Let the Midnight Special
Shine its light on me
Let the Midnight Special
Shine its ever-lovin' light on me
-"The Midnight Special," traditional
Shadow and Wednesday ate breakfast at a Country Kitchen across the street from their motel. It was eight in the morning, and the world was misty1 and chill.
"You still ready to leave Eagle Point?" asked Wednesday. "I have some calls to make, if you are. Friday today. Friday's a free day. A woman's day. Saturday tomorrow. Much to do on Saturday."
"I'm ready," said Shadow. "Nothing keeping me here."
Wednesday heaped his plate high with several kinds of breakfast meats. Shadow took some melon, a bagel, and a packet of cream cheese. They went and sat down in a booth.
"That was some dream you had last night," said Wednesday.
"Yes," said Shadow. "It was." Laura's muddy footprints had been visible on the motel carpet when he got up that morning, leading from his bedroom to the lobby and out the door.
"So," said Wednesday. "Why'd they call you Shadow?"
Shadow shrugged2. "It's a name," he said. Outside the plate glass the world in the mist had become a pencil drawing executed in a dozen different grays with, here and there, a smudge of electric red or pure white. "How'd you lose your eye?"
Wednesday shoveled4 half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. "Didn't lose it," he said. "I still know exactly where it is."
"So what's the plan?"
Wednesday looked thoughtful. He ate several vivid pink slices of ham, picked a fragment of meat from his beard, dropped it onto his plate. "Plan is as follows. Tomorrow night we shall be meeting with a number of persons preeminent5 in their respective fields-do not let their demeanor6 intimidate7 you. We shall meet at one of the most important places in the entire country. Afterward8 we shall wine and dine them. I need to enlist10 them in my current enterprise."
"And where is this most important place?"
"You'll see, m'boy. I said one of them. Opinions are justifiably11 divided. I have sent word to my colleagues. We'll stop off in Chicago on the way, as I need to pick up some money. Entertaining, in the manner we shall need to entertain, will take more ready cash than I currently have available. Then on to Madison." Wednesday paid and they left, walked back across the road to the motel parking lot. Wednesday tossed Shadow the car keys.
He drove down to the freeway and out of town.
"You going to miss it?" asked Wednesday. He was sorting through a folder12 filled with maps.
"The town? No. I didn't really ever have a life here. I was never in one place too long as a kid, and I didn't get here until I was in my twenties. So this town is Laura's."
"Let's hope she stays here," said Wednesday.
"It was a dream," said Shadow. "Remember."
"That's good," said Wednesday. "Healthy attitude to have. Did you fuck her last night?"
Shadow took a breath. Then, "That is none of your damn business. And no."
"Did you want to?"
Shadow said nothing at all. He drove north, toward Chicago. Wednesday chuckled13, and began to pore over his maps, unfolding and refolding them, making occasional notes on a yellow legal pad with a large silver ballpoint pen.
Eventually he was finished. He put his pen away, put the folder on the backseat. "The best thing about the states we're heading for," said Wednesday, "Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there, is they have the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins14 running through them like a good cheese."
"Only when you were younger?" asked Shadow. "Looked like you were doing pretty good last night."
"Yes." Wednesday smiled. "Would you like to know the secret of my success?"
"You pay them?"
"Nothing so crude. No, the secret is charm. Pure and simple."
"Charm, huh? Well, like they say, you either got it or you ain't."
"Charms can be learned," said Wednesday.
Shadow tuned15 the radio to an oldies station, and listened to songs that were current before he was born. Bob Dylan sang about a hard rain that was going to fall, and Shadow wondered if that rain had fallen yet, or if it was something that was still going to happen. The road ahead of them was empty and the ice crystals on the asphalt glittered like diamonds in the morning sun.
***
Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban16 sprawl17, and the sprawl became the city.
They parked outside a squat18 black brownstone. The sidewalk was clear of snow. They walked to the lobby. Wednesday pressed the top button on the gouged19 metal intercom box. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Then, experimentally, he began to press the other buttons, for other tenants20, with no response.
"It's dead," said a gaunt old woman, coming down the steps. "Doesn't work. We call the super, ask him when he going to fix, when he going to mend the heating, he does not care, goes to Arizona for the winter for his chest." Her accent was thick, Eastern European, Shadow guessed.
Wednesday bowed low. "Zorya, my dear, may I say how unutterably beautiful you look? A radiant creature. You have not aged21."
The old woman glared at him. "He don't want to see you. I don't want to see you neither. You bad news."
"That's because I don't come if it isn't important."
The woman sniffed22. She carried an empty string shopping bag, and wore an old red coat, buttoned up to her chin. She looked at Shadow suspiciously.
"Who is the big man?" she asked Wednesday. "Another one of your murderers?"
"You do me a deep disservice, good lady. This gentleman is called Shadow. He is working for me, yes, but on your behalf. Shadow, may I introduce you to the lovely Miss Zorya Vechernyaya."
"Good to meet you," said Shadow.
Birdlike, the old woman peered up at him. "Shadow," she said. "A good name. When the shadows are long, that is my time. And you are the long shadow." She looked him up and down, then she smiled. "You may kiss my hand," she said, and extended a cold hand to him.
Shadow bent23 down and kissed her thin hand. She had a large amber24 ring on her middle finger.
"Good boy," she said. "I am going to buy groceries. You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread. Do you think you will be here for supper?"
"I would hope so," said Wednesday.
"Then you had better give me some money to buy more food," she said. "I am proud, but I am not stupid. The others are prouder than I am, and he is the proudest of all. So give me money and do not tell them that you give me money."
Wednesday opened his wallet, and reached in. He took out a twenty. Zorya Vechernyaya plucked it from his fingers, and waited. He took out another twenty and gave it to her.
"Is good," she said. "We will feed you like princes. Now, go up the stairs to the top. Zorya Utrennyaya is awake, but our other sister is still asleep, so do not be making too much noise."
Shadow and Wednesday climbed the dark stairs. The landing two stories up was half filled with black plastic garbage bags and it smelled of rotting vegetables.
"Are they gypsies?" asked Shadow.
"Zorya and her family? Not at all. They're not Rom. They're Russian. Slavs, I believe."
"But she does fortune-telling."
"Lots of people do fortune-telling. I dabble25 in it myself." Wednesday was panting as they went up the final flight of stairs. "I'm out of shape."
The landing at the top of the stairs ended in a single door painted red, with a peephole in it.
Wednesday knocked at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, louder this time.
"Okay! Okay! I heard you! I heard you!" The sound of locks being undone26, of bolts being pulled, the rattle27 of a chain. The red door opened a crack.
"Who is it?" A man's voice, old and cigarette-roughened.
"An old friend, Czernobog. With an associate."
