Chapter Fourteen
People are in the dark, they don't know what to do
I had a little lantern, oh but it got blown out too.
I'm reaching out my hand. I hope you are too.
I just want to be in the dark with you.
-Greg Brown, "In the Dark with You"
They changed cars at five in the morning, in Minneapolis, in the airport's long-term parking lot. They drove to the top floor, where the parking building was open to the sky.
Shadow took the orange uniform and the handcuffs and leg hobbles, put them in the brown paper bag that had briefly1 held his possessions, folded the whole thing up, and dropped it into a garbage can. They had been waiting for ten minutes when a barrel-chested young man came out of an airport door and walked over to them. He was eating a packet of Burger King french fries. Shadow recognized him immediately: he had sat in the back of the car, when they had left the House on the Rock, and hummed so deeply the car had vibrated. He now sported a white-streaked winter beard he had not had before. It made him look older.
The man wiped the grease from his hands onto his jeans, extended one huge hand to Shadow. "I heard of the All-Father's death," he said. "They will pay, and they will pay dearly."
"Wednesday was your father?" asked Shadow.
"He was the All-Father," said the man. His deep voice caught in his throat. "You tell them, tell them all, that when we are needed, my people will be there."
Czernobog picked at a flake2 of tobacco from between his teeth and spat3 it out onto the frozen slush. "And how many of you is that? Ten? Twenty?"
The barrel-chested man's beard bristled4. "And aren't ten of us worth a hundred of them? Who would stand against even one of my folk, in a battle? But there are more of us than that, at the edge of the cities. There are a few in the mountains. Some in the Catskills, a few living in the carny towns in Florida. They keep their axes sharp. They will come if I call them."
"You do that, Elvis," said Mr. Nancy. Shadow thought he said Elvis, anyway. Nancy had exchanged the deputy's uniform for a thick brown cardigan, corduroy trousers, and brown loafers. "You call them. It's what the old bastard5 would have wanted."
"They betrayed him. They killed him. I laughed at Wednesday, but I was wrong. None of us are safe any longer," said the man whose name sounded like Elvis. "But you can rely on us." He gently patted Shadow on the back and almost sent him sprawling6. It was like being gently patted on the back by a wrecking8 ball.
Czernobog had been looking around the parking lot. Now he said, "You will pardon me asking, but our new vehicle is which?"
The barrel-chested man pointed9. "There she is," he said.
Czernobog snorted. "That?"
It was a 1970 VW bus. There was a rainbow decal in the rear window.
"It's a fine vehicle. And it's the last thing that they'll be expecting you to be driving."
Czernobog walked around the vehicle. Then he started to cough, a lung-rumbling, old-man, five-in-the-morning smoker's cough. He hawked10, and spat, and put his hand to his chest, massaging11 away the pain. "Yes. The last car they will suspect. So what happens when the police pull us over, looking for the hippies and the dope? Eh? We are not here to ride the magic bus. We are to blend in."
The bearded man unlocked the door of the bus. "So they take a look at you, they see you aren't hippies, they wave you goodbye. It's the perfect disguise. And it's all I could find at no notice."
Czernobog seemed to be ready to argue it further, but Mr. Nancy intervened smoothly12. "Elvis, you came through for us. We are very grateful. Now, that car needs to get back to Chicago."
"We'll leave it in Bloomington," said the bearded man. "The wolves will take care of it. Don't give it another thought." He turned back to Shadow. "Again, you have my sympathy and I share your pain. Good luck. And if the vigil falls to you, my admiration13, and my sympathy." He squeezed Shadow's hand with his own catcher's-mitt fist. It hurt. "You tell his corpse14 when you see it. Tell him that Alviss son of Vindalf will keep the faith."
The VW bus smelled of patchouli, of old incense15 and rolling tobacco. There was a faded pink carpet glued to the floor and to the walls.
"Who was that?" asked Shadow, as he drove them down the ramp16, grinding the gears.
"Just like he said, Alviss son of Vindalf. He's the king of the dwarfs17. The biggest, mightiest19, greatest of all the dwarf18 folk."
"But he's not a dwarf," pointed out Shadow. "He's what, five-eight? Five-nine?"
"Which makes him a giant among dwarfs," said Czernobog from behind him. "Tallest dwarf in America."
"What was that about the vigil?" asked Shadow.
The two old men said nothing. Shadow glanced at Mr. Nancy, who was staring out of the window.
"Well? He was talking about a vigil. You heard him."
Czernobog spoke20 up from the backseat. "You will not have to do it," he said.
"Do what?"
"The vigil. He talks too much. All the dwarfs talk and talk. Is nothing to think of. Better you put it out of your mind."
***
Driving south was like driving forward in time. The snows erased21, slowly, and were completely gone by the following morning when the bus reached Kentucky. Winter was already over in Kentucky, and spring was on its way. Shadow began to wonder if there were some kind of equation to explain it-perhaps every fifty miles he drove south he was driving a day into the future.
He would have mentioned his idea to somebody, but Mr. Nancy was asleep in the passenger seat in the front, while Czernobog snored unceasingly in the back.
Time seemed a flexible construct at that moment, an illusion he was imagining as he drove. He found himself becoming painfully aware of birds and animals: he saw the crows on the side of the road, or in the bus's path, picking at roadkill; flights of birds wheeled across the skies in patterns that almost made sense; cats stared at them from front lawns and fence posts.
Czernobog snorted and woke, sitting up slowly. "I dreamed a strange dream," he said. "I dreamed that I am truly Bielebog. That forever the world imagines that there are two of us, the light god and the dark, but that now we are both old, I find it was only me all the time, giving them gifts, taking my gifts away." He broke the filter from a Lucky Strike, put the cigarette between his lips and lit it.
Shadow wound down his window.
"Aren't you worried about lung cancer?" he said.
"I am cancer," said Czernobog. "I do not frighten myself."
Nancy spoke. "Folk like us don't get cancer. We don't get arteriosclerosis or Parkinson's disease or syphilis. We're kind of hard to kill."
"They killed Wednesday," said Shadow.
He pulled over for gas, and then parked next door at a restaurant for an early breakfast. As they entered, the pay phone in the entrance began to jangle.
They gave their orders to an elderly woman with a worried smile, who had been sitting reading a paperback23 copy of What My Heart Meant by Jenny Kerton. The woman sighed, then walked back and over to the phone, picked it up, said "Yes." Then she looked back at the room, said, "Yep. Looks like they are. You just hold the line now," and walked over to Mr. Nancy.
"It's for you," she said.
"Okay," said Mr. Nancy. "Now, ma'am, you make sure those fries are real crisp now. Think burnt." He walked over to the pay phone. "This is he."
"And what makes you think I'm dumb enough to trust you?" he said.
"I can find it," he said. "I know where it is."
"Yes," he said. "Of course we want it. You know we want it. And I know you want to get rid of it. So don't give me any shit."
He hung up the telephone, came back to the table.
"Who was it?" asked Shadow.
"Didn't say."
"What did they want?"
"They were offerin' us a truce24, while they hand over the body."
"They lie," said Czernobog. "They want to lure25 us in, and then they will kill us. What they did to Wednesday. Is what I always used to do," he added, with gloomy pride.
"It's on neutral territory," said Nancy. "Truly neutral."
