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tradition, just fine.
    Brace's hero was three years his senior, experienced (as was Brace) at trumpeting in the band. Brace's hero did other and greater things: firing plinking rifles, grappling with dates, breeding cattle, driving at high speeds and shooting basketballs. He was blond and beautiful and, when Brace was not overcome with awe of his hero, Brace loved him. Brace, a son of copper-throated music and copper-fitted morals, looked up to a creature who lived comfortably with copper while having a wonderful time. Following the local ethic of seeking a profitable education, Brace arrived at the cow college where his hero was a star basketball player engaged in shaving points.
    "A gorgeous con," Glass told Lamp. "Nobody got hurt. The team won and the gamblers won. You got to admire the set."
    "Is that what they teach you in those fancy synagogues?"
    "They teach delicatessen management," Glass said thoughtfully. "It just occurs, cook ... this ship ain't kosher."
    Texture fooled Brace. After years of being quietly followed as a hero, the man finally took an interest in Brace. There were motives, of course, but Brace did not even dream of such things. It seemed to him that he was magically launched into the deep meaning and pleasures of adulthood. Lovely young women talked to him. Young men, sensing him an important satellite to the charging and dribbling star, wished to be his friend. Without understanding the seediness of the situation, and without knowing how or why, Brace found himself in the role of an intermediary. Men visited his room and said they were alumni. The men left envelopes for the basketball player. Brace, stricken with uncritical worship, did not at first even try to understand.
    "It's the drop man gets the trouble," Glass confided to Lamp. "Don't never get conned into taking the drop."
    Lamp groaned and prophesied.
    Understanding came slow. Through most of the season Brace cooperated, while running his small but increasing fund of knowledge through his conscience. He balked at the harm his mind was trying to discover; for heroes, after all, are not easy to come by, and young love suffers not from its lack of truth but from its lack of discrimination. He walked nighttime streets, stood in shadows before his hero's fraternity house, and, it may be, wept. When he finally understood the message of his conscience, he took that message back to the wise, older men who had given the conscience to him in the first place.
    Brace talked to his father. His father spoke in broad and certain tones like the voice of a trombone. His father said that Brace was doing the right thing. His father said that Brace made him proud. His father told Brace to take his information to the minister.
    The minister blinked with emotion, as if struck in a mortal place by a beatitude. He shot his cuffs, adjusted his tie, fondled a hymn book, gave a brief prayer of thanks. The minister said that Brace was doing the right thing. God was glad. The minister said he would speak to the basketball coach.
    The basketball coach towered above Brace. He laid manly hands the size of hoops on Brace's shoulders. The coach thanked Brace for doing the right thing in the name of clean sportsmanship.
    Brace's hero disdained him. When Brace phoned the lovely young women, with the lovely, tight-fitting angora sweaters, their roommates said that they were not in. His new men friends greeted him coldly, or not at all. Alumni stopped visiting. Through the rest of the season Brace attended the games, watched wins by narrow margins flash triumphantly on the glowing scoreboard. In the spring, his hero graduated and was hired at a high salary by a professional team.
    Brace's father, this time in a voice like a tuba, decided that in the following year Brace would attend a smaller college nearer to his home.
    It would take nearly another year, a year of loneliness that accumulated through silences and avoidance and summary conversations, before Brace understood that