American Gods (44 page)

The Widow Paris’s husband, Jacques (whose own death, three
years later, would have several remarkable features), had told Marie a little
about the gods of St. Domingo, but she did not care. Power came from the
rituals, not from the—gods.

Together Mama Zouzou and the Widow Paris crooned and stamped
and keened in the swamp. They were singing in the blacksnakes, the free woman
of color and the slave woman with the withered arm.

“There is more to it than just you prosper, your enemies
fail,” said Mama Zouzou.

Many of the words of the ceremonies, words she knew once,
words her brother had also known, these words had fled from her memory. She
told pretty Marie Laveau that the words did not matter, only the tunes and the
beats, and there, singing and tapping in the blacksnakes, in the swamp, she has
an odd vision. She sees the beats of the songs, the Calinda beat, the Bamboula
beat, all the rhythms of equatorial Africa spreading slowly across this
midnight land until the whole country shivers and swings to the beats of the
old gods whose realms she had left. And even that, she understands somehow, in
the swamp, even that will not be enough.

She turns to pretty Marie and sees herself through Marie’s
eyes, a black-skinned old woman, her face lined, her bony arm hanging stiffly
by her side, her eyes the eyes of one who has seen her children fight in the
trough for food from the dogs. She saw-herself, and she knew men for the first
time the revulsion and the fear the younger woman had for her.

Then she laughed, and crouched, and picked up in her good
hand a blacksnake as tall as a sapling and as thick as a ship’s rope.

“Here,” she said. “Here will be our voudon”

She dropped the unresisting snake into a basket that yellow
Marie was carrying.

And then, in the moonlight, the second sight possessed her
for a final time, and she saw her brother Agasu. He was not the twelve-year-old
boy she had last seen in the Bridgeport market, but a huge man, bald and
grinning with broken teeth, his back lined with deep scars. In one hand he held
a machete. His right arm was barely a stump.

She reached out her own good left hand.

“Stay, stay awhile,” she whispered. “I will be there. I will
be with you soon.”

And Marie Paris thought the old woman was speaking to her.

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in
sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a
nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other
theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this
national creed.

—Agnes Repplier,
Times and Tendencies
.

Shadow drove west, across Wisconsin and Minnesota and into
North Dakota, where the snow-covered hills looked like huge sleeping buffalo,
and he and Wednesday saw nothing but nothing and plenty of it for mile after
mile. They went south, then, into South Dakota, heading for reservation
country.

Wednesday had traded the Lincoln Town Car, which Shadow had
liked to drive, for a lumbering and ancient Winnebago, which smelled
pervasively and unmistakably of male cat, which he didn’t enjoy driving at all.

As they passed their first signpost for Mount Rushmore,
still several hundred miles away, Wednesday grunted. “Now that,” he said, “is a
holy place.”

Shadow had thought Wednesday was asleep. He said, “I know it
used to be sacred to the Indians.”

“It’s a holy place,” said Wednesday. “That’s the American
Way—they need to give people an excuse to come and worship. These days, people
can’t just go and see a mountain. Thus, Mister Gutzon Borglum’s tremendous
presidential faces. Once they were carved, permission was granted, and now the
people drive out in their multitudes to see something in the flesh that they’ve
already seen on a thousand postcards.”

“I knew a guy once. He did weight training at the Muscle
Farm, years back. He said that the Dakota Indians, the young men climb up the
mountain, then form death-defying human chains off the heads, just so that the
guy at the end of the chain can piss on the president’s nose.”

Wednesday guffawed. “Oh, fine! Very fine! Is any specific
president the particular butt of then: ire?”

Shadow shrugged. “He never said.”

Miles vanished beneath the wheels of the Winnebago. Shadow
began to imagine that he was staying still while the American landscape moved
past them at a steady sixty-seven miles per hour. A wintry mist fogged the
edges of things.

It was midday on the second day of the drive, and they were
almost there. Shadow, who had been’ thinking, said, “A girl vanished from
Lakeside last WeekfWhen we were in San Francisco.”

“Mm?” Wednesday sounded barely interested.

