American Gods (12 page)

“Now,” he said, “You do a little shopping in the food store, then hang out by the phone. If anyone asks, you're waiting for a call from your girlfriend, whose car has broken down.”

“So why's she calling me there?”

“How the hell should you know?”

Wednesday put on a pair of faded pink earmuffs. He closed the trunk. Snowflakes settled on his dark blue cap, and on his earmuffs.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Ludicrous,” said Shadow.

“Ludicrous?”

“Or goofy, maybe,” said Shadow.

“Mm. Goofy and ludicrous. That's good.” Wednesday smiled. The earmuffs made him appear, at the same time, reassuring, amusing, and, ultimately, lovable. He strode across the street and walked along the block to the bank building, while Shadow walked into the supermarket hall and watched.

Wednesday taped a large red out-of-order notice to the ATM. He put a red ribbon across the night deposit slot, and he taped a photocopied sign up above it. Shadow read it with amusement.

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE
, it said,
WE ARE WORKING TO MAKE ONGOING IMPROVEMENTS. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE TEMPORARY INCONVENIENCE
.

Then Wednesday turned around and faced the street. He looked cold and put-upon.

A young woman came over to use the ATM. Wednesday shook his head, explained that it was out of order. She cursed, apologized for cursing, and ran off.

A car drew up, and a man got out holding a small gray sack and a key. Shadow watched as Wednesday apologized to the man, then made him sign the clipboard, checked his deposit slip, painstakingly wrote him out a receipt and puzzled over which copy to keep, and, finally, opened his big black metal case and put the man's sack inside.

The man shivered in the snow, stamping his feet, waiting for the old security guard to be done with this administrative nonsense, so he could leave his takings and get out of the cold and be on his way, then he took his receipt and got back into his warm car and drove off.

Wednesday walked across the street carrying the metal case, and bought himself a coffee at the supermarket.

“Afternoon, young man,” he said, with an avuncular chuckle, as he passed Shadow. “Cold enough for you?”

He walked back across the street and took gray sacks and envelopes from people coming to deposit their earnings or their takings on this Saturday afternoon, a fine old security man in his funny pink earmuffs.

Shadow bought some things to read—
Turkey Hunting, People,
and, because the cover picture of Bigfoot was so endearing, the
Weekly World News
—and stared out of the window.

“Anything I can do to help?” asked a middle-aged black man with a white mustache. He seemed to be the manager.

“Thanks, man, but no. I'm waiting for a phone call. My girlfriend's car broke down.”

“Probably the battery,” said the man. “People forget those things only last three, maybe four years. It's not like they cost a fortune.”

“Tell me about it,” said Shadow.

“Hang in there, big guy,” said the manager, and he went back into the supermarket.

The snow had turned the street scene into the interior of a snow globe, perfect in all its details.

Shadow watched, impressed. Unable to hear the conversations across the street, he felt it was like watching a fine silent movie performance, all pantomime and expression: the old security guard was gruff, earnest—a little bumbling perhaps, but enormously well-meaning. Everyone who gave him their money walked away a little happier from having met him.

And then the cops drew up outside the bank, and Shadow's heart sank. Wednesday tipped his cap to them, and ambled over to the police car. He said his hellos and shook hands through the open window, and nodded, then hunted through his pockets until he found a business card and a letter, and passed them through the window of the car. Then he sipped his coffee.

The telephone rang. Shadow picked up the handpiece and did his best to sound bored. “A1 Security Services,” he said.

“Can I speak to A. Haddock?” asked the cop across the street.

“This is Andy Haddock speaking,” said Shadow.

“Yeah, Mister Haddock, this is the police,” said the cop in the car across the street. “You've got a man at the First Illinois Bank on the corner of Market and Second.”

“Uh, yeah. That's right. Jimmy O'Gorman. And what seems to be the problem, officer? Jim behaving himself? He's not been drinking?”

“No problem, sir. Your man is just fine, sir. Just wanted to make certain everything was in order.”

“You tell Jim that if he's caught drinking again, officer, he's fired. You got that? Out of a job. Out on his ass. We have zero tolerance at A1 Security.”

“I really don't think it's my place to tell him that, sir. He's doing a fine job. We're just concerned because something like this really ought to be done by two personnel. It's risky, having one unarmed guard dealing with such large amounts of money.”

“Tell me about it. Or more to the point, you tell those cheapskates down at the First Illinois about it. These are my men I'm putting on the line, officer. Good men. Men like you.” Shadow found himself warming to this identity. He could feel himself becoming Andy Haddock, chewed cheap cigar in his ashtray, a stack of paperwork to get to this Saturday afternoon, a home in Schaumburg and a mistress in a little apartment on Lake Shore Drive. “Y'know, you sound like a bright young man, officer, uh . . .”

“Myerson.”

“Officer Myerson. You need a little weekend work, or you wind up leaving the force, any reason, you give us a call. We always need good men. You got my card?”

“Yes sir.”

“You hang onto it,” said Andy Haddock. “You call me.”

The police car drove off, and Wednesday shuffled back through the snow to deal with the small line of people who were waiting to give him their money.