The door opened as far as the security chain would allow. Shadow could see a gray face, in the shadows, peering out at them. "What do you want, Votan?"
"Initially28, simply the pleasure of your company. And I have information to share. What's that phrase?...Oh yes. You may learn something to your advantage."
The door opened all the way. The man in the dusty bathrobe was short, with iron-gray hair and craggy features. He wore gray pinstripe pants, shiny from age, and slippers29. He held an unfiltered cigarette with square-tipped fingers, sucking the tip while keeping it cupped in his fist-like a convict, thought Shadow, or a soldier. He extended his left hand to Wednesday. "Welcome then, Votan."
"They call me Wednesday these days," he said, shaking the old man's hand.
A narrow smile; a flash of yellow teeth. "Yes," he said. "Very funny. And this is?"
"This is my associate. Shadow, meet Mr. Czernobog."
"Well met," said Czernobog. He shook Shadow's left hand with his own. His hands were rough and callused, and the tips of his fingers were as yellow as if they had been dipped in iodine30.
"How do you do, Mr. Czernobog?"
"I do old. My guts31 ache, and my back hurts, and I cough my chest apart every morning."
"Why you are standing32 at the door?" asked a woman's voice. Shadow looked over Czernobog's shoulder, at the old woman standing behind him. She was smaller and frailer34 than her sister, but her hair was long and still golden. "I am Zorya Utrennyaya," she said. "You must not stand there in the hall. You must go in, sit down. I will bring you coffee."
Through the doorway35 into an apartment that smelted36 like overboiled cabbage and cat box and unfiltered foreign cigarettes, and they were ushered37 through a tiny hallway past several closed doors to the sitting room at the far end of the corridor, and were seated on a huge old horsehair sofa, disturbing an elderly gray cat in the process, who stretched, stood up, and walked, stiffly, to a distant part of the sofa, where he lay down, warily38 stared at each of them in turn, then closed one eye and went back to sleep. Czernobog sat in an armchair across from them.
Zorya Utrennyaya found an empty ashtray39 and placed it beside Czernobog. "How you want your coffee?" she asked her guests. "Here we take it black as night, sweet as sin."
"That'll be fine, ma'am," said Shadow. He looked out of the window, at the buildings across the street.
Zorya Utrennyaya went out. Czernobog stared at her as she left. "That's a good woman," he said. "Not like her sisters. One of them is a harpy, the other, all she does is sleep." He put his slippered40 feet up on a long, low coffee table, a chess board inset in the middle, cigarette burns and mug rings on its surface.
"Is she your wife?" asked Shadow.
"She's nobody's wife." The old man sat in silence for a moment, looking down at his rough hands. "No. We are all relatives. We come over here together, long time ago."
From the pocket of his bathrobe, Czernobog produced a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Wednesday pulled out a narrow gold lighter41 and lit the old man's cigarette. "First we come to New York," said Czernobog. "All our countrymen go to New York. Then, we come out here, to Chicago. Everything got very bad. Even in the old country, they had nearly forgotten me. Here, I am just a bad memory. You know what I did when I got to Chicago?"
"No," said Shadow.
"I get a job in the meat business. On the kill floor. When the steer42 comes up the ramp43, I was a knocker. You know why we are called knockers? Is because we take the sledgehammer and we knock the cow down with it. Bam! It takes strength in the arms. Yes? Then the shackler chains the beef up, hauls it up, then they cut the throat. They drain the blood first before they cut the head off. We were the strongest, the knockers." He pushed up the sleeve of his bathrobe, flexed46 his upper arm to display the muscles still visible under the old skin. "Is not just strong though. There was an art to it. To the blow. Otherwise the cow is just stunned47, or angry. Then, in the fifties, they give us the bolt gun. You put it to the forehead, bam! bam! Now you think, anybody can kill. Not so." He mimed48 putting a metal bolt through a cow's head. "It still takes skill." He smiled at the memory, displaying an iron-colored tooth.
"Don't tell them cow-killing49 stories." Zorya Utrennyaya carried in their coffee on a red wooden tray, in small brightly enameled50 cups. She gave them each a cup, then sat beside Czernobog.
"Zorya Vechernyaya is doing shopping," she said. "She will be soon back."
"We met her downstairs," said Shadow. "She says she tells fortunes."
"Yes," said her sister. "In the twilight51, that is the time for lies. I do not tell good lies, so I am a poor fortune-teller. And our sister, Zorya Polunochnaya, she can't tell no lies at all."
The coffee was even sweeter and stronger than Shadow had expected.
Shadow excused himself to use the bathroom-a closet-like room, hung with several brown-spotted framed photographs of men and women in stiff Victorian poses. It was early afternoon, but already the daylight was beginning to fade. He heard voices raised from down the hall. He washed his hands in icy-cold water with a sickly-smelling sliver52 of pink soap.
Czernobog was standing in the hall as Shadow came out.
"You bring trouble!" he was shouting. "Nothing but trouble! I will not listen! You will get out of my house!"
Wednesday was still sitting on the sofa, sipping53 his coffee, stroking the gray cat. Zorya Utrennyaya stood on the thin carpet, one hand nervously54 twining in and out of her long yellow hair.
"Is there a problem?" asked Shadow.
"He is the problem!" shouted Czernobog. "He is! You tell him that there is nothing will make me help him! I want him to go! I want him out of here! Both of you go!"
"Please," said Zorya Utrennyaya. "Please be quiet, you wake up Zorya Polunochnaya."
"You are like him, you want me to join his madness!" shouted Czernobog. He looked as if he was on the verge55 of tears. A pillar of ash tumbled from his cigarette onto the threadbare hall carpet.
Wednesday stood up, walked over to Czernobog. He rested his hand on Czernobog's shoulder. "Listen," he said, peaceably. "Firstly, it's not madness. It's the only way. Secondly56, everyone will be there. You would not want to be left out, would you?"
"You know who I am," said Czernobog. "You know what these hands have done. You want my brother, not me. And he's gone."
A door in the hallway opened, and a sleepy female voice said, "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong, my sister," said Zorya Utrennyaya. "Go back to sleep." Then she turned to Czernobog. "See? See what you do with all your shouting? You go back in there and sit down. Sit!" Czernobog looked as if he were about to protest; and then the fight went out of him. He looked frail33, suddenly: frail, and lonely.
The three men went back into the shabby sitting room. There was a brown nicotine57 ring around that room that ended about a foot from the ceiling, like the tide line in an old bathtub.
"It doesn't have to be for you," said Wednesday to Czernobog, unfazed. "If it is for your brother, it's for you as well. That's one place you dualistic types have it over the rest of us, eh?"
Czernobog said nothing.
"Speaking of Bielebog, have you heard anything from him?"
Czernobog shook his head. He looked up at Shadow. "Do you have a brother?"
