American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

  “It’ll be fine. Take a right. Now!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Since she came back from the dead?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He put a hand down to push himself to his feet, and found himself touching what appeared to be a thighbone with the palm of his hand, and he was . . .

  . . . standing in the daylight, smoking a cigarette, and looking at his watch. There were cars all around him, some empty, some not. He was wishing he had not had that last cup of coffee, for he dearly needed a piss, and it was starting to become uncomfortable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  A woman’s voice on the phone. “Yes?”

  “This is Mister Town, for Mister World.”

  “Hold please. I’ll see if he’s available.”

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

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

  “How?”

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

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

  “Told ’em it was an optical illusion.”

  “They buy it?”

  “Probably.”

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

  “They’ll be far away by now.”

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

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

  “Trouble?”

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

  “You need me to do anything?”

  “Not yet. I’ll growl at some of them, stroke others. You know the routine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Carry on, Town.”

  The connection is broken.

  Town thinks he should have had a S.W.A.T. team to pick off that fucking Winnebago, or land mines on the road, or a tactical friggin’ nukuler device, that would have showed those bastards they meant business. It was like Mr. World had once said to him, We are writing the future in Letters of Fire and Mr. Town thinks that Jesus Christ, if he doesn’t piss now he’ll lose a kidney, it’ll just burst, and it was like his pop had said when they were on long journeys, when Town was a kid, out on the interstate, his pop would always say, “My back teeth are afloat,” and Mr. Town could hear that voice even now, that sharp Yankee accent saying “I got to take a leak soon. My back teeth are afloat” . . .

  . . . and it was then that Shadow felt a hand opening his own hand, prising it open one finger at a time, off the thighbone it was clutching. He no longer needed to urinate; that was someone else. He was standing under the stars on a glassy rock plain.

  Wednesday made the signal for silence again. Then he began to walk, and Shadow followed.

  There was a creak from the mechanical spider, and Wednesday froze. Shadow stopped and waited with him. Green lights flickered and ran up and along its side in clusters. Shadow tried not to breathe too loudly.

  He thought about what had just happened. It had been like looking through a window into someone else’s mind. And then he thought, Mr. World. It was me who thought his voice sounded familiar. That was my thought, not Town’s. That
was why that seemed so strange. He tried to identify the voice in his mind, to put it into the category in which it belonged, but it eluded him.

  It’ll come to me, thought Shadow. Sooner or later, it’ll come to me.

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

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

  “Where are we?”

  “Behind the scenes,” said Wednesday.

  “Sorry?”

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

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

  “Yes.”

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

  “Do they know where we’re headed?”

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

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

  “What was that spider thing?”

  “A pattern manifestation. A search engine.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

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

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

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

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

  Wednesday only grunted.

  Each hill they came to was harder to climb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Mike Ainsel,” said Shadow.

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

  “Shadow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You said a mouthful,” said Johnny Chapman.

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

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

  Wednesday said, “All the alternatives are worse.”

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

  “I’m working,” said Shadow.

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

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