American Gods (40 page)

The green lights went blue, then red, then faded to a dull red, and the spider settled down on its metallic haunches. Wednesday began to walk forward, a lonely figure beneath the stars, in a broad-brimmed hat, his frayed dark cloak gusting randomly in the nowhere wind, his staff tapping on the glassy rock floor.

When the metallic spider was only a distant glint in the starlight, far back on the plain, Wednesday said, “It should be safe to speak, now.”

“Where are we?”

“Behind the scenes,” said Wednesday.

“Sorry?”

“Think of it as being behind the scenes. Like in a theater or something. I just pulled us out of the audience and now we're walking about backstage. It's a shortcut.”

“When I touched that bone. I was in the mind of a guy named Town. He's with that spook show. He hates us.”

“Yes.”

“He's got a boss named Mister World. He reminds me of someone, but I don't know who. I was looking into Town's head—or maybe I was in his head. I'm not certain.”

“Do they know where we're headed?”

“I think they're calling off the hunt right now. They didn't want to follow us to the reservation. Are we going to a reservation?”

“Maybe.” Wednesday leaned on his staff for a moment, then continued to walk.

“What was that spider thing?”

“A pattern manifestation. A search engine.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“You only get to be my age by assuming the worst.”

Shadow smiled. “And how old would that be?”

“Old as my tongue,” said Wednesday. “And a few months older than my teeth.”

“You play your cards so close to your chest,” said Shadow. “That I'm not even sure that they're really cards at all.”

Wednesday only grunted.

Each hill they came to was harder to climb.

Shadow began to feel headachy. There was a pounding quality to the starlight, something that resonated with the pulse in his temples and his chest. At the bottom of the next hill he stumbled, opened his mouth to say something and, without warning, he vomited.

Wednesday reached into an inside pocket, and produced a small hip flask. “Take a sip of this,” he said. “Only a sip.”

The liquid was pungent, and it evaporated in his mouth like a good brandy, although it did not taste like alcohol. Wednesday took the flask away, and pocketed it. “It's not good for the audience to find themselves walking about backstage. That's why you're feeling sick. We need to hurry to get you out of here.”

They walked faster, Wednesday at a solid trudge, Shadow stumbling from time to time, but feeling better for the drink, which had left his mouth tasting of orange peel, of rosemary oil and peppermint and cloves.

Wednesday took his arm. “There,” he said, pointing to two identical hillocks of frozen rock-glass to their left. “Walk between those two mounds. Walk beside me.”

They walked, and the cold air and bright daylight smashed into Shadow's face at the same time.

They were standing halfway up a gentle hill. The mist had gone, the day was sunny and chill, the sky was a perfect blue. At the bottom of the hill was a gravel road, and a red station wagon bounced along it like a child's toy car. A gust of wood smoke came from a building nearby. It looked as if someone had picked up a mobile home and dropped it on the side of the hill thirty years ago. The home was much repaired, patched, and, in places, added onto.

As they reached the door it opened, and a middle-aged man with sharp eyes and a mouth like a knife slash looked down at them and said, “Eyah, I heard that there were two white men on their way to see me. Two whites in a Winnebago. And I heard that they got lost, like white men always get lost if they don't put up their signs everywhere. And now look at these two sorry beasts at the door. You know you're on Lakota land?” His hair was gray, and long.

“Since when were you Lakota, you old fraud?” said Wednesday. He was wearing a coat and a flap-eared cap, and already it seemed to Shadow unlikely that only a few moments ago under the stars he had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a tattered cloak. “So, Whiskey Jack. I'm starving, and my friend here just threw up his breakfast. Are you going to invite us in?”

Whiskey Jack scratched an armpit. He was wearing blue jeans, and an undershirt the gray of his hair. He wore moccasins, and he seemed not to notice the cold. Then he said, “I like it here. Come in, white men who lost their Winnebago.”

There was more wood smoke in the air inside the trailer, and there was another man in there, sitting at a table. The man wore stained buckskins, and was barefoot. His skin was the color of bark.