“Kid named Alison McGovern. Shi’s not the first kid to
vanish there. There have been others. They go in the wintertime.”

Wednesday furrowed his brow. “It is a tragedy, is it not?
The little faces on the milk cartons—although I can’t remember the last time I
saw a kid on a milk carton—and on the walls of freeway rest areas. ‘Have you
seen me?’ they ask. A deeply existential question at the best of times. ‘Have
you seen me?’ Pull off at the next exit.”

Shadow thought he heard a helicopter pass overhead, but the
clouds were too low to see anything.

“Why did you pick Lakeside?” asked Shadow.

“I told you. It’s a nice quiet place to hide you away. You’re
off the board there, under the radar.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the way it is. Now hang a left,” said Wednesday.

Shadow turned left.

“There’s something wrong,” said Wednesday. “Fuck. Jesus
fucking Christ on a bicycle. Slow down, but don’t stop.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Trouble. Do you know any alternative routes?”

“Not really. This is my first time in South Dakota,” said
Shadow. “And I don’t know where we’re going.”

On the other side of the hill something flashed redly,
smudged by the mist.

“Roadblock,” said Wednesday. He pushed his hand deeply into
first one pocket of his suit, then another, searching for something.

“I can stop and turn around.”

“We can’t turn. They’re behind us as well,” said Wednesday. “Take
your speed down to ten, fifteen miles per hour.”

Shadow glanced into the mirror. There were headlights behind
them, under a mile back. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

Wednesday snorted. “Sure as eggs is eggs,” he said. “As the
turkey farmer said when he hatched his first turtle. Ah, success!” and from the
bottom of a pocket he produced a small piece of white chalk.

He started to scratch with the chalk on the dashboard of the
camper, making marks as if he were solving an algebraic puzzle—or perhaps,
Shadow thought, as if he were a hobo, scratching long messages to the other
hobos in hobo code—bad dog here, dangerous town, nice woman, soft jail in which
to overnight ...

“Okay,” said Wednesday. “Now increase your speed to thirty.
And don’t slow down from that.”

One of the cars behind them turned on its lights and siren
and accelerated toward them. “Do not slow down,” repeated Wednesday. “They just
want us to slow before we get to the roadblock.” Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

They crested the hill. The roadblock was less than a quarter
of a mile away. Twelve cars arranged across the road, and on the side of the
road, police cars, and several big black SUVs.

“There,” said Wednesday, and he put his chalk away. The
dashboard of the Winnebago was now covered with rune-like scratchings.

The car with the siren was just behind them. It had slowed
to their speed, and an amplified voice was shouting, “Pull over!” Shadow looked
at Wednesday.

“Turn right,” said Wednesday. “Just pull off the road.”

“I can’t take this thing off-road. We’ll tip.”

“It’ll be fine. Take a right. Now!”

Shadow pulled the wheel down with his right hand, and the
Winnebago lurched and jolted. For a moment he thought he had been correct, that
the camper was going to tip, and then the world through the windshield
dissolved and shimmered, like the reflection in a cleaY pool when the wind
brushes the surface.

The clouds and the mist and the snow and the day were gone.

Now there were stars overhead, hanging like frozen spears of
light, stabbing the night sky.

“Park here,” said Wednesday. “We can walk the rest of the
way.”

Shadow turned off the engine. He went into the back of the
Winnebago, pulled on his coat, his boots and gloves. Then he climbed out of the
vehicle and said “Okay. Let’s go.”

Wednesday looked at him with amusement and something
else—irritation perhaps. Or pride. “Why don’t you argue?” asked Wednesday. “Why
don’t you exclaim that it’s all impossible? Why’the hell do you just do what I
say and take it all so fucking calmly?”

“Because you’re not paying me to ask questions,” said
Shadow. And then he said, realizing the truth as the words came out of his
mouth, “Anyway, nothing’s really surprised me since Laura.”

“Since she came back from the dead?”

“Since I learned she was screwing Robbie. That oneAurt. Everything
else just sits on the surface. Where are we going now?”