"No," said Shadow. "Not that I know of."
"I have a brother. They say, you put us together, we are like one person, you know? When we are young, his hair, it is very blond, very light, his eyes are blue, and people say, he is the good one. And my hair it is very dark, darker than yours even, and people say I am the rogue58, you know? I am the bad one. And now time passes, and my hair is gray. His hair, too, I think, is gray. And you look at us, you would not know who was light, who was dark."
"Were you close?" asked Shadow.
"Close?" asked Czernobog. "No. How could we be? We cared about such different things."
There was a clatter59 from the end of the hall, and Zorya Vechemyaya came in. "Supper in one hour," she said. Then she went out.
Czernobog sighed. "She thinks she is a good cook," he said. "She was brought up, there were servants to cook. Now, there are no servants. There is nothing."
"Not nothing," said Wednesday. "Never nothing."
"You," said Czernobog. "I shall not listen to you." He turned to Shadow. "Do you play checkers?" he asked.
"Yes," said Shadow.
"Good. You shall play checkers with me," he said, taking a wooden box of pieces from the mantelpiece and shaking them out onto the table. "I shall play black."
Wednesday touched Shadow's arm. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said.
"Not a problem. I want to," said Shadow. Wednesday shrugged, and picked up an old copy of Reader's Digest from a small pile of yellowing magazines on the windowsill.
Czernobog's brown fingers finished arranging the pieces on the squares, and the game began.
***
In the days that were to come, Shadow often found himself remembering that game. Some nights he dreamed of it. His flat, round pieces were the color of old, dirty wood, nominally60 white. Czernobog's were a dull, faded black. Shadow was the first to move. In his dreams, there was no conversation as they played, just the loud click as the pieces were put down, or the hiss61 of wood against wood as they were slid from square to adjoining square.
For the first half dozen moves each of the men slipped pieces out onto the board, into the center, leaving the back rows untouched. There were pauses between the moves, long, chesslike pauses, while each man watched, and thought.
Shadow had played checkers in prison: it passed the time. He had played chess, too, but he was not temperamentally suited to planning ahead. He preferred picking the perfect move for the moment. You could win in checkers like that, sometimes.
There was a click as Czernobog picked up a black piece and jumped it over one of Shadow's white pieces. The old man picked up Shadow's white piece and put it on the table at the side of the board.
"First blood. You have lost," said Czernobog. "The game is done."
"No," said Shadow. "Game's got a long way to go yet."
"Then would you care for a wager62? A little side bet, to make it more interesting?"
"No," said Wednesday, without looking up from a "Humor in Uniform" column. "He wouldn't."
"I am not playing with you, old man. I play with him. So, you want to bet on the game, Mister Shadow?"
"What were you two arguing about, before?" asked Shadow.
Czernobog raised a craggy eyebrow63. "Your master wants me to come with him. To help him with his nonsense. I would rather die."
"You want to bet? Okay. If I win, you come with us."
The old man pursed his lips. "Perhaps," he said. "But only if you take my forfeit64, when you lose."
"And that would be?"
There was no change in Czernobog's expression. "If I win, I get to knock your brains out. With the sledgehammer. First you go down on your knees. Then I hit you a blow with it, so you don't get up again." Shadow looked at the man's old face, trying to read him. He was not joking, Shadow was certain of that: there was a hunger there for something, for pain, or death, or retribution.
Wednesday closed the Reader's Digest. "This is ridiculous," he said. "I was wrong to come here. Shadow, we're leaving." The gray cat, disturbed, got to its feet and stepped onto the table beside the checkers game. If stared at the pieces, then leapt down onto the floor and, tail held high, it stalked from the room.
"No," said Shadow. He was not scared of dying. After all, it was not as if he had anything to live for. 'It's fine. I accept. If you win the game, you get the chance to knock my brains out with one blow of your sledgehammer," and he moved his next white piece to the adjoining square on the edge of the board.
Nothing more was said, but Wednesday did not pick up his Reader's Digest again. He watched the game with his glass eye and his true eye, with an expression that betrayed nothing.
Czernobog took another of Shadow's pieces. Shadow took two of Czernobog's. From the corridor came the smell of unfamiliar65 foods cooking. While not all of the smells were appetizing, Shadow realized suddenly how hungry he was.
The two men moved their pieces, black and white, turn and turnabout. A flurry of pieces taken, a blossoming of two-piece-high kings: no longer forced to move only forward on the board, a sideways slip at a time, the kings could move forward or back, which made them doubly dangerous. They had reached the farthest row, and could go where they wanted. Czernobog had three kings, Shadow had two.
Czernobog moved one of his kings around the board, eliminating Shadow's remaining pieces, while using the other two kings to keep Shadow's kings pinned down.
And then Czernobog made a fourth king, and returned down the board to Shadow's two kings, and, unsmiling, took them both. And that was that.
"So," said Czernobog. "I get to knock out your brains. And you will go on your knees willingly. Is good." He reached out an old hand, and patted Shadow's arm with it.
"We've still got time before dinner's ready," said Shadow. "You want another game? Same terms?"
Czernobog lit another cigarette, from a kitchen box of matches. "How can it be same terms? You want I should kill you twice?"
"Right now, you have one blow, that's all. You told me yourself that it's not just strength, it's skill too. This way, if you win this game, you get two blows to my head."
Czernobog glowered66. "One blow is all it takes, one blow. That is the art." He patted his upper right arm, where the muscles were, with his left, scattering67 gray ash from the cigarette in his left hand.
"It's been a long time. If you've lost your skill you might simply bruise68 me. How long has it been since you swung a killing hammer in the stockyards? Thirty years? Forty?"
Czernobog said nothing. His closed mouth was a gray slash69 across his face. He tapped his fingers on the wooden table, drumming out a rhythm with them. Then he pushed the twenty-four checkers back to their home squares on the board.
"Play," he said. "Again, you are light. I am dark."
Shadow pushed his first piece out. Czernobog pushed one of his own pieces forward. And it occurred to Shadow that Czernobog was going to try to play the same game again, the one that he had just won, that this would be his limitation.
This time Shadow played recklessly. He snatched tiny opportunities, moved without thinking, without a pause to consider. And this time, as he played, Shadow smiled; and whenever Czernobog moved a piece, Shadow smiled wider.
Soon, Czernobog was slamming his pieces down as he moved them, banging them down on the wooden table so hard that the remaining pieces shivered on their black squares.
"There," said Czernobog, taking one of Shadow's men with a crash, slamming the black piece down. "There. What do you say to that?"
Shadow said nothing: he simply smiled, and jumped the piece that Czernobog had put down, and another, and another, and a fourth, clearing the center of the board of black pieces. He took a white piece from the pile beside the board and kinged his man.
After that, it was just a mopping-up exercise: another handful of moves, and the game was done.
