American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

  “They suspected my noncustodial asshole brother-in-law, his father. Who was asshole enough to have stolen him away. Probably did. But this is in a little town in the North Woods. Lovely, sweet, pretty little town where no one ever locks their doors.” She sighed, shook her head. She held her coffee cup in both hands. “Are you sure you aren’t part Indian?”

  “Not that I know. It’s possible. I don’t know much about my father. I guess my ma would have told me if he was Native American, though. Maybe.”

  Again the mouth twist. Sam gave up halfway through her chocolate cream pie: the slice was half the size of her head. She pushed the plate across the table to Shadow. “You want?” He smiled, said, “Sure,” and finished it off.

  The waitress handed them the check, and Shadow paid.

  “Thanks,” said Sam.

  It was getting colder now. The car coughed a couple of times before it started. Shadow drove back onto the road, and kept going south. “You ever read a guy named Herodotus?” he asked.

  “Jesus. What?”

  “Herodotus. You ever read his Histories?”

  “You know,” she said, dreamily, “I don’t get it. I don’t get how you talk, or the words you use or anything. One moment you’re a big dumb guy, the next you’re reading my friggin’ mind, and the next we’re talking about Herodotus. So no. I have not read Herodotus. I’ve heard about him. Maybe on NPR. Isn’t he the one they call the father of lies?”

  “I thought that was the Devil.”

  “Yeah, him too. But they were talking about Herodotus saying there were giant ants and gryphons guarding gold mines, and how he made this stuff up.”

  “I don’t think so. He wrote what he’d been told. It’s like, he’s writing these histories. And they’re mostly pretty good histories. Loads of weird little details—like, did you know, in Egypt, if a particularly beautiful girl or the wife of a lord or whatever died, they wouldn’t send her to the embalmer for three days? They’d let her body spoil in the heat first.”

  “Why? Oh, hold on. Okay, I think I know why. Oh, that’s disgusting.”

  “And there’re battles in there, all sorts of normal things. And then there are the gods. Some guy is running back to report on the outcome of a battle and he’s running and running, and he sees Pan in a glade. And Pan says, ‘Tell them to build me a temple here.’ So he says okay, and runs the rest of the way back. And he reports the battle news, and then says, ‘Oh, and by the way, Pan wants you to build him a temple.’ It’s really matter-of-fact, you know?”

  “So there are stories with gods in them. What are you trying to say? That these guys had hallucinations?”

  “No,” said Shadow. “That’s not it.”

  She chewed a hangnail. “I read some book about brains,” she said. “My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.”

  “I like my theory better,” said Shadow.

  “What’s your theory?”

  “That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.”

  “Oh.” Silence: only the rattling of the car, the roar of the engine, the growling of the muffler—which did not sound healthy. Then, “Do you think they’re still there?”

  “Where?”

  “Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked you’d see the gods?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think people’d know that was what they’d seen.”

  “I bet it’s like space aliens,” she said. “These days, people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain.”

  “I don’t think the gods ever gave rectal probes,” said Shadow. “And they didn’t mutilate cattle themselves. They got people to do it for them.”

  She chuckled. They drove in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, “Hey, that reminds me of my favorite god story, from Comparative Religion One-oh-one. You want to hear it?”

  “Sure,” said Shadow.

  “Okay. This is one about Odin. The Norse god. You know? There was some Viking king on a Viking ship—this was back in the Viking times, obviously—and they were becalmed, so he says he’ll sacrifice one of his men to Odin if Odin will send them a wind and get them to land. Okay. The wind comes up, and they get to land. So, on land, they draw lots to figure out who gets sacrificed—and it’s the king himself. Well, he’s not happy about this, but they figure out that they can hang him in effigy and not hurt him. They take a calf’s intestines and loop them loosely around the guy’s neck, and they tie the other end to a thin branch, and they take a reed instead of a spear and poke him with it and go ‘Okay, you’ve been hung’—hanged?—whatever—‘you’ve been sacrificed to Odin.’ “

  The road curved: Another Town (pop. 300), home of the runner-up to the state under-12s speed-skating championship, two huge giant-economy-sized funeral parlors on each side of the road, and how many funeral parlors do you need, Shadow wondered, when you only have three hundred people . . . ?