Czernobog chuckled27. It sounded like a metal ball rattling28 in a dry skull29. "I used to say that also. Come to a neutral place, I would say, and then in the night we would rise up and kill them all. Those were the good days."
Mr. Nancy shrugged30. He crunched31 down on his dark brown french fries, grinned his approval. "Mm-mm. These are fine fries," he said.
"We can't trust those people," said Shadow.
"Listen, I'm older than you and I'm smarter than you and I'm better lookin' than you," said Mr. Nancy, thumping33 the bottom of the ketchup34 bottle, blobbing ketchup over his burnt fries. "I can get more pussy35 in an afternoon than you'll get in a year. I can dance like an angel, fight like a cornered bear, plan better than a fox, sing like a nightingale..."
"And your point here is...?"
Nancy's brown eyes gazed into Shadow's. "And they need to get rid of the body as much as we need to take it."
Czernobog said, "There is no such neutral place."
"There's one," said Mr. Nancy. "It's the center."
***
Determining the exact center of anything can be problematic at best. With living things-people, for example, or continents-the problem becomes one of intangibles: What is the center of a man? What is the center of a dream? And in the case of the continental36 United States, should one count Alaska when one attempts to find the center? Or Hawaii?
As the Twentieth Century began, they made a huge model of the USA, the lower forty-eight states, out of cardboard, and to find the center they balanced it on a pin, until they found the single place it balanced.
As near as anyone could figure it out, the exact center of the continental United States was several miles from Lebanon, Kansas, on Johnny Grib's hog38 farm. By the 1930s the people of Lebanon were all ready to put a monument up in the middle of the hog farm, but Johnny Grib said that he didn't want millions of tourists coming in and tramping all over and upsetting the hogs39, so they put the monument to the geographical40 center of the United States two miles north of the town. They built a park, and a stone monument to go in the park, and a brass41 plaque42 on the monument. They blacktopped the road from the town, and, certain of the influx43 of tourists waiting to arrive, they even built a motel by the monument. Then they waited.
The tourists did not come. Nobody came.
It's a sad little park, now, with a mobile chapel44 in it that wouldn't fit a small funeral party, and a motel whose windows look like dead eyes.
"Which is why," concluded Mr. Nancy, as they drove into Humansville, Missouri (pop. 1084), "the exact center of America is a tiny run-down park, an empty church, a pile of stones, and a derelict motel."
"Hog farm," said Czernobog. "You just said that the real center of America was a hog farm."
"This isn't about what is," said Mr. Nancy. "It's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things."
"My kind of people?" asked Shadow. "Or your kind of people?"
Nancy said nothing. Czernobog made a noise that might have been a chuckle26, might have been a snort.
Shadow tried to get comfortable in the back of the bus. He had only slept a little. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Worse than the feeling he had had in prison, worse than the feeling he had had back when Laura had come to him and told him about the robbery. This was bad. The back of his neck prickled, he felt sick and, several times, in waves, he felt scared.
Mr. Nancy pulled over in Humansville, parked outside a supermarket. Mr. Nancy went inside, and Shadow followed him in. Czernobog waited in the parking lot, smoking his cigarette.
There was a young fair-haired man, little more than a boy, restocking the breakfast cereal shelves.
"Hey," said Mr. Nancy.
"Hey," said the young man. "It's true, isn't it? They killed him?"
"Yes," said Mr. Nancy. "They killed him."
The young man banged several boxes of Cap'n Crunch32 down on the shelf. "They think they can crush us like cockroaches," he said. He had a tarnished45 silver bracelet46 circling his wrist. "We don't crush that easy, do we?"
"No," said Mr. Nancy. "We don't."
"I'll be there, sir," said the young man, his pale blue eyes blazing.
"I know you will, Gwydion," said Mr. Nancy.
Mr. Nancy bought several large bottles of RC Cola, a six-pack of toilet paper, a pack of evil-looking black cigarillos, a bunch of bananas, and a pack of Doublemint chewing gum. "He's a good boy. Came over in the seventh century. Welsh."
The bus meandered47 first to the west and then to the north. Spring faded back into the dead end of winter. Kansas was the cheerless gray of lonesome clouds, empty windows, and lost hearts. Shadow had become adept48 at hunting for radio stations, negotiating between Mr. Nancy, who liked talk radio and dance music, and Czernobog, who favored classical music, the gloomier the better, leavened49 with the more extreme evangelical religious stations. For himself, Shadow liked oldies.
Toward the end of the afternoon they stopped, at Czernobog's request, on the outskirts50 of Cherryvale, Kansas (pop. 2,464). Czernobog led them to a meadow outside the town. There were still traces of snow in the shadows of the trees, and the grass was the color of dirt.
"Wait here," said Czernobog.
He walked, alone, to the center of the meadow. He stood there, in the winds of the end of February, for some time. At first he hung his head, then he began gesticulating.
"He looks like he's talking to someone," said Shadow.
"Ghosts," said Mr. Nancy. "They worshiped him here, over a hundred years ago. They made blood sacrifice to him, libations spilled with the hammer. After a time, the townsfolk figured out why so many of the strangers who passed through the town didn't ever come back. This was where they hid some of the bodies."
Czernobog came back from the middle of the field. His mustache seemed darker now, and there were streaks52 of black in his gray hair. He smiled, showing his iron tooth. "I feel good, now. Ahh. Some things linger, and blood lingers longest."
They walked back across the meadow to where they had parked the VW bus. Czernobog lit a cigarette, but did not cough. "They did it with the hammer," he said. "Votan, he would talk of the gallows53 and the spear, but for me, it is one thing..." He reached out a nicotine-colored finger and tapped it, hard, in the center of Shadow's forehead.
"Please don't do that," said Shadow, politely.
"Please don't do that," mimicked54 Czernobog. "One day I will take my hammer and do much worse than that to you, my friend, remember?"
"Yes," said Shadow. "But if you tap my head again, I'll break your hand."
Czernobog snorted. Then he said, "They should be grateful, the people here. There was such power raised. Even thirty years after they forced my people into hiding, this land, this very land, gave us the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was."
"Judy Garland?" asked Shadow.
Czernobog shook his head curtly55.
"He's talking about Louise Brooks56," said Mr. Nancy.
Shadow decided57 not to ask who Louise Brooks was. Instead he said, "So, look, when Wednesday went to talk to them, he did it under a truce."
"Yes."
"And now we're going to get Wednesday's body from them, as a truce."
"Yes."
"And we know that they want me dead or out of the way."
"They want all of us dead," said Nancy.
"So what I don't get is, why do we think they'll play fair this time, when they didn't for Wednesday?"
"That," said Czernobog, "is why we are meeting at the center. Is..." He frowned. "What is the word for it? The opposite of sacred?"
"Profane," said Shadow, without thinking.
"No," said Czernobog. "I mean, when a place is less sacred than any other place. Of negative sacredness. Places where they can build no temples. Places where people will not come, and will leave as soon as they can. Places where gods only walk if they are forced to."
"I don't know," said Shadow. "I don't think there is a word for it."
"All of America has it, a little," said Czernobog. "That is why we are not welcome here. But the center," said Czernobog. "The center is worst. Is like a minefield. We all tread too carefully there to dare break the truce."
They had reached the bus. Czernobog patted Shadow's upper arm. "You don't worry," he said, with gloomy reassurance58. "Nobody else is going to kill you. Nobody but me."