Shadow said, "Best of three?"
Czernobog simply stared at him, his gray eyes like points of steel. And then he laughed, clapped his hands on Shadow's shoulders. "I like you!" he exclaimed. "You have balls."
Then Zorya Utrennyaya put her head around the door to tell them that dinner was ready, and they should clear their game away and put the tablecloth70 down on the table.
"We have no dining room," she said, "I am sorry. We eat in here."
Serving dishes were placed on the table. Each of the diners was given a small painted tray on which was some tarnished71 cutlery, to hold on his or her lap.
Zorya Vechernyaya took five wooden bowls and placed an unpeeled boiled potato in each, then ladled in a healthy serving of a ferociously72 crimson73 borscht. She plopped a spoonful of white sour cream in, and handed the bowls to each of them.
"I thought there were six of us," said Shadow.
"Zorya Polunochnaya is still asleep," said Zorya Vechernyaya. "We keep her food in the refrigerator. When she wakes, she will eat."
The borscht was vinegary, and tasted like pickled beets74. The boiled potato was mealy.
The next course was a leathery pot roast, accompanied by greens of some description-although they had been boiled so long and so thoroughly75 that they were no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, greens, and were well on their way to becoming browns.
Then there were cabbage leaves stuffed with ground meat and rice, cabbage leaves of such a toughness that they were almost impossible to cut without spattering ground meat and rice all over the carpet. Shadow pushed his around his plate.
"We played checkers," said Czernobog, hacking76 himself another lump of pot roast. "The young man and me. He won a game, I won a game. Because he won a game, I have agreed to go with him and Wednesday, and help them in their madness. And because I won a game, when this is all done, I get to kill the young man, with a blow of a hammer."
The two Zoryas nodded gravely. "Such a pity," Zorya Vechernyaya told Shadow. "In my fortune for you, I should have said you would have a long life and a happy one, with many children."
"That is why you are a good fortune-teller," said Zorya Utrennyaya. She looked sleepy, as if it were an effort for her to be up so late. "You tell the best lies."
At the end of the meal, Shadow was still hungry. Prison food had been pretty bad, and prison food was better than this.
"Good food," said Wednesday, who had cleaned his plate with every evidence of enjoyment77. "I thank you ladies. And now, I am afraid that it is incumbent78 upon us to ask you to recommend to us a fine hotel in the neighborhood."
Zorya Vechernyaya looked offended at this. "Why should you go to a hotel?" she said. "We are not your friends?"
"I couldn't put you to any trouble..." said Wednesday.
"Is no trouble," said Zorya Utrennyaya, one hand playing with her incongruously golden hair, and she yawned.
"You can sleep in Bielebog's room," said Zorya Vechernyaya, pointing to Wednesday. "Is empty. And for you, young man, I make up a bed on sofa. You will be more comfortable than in feather bed. I swear."
"That would be really kind of you," said Wednesday. "We accept."
"And you pay me only no more than what you pay for hotel," said Zorya Vechernyaya, with a triumphant79 toss of her head. "A hundred dollars."
"Thirty" said Wednesday.
"Fifty."
"Thirty-five."
"Forty-five."
"Forty."
"Is good. Forty-five dollar." Zorya Vechernyaya reached across the table and shook Wednesday's hand. Then she began to clean the pots off the table. Zorya Utrennyaya yawned so hugely Shadow worried that she might dislocate her jaw80, and announced that she was going to bed before she fell asleep with her head in the pie, and she said good night to them all.
Shadow helped Zorya Vechernyaya to take the plates and dishes into the little kitchen. To his surprise there was an elderly dishwashing machine beneath the sink, and he filled it. Zorya Vechernyaya looked over his shoulder, tutted, and removed the wooden borscht bowls. "Those, in the sink," she told him.
"Sorry."
"Is not to worry. Now, back in there, we have pie," she said.
The pie-it was an apple pie-had been bought in a store and oven-warmed, and was very, very good. The four of them ate it with ice cream, and then Zorya Vechernyaya made everyone go out of the sitting room, and made up a very fine-looking bed on the sofa for Shadow.
Wednesday spoke81 to Shadow as they stood in the corridor.
"What you did in there, with the checkers game," he said.
"Yes?"
"That was good. Very, very stupid of you. But good. Sleep safe."
Shadow brushed his teeth and washed his face in the cold water of the little bathroom, and then walked back down the hall to the sitting room, turned out the light, and was asleep before his head touched the pillow.
***
There were explosions in Shadow's dream: he was driving a truck through a minefield, and bombs were going off on each side of him. The windshield shattered and he felt warm blood running down his face.
Someone was shooting at him.
A bullet punctured82 his lung, a bullet shattered his spine83, another hit his shoulder. He felt each bullet strike. He collapsed84 across the steering85 wheel.
The last explosion ended in darkness.
I must be dreaming, thought Shadow, alone in the darkness. I think I just died. He remembered hearing and believing, as a child, that if you died in your dreams, you would die in real life. He did not feel dead. He opened his eyes, experimentally.
There was a woman in the little sitting room, standing against the window, with her back to him. His heart missed a half-beat, and he said, "Laura?"
She turned, framed by the moonlight. "I'm sorry," she said. "I did not mean to wake you." She had a soft, Eastern European accent. "I will go."
"No, it's okay," said Shadow. "You didn't wake me. I had a dream."
"Yes," she said. "You were crying out, and moaning. Part of me wanted to wake you, but I thought, no, I should leave him."
Her hair was pale and colorless in the moon's thin light. She wore a white cotton nightgown, with a high lace neck and a hem9 that swept the ground. Shadow sat up, entirely86 awake. "You are Zorya Polu...," he hesitated. "The sister who was asleep."
"I am Zorya Polunochnaya, yes. And-you are called Shadow, yes? That was what Zorya Vechernyaya told me, when I woke."
"Yes. What were you looking at, out there?"
She looked at him, then she beckoned87 him to join her by the window. She turned her back while he pulled on his jeans. He walked over to her. It seemed a long walk, for such a small room.
He could not tell her age. Her skin was unlined, her eyes were dark, her lashes88 were long, her hair was to her waist and white. The moonlight drained colors into ghosts of themselves. She was taller than either of her sisters.
She pointed89 up into the night sky. "I was looking at that," she said, pointing to the Big Dipper. "See?"
"Ursa Major," he said. "The Great Bear."
"That is one way of looking at it," she said. "But it is not the way from where I come from. I am going to sit on the roof. Would you like to come with me?"
She lifted the window and clambered, barefoot, out onto the fire escape. A freezing wind blew through the window. Something was bothering Shadow, but he did not know what it was; he hesitated, then pulled on his sweater, stocks, and shoes and followed her out onto the rusting90 fire escape. She was waiting for him. His breath steamed in the chilly91 air. He watched her bare feet pad up the icy metal steps, and followed her up to the roof.