  “Okay. As soon as they say Odin’s name, the reed transforms into a spear and stabs the guy in the side, the calf intestines become a thick rope, the branch becomes the bough of a tree, and the tree pulls up, and the ground drops away, and the king is left hanging there to die with a wound in his side and his face going black. End of story. White people have some fucked-up gods, Mister Shadow.”

  “Yes,” said Shadow. “You’re not white?”

  “I’m Cherokee,” she said.

  “Full-blooded?”

  “Nope. Only four pints. My mom was white. My dad was a real reservation Indian. He came out this way, eventually married my mom, had me, then when they split he went back to Oklahoma.”

  “He went back to the reservation?”

  “No. He borrowed money and opened a Taco Bell knock-off called Taco Bill’s. He does okay. He doesn’t like me. Says I’m half-breed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s a jerk. I’m proud of my Indian blood. It helps pay my college tuition. Hell, one day it’ll probably help get me a job, if I can’t sell my bronzes.”

  “There’s always that,” said Shadow.

  He stopped in El Paso, Illinois (pop. 2500), to let Sam out at a down-at-heel house on the edge of the town. A large wire-framed model of a reindeer covered in twinkling lights stood in the front yard. “You want to come in?” she asked. “My aunt would give you a coffee.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve got to keep moving.”

  She smiled at him, looking suddenly, and for the first time, vulnerable. She patted him on the arm. “You’re fucked up, Mister. But you’re cool.”

  “I believe that’s what they call the human condition,” said Shadow. “Thanks for the company.”

  “No problem,” she said. “If you see any gods on the road to Cairo, you make sure and say hi to them from me.” She got out of the car, and went to the door of the house. She pressed a doorbell and stood there at the door without looking back. Shadow waited until the door was opened and she was safely inside before he put his foot down and headed back for the highway. He passed through Normal, and Bloomington, and Lawndale.

  At eleven that night Shadow started shaking. He was just entering Middletown. He decided he needed sleep, or just not to drive any longer, and he pulled up in front of a Night’s Inn, paid thirty-five dollars, cash in advance, for his ground-floor room, and went into the bathroom. A sad cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the tiled floor. Shadow took a towel and cleaned off the inside of the tub, then ran the water. In the main room he took off his clothes and put them on the bed. The bruises on his torso were dark and vivid. He sat in the tub, watching the color of the bathwater change. Then, naked, he washed his socks and briefs and T-shirt in the basin, wrung them out, and hung them on the clothesline that
pulled out from the wall above the bathtub. He left the cockroach where it was, out of respect for the dead.

  Shadow climbed into the bed. He wondered about watching an adult movie, but the pay-per-view device by the phone needed a credit card, and it was too risky. Then again, he was not convinced that it would make him feel any better to watch other people have sex that he wasn’t having. He turned on the TV for company, pressed the sleep button on the remote three times, which would make the TV set turn itself off automatically in forty-five minutes. It was a quarter to midnight.

  The picture was motel-fuzzy, and the colors swam across the screen. He flipped from late show to late show in the televisual wasteland, unable to focus. Someone was demonstrating something that did something in the kitchen, and replaced a dozen other kitchen utensils, none of which Shadow possessed. Flip. A man in a suit explained that these were the end times and that Jesus—a four- or five-syllable word the way the man pronounced it—would make Shadow’s business prosper and thrive if Shadow sent him money. Flip. An episode of M*A*S*H ended and a Dick Van Dyke Show began.