***
Shadow found the center of America at evening that same day, before it was fully22 dark. It was on a slight hill to the northwest of Lebanon. He drove around the little hillside park, past the tiny mobile chapel and the stone monument, and when Shadow saw the one-story 1950s motel at the edge of the park his heart sank. There was a black Humvee parked in front of it-it looked like a jeep reflected in a fun-house mirror, as squat59 and pointless and ugly as an armored car. There were no lights on inside the building.
They parked beside the motel, and as they did so, a man in a chauffeur's uniform and cap walked out of the motel and was illuminated60 by the headlights of the bus. He touched his cap to them, politely, got into the Humvee, and drove off.
"Big car, tiny dick," said Mr. Nancy.
"Do you think they'll even have beds here?" asked Shadow. "It's been days since I slept in a bed. This place looks like it's just waiting to be demolished61."
"It's owned by hunters from Texas," said Mr. Nancy. "Come up here once a year. Damned if I know what they're huntin'. It stops the place being condemned62 and destroyed."
They climbed out of the bus. Waiting for them in front of the motel was a woman Shadow did not recognize. She was perfectly63 made-up, perfectly coiffed. She reminded him of every newscaster he'd ever seen on morning television sitting in a studio that didn't really resemble a living room.
"Lovely to see you," she said. "Now, you must be Czernobog. I've heard a lot about you. And you're Anansi, always up to mischief64, eh? You jolly old man. And you, you must be Shadow. You've certainly led us a merry chase, haven't you?" A hand took his, pressed it firmly, looked him straight in the eye. "I'm Media. Good to meet you. I hope we can get this evening's business done as pleasantly as possible."
The main doors opened. "Somehow, Toto," said the fat kid Shadow had last seen sitting in a limo, "I don't believe we're in Kansas anymore."
"We're in Kansas," said Mr. Nancy. "I think we must have drove through most of it today. Damn but this country is flat."
"This place has no lights, no power, and no hot water," said the fat kid. "And, no offense65, you people really need the hot water. You just smell like you've been in that bus for a week."
"I don't think there's any need to go there," said the woman, smoothly. "We're all friends here. Come on in. We'll show you to your rooms. We took the first four rooms. Your late friend is in the fifth. All the ones beyond room five are empty-you can take your pick. I'm afraid it's not the Four Seasons, but then, what is?"
She opened the door to the motel lobby for them. It smelled of mildew66, of damp and dust and decay.
There was a man sitting in the lobby, in the near darkness. "You people hungry?" he asked.
"I can always eat," said Mr. Nancy.
"Driver's gone out for a sack of hamburgers," said the man. "He'll be back soon." He looked up. It was too dark to see faces, but he said, "Big guy. You're Shadow, huh? The asshole who killed Woody and Stone?"
"No," said Shadow. "That was someone else. And I know who you are." He did. He had been inside the man's head. "You're Town. Have you slept with Wood's widow yet?"
Mr. Town fell off his chair. In a movie, it would have been funny; in real life it was simply clumsy. He stood up quickly, came toward Shadow. Shadow looked down at him and said, "Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish."
Mr. Nancy rested his hand on Shadow's upper arm. "Truce, remember?" he said. "We're at the center."
Mr. Town turned away, leaned over to the counter, and picked up three keys. "You're down at the end of the hall," he said. "Here."
He handed the keys to Mr. Nancy and walked away, into the shadows of the corridor. They heard a motel room door open, and they heard it slam.
Mr. Nancy passed a key to Shadow, another to Czernobog. "Is there a flashlight on the bus?" asked Shadow.
"No," said Mr. Nancy. "But it's just dark. You mustn't be afraid of the dark."
"I'm not," said Shadow. "I'm afraid of the people in the dark."
"Dark is good," said Czernobog. He seemed to have no difficulty seeing where he was going, leading them down the darkened corridor, putting the keys into the locks without fumbling67. "I will be in room ten," he told them. And then he said, "Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn't she the one who killed her children?"
"Different woman," said Mr. Nancy. "Same deal."
Mr. Nancy was in room 8, and Shadow opposite the two of them, in room 9. The room smelled damp, and dusty, and deserted68. There was a bed frame in there, with a mattress69 on it, but no sheets. A little light entered the room from the gloaming outside the window. Shadow sat down on the mattress, pulled off his shoes, and stretched out at full length. He had driven too much in the last few days.
Perhaps he slept.
***
He was walking.
A cold wind tugged70 at his clothes. The tiny snowflakes were little more than a crystalline dust that gusted71 and flurried in the wind.
There were trees, bare of leaves in the winter. There were high hills on each side of him. It was late on a winter's afternoon: the sky and the snow had attained72 the same deep shade of purple. Somewhere ahead of him-in this light, distances were impossible to judge-the flames of a bonfire flickered73, yellow and orange.
A gray wolf padded through the snow before him.
Shadow stopped. The wolf stopped also, and turned, and waited. One of its eyes glinted yellowish-green. Shadow shrugged and walked toward the flames and the wolf ambled74 ahead of him.
The bonfire burned in the middle of a grove75 of trees. There must have been a hundred trees, planted in the rows. There were shapes hanging from the trees. At the end of the rows was a building that looked a little like an overturned boat. It was carved of wood, and it crawled with wooden creatures and wooden faces-dragons, gryphons, trolls, and boars-all of them dancing in the flickering76 light of the fire.
The bonfire was so high that Shadow could barely approach it. The wolf padded around the crackling fire.
In place of the wolf a man came out on the other side of the fire. He was leaning on a tall stick.
"You are in Uppsala, in Sweden," said the man, in a familiar, gravelly voice. "About a thousand years ago."
"Wednesday?" said Shadow.
The man continued to talk, as if Shadow were not there. "First every year, then, later, when the rot set in, and they became lax, every nine years, they would sacrifice here. A sacrifice of nines. Each day, for nine days, they would hang nine animals from trees in the grove. One of those animals was always a man."
He strode away from the firelight, toward the trees, and Shadow followed him. As he approached the trees the shapes that hung from them resolved: legs and eyes and tongues and heads. Shadow shook his head: there was something about seeing a bull hanging by its neck from a tree that was darkly sad, and at the same time surreal enough almost to be funny. Shadow passed a hanging stag, a wolfhound, a brown bear, and a chestnut77 horse with a white mane, little bigger than a pony78. The dog was still alive: every few seconds it would kick spasmodically, and it was making a strained whimpering noise as it dangled79 from the rope.
The man he was following took his long stick, which Shadow realized now, as it moved, was actually a spear, and he slashed80 at the dog's stomach with it, in one knifelike cut downward. Steaming entrails tumbled onto the snow. "I dedicate this death to Odin," said the man, formally.
"It is only a gesture," he said, turning back to Shadow. "But gestures mean everything. The death of one dog symbolizes81 the death of all dogs. Nine men they gave to me, but they stood for all the men, all the blood, all the power. It just wasn't enough. One day, the blood stopped flowing. Belief without blood only takes us so far. The blood must flow."
"I saw you die," said Shadow.
"In the god business," said the figure-and now Shadow was certain it was Wednesday, nobody else had that rasp, that deep cynical82 joy in words, "it's not the death that matters. It's the opportunity for resurrection. And when the blood flows..." He gestured at the animals, at the people, hanging from the trees.