The wind gusted92 cold, flattening93 her nightgown against her body, and Shadow became uncomfortably aware that Zorya Polunochnaya was wearing nothing at all underneath94.
"You don't mind the cold?" he said, as they reached the top of the fire escape, and the wind whipped his words away.
"Sorry?"
She bent her face close to his. Her breath was sweet.
"I said, doesn't the cold bother you?"
In reply, she held up a finger: wait. She stepped, lightly, over the side of the building and onto the flat roof. Shadow stepped over a little more clumsily, and followed her across the roof, to the shadow of the water tower. There was a wooden bench waiting for them there, and she sat down on it, and he sat down beside her. The water tower acted as a windbreak, for which Shadow was grateful.
"No," she said. "The cold does not bother me. This time is my time: I could no more feel uncomfortable in the night than a fish could feel uncomfortable in the deep water."
"You must like the night," said Shadow, wishing that he had said something wiser, more profound.
"My sisters are of their times. Zorya Utrennyaya is of the dawn. In the old country she would wake to open the gates, and let our father drive his-uhm, I forget the word, like a car but with horses?"
"Chariot?'
"His chariot. Our father would ride it out. And Zorya Vechernyaya, she would open the gates for him at dusk, when he returned to us."
"And you?"
She paused. Her lips were full, but very pale, "I never saw our father. I was asleep."
"Is it a medical condition?"
She did not answer. The shrug3, if she shrugged, was imperceptible. "So. You wanted to know what I was looking at."
"The Big Dipper."
She raised an arm to point to it, and the wind flattened95 her nightgown against her body. Her nipples, every goose-bump on the areolae, were visible momentarily, dark against the white cotton. Shadow shivered.
"Odin's Wain, they call it. And the Great Bear. Where we come from, we believe that is a, a thing, a, not a god, but like a god, a bad thing, chained up in those stars. If it escapes, it will eat the whole of everything. And there are three sisters who must watch the sky, all the day, all the night. If he escapes, the thing in the stars, the world is over. Pf!, like that."
"And people believe that?"
"They did. A long time ago."
"And you were looking to see if you could see the monster in the stars?"
"Something like that. Yes."
He smiled. If it were not for the cold, he decided96, he would have thought he was dreaming. Everything felt so much like a dream.
"Can I ask how old you are? Your sisters seem so much older."
She nodded her head. "I am the youngest. Zorya Utrennyaya was born in the morning, and Zorya Vechernyaya was born in the evening, and I was born at midnight. I am the midnight sister: Zorya Polunochnaya. Are you married?"
"My wife is dead. She died last week in a car accident. It was her funeral yesterday."
"I'm so sorry."
"She came to see me last night." It was not hard to say, in the darkness and the moonlight; it was not as unthinkable as it was by daylight.
"Did you ask her what she wanted?"
"No. Not really."
"Perhaps you should. It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you. Zorya Vechernyaya tells me that you played checkers with Czernobog."
"Yes. He won the right to knock in my skull97 with a sledge44."
"In the old days, they would take people up to the top of the mountains. To the high places. They would smash the back of their skulls98 with a rock. For Czernobog."
Shadow glanced about. No, they were alone on the roof.
Zorya Polunochnaya laughed. "Silly, he is not here. And you won a game also. He may not strike his blow until this is all over. He said he would not. And you will know. Like the cows he killed. They always know, first. Otherwise, what is the point?"
"I feel," Shadow told her, "like I'm in a world with its own sense of logic99. Its own rules. Like when you're in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn't break. Even if you don't know what they mean. I'm just going along with it, you know?"
"I know," she said. She held his hand, with a hand that was icy cold. "You were given protection once. You were given the sun itself. But you lost it already. You gave it away. All I can give you is much weaker protection. The daughter, not the father. But all helps. Yes?" Her white hair blew about her face in the chilly wind.
"Do I have to fight you? Or play checkers?" he asked.
"You do not even have to kiss me," she told him. "Just take the moon from me."
"How?"
"Take the moon."
"I don't understand."
"Watch," said Zorya Polunochnaya. She raised her left hand and held it in front of the moon, so that her forefinger100 and thumb seemed to be grasping it. Then, in one smooth movement, she plucked at it. For a moment, it looked like she had taken the moon from the sky, but then Shadow saw that the moon shone still, and Zorya Polunochnaya opened her hand to display a silver Liberty-head dollar resting between finger and thumb.
"That was beautifully done," said Shadow. "I didn't see you palm it. And I don't know how you did that last bit."
"I did not palm it," she said. "I took it. And now I give it to you, to keep safe. Here. Don't give this one away."
She placed it in his right hand and closed his fingers around it. The coin was cold in his hand. Zorya Polunochnaya leaned forward, and closed his eyes with her fingers, and kissed him, lightly, once upon each eyelid102.
***
Shadow awoke on the sofa, fully101 dressed. A narrow shaft103 of sunlight streamed in through the window, making the dust motes104 dance.
He got out of bed, and walked over to the window. The room seemed much smaller in the daylight.
The thing that had been troubling him since last night came into focus as he looked out and down and across the street. There was no fire escape outside this window: no balcony, no rusting metal steps.
Still, held tight in the palm of his hand, bright and shiny as the day it had been minted, was a 1922 Liberty-head silver dollar.
"Oh. You're up," said Wednesday, putting his head around the door. "That's good. You want coffee? We're going to rob a bank."
***
Coming To America
1721
The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional105, a charcoal-sketched simplicity106 for the children, or the easily bored. For the most part it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. It is a fine fiction, he continued, pausing for a moment to dip his pen in the inkwell and collect his thoughts, that America was founded by pilgrims, seeking the freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to the Americas, spread and bred and filled the empty land.
In truth, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place. In the days where you could be hanged in London from Tyburn's triple-crowned tree for the theft of twelve pennies, the Americas became a symbol of clemency107, of a second chance. But the conditions of transportation were such that, for some, it was easier to take the leap from the leafless and dance on nothing until the dancing was done. Transportation, it was called: for five years, for ten years, for life. That was the sentence.
You were sold to a captain, and would ride in his ship, crowded tight as a slaver's, to the colonies or to the West Indies; off the boat the captain would sell you on as an indentured108 servant to one who would take the cost of your skin out in your labor110 until the years of your indenture109 were done. But at least you were not waiting to hang in an English prison (for in those days prisons were places where you stayed until you were freed, transported, or hanged: you were not sentenced there for a term), and you were free to make the best of your new world. You were also free to bribe111 a sea captain to return you to England before the terms of your transportation were over and done. People did. And if the authorities caught you returning from transportation-if an old enemy, or an old friend with a score to settle, saw you and peached on you-then you were hanged without a blink.
