Chapter 13

   Hey, old friend.
   What do you say, old friend?
   Make it okay, old friend,
   Give an old friendship a break.
   Why so grim?
   We’re going on forever.
   You, me, him–
   Too many lives are at stake…

Stephen Sondheim, “Old Friends”


   It was Saturday morning. Shadow answered the door.
   Marguerite Olsen was there. She did hot come in, just stood in the sunlight, looking serious. “Mister Ainsel…?”
   “Mike, please,” said Shadow.
   “Mike, yes. Would you like to come over for dinner tonight? About six, eh? It won’t be anything exciting, just spaghetti and meatballs.”
   “I like spaghetti and meatballs.”
   “Obviously, if you have any other plans…”
   “I have no other plans.”
   “Six o’clock.”
   “Should I bring flowers?”
   “If you must. But this is a social gesture. Not a romantic one.”
   He showered. He went for a short walk, down to the bridge and back. The sun was up, a tarnished quarter in the sky, and he was sweating in his coat by the time he got home. He drove the 4-Runner down to Dave’s Finest Food and bought a bottle of wine. It was a twenty-dollar bottle, which seemed to Shadow like some kind of guarantee of quality. He didn’t know wines, so he bought a Californian cabernet, because Shadow had once seen a bumper-sticker, back when he was younger and people still had bumper stickers on their cars, which said LIFE is A CABERNET and it had made him laugh.
   He bought a plant in a pot as a gift. Green leaves, no flowers. Nothing remotely romantic about that.
   He bought a carton of milk, which he would never drink, and a selection of fruit, which he would never eat.
   Then he drove over to Mabel’s and bought a single lunchtime pasty. Mabel’s face lit up when she saw him. “Did Hinzelmann catch up with you?”
   “I didn’t know he was looking for me.”
   “Yup. Wants to take you ice fishing. And Chad Mulligan wanted to know if I’d seen you around. His cousin’s here from out of state. His second cousin, what we used to call kissing cousins. Such a sweetheart. You’ll love her,” and she dropped the pasty into a brown paper bag, twisted the top over to keep the pasty warm.
   Shadow drove the long way home, eating one-handed, the pastry crumbs tumbling onto his jeans and onto the floor of the 4-Runner. He passed the library on the south shore of the lake. It was a black-and-white town in the ice and the snow. Spring seemed unimaginably far away: the klunker would always sit on the ice, with the ice-fishing shelters and the pickup trucks and the snowmobile tracks.
   He reached his apartment, parked, walked up the drive, up the wooden steps to his apartment. The goldfinches and nuthatches on the birdfeeder hardly gave him a glance. He went inside. He watered the plant, wondered whether or not to put the wine into the refrigerator.
   There was a lot of time to kill until six. Shadow wished he could comfortably watch television once more. He wanted to be entertained, not to have to think, just to sit and let the sounds and the light wash over him. Do you want to see Lucy’s tits? something with a Lucy voice whispered in his memory, and he shook his head, although there was no one there to see him.
   He was nervous, he realized. This would be his first real social interaction with other people-normal people, not people in jail, not gods or culture heroes or dreams-since he was first arrested, over three years ago. He would have to make conversation, as Mike Ainsel.
   He checked his watch. It was two-thirty. Marguerite Olsen had told him to be there at six. Did she mean six exactly? Should he be there a little early? A little late? He decided, eventually, to walk next door at five past six.
   Shadow’s telephone rang.
   “Yeah?” he said.
   “That’s no way to answer the phone,” growled Wednesday.
   “When I get my telephone connected I’ll answer it politely,” said Shadow. “Can I help you?”
   “I don’t know,” said Wednesday. There was a pause. Then he said, “Organizing gods is like herding cats into straight lines. They don’t take naturally to it.” There was a deadness, and an exhaustion, in Wednesday’s voice that Shadow had never heard before.
   “What’s wrong?”
   “It’s hard. It’s too fucking hard. I don’t know if this is going to work. We might as well cut our throats. Just cut our own throats.”
   “You mustn’t talk like that.”
   “Yeah. Right.”
   “Well, if you do cut your throat,” said Shadow, trying to jolly Wednesday out of his darkness, “maybe it wouldn’t even hurt.”
   “It would hurt. Even for my kind, pain still hurts. If you move and act in the material world, then the material world acts on you. Pain hurts, just as greed intoxicates and lust burns. We may not die easy and we sure as hell don’t die well, but we can die. If we’re still loved and remembered, something else a whole lot like us comes along and takes our place and the whole damn thing starts all over again. And if we’re forgotten, we’re done.”
   Shadow did not know what to say. He said, “So where are you calling from?”
   “None of your goddamn business.”
   “Are you drunk?”
   “Not yet. I just keep thinking about Thor. You never knew him. Big guy, like you. Good-hearted. Not bright, but he’d give you the goddamned shirt off his back if you asked him. And he killed himself. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off in Philadelphia in 1932. What kind of a way is that for a god to die?”
   “I’m sorry.”
