Enigmatic Pilot (13 page)

The proprietor was known as Chicken Germain, a Melungeon woman built like a cart horse with straight black hair and steel-blue eyes. She loved fried food and men, especially well-endowed men—and especially well-endowed men who also had some physical deformity. The first night Hephaestus managed to sneak in the door, Chicken was about to have him evicted when she noticed his limp. An hour later she noticed that he was anything but limp, chicken bones and gaudy silk stockings strewn on the floor beside her carved oak bed upstairs.

Despite his age, Lloyd was in his own way tortured by the temptations of desire into which Miss Viola had initiated him. There were not many avenues for sexual fulfillment for a boy of his age—particularly one who was new to town and without spending money, because, unlike Hephaestus, all the money he made he turned over to his mother.

From a street waif named Scooper he heard about a teenage half-breed called Pawnee Mary, who would let you do her if you
gave her chewing tobacco. There was also a beefy bucket head named Betty, who would get down on all fours behind the feedlot if you gave her a pig ear to chew on. But the Christian Union rode Betty out of town on a rail (which some local wags claimed she enjoyed), while Pawnee Mary was found floating facedown in the river. Young Lloyd grew ever more restless for company and release, and might well have wandered down a short, dark path himself had his yearning for female affection not found another outlet.

One night after he had fled the stable, where enough rancor was brewing between his parents to set the horses snorting in their stalls below, he happened upon a Lyceum-like institution that called itself the Illumination Society. The establishment was filled with horn-rimmed fusspots arguing about a magic-lantern lecture on the life history of the bee. Was it too bold? Too suggestive? The opinions were hot on both sides of the debate, and no one noticed Lloyd slip into the adjacent library. He was starving for intellectual stimulation in the same way that he craved sex.

In the hushed, stuffy book room he found copies of Shakespeare and Horace. But when he went to look beyond one of the rows, in the darker part of the room, he pulled out a heavy volume on the history of the Punic Wars and found on the shelf behind it another book tucked away, as if in secret. In the dim light, he strained his eyes to take in the contents. The pages were filled with illustrated pictures of men and women. Naked men and women posed in positions that he hadn’t even thought of! His heart leaped. Page by forbidden page, the pictures lubricated his imagination. Fortunately, the members of the Illumination Society were now immersed in an earnest discussion regarding dues and the privileges of officeholders. Oh, how he longed to steal that book—so crammed with fantasies and flesh! But it was too large for him to slip under his shirt. He noticed a small card glued inside the front cover. It read
RARE BOOKS & MAPS
, and was followed by a St. Louis address—on
Fifth Street, not far away. His whole body quivered at the prospect! Perhaps there were more such books to be found there.

The next afternoon, following a show where sales of LUCID! hit a record high, Lloyd went searching for the shop (with the express intention of locating and stealing a forbidden text). The address in question was a very narrow shop front, not much wider than the single door, with just one small window. The pane was so caked with mud and crusted insects that it was impossible to gain any idea of what type of business was conducted inside, but the moment Lloyd was inside the door he knew that he had found what he had been searching for. The shop was much deeper than he expected, laid out in a series of small plaster-peeling rooms and alcoves built off one long hall lined by a tatty Oriental carpet. On the wall behind the door hung a Dutch map of some section of the coast of Africa, and on the floor below lay a transparent celestial sphere and a page from an illuminated manuscript depicting a sleeping peasant being inspected by a family of hedgehogs. The place was silent but for the buzzing of a bluebottle butting the inside of the clouded glass. As there was no one about, Lloyd peered into the first room. More maps covered the wall—or pieces of maps—some framed, some torn and decomposing. Piles of books lay everywhere.

