate itself Lloyd attached one of his battery wires and proceeded to torture it with electricity. Schelling was left to perform a merciful extermination. The next day when the bookseller inquired what the child was clutching in a damp handkerchief, Lloyd replied, “A cat’s brain.”
Schelling was forced to admit that his protege’s moral intelligence lagged far behind his mental aptitude. When he quizzed the boy to describe what his special field of interest was, Lloyd muttered, “Wild science.”
“What do you mean by that?” the bookman queried.
“The life of machines,” Lloyd said with a shrug. “The machinery of life.”
Schelling was taken aback to learn that a further inventory of the subjects that exuded fascination for the prodigy included ghosts, dreams, and the female anatomy. When asked what he would most like to accomplish, given his prodigious gifts, Lloyd replied, without a hint of irony or self-consciousness, “Design a female playmate who will remain forever young, communicate with the dead, formulate a detailed map of the mind, and perhaps travel to other worlds.”
Fortunately, Lloyd had to use the privy in the back lane, so Schelling was left to splutter to himself. Then he sneaked a peek at the boy’s notes. In the beleaguered two-penny Buffalo book, he found an amalgam of symbols, numbers, and marginalia-from mathematical calculations and sketches depicting various mechanical actions to a chain of hierograms that made him gawk. These emblems spiraled through a series of schematic drawings that merged existing and imaginary machines with animals and insects, along with humans and mythological beasts in graphic sexual poses. Lloyd returned and picked up his work just where he had left off without noticing the disturbed look on Schelling’s face.
While his education under the bookseller’s patronage progressed at the speed of thought, out on the medicine- show circuit the brisk sales of LUCID! were beginning to fall off. From long experience, Mulrooney sensed that the “hole was pretty well fished out” and the solution was to move on, upriver to Hannibal, Quincy, Rock Island, maybe even St. Paul. Of course, Lloyd could not go. The Sitturds’ way led west and south, yet the boy’s share of tonic sales was still nowhere near enough to pay for all three fares on the Missouri.
Mulrooney encouraged the prodigy to improvise more flamboyant expressions of his talents with an “enterprise point of view” in mind. Lloyd answered with theatrical exhibitions of magnetism, mirrors, and various volatile chemicals, which stimulated both consternation and raucous applause but did not lead to further sales. However, when he unveiled a flock of soaring toys and wind flyers public interest took a decided turn. These were simpler than the ones he had made in Zanesville but more elegant in their efficiency and less labor-intensive to produce. They had the added benefit of being disposable, which encouraged repeat purchases. They achieved an instant local vogue. Children and grown-ups alike were smitten by the sleek white arrows and bird-shaped creations. Prices varied, depending on the size and the materials, but the sudden popularity of the flying toys brought the Sitturds momentarily back together again, as Lloyd, Rapture, and the repentant Hephaestus were forced to work side by side in order to keep pace with demand as clubs and competitions sprouted wings. Yet even this success was not enough to satisfy Lloyd. His inclinations and impatience spurred him on to new heights.
The next phase started with a caged dove, a lamb, and a rooster. While gathering his things to leave Schelling’s bookshop one afternoon, Lloyd stumbled upon a volume on the history of ballooning, which began with the story of the Frenchman Pilatre de Rozier launching the first animals in a balloon of paper and fabric, then making a solo ascent himself a few months after-followed later by a true free flight in a balloon designed by the famous Montgolfier brothers in 1783.
In the early hours of the next day, Lloyd launched his own straw fire-fueled balloon made of butcher paper and hat wire, sending aloft one of the stable mice he had nabbed. He watched with pride as it disappeared in the vicinity of the Nicholson grocery store. (Unbeknownst to the boy, the balloon bounded about in the framing of a rooftop water tank before crashing near the Wheaton drugstore, to the mystification of a clerk named Balthus Tubb, who would go to his grave puzzling over the singed vermin that fell from the sky and hit him in the head.)
Reading how kites had been used in ancient China to elevate fireworks for military purposes set off fireworks of its own inside the boy’s mind. With funding from Mulrooney, Lloyd began constructing, demonstrating, and selling kites as big as himself along the levee as part of the medicine show’s new program. The sight of the creations trembling on their tethers over the river brought whistles from the packet steamers and cheers from the freight- loaded flatboats. The size of the kites grew, and so did their efficiency. When the Fourth of July came, Lloyd incorporated his emerging capabilities into a pyrotechnic display along the riverbank. Mulrooney handled the ticket sales and was delighted at the takings. Schelling was circulating in the crowd that night, too, but he was far from delighted.
The next day at closing time, the humpbacked bibliophile buttonholed the wunderkind and said, “My boy, I have someone who would like to make your acquaintance. Someone I think it would be very strategic for you to meet. She is known as Mother Tongue. She is elderly and eccentric, but if favorably disposed toward you-and I believe she will be-she could become an invaluable… sponsor.”
“Why?” Lloyd asked.
“Because of your unique abilities. And because she is eccentric. I would like you to meet me at the old ferry landing at midnight tonight.”
“Midnight?” Lloyd cried. “What will I tell my mother and father?” Although he protested, he was beginning to think that he did not owe his parents any explanation for his actions anymore.
“You must not tell them. You must wait until they are asleep and slip out.”
“But why so late-and where does this Mother Tongue live?”
“I can only say that she is eccentric, as I have told you. But she
“All right,” Lloyd agreed, and turned to head home, thinking all the while that his own fortunes seemed to rise in proportion to the fall in his parents’. It stung him, though, how they were forever undermining his elation, flinging filaments if not cables of guilt and responsibility at him, needing him yet holding him back. But from what? Perhaps the answer to that question was about to take more than a dream’s shape.
CHAPTER 8. Midnight Is a Door
LLOYD ARRIVED AT THE OLD FERRY LANDING DEAD ON THE APPOINTED time. A full moon reflected off the wharf and the chimneys of the docked boats, giving the Mississippi a sickly silver sheen. Schelling was waiting for him. Two stevedore-muscled black men were on board a cramped, decrepit steam launch with him-one at the helm, one standing guard. Despite the warm summer night, the boy shivered.
Stoked with cottonwood and cypress, the boiler of the dilapidated boat powered the craft out into the current. The telltale silhouette of a yawl rowed off south beyond them, and a beaming coal barge loomed out toward the Illinois side. Beyond that, no one appeared to be on the water except for them and the moonlight.
Schelling handed Lloyd a strip of dark muslin. “Please blindfold yourself.”
“Why?” Lloyd asked, the hair rising on the back of his neck.
“You will see,” Schelling replied. “Trust me.”
Lloyd flopped down on a crate and wrapped the cloth around his head as he was instructed. This was not at all what he had expected, but the familiar sounds of the boat surging through the river filled him with a confused sense of resignation and anticipation. Surely this man meant him well.
He listened hard, trying to picture their progress away from St. Louis. The hiss of the gauge cock. The low rumble of the mud valves. At first he was sure they were headed upriver, and then they turned, and perhaps again. Twice Schelling raised him up and spun him around, as if to further disorient him. Not a word was spoken between the humpback and his dark-skinned crew. On and on the boat plowed. Then drifted.
At last it became clear that they were docking. There were all the sounds of pulling into a wharf: the change in the rhythm of the machinery… backwash… scrambling of hands and legs… ropes heaved. Lloyd was lifted onto some sort of pier (by one of the Negroes, he surmised) and pushed gently but forcibly into a seated position. After several