Shadow could not decide whether the dead humans they walked past were more or less horrifying83 than the animals: at least the humans had known the fate they were going to. There was a deep, boozy smell about the men that suggested that they had been allowed to anesthetize themselves on their way to the gallows, while the animals would simply have been lynched, hauled up alive and terrified. The faces of the men looked so young: none of them was older than twenty.
"Who am I?" asked Shadow.
"You?" said the man. "You were an opportunity. You were part of a grand tradition. Although both of us are committed enough to the affair to die for it. Eh?"
"Who are you?" asked Shadow.
"The hardest part is simply surviving," said the man. The bonfire-and Shadow realized with a strange horror that it truly was a bone-fire: rib37 cages and fire-eyed skulls84 stared and stuck and jutted85 from the flames, sputtering86 trace-element colors into the night, greens and yellows and blues-was flaring87 and crackling and burning hotly. "Three days of the tree, three days in the underworld, three days to find my way back."
The flames sputtered88 and flamed too brightly for Shadow to look at directly. He looked down into the darkness beneath the trees.
A knock on the door-and now there was moonlight coming in the window. Shadow sat up with a start. "Dinner's served," said Media's voice.
Shadow put his shoes back on, walked over to the door, went out into the corridor. Someone had found some candles, and a dim yellow light illuminated the reception hall. The driver of the Humvee came in holding a cardboard tray and a paper sack. He wore a long black coat and a peaked chauffeur's cap.
"Sorry about the delay," he said, hoarsely89. "I got everybody the same: a couple of burgers, large fries, large Coke, and apple pie. I'll eat mine out in the car." He put the food down, then walked back outside. The smell of fast food filled the lobby. Shadow took the paper bag and passed out the food, the napkins, the packets of ketchup.
They ate in silence while the candles flickered and the burning wax hissed90.
Shadow noticed that Town was glaring at him. He turned his chair a little, so his back was to the wall. Media ate her burger with a napkin poised91 by her lips to remove crumbs92.
"Oh. Great. These burgers are nearly cold," said the fat kid. He was still wearing his shades, which Shadow thought pointless and foolish, given the darkness of the room.
"Sorry about that," said Town. "The nearest McDonald's is in Nebraska."
They finished their lukewarm hamburgers and cold fries. The fat kid bit into his single-person apple pie, and the filling spurted93 down his chin. Unexpectedly, the filling was still hot. "Ow," he said. He wiped at it with his hand, licking his fingers to get them clean. "That stuff burns!" he said. "Those pies are a class-action suit waiting to fucking happen."
Shadow wanted to hit the kid. He'd wanted to hit him since the kid had his goons hurt him in the limo, after Laura's funeral. He pushed the thought away. "Can't we just take Wednesday's body and get out of here?" he asked.
"Midnight," said Mr. Nancy and the fat kid, at the same time.
"These things must be done by the rules," said Czernobog.
"Yeah," said Shadow. "But nobody tells me what they are. You keep talking about the goddamn rules, I don't even-know what game you people are playing."
"It's like breaking the street date," said Media, brightly. "You know. When things are allowed to be on sale."
Town said, "I think the whole thing's a crock of shit. But if their rules make them happy, then my agency is happy and everybody's happy." He slurped94 his Coke. "Roll on midnight. You take the body, you go away. We're all lovey-fucking-dovey and we wave you goodbye. And then we can get on with hunting you down like the rats you are."
"Hey," said the fat kid to Shadow. "Reminds me. I told you to tell your boss he was history. Did you ever tell him?"
"I told him," said Shadow. "And you know what he said to me? He said to tell the little snot, if ever I saw him again, to remember that today's future is tomorrow's yesterday." Wednesday had never said any such thing. Still, these people seemed to like clichés. The black sunglasses reflected the flickering candle flames back at him, like eyes.
The fat kid said, "This place is such a fucking dump. No power. Out of wireless95 range. I mean, when you got to be wired, you're already back in the stone age." He sucked the last of his Coke through the straw, dropped the cup on the table, and walked away down the corridor.
Shadow reached over and placed the fat kid's garbage back into the paper sack. "I'm going to see the center of America," he announced. He got up and walked outside, into the night. Mr. Nancy followed him. They strolled together, across the little park, saying nothing until they reached the stone monument. The wind gusted at them, fitfully, first from one direction, then from another. "So," he said. "Now what?"
The half-moon hung pale in the dark sky.
"Now," said Nancy, "you should go back to your room. Lock the door. You try to get some more sleep. At midnight they give us the body. And then we get the hell out of here. The center is not a stable place for anybody."
"If you say so."
Mr. Nancy inhaled96 on his cigarillo. "This should never have happened," he said. "None of this should have happened. Our kind of people, we are..." He waved the cigarillo about, as if using it to hunt for a word, then stabbing forward with it. "...exclusive. We're not social. Not even me. Not even Bacchus. Not for long. We walk by ourselves or we stay in our own little groups. We do not play well with others. We like to be adored and respected and worshiped-me, I like them to be tellin' tales about me, tales showing my cleverness. It's a fault, I know, but it's the way I am. We like to be big. Now, in these shabby days, we are small. The new gods rise and fall and rise again. But this is not a country that tolerates gods for long. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves, Shiva destroys, and the ground is clear for Brahma to create once more."
"So what are you saying?" asked Shadow. "The fighting's over, now? The battle's done?"
Mr. Nancy snorted. "Are you out of your mind? They killed Wednesday. They killed him and they bragged97 about it. They spread the word. They've showed it on every channel to those with eyes to see it. No, Shadow. It's only just begun."
He bent99 down at the foot of the stone monument, stubbed out his cigarillo on the earth, and left it there, like an offering.
"You used to make jokes," said Shadow. "You don't anymore."
"It's hard to find the jokes these days. Wednesday's dead. Are you comin' inside?"
"Soon."
Nancy walked away, toward the motel. Shadow reached out his hand and touched the monument's stones. He dragged his big fingers across the cold brass plate. Then he turned and walked over to the tiny white chapel, walked through the open doorway100, into the darkness. He sat down in the nearest pew and closed his eyes and lowered his head, and thought about Laura, and about Wednesday, and about being alive.
There was a click from behind him, and a scuff101 of shoe against earth. Shadow sat up, and turned. Someone stood just outside the open doorway, a dark shape against the stars. Moonlight glinted from something metal.
"You going to shoot me?" asked Shadow.
"Jesus-I wish," said Mr. Town. "It's only for self-defense. So, you're praying? Have they got you thinking that they're gods? They aren't gods."
"I wasn't praying," said Shadow. "Just thinking."
"The way I figure it," said Town, "they're mutations. Evolutionary102 experiments. A little hypnotic ability, a little hocus-pocus, and they can make people believe anything. Nothing to write home about. That's all. They die like men, after all."
"They always did," said Shadow. He got up, and Town took a step back. Shadow walked out of the little chapel, and Mr. Town kept his distance. "Hey," Shadow said. "Do you know who Louise Brooks was?"
"Friend of yours?"
"Nope. She was a movie star from south of here."
Town paused. "Maybe she changed her name, and became Liz Taylor or Sharon Stone or someone," he suggested, helpfully.
"Maybe." Shadow started to walk back to the motel. Town kept pace with him.
"You should be back in prison," said Mr. Town. "You should be on fucking death row."
"I didn't kill your associates," said Shadow. "But I'll tell you something a guy once told me, back when I was in prison. Something I've never forgotten."