He found amid the mouse dirt and cobwebs a fat vellum volume concerning the history of military fortifications. In the neighboring alcove he found the travels of Hakluyt and the
Wildflowers of the Southern Alps
, which had several blood-smeared mosquitoes smushed between its pages. At last, however, on top of a crooked chimney pile of texts, he came upon an edition of Nicolaus Steno’s famous anatomical work on the ovaries of sharks, which gave him hope that he might have hit on a heap of biological or medical texts. Perhaps somewhere near the bottom was hidden the documentation of some forensically vivid mating ritual or a diagram of the female organs. He
became so engrossed in this possibility that he was not even aware of the hint of witch hazel insinuating itself through the haze of cracked book paste and Graeco-Latino-English terminology—until the man’s stealthy approach was announced with a phlegmy clearing of the throat. Lloyd tipped over a pillar of crumbling books and stared up in panic, choking on the dust.

The man who confronted him now was but a smidgen over five feet tall, with tufts of wild hair and bushy eyebrows giving way to a domed forehead. His hands were soft and effeminate-looking, yet there was about his frame a contrasting hint of martial energy and force of character, which was undermined by a noticeable hump on his back. The man’s attire consisted of a neat but worn dark twill suit with a faint powdering of dust, an expensive-looking white shirt and a silver pocket watch suspended from his waistcoat by an oily chain. On the thick hooked nose above a bristle of gray mustache propped a pair of round wire spectacles, and when he opened his mouth to speak Lloyd spotted a calcium stain on his front tooth.

“This is not a lending library, young man. These books are for sale. Get along.”

He pivoted to leave, but Lloyd piped up.

“But it looks like there are a lot of books that no one wants to buy! Wouldn’t it be better if some were read?”

“You know nothing,” the man croaked. “I do a brisk trade with bibliophiles from all over the country and indeed the world. From here to Boston, London, and Antwerp. There is a buyer for every book under this roof. You do not look like a buyer to me. Please go.”

“Couldn’t I just sit in one of the rooms and read?” Lloyd begged. “I won’t disturb any of the … buyers.”

This plea grated on the humpy man’s nerves, for he slapped his hands together and stuttered, “H-how … how did you come to find me?”

Lloyd fidgeted again, not wanting to recount how he had
learned of the shop and certainly not what he had hoped to find.

“I … I was just … walking past,” he muttered.

The man slapped his hands together again and said, “Then you may kindly just walk out. Books such as these are not for children.”

“Don’t you think that education is a good thing?” Lloyd asked stubbornly.

“Allein die Dosis macht dass ein Ding kein Gift ist,”
the bookman said, sighing.
“Good day.”

“I know what you said,” Lloyd replied.

“Yes, but you are not leaving as I asked. Will I have to call a constable?”

“No, I mean what you said in German.”

“Bully for you. And now I am addressing you in Latin.
“Nemo me impune lacessit.”

“Why would I want to harm you?” Lloyd puzzled.

“What?” the dainty humped man started. “You know Latin, too?”

“Yes,” Lloyd answered. “Of course.”

The proprietor gave a sniff of disbelief and strode over to the nearest shelf and whisked out a volume of Catullus’s poetry. “All right,” he said, handing the open book to Lloyd and pointing. “Tell me what this says.”

Lloyd glanced down at the selected page and read, “
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior
. It means ‘I hate and love. You may ask why I do so. I do not know, but I feel it and am in torment.’ ”

“Hmm.” The man smiled, showing his calcium stain. “And what did I say before in German?”

“ ‘Only the dose insures the thing will not be a poison.’ ”

“Correct!” snapped the bookseller. “And in reference to education you may already have had too much—at least of a certain kind.”

“I hardly ever go to school,” Lloyd corrected. “But I
am
quick.”

“Perhaps,” the man said, flexing his hump. “But you are slow to leave. I believe you were sent by one of the local dilettantes to goad and annoy me.”

“I wasn’t sent by anyone!” Lloyd insisted. “I’m here on my own.”

There was something about the emphatic way the boy uttered this last remark, combined with his unexpected erudition, that made the bookseller change his attitude, for he brushed some of the dust from his suit and said, “All right, my learned young friend. Since you are so committed, you may remain here and read. I close at four, and you are not to wander outside this room. Understood?”

“Thank you!” Lloyd beamed. “Thank you. But … is there any key to how the books are organized?”

The humped man stroked his mustache.

“The key is right here,” he said, pointing to his shining forehead. “I know where every book is in the entire shop. Does my young sir have special interests?”