  Shadow hadn’t seen an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show for years, but there was something comforting about the 1965 black-and-white world it painted, and he put the channel changer down beside the bed, and turned off the bedside light. He watched the show, eyes slowly closing, aware that something was odd. He had not seen many episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, so he was not surprised that it was an episode he could not remember seeing before. What he found strange was the tone.

  All the regulars were concerned about Rob’s drinking. He was missing days at work. They went to his home: he had locked himself in the bedroom, and had to be persuaded to come out. He was staggering drunk, but still pretty funny. His friends, played by Maury Amsterdam and Rose Marie, left after getting some good gags in. Then, when Rob’s wife went to remonstrate with him, he hit her, hard, in the face. She sat down on the floor and began to cry, not in that famous Mary Tyler Moore wail, but in small, helpless sobs, hugging herself and whispering, “Don’t hit me, please, I’ll do anything, just don’t hit me anymore.”

  “What the fuck is this?” said Shadow, aloud.

  The picture dissolved into phosphor-dot fuzz. When it came back, The Dick Van Dyke Show had, inexplicably, become I Love Lucy. Lucy was trying to persuade Ricky to let her replace their old icebox with a new refrigerator. When he left, however, she walked over to the couch and sat down, crossing her ankles, resting her hands in her lap, and staring out patiently in black and white across the years.

  “Shadow?” she said. “We need to talk.”

  Shadow said nothing. She opened her purse and took out a cigarette, lit it with an expensive silver lighter, put the lighter away. “I’m talking to you,” she said. “Well?”

  “This is crazy,” said Shadow.

  “Like the rest of your life is sane? Give me a fucking break.”

  “Whatever. Lucille Ball talking to me from the TV is weirder by several orders of magnitude than anything that’s happened to me so far,” said Shadow.

  “It’s not Lucille Ball. It’s Lucy Ricardo. And you know something—I’m not even her. It’s just an easy way to look, given the context. That’s all.” She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

  “Who are you?” asked Shadow.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good question. I’m the idiot box. I’m the TV. I’m the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I’m the boob tube. I’m the little shrine the family gathers to adore.”

  “You’re the television? Or someone in the television?”

  “The TV’s the altar. I’m what people are sacrificing to.”

  “What do they sacrifice?” asked Shadow.

  “Their time, mostly,” said Lucy. “Sometimes each other.” She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

  “You’re a god?” said Shadow.

  Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. “You could say that,” she said.

  “Sam says hi,” said Shadow.

  “What? Who’s Sam? What are you talking about?”

  Shadow looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past twelve. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “So, Lucy-on-the-TV. What do we need to talk about? Too many people have needed to talk recently. Normally it ends with someone hitting me.”

  The camera moved in for a close-up: Lucy looked concerned, her lips pursed. “I hate that. I hate that people were hurting you, Shadow. I’d never do that, honey. No, I want to offer you a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Working for me. I heard about the trouble you had with the Spookshow, and I was impressed with how you dealt with it. Efficient, no-nonsense, effective. Who’d’ve thought you had it in you? They are really pissed.”

  “Really?”

  “They underestimated you, sweetheart. Not a mistake I’m going to make. I want you in my camp.” She stood up, walked toward the camera. “Look at it like this, Shadow: we are the coming thing. We’re shopping malls—your friends are crappy roadside attractions. Hell, we’re on-line malls, while your friends are sitting by the side of the highway selling homegrown produce from a cart. No—they aren’t even fruit sellers. Buggy-whip vendors. Whalebone-corset repairers. We are now and tomorrow. Your friends aren’t even yesterday anymore.”

  It was a strangely familiar speech. Shadow asked, “Did you ever meet a fat kid in a limo?”

  She spread her hands and rolled her eyes comically, funny Lucy Ricardo washing her hands of a disaster. “The technical boy? You met the technical boy? Look, he’s a good kid. He’s one of us. He’s just not good with people he doesn’t know. When you’re working for us, you’ll see how amazing he is.”

  “And if I don’t want to work for you, I-Love-Lucy?”