"And that is?"
"There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't."
The driver stood by the Humvee. "G'night, gentlemen," he said as they passed.
"Night," said Mr. Town. And then he said, to Shadow, "I personally don't give a fuck about any of this. What I do, is what Mister World says. It's easier that way."
Shadow walked down the corridor to room 9.
He unlocked the door, went inside. He said, "Sorry. I thought this was my room."
"It is," said Media. "I was waiting for you." He could see her hair in the moonlight, and her pale face. She was sitting on his bed, primly103.
"I'll find another room."
"I won't be here for long," she said. "I just thought it might be an appropriate time to make you an offer."
"Okay. Make the offer."
"Relax," she said. There was a smile in her voice. "You have such a stick up your butt104. Look, Wednesday's dead. You don't owe anyone anything. Throw in with us. Time to Come Over to the Winning Team."
Shadow said nothing.
"We can make you famous, Shadow. We can give you power over what people believe and say and wear and dream. You want to be the next Gary Grant? We can make that happen. We can make you the next Beatles."
"I think I preferred it when you were offering to show me Lucy's tits," said Shadow. "If that was you."
"Ah," she said.
"I need my room back. Good night."
"And then of course," she said, not moving, as if he had not spoken, "we can turn it all around. We can make it bad for you. You could be a bad joke forever, Shadow. Or you could be remembered as a monster. You could be remembered forever, but as a Manson, a Hitler...how would you like that?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm kind of tired," said Shadow. "I'd be grateful if you'd leave now."
"I offered you the world," she said. "When you're dying in a gutter105, you remember that."
"I'll make a point of it," he said.
After she had gone her perfume lingered. He lay on the bare mattress and thought about Laura, but whatever he thought about-Laura playing Frisbee106, Laura eating a root-beer float without a spoon, Laura giggling107, showing off the exotic underwear she had bought when she attended a travel agents' convention in Anaheim-always morphed, in his mind, into Laura sucking Robbie's cock as a truck slammed them off the road and into oblivion. And then he heard her words, and they hurt every time.
You're not dead, said Laura in her quiet voice, in his head. But I'm not sure that you're alive, either.
There was a knock. Shadow got up and opened the door. It was the fat kid. "Those hamburgers," he said. "They were just icky. Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's."
"This place is turning into Grand Central Station," said Shadow. "Okay, so I guess you're here to offer me the freedom of the Internet if I come over to your side of the fence. Right?"
The fat kid was shivering. "No. You're already dead meat," he said. "You-you're a fucking illuminated Gothic black-letter manuscript. You couldn't be hypertext if you tried. I'm...I'm synaptic, while, while you're synoptic..." He smelled strange, Shadow realized. There was a guy in the cell across the way, whose name Shadow had never known. He had taken off all his clothes in the middle of the day and told everyone that he had been sent to take them away, the truly good ones, like him, in a silver spaceship to a perfect place. That had been the last time Shadow had seen him. The fat kid smelled like that guy.
"Are you here for a reason?"
"Just wanted to talk," said the fat kid. There was a whine108 in his voice. "It's creepy in my room. That's all. It's creepy in there. Fifty miles to a McDonald's, can you believe that? Maybe I could stay in here with you."
"What about your friends from the limo? The ones who hit me? Shouldn't you ask them to stay with you?"
"The children wouldn't operate out here. We're in a dead zone."
Shadow said, "It's a while until midnight, and it's longer to dawn. I think maybe you need rest. I know I do."
The fat kid said nothing for a moment, then he nodded, and walked out of the room.
Shadow closed his door, and locked it with the key. He lay back on the mattress.
After a few moments the noise began. It took him a few moments to figure out what it had to be, then he unlocked his door and walked out into the hallway. It was the fat kid, now back in his own room. It sounded like he was throwing something huge against the walls of the room. From the sounds, Shadow guessed that what he was throwing was himself. "It's just me!" he was sobbing109. Or perhaps, "It's just meat." Shadow could not tell.
"Quiet!" came a bellow110 from Czernobog's room, down the hall.
Shadow walked down to the lobby and out of the motel. He was tired.
The driver still stood beside the Humvee, a dark shape in a peaked cap.
"Couldn't sleep, sir?" he asked.
"No," said Shadow.
"Cigarette, sir?"
"No, thank you."
"You don't mind if I do?"
"Go right ahead."
The driver used a Bic disposable lighter111, and it was in the yellow light of the flame that Shadow saw the man's face, actually saw it for the first time, and recognized him, and began to understand.
Shadow knew that thin face. He knew that there would be close-cropped orange hair beneath the black driver's cap, cut close to the scalp. He knew that when the man's lips smiled they would crease112 into a network of rough scars.
"You're looking good, big guy," said the driver.
"Low Key?" Shadow stared at his old cellmate warily113.
Prison friendships are good things: they get you through bad places and through dark times. But a prison friendship ends at the prison gates, and a prison friend who reappears in your life is at best a mixed blessing114.
"Jesus. Low Key Lyesmith," said Shadow, and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-Smith."
"You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.
***
They sat in Shadow's room in the abandoned motel, sitting on the bed, at opposite ends of the mattress. The sounds from the fat kid's room had pretty much stopped.
"You were lucky we were inside together," said Loki. "You would never have survived your first year without me."
"You couldn't have walked out if you wanted."
"It's easier just to do the time." He paused. Then, "You got to understand the god thing. It's not magic. It's about being you, but the you that people believe in. It's about being the concentrated, magnified, essence of you. It's about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief and become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystallize." He paused. "And then one day they forget about you, and they don't believe in you, and they don't sacrifice, and they don't care, and the next thing you know you're running a three-card monte game on the corner of Broadway and Forty-third."
"Why were you in my cell?"
"Coincidence. Pure and simple."
"And now you're driving for the opposition115."
"If you want to call them that. It depends where you're standing116. The way I figure it, I'm driving for the winning team."
"But you and Wednesday, you were from the same, you're both-"
"Norse pantheon. We're both from the Norse pantheon. Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Yeah."
"So?"
Shadow hesitated. "You must have been friends. Once."
"No. We were never friends. I'm not sorry he's dead. He was just holding the rest of us back. With him gone, the rest of them are going to have to face up to the facts: it's change or die, evolve or perish. He's gone. War's over."
Shadow looked at him, puzzled. "You aren't that stupid," he said. "You were always so sharp. Wednesday's death isn't going to end anything. It's just pushed all of the ones who were on the fence over the edge."
"Mixing metaphors117, Shadow. Bad habit."
"Whatever," said Shadow. "It's still true. Jesus. His death did in an instant what he'd spent the last few months trying to do. It united them. It gave them something to believe in."
"Perhaps." Loki shrugged. "As far as I know, the thinking on this side of the fence was that with the troublemaker118 out of the way, the trouble would also be gone. It's not any of my business, though. I just drive."
"So tell me," said Shadow, "why does everyone care about me? They act like I'm important. Why does it matter what I do?"
"Damned if I know. You were important to us because you were important to Wednesday. As for the why of it...I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries."
"I'm tired of mysteries."
"Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest119 to the world. Like salt in a stew120."
"So you're their driver. You drive for all of them?"
"Whoever needs me," said Loki. "It's a living."
He raised his wristwatch to his face, pressed a button: the dial glowed a gentle blue, which illuminated his face, giving it a haunting, haunted appearance. "Five to midnight. Time," said Loki. "You coming?"