“I am interested in science. And magic,” Lloyd answered. “And … secrets.”

“I … see,” the bookseller said, arching his woolly eyebrows.

The humped man disappeared into the next room and Lloyd heard him foraging among the piles. He returned with an armload of Euclid’s
Elements
and a book concerning Hooke’s microscopy and an alchemical folio titled “Tract on the Tincture and Oil of Antimony,” by Roger Bacon.

“Feast your mind on these. But mark what I say about staying in this room.”

So saying, the man spun around and retreated back into the gloom of maps and tomes, taking the delicate astringency of the witch hazel with him. To the boy’s surprise, other people did enter the shop. Those that he glimpsed passing by in the
hall did not look much like buyers to him, but as they did not take any notice of him he paid them little mind and burrowed deeper into his reading. Once he heard the bookseller speaking in French in low tones to someone in the back. At five minutes to four, the humped man reappeared carrying a heavy set of keys.

“What is your name, young scholar?” the man asked.

Lloyd told him his name and swallowed a clump of dust and phlegm.

“My name is Wolfgang Schelling,” the bookseller informed him. “I must say, you look more likely to pinch an apple than to go to the trouble of finding a book to read. But perhaps I don’t know very much about boys. I was never allowed to be one myself, and I have no children of my own. In any case, it’s time for you to go wherever you call home. Would you like to come back here again to study?”

“More than anything,” Lloyd cried, and this was almost true.

“All right,” Schelling purred. “Here are the rules. You are not to rummage about. Ever. I will select the books or find ones of interest for you. Do your parents or family know you came here? Does anyone know?”

“No,” Lloyd answered.

“Then let’s keep it that way. Trouble is easy to find these days, and I have no need of it. If I find that you have told anyone about your visits here, your privileges will be terminated. Always come in by the back door, which I will show you now, and you must always leave whenever I tell you to. And I do not want to hear anything about your life and problems—your family or the lack thereof. I will not tolerate either disrespect or private confidences. Understood?”

“Y-yes,” Lloyd answered.

“You may come tomorrow at either ten or one but not in between, and you must be punctual.”

“Yes, sir,” Lloyd said, nodding. “And may I bring my notebook?”

“You may. Buy you must not leave pencil shavings or do anything untidy,” Schelling replied—a remark that struck Lloyd as amusing, given the thick fur of dust that haunted the shop.

“And to resolve any unpleasant curiosity you may have, the hump on my back is a benign growth that is too close to my spine to be removed. No surgeon has the skill to remove it without endangering my life. So you need not stifle any impertinent questions on that score. Now follow me, and do not return except at the times I have indicated. Oh, and do consider bathing. You reek of fried catfish and the honey bucket.”

Lloyd flinched at this remark but picked himself up off the floor and followed the bookseller down the long hallway to the back door. Outside was an alleyway jammed with crates and excelsior, but he knew the way back to the stable and sprinted down the jagged cobblestones, leaving the humpbacked man watching him from the doorway. Once the boy was gone, Schelling returned to the room he had been reading in and took a mental inventory. The bookseller noticed that a treatise on the Greek Archytas of Tarentum’s mechanical pigeon, the first model airplane, was missing. Then, on the back of an old newspaper advertising a slave auction, he spotted something that made his bespectacled eyes bug out. Using but a hardened clump of street mud, the boy had managed to scrawl a rather fine imitation of one of Hooke’s microscopic drawings.

“I wonder …” Schelling murmured.

T
HE
S
ITTURDS’ MORALE COLLAPSED IN
S
T
. L
OUIS
. T
HEIR WORLD
always seemed to be ending. Rapture felt degraded and confused by the “w’ich en w’y talk” of the metropolis. She had lost her ability for “sperit voicen” and seemed fatigued at heart. Hephaestus teetered into the gutter. Where up to this point the trials of travel had brought them together in their quest to reach Texas and learn the secret of the “salvation” letter, now all the distractions and pressures of the city and their changing roles seemed to bring them undone. Each in a private way was homesick for their old life, as much as that had seemed a burden in the past. Each felt somehow to blame, especially Hephaestus.