  There was a knock on the door of Lucy’s apartment, and Ricky’s voice could be heard offstage, asking Loo-cy what was keepin’ her so long, they was due down at the club in the next scene; a flash of irritation touched Lucy’s cartoonish face. “Hell,” she said. “Look, whatever the old guys are paying you, I can pay you double. Treble. A hundred times. Whatever they’re giving you, I can give you so much more.” She smiled, a perfect, roguish, Lucy Ricardo smile. “You name it, honey. What do you need?” She began to undo the buttons of her blouse. “Hey,” she said. “You ever wanted to see Lucy’s tits?”

  The screen went black. The sleep function had kicked in and the set turned itself off. Shadow looked at his watch: it was half past midnight. “Not really,” said Shadow.

  He rolled over in bed and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that the reason he liked Wednesday and Mr. Nancy and the rest of them better than their opposition was pretty straightforward: they might be dirty, and cheap, and their food might taste like shit, but at least they didn’t speak in clichés.

  And he guessed he would take a roadside attraction, no matter how cheap, how crooked, or how sad, over a shopping mall, any day.

  Morning found Shadow back on the road, driving through a gently undulating brown landscape of winter grass and leafless trees. The last of the snow had vanished. He filled up the tank of the piece of shit in a town that was home to the runner-up of the state women’s under 16s three-hundred-meter dash, and, hoping that the dirt wasn’t all that was holding it together, he ran the car through the gas station car wash. He was surprised to discover that the car was, when clean— against all reason— white, and pretty much free of rust. He drove on.

  The sky was impossibly blue, and white industrial smoke rising from factory chimneys was frozen in the sky, like a photograph. A hawk launched itself from a dead tree and flew toward him, wings strobing in the sunlight like a series of stop-motion photographs.

  At some point he found himself heading into East St. Louis. He attempted to avoid it and instead found himself driving through what appeared to be a red-light district in an industrial park. Eighteen-wheelers and huge rigs were parked outside buildings that looked li
ke temporary warehouses, that claimed to be 24 HOUR NITE CLUBs and, in one case, THE BEST PEAP SHOW IN TOWN. Shadow shook his head, and drove on. Laura had loved to dance, clothed or naked (and, on several memorable evenings, moving from one state to the other), and he had loved to watch her.

  Lunch was a sandwich and a can of Coke in a town called Red Bud.

  He passed a valley filled with the wreckage of thousands of yellow bulldozers, tractors, and Caterpillars. He wondered if this was the bulldozers’ graveyard, where the bulldozers went to die.

  He drove past the Pop-a-Top Lounge. He drove through Chester (“Home of Popeye”). He noticed that the houses had started to gain pillars out front, that even the shabbiest, thinnest house now had its white pillars, proclaiming it, in someone’s eyes, a mansion. He drove over a big, muddy river, and laughed out loud when he saw that the name of it, according to the sign, was the Big Muddy River. He saw a covering of brown kudzu over three winter-dead trees, twisting them into strange, almost human shapes: they could have been witches, three bent old crones ready to reveal his fortune.

  He drove alongside the Mississippi. Shadow had never seen the Nile, but there was a blinding afternoon sun burning on the wide brown river that made him think of the muddy expanse of the Nile: not the Nile as it is now, but as it was long ago, flowing like an artery through the papyrus marshes, home to cobra and jackal and wild cow . . .

  A road sign pointed to Thebes.

  The road was built up about twelve feet, so he was driving above the marshes. Clumps and clusters of birds in flight were questing back and forth, black dots against the blue sky, moving in some desperate Brownian motion.

  In the late afternoon the sun began to lower, gilding the world in elf-light, a thick warm custardy light that made the world feel unearthly and more than real, and it was in this light that Shadow passed the sign telling him he was Now Entering Historical Cairo. He drove under a bridge and found himself in a small port town. The imposing structures of the Cairo courthouse and the even more imposing customs house looked like enormous freshly baked cookies in the syrupy gold of the light at the end of the day.