Shadow took a deep breath. "I'm coming," he said.
They walked down the dark motel corridor until they reached room 5.
Loki took a box of matches from his pocket and thumb-nailed a match into flame. The momentary121 flare122 hurt Shadow's eyes. A candle wick flickered and caught. And another. Loki lit a new match, and continued to light the candle stubs: they were on the windowsills and on the headboard of the bed and on the sink in the corner of the room.
The bed had been hauled from its position against the wall into the middle of the motel room, leaving a few feet of space between the bed and the wall on each side. There were sheets draped over the bed, old motel sheets, moth-holed and stained. On top of the sheets lay Wednesday, perfectly still.
He was dressed in the pale suit he had been wearing when he was shot. The right side of his face was untouched, perfect, unmarred by blood. The left side of his face was a ragged98 mess, and the left shoulder and front of the suit was spattered with dark spots. His hands were at his side's. The expression on that wreck7 of a face was far from peaceful: it looked hurt-a soul-hurt, a real down-deep hurt, filled with hatred123 and anger and raw craziness. And, on some level, it looked satisfied.
Shadow imagined Mr. Jacquel's practiced hands smoothing that hatred and pain away, rebuilding a face for Wednesday with mortician's wax and makeup124, giving him a final peace and dignity that even death had denied him.
Still, the body seemed no smaller in death. And it still smelled faintly of Jack125 Daniel's.
The wind from the plains was rising: he could hear it howling around the old motel at the imaginary center of America. The candles on the windowsill guttered126 and flickered.
He could hear footsteps in the hallway. Someone knocked on a door, called "Hurry up please, it's time," and they began to shuffle127 in, heads lowered.
Town came in first, followed by Media and Mr. Nancy and Czernobog. Last of all came the fat kid: he had fresh red bruises128 on his face, and his lips were moving all the time, as if he were reciting some words to himself, but he was making no sound. Shadow found himself feeling sorry for him.
Informally, without a word being spoken, they ranged themselves about the body, each an arm's length away from the next. The atmosphere in the room was religious-deeply religious, in a way that Shadow had never previously129 experienced. There was no sound but the howling of the wind and the crackling of the candles.
"We are come together, here in this godless place," said Loki, "to pass on the body of this individual to those who will dispose of it properly according to the rites130. If anyone would like to say something, say it now."
"Not me," said Town. "I never properly met the guy. And this whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable."
Czernobog said, "These actions will have consequences. You know that? This can only be the start of it all."
The fat kid started to giggle131, a high-pitched, girlish noise. He said, "Okay. Okay, I've got it." And then, all on one note, he recited:
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon132 cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold..."
And then he broke off, his brow creasing133. He said, "Shit. I used to know the whole thing," and he rubbed his temples and made a face and was quiet.
And then they were all looking at Shadow. The wind was screaming now. He didn't know what to say. He said, "This whole thing is pitiful. Half of you killed him or had a hand in his death. Now you're giving us his body. Great. He was an irascible old fuck but I drank his mead51 and I'm still working for him. That's all."
Media said, "In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world there's a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail134 is-well, it's magic, isn't it? Perhaps it's a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That's how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate135 on that."
And Mr. Nancy cleared his throat and said, "So. I got to say it, because nobody else here will. We are at the center of this place: a land that has no time for gods, and here at the center it has less time for us than anywhere. It is a no-man's-land, a place of truce, and we observe our truces136, here. We have no choice. So. You give us the body of our friend. We accept it. You will pay for this, murder for murder, blood for blood."
Town said, "Whatever. You could save yourselves a lot of time and effort by going home and shooting yourselves in the heads. Cut out the middleman."
"Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior137 will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart."
"Leave it, old man," said Town.
"The blood-dimmed tide is loose," said the fat kid. "I think that comes next."
The wind howled.
"Okay," said Loki. "He's yours. We're done. Take the old bastard away."
He made a gesture with his fingers, and Town, Media, and the fat kid left the room. He smiled at Shadow. "Call no man happy, huh, kid?" he said. And then he, too, walked away.
"What happens now?" asked Shadow.
"Now we wrap him up," said Anansi. "And we take him away from here."
They wrapped the body in the motel sheets, wrapped it well in its impromptu138 shroud139, so there was no body to be seen, and they could carry it. The two old men walked to each end of the body, but Shadow said, "Let me see something," and he bent his knees and slipped his arms around the white-sheeted figure, pushed him up and over his shoulder. He straightened his knees, until he was standing, more or less easily. "Okay," he said. "I've got him. Let's put him into the back of the car."
Czernobog looked as if he were about to argue, but he closed his mouth. He spat on his forefinger140 and thumb and began to snuff the candles between his fingertips. Shadow could hear them fizz as he walked from the darkening room.
Wednesday was heavy, but Shadow could cope, if he walked steadily141. He had no choice. Wednesday's words were in his head with every step he took along the corridor, and he could taste the sour-sweetness of mead in the back of his throat. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil...
Mr. Nancy opened the motel lobby door for him, then hurried over and opened the back of the bus. The other four were already standing by their Humvee, watching them as if they could not wait to be off. Loki had put his driver's cap back on. The cold wind tugged at Shadow as he walked, whipped at the sheets.
He placed Wednesday down as gently as he could in the back of the bus.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Town stood there with his hand out. He was holding something.
"Here," said Mr. Town, "Mister World wanted you to have this."
It was a glass eye. There was a hairline crack down the middle of it, and a tiny chip gone from the front.
"We found it in the Masonic Hall, when we were cleaning up. Keep it for luck. God knows you'll need it."
Shadow closed his hand around the eye. He wished he could come back with something smart and sharp, but Town was already back at the Humvee, and climbing up into the car; and Shadow still couldn't think of anything clever to say.
***
They drove east. Dawn found them in Princeton, Missouri. Shadow had not slept yet.
Nancy said, "Anywhere you want us to drop you? If I were you, I'd rustle142 up some ID and head for Canada. Or Mexico."
"I'm sticking with you guys," said Shadow. "It's what Wednesday would have wanted."
"You aren't working for him anymore. He's dead. Once we drop his body off, you are free to go."
"And do what?"
"Keep out of the way, while the war is on," said Nancy. He flipped143 his turn signal, and took a left.
"Hide yourself, for a little time," said Czernobog. "Then, when this is over, you will come back to me, and I will finish the whole thing."
Shadow said, "Where are we taking the body?"
"Virginia. There's a tree," said Nancy.
"A world tree," said Czernobog with gloomy satisfaction. "We had one in my part of the world. But ours grew under the world, not above it."
"We put him at the foot of the tree," said Nancy. "We leave him there. We let you go. We drive south. There's a battle. Blood is shed. Many die. The world changes, a little."
"You don't want me at your battle? I'm pretty big. I'm good in a fight."
Nancy turned his head to Shadow and smiled-the first real smile Shadow had seen on Mr. Nancy's face since he had rescued Shadow from the Lumber144 County Jail. "Most of this battle will be fought in a place you cannot go, and you cannot touch."
"In the hearts and the minds of the people," said Czernobog. "Like at the big roundabout."
"Huh?"
"The carousel," said Mr. Nancy.
"Oh," said Shadow. "Backstage. I got it. Like the desert with the bones in."