“She okay?” asked the manager, putting his head around the door. “Your girlfriend?”

“It was the battery,” said Shadow. “Now I just got to wait.”

“Women,” said the manager. “I hope yours is worth waiting for.”

Winter darkness descended, the afternoon slowly graying into night. Lights went on. More people gave Wednesday their money. Suddenly, as if at some signal Shadow could not see, Wednesday walked over to the wall, removed the out-of-order signs, and trudged across the slushy road, heading for the parking lot. Shadow waited a minute, then followed him.

Wednesday was sitting in the back of the car. He had opened the metal case, and was methodically laying everything he had been given out on the backseat in neat piles.

“Drive,” he said. “We're heading for the First Illinois Bank over on State Street.”

“Repeat performance?” asked Shadow. “Isn't that kind of pushing your luck?”

“Not at all,” said Wednesday. “We're going to do a little banking.”

While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the backseat and removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking the cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Shadow pulled up outside the bank, stopping the car about fifty yards down the road, well out of camera range. Wednesday got out of the car and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. Then he opened the night safe, and dropped in the gray bags. He closed it again.

He climbed into the passenger seat. “You're heading for I-90,” said Wednesday. “Follow the signs west for Madison.”

Shadow began to drive.

Wednesday looked back at the bank they were leaving. “There, my boy,” he said, cheerfully, “that will confuse everything. Now, to get the really big money, you need to do that at about four-thirty on a Sunday morning, when the clubs and the bars drop off their Saturday night's takings. Hit the right bank, the right guy making the drop-off—they tend to pick them big and honest, and sometimes have a couple of bouncers accompany them, but they aren't necessarily smart—and you can walk away with a quarter of a million dollars for an evening's work.”

“If it's that easy,” said Shadow, “how come everybody doesn't do it?”

“It's not an entirely risk-free occupation,” said Wednesday, “especially not at four-thirty in the morning.”

“You mean the cops are more suspicious at four-thirty in the morning?”

“Not at all. But the bouncers are. And things can get awkward.”

He flicked through a sheaf of fifties, added a smaller stack of twenties, weighed them in his hand, then passed them over to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Your first week's wages.”

Shadow pocketed the money without counting it. “So, that's what you do?” he asked. “To make money?”

“Rarely. Only when a great deal of cash is needed fast. On the whole, I make my money from people who never know they've been taken, and who never complain, and who will frequently line up to be taken when I come back that way again.”

“That Sweeney guy said you were a hustler.”

“He was right. But that is the least of what I am. And the least of what I need you for, Shadow.”

 

Snow spun through their headlights and into the windshield as they drove through the darkness. The effect was almost hypnotic.

“This is the only country in the world,” said Wednesday, into the stillness, “that worries about what it is.”

“What?”

“The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”

“And . . . ?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“So you've been to lots of other countries, then?”

Wednesday said nothing. Shadow glanced at him. “No,” said Wednesday, with a sigh. “No. I never have.”

They stopped for gas, and Wednesday went into the rest room in his security guard jacket and his suitcase, and came out in a crisp, pale suit, brown shoes, and a knee-length brown coat that looked like it might be Italian.

“So when we get to Madison, what then?”

“Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?”

“No,” said Shadow. “But I've seen the signs.”

The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world: oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock. Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them. Did the House balance perilously upon the Rock? What was so interesting about the Rock? About the House? He had given it a passing thought, but then forgotten it. Shadow was not in the habit of visiting roadside attractions.

They left the interstate at Madison, and drove past the dome of the capitol building, another perfect snow-globe scene in the falling snow, and then they were off the interstate and driving down country roads. After almost an hour of driving through towns with names like Black Earth, they turned down a narrow driveway, past several enormous, snow-dusted flower pots entwined with lizardlike dragons. The tree-lined parking lot was almost empty.

“They'll be closing soon,” said Wednesday.

“So what is this place?” asked Shadow, as they walked through the parking lot toward a low, unimpressive wooden building.

“This is a roadside attraction,” said Wednesday. “One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power.”

“Come again?”

“It's perfectly simple,” said Wednesday. “In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or . . . well, you get the idea.”

“There are churches all across the States, though,” said Shadow.

“In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that.”

“You have some pretty whacked-out theories,” said Shadow.

“Nothing theoretical about it, young man,” said Wednesday. “You should have figured that out by now.”

There was only one ticket window open. “We stop selling tickets in half an hour,” said the girl. “It takes at least two hours to walk around, you see.”

Wednesday paid for their tickets in cash.

“Where's the rock?” asked Shadow.

“Under the house,” said Wednesday.

“Where's the house?”

Wednesday put his finger to his lips, and they walked forward. Farther in, a player piano was playing something that was intended to be Ravel's
Bolero
. The place seemed to be a geometrically reconfigured 1960s bachelor pad, with open stone work, pile carpeting, and magnificently ugly mushroom-shaped stained-glass lampshades. Up a winding staircase was another room filled with knickknacks.

“They say this was built by Frank Lloyd Wright's evil twin,” said Wednesday. “Frank Lloyd Wrong.” He chuckled at his joke.