Wednesday seemed delighted. “Well,” he said, “it seems our delay was fortuitous. Whiskey Jack and Apple Johnny. Two birds with one stone.”

The man at the table, Apple Johnny, stared at Wednesday, then he reached down a hand to his crotch, cupped it and said, “Wrong again. I jes' checked and I got both of my stones, jes' where they oughtta be.” He looked up at Shadow, raised his hand, palm out. “I'm John Chapman. You don't mind anything your boss says about me. He's an asshole. Always was an asshole. Always goin' to be an asshole. Some people is jes' assholes, and that's an end of it.”

“Mike Ainsel,” said Shadow.

Chapman rubbed his stubbly chin. “Ainsel,” he said. “That's not a name. But it'll do at a pinch. What do they call you?”

“Shadow.”

“I'll call you Shadow, then. Hey, Whiskey Jack”—but it wasn't really
Whiskey Jack
he was saying, Shadow realized. Too many syllables. “How's the food looking?”

Whiskey Jack took a wooden spoon and lifted the lid off a black iron pot, bubbling away on the range of the wood-burning stove. “It's ready for eating,” he said.

He took four plastic bowls and spooned the contents of the pot into the bowls, put them down on the table. Then he opened the door, stepped out into the snow, and pulled a plastic gallon jug from the snowbank. He brought it inside, and poured four large glasses of a cloudy yellow-brown liquid, which he put beside each bowl. Last of all, he found four spoons. He sat down at the table with the other men.

Wednesday raised his glass suspiciously. “Looks like piss,” he said.

“You still drinking that stuff?” asked Whiskey Jack. “You white men are crazy. This is better.” Then, to Shadow, “The stew is mostly wild turkey. John here brought the applejack.”

“It's a soft apple cider,” said John Chapman. “I never believed in hard liquor. Makes men mad.”

The stew was delicious, and it was very good apple cider. Shadow forced himself to slow down, to chew his food, not to gulp it, but he was more hungry than he would have believed. He helped himself to a second bowl of the stew and a second glass of the cider.

“Dame Rumor says that you've been out talking to all manner of folk, offering them all manner of things. Says you're takin' the old folks on the warpath,” said John Chapman. Shadow and Whiskey Jack were washing up, putting the leftover stew into Tupperware bowls. Whiskey Jack put the bowls into the snowdrifts outside his front door, and put a milk crate on top of the place he'd pushed them, so he could find them again.

“I think that's a fair and judicious summary of events,” said Wednesday.

“They'll win,” said Whiskey Jack flatly. “They won already. You lost already. Like the white man and my people. Mostly they won. And when they lost, they made treaties. Then they broke the treaties. So they won again. I'm not fighting for another lost cause.”

“And it's no use you lookin' at me,” said John Chapman, “for even if I fought for you—which'n I won't—I'm no use to you. Mangy rat-tailed bastards jes' picked me off and clean forgot me.” He stopped. Then he said, “Paul Bunyan.” He shook his head slowly and he said it again.
“Paul Bunyan.”
Shadow had never heard two such innocuous words made to sound so damning.

“Paul Bunyan?” Shadow said. “What did he ever do?”

“He took up head space,” said Whiskey Jack. He bummed a cigarette from Wednesday and the two men sat and smoked.

“It's like the idiots who figure that hummingbirds worry about their weight or tooth decay or some such nonsense, maybe they just want to spare hummingbirds the evils of sugar,” explained Wednesday. “So they fill the hummingbird feeders with fucking NutraSweet. The birds come to the feeders and they drink it. Then they die, because their food contains no calories even though their little tummies are full. That's Paul Bunyan for you. Nobody ever told Paul Bunyan stories. Nobody ever believed in Paul Bunyan. He came staggering out of a New York ad agency in 1910 and filled the nation's myth stomach with empty calories.”

“I like Paul Bunyan,” said Whiskey Jack. “I went on his ride at the Mall of America, few years back. You see big old Paul Bunyan at the top then you come crashing down. Splash! He's okay by me. I don't mind that he never existed, means he never cut down any trees. Not as good as planting trees though. That's better.”