Mr. Nancy raised his head. "Every time I figure you don't have enough sense to bring guts145 to a bear, you surprise me. Yeah, that's where the real battle will happen. Everythin' else will just be flash and thunder."
"Tell me about the vigil," said Shadow.
"Someone has to stay with the body. It's a tradition. We'll find somebody."
"He wanted me to do it."
"No," said Czernobog. "It will kill you. Bad, bad, bad idea."
"Yeah? It'll kill me? To stay with his body?"
"It's not what I'd want at my funeral," said Mr. Nancy. "When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie."
"I never saw that movie," said Czernobog.
"Of course you did. It's right at the end. It's the high school movie. All the children goin' to the prom."
Czernobog shook his head.
Shadow said, "The film's called Carrie, Mr. Czernobog. Okay, one of you tell me about the vigil."
Nancy said, "You tell him. I'm drivin'."
"I never heard of no film called Carrie. You tell him."
Nancy said, "The person on the vigil-gets tied to the tree. Just like Wednesday was. And then they hang there for nine days and nine nights. No food, no water. All alone. At the end they cut the person down, and if they lived...well, it could happen. And Wednesday will have had his vigil."
Czernobog said, "Maybe Alviss will send us one of his people. A dwarf could survive it."
"I'll do it," said Shadow.
"No," said Mr. Nancy.
"Yes," said Shadow.
The two old men were silent Then Nancy said, "Why?"
"Because it's the kind of thing a living person would do," said Shadow.
"You are crazy," said Czernobog.
"Maybe. But I'm going to hold Wednesday's vigil."
When they stopped for gas Czernobog announced he felt sick and wanted to ride in the front. Shadow didn't mind moving to the back of the bus. He could stretch out more, and sleep.
They drove on in silence. Shadow felt that he'd made a decision; something big and strange.
"Hey. Czernobog," said Mr. Nancy, after a while. "You check out the technical boy back at the motel? He was not happy. He's been screwin' with something that screwed him right back. That's the biggest trouble with the new kids-they figure they know every thin', and you can't teach them nothin' but the hard way."
"Good," said Czernobog.
Shadow was stretched out full length on the seat in the back. He felt like two people, or more than two. There was part of him that felt gently exhilarated: he had done something. He had moved. It wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't wanted to live, but he did want to live, and that made all the difference. He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world; and he wondered if Laura would appreciate the joke.
There was another part of him-maybe it was Mike Ainsel, he thought, vanished off into nothing at the press of a button in the Lakeside Police Department-who was still trying to figure it all out, trying to see the big picture..
"Hidden Indians," he said out loud.
"What?" came Czernobog's irritated croak146 from the front seat.
"The pictures you'd get to color in as kids. 'Can you see the hidden Indians in this picture? There are ten Indians in this picture, can you find them all?' And at first glance you could only see the waterfall and the rocks and the trees, then you see that if you just tip the picture on its side that shadow is an Indian..." He yawned.
"Sleep," suggested Czernobog.
"But the big picture," said Shadow. Then he slept, and dreamed of hidden indians.
***
The tree was in Virginia. It was a long way away from anywhere, on the back of an old farm. To get to the farm they had had to drive for almost an hour south from Blacksburg, to drive roads with names like Pennywinkle Branch and Rooster Spur. They got turned around twice and Mr. Nancy and Czernobog both lost their tempers with Shadow and with each other.
They stopped to get directions at a tiny general store, set at the bottom of the hill in the place where the road forked. An old man came out of the back of the store and stared at them: he wore Oshkosh B'Gosh denim147 overalls148 and nothing else, not even shoes. Czernobog selected a pickled hog's foot from a jar on the counter and went outside to eat it on the deck, while the man in the overalls drew Mr. Nancy maps on the back of napkins, marking off turnings and local landmarks149. They set off once more, with Mr. Nancy driving, and they were there in ten minutes. A sign on the gate said ASH.
Shadow got out of the bus and opened the gate. The bus drove through, jolting150 through the meadowland. Shadow closed the gate. He walked a little behind the bus, stretching his legs, jogging when the bus got too far in front of him, enjoying the sensation of moving his body.
He had lost all sense of time on the drive from Kansas. Had they been driving for two days? Three days? He did not know.
The body in the back of the bus did not seem to be rotting. He could smell it-a faint odor of Jack Daniel's, overlaid with something that might have been sour honey. But the smell was not unpleasant. From time to time he would take out the glass eye from his pocket and look at it: it was shattered deep inside, fractured from what he imagined was the impact of a bullet, but apart from a chip to one side of the iris151 the surface was unmarred. Shadow would run it through his hands, palming it, rolling it, pushing it along with his fingers. It was a ghastly souvenir, but oddly comforting: and he suspected that it would have amused Wednesday to know that his eye had wound up in Shadow's pocket.
The farmhouse152 was dark and shut up. The meadows were overgrown and seemed abandoned. The farm roof was crumbling153 at the back; it was covered in black plastic sheeting. They jolted154 over a ridge155 and Shadow saw the tree.
It was silver-gray and it was higher than the farmhouse. It was the most beautiful tree Shadow had ever seen: spectral156 and yet utterly157 real and almost perfectly symmetrical. It also looked instantly familiar: he wondered if he had dreamed it, then realized that no, he had seen it before, or a representation of it, many times. It was Wednesday's silver tie pin.
The VW bus jolted and bumped across the meadow, and came to a stop about twenty feet from the trunk of the tree. There were three women standing by the tree. At first glance Shadow thought that they were the Zorya, but no, they were three women he did not know. They looked tired and bored, as if they had been standing there for a long time. Each of them held a wooden ladder. The biggest also carried a brown sack. They looked like a set of Russian dolls: a tall one-she was Shadow's height, or even taller-a middle-sized one, and a woman so short and hunched158 that at first glance Shadow wrongly supposed her to be a child. They looked so much alike that Shadow was certain that the women must be sisters.
The smallest of the women dropped to a curtsy when the bus drew up. The other two just stared. They were sharing a cigarette, and they smoked it down to the filter before one of them stubbed it out against a root.
Czernobog opened the back of the bus and the biggest of the women pushed past him, and, as easily as if it were a sack of flour, she lifted Wednesday's body out of the back and carried it to the tree. She laid it in front of the tree, about ten feet from the trunk. She and her sisters unwrapped Wednesday's body. He looked worse by daylight than he had by candlelight in the motel room, and after one quick glance Shadow looked away. The women arranged his clothes, tidied his suit, then placed him at the corner of the sheet and wound it around him once more.
Then the women came over to Shadow.
-You are the one? the biggest of them asked.
-The one who will mourn the All-Father? asked the middle-sized one.
-You have chosen to take the vigil? asked the smallest.
Shadow nodded. Afterward159, he was unable to remember whether he had actually heard their voices. Perhaps he had simply understood what they had meant from their looks and their eyes.
Mr. Nancy, who had gone back to the house to use the bathroom, came walking back to the tree. He was smoking a cigarillo. He looked thoughtful.
"Shadow," he called. "You really don't have to do this. We can find somebody more suited."
"I'm doing it," said Shadow, simply.
"And if you die?" asked Mr. Nancy. "If it kills you?"
"Then," said Shadow, "it kills me."
Mr. Nancy flicked160 his cigarillo into the meadow, angrily. "I said you had shit for brains, and you still have shit for brains. Can't see when somebody's tryin' to give you an out?"
