It was a miserable night despite the butter beans and cinnamon that Rapture managed to serve, along with a slice of smoked fatback, a loaf of day-old flatiron bread, followed by a variation on apple pandowdy and quick mud coffee.

The mice were so insistent-and when they weren’t running wild across the rafters and the floor the rats in the walls and the birds in the roof sounded even louder-and Hephaestus was so disgusted with himself for losing Lloyd’s money that no one much enjoyed their food. Rapture tried to console her husband by reminding him that Lloyd had found the wad of notes, which meant it had been lost by someone else and so was “bad luck ’n’ kemin home.” Lloyd kept his mouth shut at this, although a part of him longed to tell them both the truth. He wanted the praise he was due for his resourcefulness and knack. There was more Zanesville in his parents than he liked.

But the important fact was that they could no longer afford their stateroom on the Spirit of Independence. A new life with Micah seemed farther away than when they were in Ohio. They were stranded and disheartened, and just before they tried to go to sleep Hephaestus started blubbering. It was not an easily stomached sight, and filled Rapture with fear. Lloyd felt his disdain turning to shame. Suddenly, the family was outright foundering-and a long way from home.

“Listen, Hephaestus,” he said in a dark, calm voice, the first time he had ever called his father by his first name. “You have to pull yourself together. Tomorrow I will go out and bring some more money in. I don’t know how yet, but I will. But you can’t be a machine that breaks down now. You’re supposed to be the father in this family.”

There was an almost chilling sobriety to the boy’s words that shook both parents-perhaps because they each suspected that the money that had been lost had not been found. In any case, the next morning while the sun was still low, at the tender age of six, Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd went to seek employment with the one person he knew in the river city.