I am reminded, he continued, after a short pause, during which he refilled the inkwell on his desk from the bottle of umber ink from the closet and dipped his pen once more, of the life of Essie Tregowan, who came from a chilly little cliff-top village in Cornwall, in the southwest of England, where her family had lived from time out of mind. Her father was a fisherman, and it was rumored112 that he was one of the wreckers-those who would hang their lamps high on the dangerous cliffs when the storm winds raged, luring113 ships onto the rocks, for the goods on shipboard. Essie's mother was in service as a cook at the squire114's house, and at the age of twelve Essie began to work there, in the scullery. She was a thin little thing, with wide brown eyes and dark brown hair; and she was not a hard worker but was forever slipping off and away to listen to stories and tales, if there was anyone who would tell them: tales of the piskies and the spriggans, of the black dogs of the moors115 and the seal-women of the Channel. And, though the squire laughed at such things, the kitchen-folk always put out a china saucer of the creamiest milk at night, put it outside the kitchen door, for the piskies.
Several years passed, and Essie was no longer a thin little thing: now she curved and billowed like the swell116 of the green sea, and her brown eyes laughed, and her chestnut117 hair tossed and curled. Essie's eyes lighted on Bartholomew, the squire's eighteen-year-old son, home from Rugby, and she went at night to the standing stone on the edge of the woodland, and she put some bread that Bartholomew had been eating but had left unfinished on the stone, wrapped in a cut strand118 of her own hair. And on the very next day Bartholomew came and talked to her, and looked on her approvingly with his own eyes, the dangerous blue of a sky when a storm is coming, while she was cleaning out the grate in his bedroom. He had such dangerous eyes, said Essie Tregowan.
Soon enough Bartholomew went up to Oxford119, and, when Essie's condition became apparent, she was dismissed. But the babe was stillborn, and as a favor to Essie's mother, who was a very fine cook, the squire's wife prevailed upon her husband to return the former maiden120 to her former position in the scullery.
But Essie's love for Bartholomew had turned to hatred121 for his family, and within the year she took for her new beau a man from a neighboring village, with a bad reputation, who went by the name of Josiah Horner. And one night, when the family slept, Essie arose in the night and unbolted the side door, to let her lover in. He rifled the house while the family slept on.
Suspicion immediately fell upon someone in the house, for it was apparent that someone must have opened the door (which the squire's wife distinctly remembered having bolted herself), and someone must have known where the squire kept his silver plate, and the drawer in which he kept his coins and his promissory notes. Still, Essie, by resolutely122 denying everything, was convicted of nothing until Master Josiah Horner was caught, in a chandler's in Exeter, passing one of the squire's notes. The squire identified it as his, and Horner and Essie went to trial.
Horner was convicted at the local assizes, and was, as the slang of the time so cruelly and so casually123 had it, turned off, but the judge took pity on Essie, because of her age or her chestnut hair, and he sentenced her to seven years' transportation. She was to be transported on a ship called the Neptune124, under the command of one Captain Clarke. So Essie went to the Carolinas; and on the way she conceived an alliance with the selfsame captain, and prevailed upon him to return her to England with him, as his wife, and to take her to his mother's house in London, where no man knew her. The journey back, when the human cargo125 had been exchanged for cotton and tobacco, was a peaceful time and a happy one for the captain and his new bride, who were as two lovebirds or courting butterflies, unable to cease from touching126 each other or giving each other little gifts and endearments127.
When they reached London, Captain Clarke lodged128 Essie with his mother, who treated her in all ways as her son's new wife. Eight weeks later, the Neptune set sail again, and the pretty young bride with the chestnut hair waved her husband goodbye from dockside. Then she returned to her mother-in-law's house, where, the old woman being absent, Essie helped herself to a length of silk, several gold coins, and a silver pot in which the old woman kept her buttons, and pocketing these things Essie vanished into the stews129 of London.
Over the following two years Essie became an accomplished130 shoplifter, her wide skirts capable of concealing131 a multitude of sins, consisting chiefly of stolen bolts of silk and lace, and she lived life to the full. Essie gave thanks for her escapes from her vicissitudes132 to all the creatures that she had been told of as a child, to the piskies (whose influence, she was certain, extended as far as London), and she would put a wooden bowl of milk on a window ledge45 each night, although her friends laughed at her; but she had the last laugh, as her friends got the pox or the clap and Essie remained in the peak of health.
She was a year shy of her twentieth birthday when fate dealt her an ill blow: she sat in the Crossed Forks Inn off Fleet Street, in Bell Yard, when she saw a young man enter and seat himself near the fireplace, fresh down from the university. Oho! A pigeon ripe for the plucking, thinks Essie to herself, and she sits next to him, and tells him what a fine young man he is, and with one hand she begins to stroke his knee, while her other hand, more carefully, goes in search of his pocket watch. And then he looked her full in the face, and her heart leapt and sank as eyes the dangerous blue of the summer sky before a storm gazed back into hers, and Master Bartholomew said her name.
She was taken to Newgate and charged with returning from transportation. Found guilty, Essie shocked no one by pleading her belly133, although the town matrons, who assessed such claims (which were usually spurious) were surprised when they were forced to agree that Essie was indeed with child; although who the father was, Essie declined to say.
Her sentence of death was once more commuted134 to transportation, this time for life.
She rode out this time on the Sea-Maiden. There were two hundred transportees on that ship, packed into the hold like so many fat hogs135 on their way to market. Fluxes136 and fevers ran rampant137; there was scarcely room to sit, let alone to lie down; a woman died in childbirth in the back of the hold, and, the people being pushed in too tightly to pass her body forward, she and the infant were forced out of a small porthole in the back, directly into the choppy gray sea. Essie was eight months gone, and it was a wonder she kept the baby, but keep it she did.
In her life ever after she would have nightmares of her time in that hold, and she would wake up screaming with the taste and stench of the place in her throat.
The Sea-Maiden landed at Norfolk in Virginia, and Essie's indenture was bought by a "small planter," a tobacco farmer named John Richardson, for his wife had died of the childbirth fever a week after giving birth to his daughter, and he had need of a wet nurse and a maid of all work upon his smallholding.
So Essie's baby boy, whom she called Anthony, after, she said, her late husband his father (knowing there was none there to contradict her, and perhaps she had known an Anthony once), sucked at Essie's breast alongside of Phyllida Richardson, and her employer's child always got first suck, so she grew into a healthy child, tall and strong, while Essie's son grew weak and rickety on what was left.