"I'm sorry," said Shadow. He didn't say anything else. Nancy walked back to the bus.
Czernobog walked over to Shadow. He did not look pleased. "You must come through this alive," he said. "Come through this safely for me." And then he tapped his knuckle161 gently against Shadow's forehead and said, "Bam!" He squeezed Shadow's shoulder, patted his arm, and went to join Mr. Nancy.
The biggest woman, whose name seemed to be Urtha or Urder-Shadow could not repeat it back to. her to her satisfaction-told him, in pantomime, to take off the clothes.
"All of them?"
The big woman shrugged. Shadow stripped to his briefs and T-shirt. The women propped162 the ladders against the tree. One of the ladders-it was painted by hand, with little flowers and leaves twining up the struts-they pointed out to him.
He climbed the nine steps. Then, at their urging, he stepped onto a low branch.
The middle woman tipped out the contents of the sack onto the meadow-grass. It was filled with a tangle163 of thin ropes, brown with age and dirt, and the woman began to sort them out into lengths, and to lay them carefully on the ground beside Wednesday's body.
They climbed their own ladders now, and they began to knot the ropes, intricate and elegant knots, and they wrapped the ropes first about the tree, and then about Shadow. Unembarrassed, like midwives or nurses or those who lay out corpses164, they removed his T-shirt and briefs, then they bound him, never tightly, but firmly and finally. He was amazed at how comfortably the ropes and the knots bore his weight. The ropes went under his arms, between his legs, around his waist, his ankles, his chest, binding165 him to the tree.
The final rope was tied, loosely, about his neck. It was, initially166, uncomfortable, but his weight was well distributed, and none of the ropes cut his flesh.
His feet were five feet above the ground. The tree was leafless and huge, its branches black against the gray sky, its bark a smooth silvery gray.
They took the ladders away. There was a moment of panic as all his weight was taken by the ropes, and he dropped a few inches. Still, he made no sound.
The women placed the body, wrapped in its motel-sheet shroud, at the foot of the tree, and they left him there.
They left him there alone.
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1
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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2
flake
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| v.使成薄片；雪片般落下；n.薄片 | |
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3
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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4
bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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5
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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6
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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7
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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8
wrecking
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| 破坏 | |
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9
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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10
hawked
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| 通过叫卖主动兜售（hawk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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11
massaging
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的现在分词 ) | |
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12
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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13
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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14
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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15
incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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16
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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17
dwarfs
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| n.侏儒，矮子（dwarf的复数形式）vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的第三人称单数形式） | |
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18
dwarf
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| n.矮子，侏儒，矮小的动植物；vt.使…矮小 | |
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19
mightiest
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| adj.趾高气扬( mighty的最高级 )；巨大的；强有力的；浩瀚的 | |
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20
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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21
erased
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| v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除 | |
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22
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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23
paperback
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| n.平装本，简装本 | |
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24
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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25
lure
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| n.吸引人的东西，诱惑物；vt.引诱，吸引 | |
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26
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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27
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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29
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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30
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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31
crunched
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| v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的过去式和过去分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄 | |
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32
crunch
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| n.关键时刻；艰难局面；v.发出碎裂声 | |
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33
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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34
ketchup
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| n.蕃茄酱，蕃茄沙司 | |
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35
pussy
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| n.(儿语)小猫，猫咪 | |
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36
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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37
rib
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| n.肋骨，肋状物 | |
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38
hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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39
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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40
geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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41
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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42
plaque
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| n.饰板，匾，(医)血小板 | |
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43
influx
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| n.流入，注入 | |
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44
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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45
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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46
bracelet
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| n.手镯，臂镯 | |
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47
meandered
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| （指溪流、河流等）蜿蜒而流( meander的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
adept
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| adj.老练的，精通的 | |
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49
leavened
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| adj.加酵母的v.使（面团）发酵( leaven的过去式和过去分词 )；在…中掺入改变的因素 | |
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50
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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51
mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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52
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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53
gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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54
mimicked
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| v.（尤指为了逗乐而）模仿( mimic的过去式和过去分词 )；酷似 | |
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55
curtly
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| adv.简短地 | |
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56
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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57
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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58
reassurance
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| n.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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59
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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60
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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61
demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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62
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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63
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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64
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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65
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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66
mildew
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| n.发霉；v.（使）发霉 | |
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67
fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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68
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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69
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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70
tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
gusted
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| n. 突然一阵 n. 风味 vi. 猛吹 | |
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72
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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73
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
ambled
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| v.（马）缓行( amble的过去式和过去分词 )；从容地走，漫步 | |
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75
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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76
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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77
chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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78
pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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79
dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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80
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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81
symbolizes
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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83
horrifying
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| a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的 | |
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84
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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85
jutted
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| v.（使）突出( jut的过去式和过去分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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86
sputtering
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| n.反应溅射法；飞溅；阴极真空喷镀；喷射v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的现在分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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87
flaring
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| a.火焰摇曳的，过份艳丽的 | |
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88
sputtered
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| v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的过去式和过去分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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89
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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90
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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91
poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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92
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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93
spurted
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| （液体，火焰等）喷出，（使）涌出( spurt的过去式和过去分词 )； （短暂地）加速前进，冲刺 | |
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94
slurped
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| v.啜食( slurp的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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95
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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96
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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97
bragged
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| v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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98
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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99
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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100
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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101
scuff
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| v. 拖着脚走；磨损 | |
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102
evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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103
primly
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| adv.循规蹈矩地，整洁地 | |
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104
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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105
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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106
frisbee
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| n.飞盘(塑料玩具) | |
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107
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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108
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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109
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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110
bellow
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| v.吼叫，怒吼；大声发出，大声喝道 | |
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111
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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112
crease
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| n.折缝，褶痕，皱褶；v.(使)起皱 | |
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113
warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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114
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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115
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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116
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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117
metaphors
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| 隐喻( metaphor的名词复数 ) | |
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118
troublemaker
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| n.惹是生非者，闹事者，捣乱者 | |
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119
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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120
stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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121
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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122
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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123
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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124
makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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125
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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126
guttered
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| vt.形成沟或槽于…（gutter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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127
shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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128
bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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129
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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130
rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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131
giggle
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| n.痴笑，咯咯地笑；v.咯咯地笑着说 | |
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132
falcon
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| n.隼，猎鹰 | |
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133
creasing
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的现在分词 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹； 挑檐 | |
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134
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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135
meditate
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| v.想，考虑，（尤指宗教上的）沉思，冥想 | |
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136
truces
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| 休战( truce的名词复数 )； 停战（协定）； 停止争辩（的协议）； 中止 | |
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137
warrior
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| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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138
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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139
shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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140
forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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141
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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142
rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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143
flipped
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| 轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥 | |
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144
lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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145
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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146
croak
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| vi.嘎嘎叫，发牢骚 | |
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147
denim
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| n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤 | |
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148
overalls
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| n.（复）工装裤；长罩衣 | |
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149
landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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150
jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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151
iris
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| n.虹膜，彩虹 | |
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152
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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153
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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154
jolted
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| （使）摇动， （使）震惊( jolt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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155
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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156
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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157
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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158
hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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159
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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160
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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161
knuckle
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| n.指节；vi.开始努力工作；屈服，认输 | |
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162
propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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163
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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164
corpses
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| n.死尸，尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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165
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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166
initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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