“You said a mouthful,” said Johnny Chapman.

Wednesday blew a smoke ring. It hung in the air, dissipating slowly in wisps and curls. “Damn it, Whiskey Jack, that's not the point and you know it.”

“I'm not going to help you,” said Whiskey Jack. “When you get your ass kicked, you can come back here and if I'm still here I'll feed you again. You get the best food in the fall.”

Wednesday said, “All the alternatives are worse.”

“You have no idea what the alternatives are,” said Whiskey Jack. Then he looked at Shadow. “You are hunting,” he said. His voice was roughened by wood smoke and cigarettes.

“I'm working,” said Shadow.

Whiskey Jack shook his head. “You are also hunting something,” he said. “There is a debt that you wish to pay.”

Shadow thought of Laura's blue lips and the blood on her hands, and he nodded.

“Listen. Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother.”

Wednesday said, “If you won't play, you won't play. We'll be moving on.”

Whiskey Jack's face was impassive. “I'm talking to this young man,” he said. “You are beyond help. He is not.” He turned back to Shadow. “Tell me your dream,” said Whiskey Jack.

Shadow said, “I was climbing a tower of skulls. There were huge birds flying around it. They had lightning in their wings. They were attacking me. The tower fell.”

“Everybody dreams,” said Wednesday. “Can we hit the road?”

“Not everybody dreams of the
Wakinyau
, the thunderbird,” said Whiskey Jack. “We felt the echoes of it here.”

“I
told
you,” said Wednesday. “Jesus.”

“There's a clutch of thunderbirds in West Virginia,” said Chapman, idly. “A couple of hens and an old cock-bird at least. There's also a breeding pair in the land, they used to call it the State of Franklin, but old Ben never got his state, up between Kentucky and Tennessee. ‘Course, there was never a great number of them, even at the best of times.”

Whiskey Jack reached out a hand the color of red clay and touched Shadow's face, gently. “Eyah,” he said. “It's true. If you hunt the thunderbird you could bring your woman back. But she belongs to the wolf, in the dead places, not walking the land.”

“How do you
know?
” asked Shadow.

Whiskey Jack's lips did not move. “What did the buffalo tell you?”

“To believe.”

“Good advice. Are you going to follow it?”

“Kind of. I guess.” They were talking without words, without mouths, without sound. Shadow wondered if, for the other two men in the room, they were standing, unmoving, for a heartbeat or for fraction of a heartbeat.

“When you find your tribe, come back and see me,” said Whiskey Jack. “I can help.”

“I shall.”

Whiskey Jack lowered his hand. Then he turned to Wednesday. “Are you going to fetch your Ho Chunk?”

“My what?”

“
Ho Chunk.
It's what the Winnebago call themselves.”

Wednesday shook his head. “It's too risky. Retrieving it could be problematic. They'll be looking for it.”

“Is it stolen?”

Wednesday looked affronted. “Not a bit of it. The papers are in the glove compartment.”

“And the keys?”

“I've got them,” said Shadow.

“My nephew, Harry Bluejay, has an '81 Buick. Why don't you give me the keys to your camper? You can take his car.”

Wednesday bristled. “What kind of trade is that?”

Whiskey Jack shrugged. “You know how hard it will be to bring back your camper from where you abandoned it? I'm doing you a favor. Take it or leave it. I don't care.” He closed his knife-wound mouth.

Wednesday looked angry, and then the anger became rue, and he said, “Shadow, give the man the keys to the Winnebago.” Shadow passed the car keys to Whiskey Jack.

“Johnny,” said Whiskey Jack, “will you take these men down to find Harry Bluejay? Tell him I said for him to give them his car.”

“Be my pleasure,” said John Chapman.

He got up and walked to the door, picked up a small burlap sack sitting next to it, opened the door, and walked outside. Shadow and Wednesday followed him. Whiskey Jack waited in the doorway. “Hey,” he said to Wednesday. “Don't come back here, you. You are not welcome.”