And along with the milk, the children as they grew drank Essie's tales: of the knockers and the blue-caps who live down the mines; of the Bucca, the trickiest138 spirit of the land, much more dangerous than the redheaded, snub-nosed piskies, for whom the first fish of the catch was always left upon the shingle139, and for whom a fresh-baked loaf of bread was left in the field, at reaping time, to ensure a fine harvest; she told them of the apple-tree men-old apple trees who talked when they had a mind, and who needed to be placated140 with the first cider of the crop, which was poured onto their roots as the year turned, if they were to give you a fine crop for the next year. She told them, in her mellifluous141 Cornish drawl, which trees they should be wary142 of, in the old rhyme:
Elm, he do brood
And oak, he do hate,
But the willow143-man goes walking,
If you stays out late.
She told them all these things, and they believed, because she believed.
The farm prospered144, and Essie Tregowan placed a china saucer of milk outside the back door, each night, for the piskies. And after eight months John Richardson came a-knocking quietly on Essie's bedroom door, and asked her for favors of the kind a woman shows a man, and Essie told him how shocked and hurt she was, a poor widow woman, and an indentured servant no better than a slave, to be asked to prostitute herself for a man whom she had had so much respect for-and an indentured servant could not marry, so how he could even think to torment145 an indentured transportee girl so she could not bring herself to think-and her nut-brown eyes filled with tears, such that Richardson found himself apologizing to her, and the upshot of it was that John Richardson wound up, in that corridor, of that hot summer's night, going down on one knee to Essie Tregowan and proposing an end to her indenture and offering his hand in marriage. Now, although she accepted him, she would not sleep a night with him until it was legal, whereupon she moved from the little room in the attic146 to the master bedroom in the front of the house; and if some of Farmer Richardson's friends and their wives cut him when next they saw him in town, many more of them were of the opinion that the new Mistress Richardson was a damn fine-looking woman, and that Johnnie Richardson had done quite well for himself.
Within a year, she was delivered of another child, another boy, but as blond as his father and his half sister, and they named him John, after his father.
The three children went to the local church to hear the traveling preacher on Sundays, and they went to the little school to learn their letters and their numbers with the children of the other small fanners; while Essie also made sure they knew the mysteries of the piskies, which were the most important mysteries there were: redheaded men, with eyes and clothes as green as a river and turned-up noses, funny, squinting147 men who would, if they got a mind to, turn you and twist you and lead you out of your way, unless you had salt in your pocket, or a little bread. When the children went off to school, they each of them carried a little salt in one pocket, a little bread in the other, the old symbols of life and the earth, to make sure they came safely home once more, and they always did.
The children grew in the lush Virginia hills, grew tall and strong (although Anthony, her first son, was always weaker, paler, more prone148 to disease and bad airs) and the Richardsons were happy; and Essie loved her husband as best she could. They had been married a decade when John Richardson developed a toothache so bad it made him fall from his horse. They took him to the nearest town, where his tooth was pulled; but it was too late, and the blood poisoning carried him off, black-faced and groaning149, and they buried him beneath his favorite willow tree.
The widow Richardson was left the farm to manage until Richardson's two children were of age: she managed the indentured servants and the slaves, and brought in the tobacco crop, year in, year out; she poured cider on the roots of the apple trees on New Year's Eve, and placed a loaf of new-baked bread in the fields at harvest time, and she always left a saucer of milk at the back door. The farm flourished, and the widow Richardson gained a reputation as a hard bargainer, but one whose crop was always good, and who never sold shoddy for better merchandise.
So all went well for another ten years; but after that was a bad year, for Anthony, her son, slew150 Johnnie, his half brother, in a furious quarrel over the future of the farm and the disposition151 of Phyllida's hand; and some said he had not meant to kill his brother, and that it was a foolish blow that struck too deep, and some said otherwise. Anthony fled, leaving Essie to bury her youngest son beside his father. Now, some said Anthony fled to Boston, and some said he went south, and his mother was of the opinion that he had taken ship to England, to enlist in George's army and fight the rebel Scots. But with both sons gone the farm was an empty place, and a sad one, and Phyllida pined and plained as if her heart had been broken, while nothing that her stepmother could say or do would put a smile back on her lips again.
But heartbroken or not, they needed a man about the farm, and so Phyllida married Harry152 Soames, a ship's carpenter by profession, who had tired of the sea and who dreamed of a life on land on a farm like the Lincolnshire farm upon which he had grown up. And although the Richardsons' farm was little enough like that, Harry Soames found correspondences enough to make him happy. Five children were born to Phyllida and Harry, three of whom lived.
The widow Richardson missed her sons, and she missed her husband, although he was now little more than a memory of a fair man who treated her kindly153. Phyllida's children would come to Essie for tales, and she would tell them of the Black Dog of the Moors, and of Raw-Head and Bloody-Bones, or the Apple Tree Man, but they were not interested; they only wanted tales of Jack154-Jack up the Beanstalk, or Jack Giant-killer, or Jack and his Cat and the King. She loved those children as if they were her own flesh and blood, although sometimes she would call them by the names of those long dead.
It was May, and she took her chair out into the kitchen garden to pick peas and to shuck them in the sunlight, for even in the lush heat of Virginia the cold had entered her bones as the frost had entered her hair, and a little warmth was a fine thing.
As the widow Richardson shucked the peas with her old hands, she got to thinking about how fine it would be to walk once more on the moors and the salty cliffs of her native Cornwall, and she thought of sitting on the shingle as a little girl, waiting for her father's ship to return from the gray seas. Her hands, blue-knuckled and clumsy, opened the pea pods, forced the full peas into an earthenware155 bowl, and dropped the empty pea pods onto her aproned lap. And then she found herself remembering, as she had not remembered for a long time, a life well lost: how she had twitched156 purses and filched157 silks with her clever fingers; and now she remembers the warden158 of Newgate telling her that it will be a good twelve weeks before her case would be heard, and that she could escape the gallows159 if she could plead her belly, and what a pretty thing she was-and how she had turned to the wall and bravely lifted her skirts, hating herself and hating him, but knowing he was right; and the feel of the life quickening inside her that meant that she could cheat death for a little longer...
"Essie Tregowan?" said the stranger.
The widow Richardson looked up, shading her eyes in the May sunshine. "Do I know you?" she asked. She had not heard him approach.
The man was dressed all in green: dusty green trews, green jacket, and a dark green coat. His hair was a carroty red, and he grinned at her all lopsided. There was something about the man that made her happy to look at him, and something else that whispered of danger. "You might say that you know me," he said.
He squinted160 down at her, and she squinted right back up at him, searching his moon-face for a clue to his identity. He looked as young as one of her own grandchildren, yet he had called her by her old name, and there was a burr in his voice she knew from her childhood, from the rocks and the moors of her home.
"You're a Cornishman?" she asked.
"That I am, a Cousin Jack," said the red-haired man. "Or rather, that I was, but now I'm here in this new world, where nobody puts out ale or milk for an honest fellow, or a loaf of bread come harvest time."