Wednesday pointed, and they began to walk. The ground beneath
their feet was rock of some kind, slick and volcanic, occasionally glassy. The
air was chilly, but not winter-cold. They sidestepped their way awkwardly down
a hill. There was a rough path, and they followed it. Shadow looked down to the
bottom of the hill.

“What the hell is that?” asked Shadow, but Wednesday touched
his finger to his lips, shook his head sharply. Silence.

It looked like a mechanical spider, blue metal, glittering
LED lights, and it was the size of a tractor. It squatted at the bottom of the
hill. Beyond it were an assortment of bones, each with a flame beside it little
bigger than a candle-flame, flickering.

Wednesday gestured for Shadow to keep his distance from
these objects. Shadow took an extra step to the side, which was a mistake on
that glassy path, as his ankle twisted and he tumbled down the slope, rolling
and slipping and bouncing. He grabbed at a rock as he went past, and the
obsidian snag ripped his leather glove as if it were paper.

He came to rest at the bottom of the hill, between the
mechanical spider and the bones.

He put a hand down to push himself to his feet, and found himself
touching what appeared to be a thighbone looking at his watch. There were cars
all around him, some empty, some not. He was wishing he ‘had not had that last cup
of coffee, for he dearly needed a piss, and it was starting to become
uncomfortable.

One of the local law enforcement people came over to him, a
big man with frost in his walrus mustache. He had already forgotten the man’s
name.

“I don’t know how we could have lost them,” says Local Law
Enforcement, apologetic and puzzled.

“It was an optical illusion,” he replies. “You get them in
freak weather conditions. The mist. It was a mirage. They were driving down
some other road. We thought they were on this one.”

Local Law Enforcement looks disappointed. “Oh. I thought it
was maybe like an X-Files kinda thing,” he says.

“Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid.” He suffers from
occasional hemorrhoids and his ass has just started itching in the way that signals
that a flare-up is on the way. He wants to be back inside the Beltway. He
wishes there was a tree to go and stand behind: the urge to piss is getting
worse. He drops the cigarette and steps on it.

Local Law Enforcement walks over to one of the police cars
and says something to the driver. They, both shake their heads.

He pulls out his telephone, touches the menu, pages down and
finds the address entry marked ‘‘Laundry,” which had amused him so much when he
typedit in—a reference to The Man from U.N.C.LE, and as he looks at it he
realizes that it’s not from that at all, that was a tailor’s, he’s thinking of
Get Smart, and he still feels weird and slightly embarrassed after all those
years about not realizing it was a comedy when he was a kid, and just wanting a
shoephone ...

A woman’s voice on the phone. “Yes?”

“This is Mister Town, for Mister World.”

There is silence. Town crosses his legs, tugs his belt
higher on his belly—got to lose those last ten pounds—and away from his
bladder. Then an urbane voice says, “Hello, Mister Town.”

“We lost them,” says Town. He feels a knot of frustration in
his gut: these were the bastards, the lousy duty sons of bitches who killed
Woody and Stone, for Chrissakes. Good men. Good men. He badly wants to fuck
Mrs. Wood, but knows it’s still too soon after Woody’s death to make a move. So
he is taking her out for dinner every couple of weeks, an investment in the
future, she’s just grateful for the attention ...

“How?”

“I don’t know. We set up a roadblock, there was nowhere they
could have gone and they went there anyway.”

“Just another one of life’s little mysteries. Don’t worry.
Have you calmed the locals?”

“Told ‘em it was an optical illusion.”

“They buy it?”

“Probably.”

There was something very familiar about Mr World’s
voice—which was a strange thing to think, he’d been working for him directly
for two years now, spoken to him every day, of course there was something
familiar about his voice.

“They’ll be far away by now.”

“Should we send people down to the rez to intercept them?”

“Not worth the aggravation. Too many jurisdictional issues,
and there are only so many strings I can pull in a morning. We have plenty of
time. Just get back here. I’ve got my hands full at this end trying to organize
the policy meeting.”

“Trouble?”

“It’s a pissing contest. I’ve proposed that we have it out
here. The techies want it in Austin, or maybe San Jose, the players want it in
Hollywood, the intangibles want it on Wall Street. Everybody wants it in their
own backyard. Nobody’s going to give.”