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.