The old woman steadied the bowl of peas upon her lap. "If you're who I think you are," she said, "then I've no quarrel with you." In the house, she could hear Phyllida grumbling161 to the housekeeper162.
"Nor I with you," said the red-haired fellow, a little sadly, "although it was you that brought me here, you and a few like you, into this land with no time for magic and no place for piskies and such folk."
"You've done me many a good turn," she said.
"Good and ill," said the squinting stranger. "We're like the wind. We blows both ways."
Essie nodded.
"Will you take my hand, Essie Tregowan?" And he reached out a hand to her. Freckled163 it was, and although Essie's eyesight was going she could see each orange hair on the back of his hand, glowing golden in the afternoon sunlight. She bit her lip. Then, hesitantly, she placed her blue-knotted hand in his.
She was still warm when they found her, although the life had fled her body and only half the peas were shelled.
收听单词发音 |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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shoveled
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| vt.铲，铲出（shovel的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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preeminent
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的 | |
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demeanor
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intimidate
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| vt.恐吓，威胁 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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hem
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enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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justifiably
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folder
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| n.纸夹，文件夹 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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sprawl
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| vi.躺卧，扩张，蔓延；vt.使蔓延；n.躺卧，蔓延 | |
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squat
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gouged
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| v.凿( gouge的过去式和过去分词 )；乱要价；（在…中）抠出…；挖出… | |
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tenants
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aged
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sniffed
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| v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的过去式和过去分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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bent
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amber
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dabble
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26
undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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27
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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28
initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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29
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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30
iodine
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| n.碘，碘酒 | |
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31
guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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32
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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33
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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34
frailer
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| 脆弱的( frail的比较级 )； 易损的； 易碎的 | |
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35
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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36
smelted
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| v.熔炼，提炼（矿石）( smelt的过去式和过去分词 )；合演( costar的过去式和过去分词 )；闻到；嗅出 | |
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37
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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39
ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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40
slippered
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| 穿拖鞋的 | |
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41
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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42
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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43
ramp
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| n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速 | |
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44
sledge
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| n.雪橇，大锤；v.用雪橇搬运，坐雪橇往 | |
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45
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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46
flexed
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| adj.[医]曲折的，屈曲v.屈曲( flex的过去式和过去分词 )；弯曲；（为准备大干而）显示实力；摩拳擦掌 | |
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47
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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48
mimed
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| v.指手画脚地表演，用哑剧的形式表演( mime的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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49
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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50
enameled
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| 涂瓷釉于，给…上瓷漆，给…上彩饰( enamel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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52
sliver
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| n.裂片，细片，梳毛；v.纵切，切成长片，剖开 | |
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53
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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54
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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55
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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56
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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57
nicotine
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| n.(化)尼古丁，烟碱 | |
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58
rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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59
clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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60
nominally
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| 在名义上，表面地； 应名儿 | |
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61
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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62
wager
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| n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌 | |
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63
eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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64
forfeit
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| vt.丧失；n.罚金，罚款，没收物 | |
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65
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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66
glowered
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| v.怒视( glower的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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68
bruise
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| n.青肿，挫伤；伤痕；vt.打青；挫伤 | |
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69
slash
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| vi.大幅度削减；vt.猛砍，尖锐抨击，大幅减少；n.猛砍，斜线，长切口，衣衩 | |
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70
tablecloth
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| n.桌布，台布 | |
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71
tarnished
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| （通常指金属）（使）失去光泽，（使）变灰暗( tarnish的过去式和过去分词 )； 玷污，败坏 | |
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72
ferociously
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| 野蛮地，残忍地 | |
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73
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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74
beets
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| 甜菜( beet的名词复数 )； 甜菜根； （因愤怒、难堪或觉得热而）脸红 | |
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75
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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76
hacking
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| n.非法访问计算机系统和数据库的活动 | |
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77
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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78
incumbent
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| adj.成为责任的，有义务的；现任的，在职的 | |
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79
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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80
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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81
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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82
punctured
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| v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气 | |
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83
spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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84
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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85
steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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86
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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87
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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88
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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89
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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90
rusting
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| n.生锈v.（使）生锈( rust的现在分词 ) | |
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91
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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92
gusted
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| n. 突然一阵 n. 风味 vi. 猛吹 | |
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93
flattening
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| n. 修平 动词flatten的现在分词 | |
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94
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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95
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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96
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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97
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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98
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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99
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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100
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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101
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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102
eyelid
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| n.眼睑，眼皮 | |
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103
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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104
motes
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| n.尘埃( mote的名词复数 )；斑点 | |
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105
fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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106
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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107
clemency
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| n.温和，仁慈，宽厚 | |
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108
indentured
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| v.以契约束缚（学徒）( indenture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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109
indenture
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| n.契约；合同 | |
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110
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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111
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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112
rumored
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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113
luring
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的现在分词形式） | |
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114
squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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115
moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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116
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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117
chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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118
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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119
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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120
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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121
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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122
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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123
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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124
Neptune
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| n.海王星 | |
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125
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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126
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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127
endearments
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| n.表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示( endearment的名词复数 ) | |
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128
lodged
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| v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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129
stews
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| n.炖煮的菜肴( stew的名词复数 )；烦恼，焦虑v.炖( stew的第三人称单数 )；煨；思考；担忧 | |
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130
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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131
concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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132
vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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133
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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134
commuted
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| 通勤( commute的过去式和过去分词 )； 减（刑）； 代偿 | |
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135
hogs
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| n.（尤指喂肥供食用的）猪( hog的名词复数 )；（供食用的）阉公猪；彻底地做某事；自私的或贪婪的人 | |
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136
fluxes
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| 连续的改变( flux的名词复数 )； 不稳定的状态； 不停的变化； 通量 | |
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137
rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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138
trickiest
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|
| adj.狡猾的( tricky的最高级 )；（形势、工作等）复杂的；机警的；微妙的 | |
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139
shingle
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| n.木瓦板；小招牌(尤指医生或律师挂的营业招牌)；v.用木瓦板盖（屋顶）；把（女子头发）剪短 | |
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140
placated
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| v.安抚，抚慰，使平静( placate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
mellifluous
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| adj.（音乐等）柔美流畅的 | |
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142
wary
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| adj.谨慎的，机警的，小心的 | |
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143
willow
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| n.柳树 | |
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144
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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145
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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146
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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147
squinting
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| 斜视( squint的现在分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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148
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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149
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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150
slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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151
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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152
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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153
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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154
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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155
earthenware
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| n.土器，陶器 | |
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156
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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157
filched
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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158
warden
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| n.监察员，监狱长，看守人，监护人 | |
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159
gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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160
squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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161
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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162
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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163
freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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