   “You don’t give two fucking cents, son. He was a whole lot like you. Big and dumb.” Wednesday stopped talking. He coughed.
   “What’s wrong?” said Shadow, for the second time.
   “They got in touch.”
   “Who did?”
   “The opposition.”
   “And?”
   “They want to discuss a truce. Peace talks. Live and let fucking live.”
   “So what happens now?”
   “Now I go and drink bad coffee with the modern assholes in a Kansas City Masonic Hall.”
   “Okay. You going to pick me up, or shall I meet you somewhere?”
   “You stay there and you keep your head down. Don’t get into any trouble. You hear me?”
   “But-”
   There was a click, and the line went dead and stayed dead. There was no dial tone, but then, there never had been.
   Nothing but time to kill. The conversation with Wednesday had left Shadow with a sense of disquiet. He got up, intending to go for a walk, but already the light was fading, and he sat back down again.
   Shadow picked up the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council 1872-1884 and turned the pages, his eyes scanning the tiny print, not actually reading it, occasionally stopping to scan something that caught his eye.
   In July 1874, Shadow learned, the city council was concerned about the number of itinerant foreign loggers arriving in the town. An opera house was to be built on the corner of Third Street and Broadway. It was to be expected that the nuisances attendant to the damming of the Mill-Creek would abate once the mill-pond had become a lake. The council authorized the payment of seventy dollars to Mr. Samuel Samuels, and of eighty-five dollars to Mr. Heikki Salminen, in compensation for their land and for the expenses incurred in moving their domiciles out of the area to be flooded.
   It had never occurred to Shadow before that the lake was manmade. Why call a town Lakeside, when the lake had begun as a dammed mill-pond? He read on, to discover that a Mr. Hinzelmann, originally of Hildemuhlen in Bavaria, was in charge of the lake-building project, and that the city council had granted him the sum of $370 toward the project, any shortfall to be made up by public subscription. Shadow tore off a strip of a paper towel and placed it into the book as a bookmark. He could imagine Hinzelmann’s pleasure in seeing the reference to his grandfather. He wondered if the old man knew that his family had been instrumental in building the lake. Shadow flipped forward through the book, scanning for more references to the lake-building project.
   They had dedicated the lake in a ceremony in the spring of 1876, as a precursor to the town’s centennial celebrations. A vote of thanks to Mr. Hinzelmann was taken by the council.
   Shadow checked his watch. It was five-thirty. He went into the bathroom, shaved, combed his hair. He changed his clothes. Somehow the final fifteen minutes passed. He got the wine and the plant, arid he walked next door.
   The door opened as he knocked. Marguerite Olsen looked almost as nervous as he felt. She took the wine bottle and the potted plant, and said thank you. The television was on, The Wizard of Oz on video. It was still in sepia, and Dorothy was still in Kansas, sitting with her eyes closed in Professor Marvel’s wagon as the old fraud pretended to read her mind, and the twister-wind that would tear her away from her life was approaching. Leon sat in front of the screen, playing with a toy fire truck. When he saw Shadow an expression of delight touched his face; he stood up and ran, tripping over his feet in his excitement, into a back bedroom, from which he emerged a moment later triumphantly waving a quarter.
   “Watch, Mike Ainsel!” he shouted. Then closed both his hands and he pretended to take the coin into his right hand, which he opened wide. “I made it disappear, Mike Ainsel!”
   “You did,” agreed Shadow. “After we’ve eaten, if it’s okay with your mom, I’ll show you how to do it even smoother than that.”
   “Do it now if you want,” said Marguerite. “We’re still waiting for Samantha. I sent her out for sour cream. I don’t know what’s taking her so long.”
   And, as if that was her cue, footsteps sounded on the wooden deck, and somebody shouldered open the front door. Shadow did not recognize her at first, then she said, “I didn’t know if you wanted the kind with calories or the kind that tastes like wallpaper paste so I went for the kind with calories,” and he knew her then: the girl from the road to Cairo.
   “That’s fine,” said Marguerite. “Sam, this is my neighbor, Mike Ainsel. Mike, this is Samantha Black Crow, my sister.”
   I don’t know you, thought Shadow desperately. You’ve never met me before. We’re total strangers. He tried to remember how he had thought snow, how easy and light that had been: this was desperate. He put out his hand and said, “Pleased to meetcha.”
   She blinked, looked up at his face. A moment of puzzlement, then recognition entered her eyes and curved the corners of her mouth into a grin. “Hello,” she said.
   “I’ll see how the food is doing,” said Marguerite, in the taut voice of someone who burns things in kitchens if they leave them alone and unwatched even for a moment.
   Sam took off her puffy coat and her hat. “So you’re the melancholy but mysterious neighbor,” she said. “Who’da thunk it?” She kept her voice down.
   “And you,” he said, “are girl Sam. Can we talk about this later?”
   “If you promise to tell me what’s going on.”
   “Deal.”

  Leon tugged at the leg of Shadow’s pants. “Will you show me now?” he asked, and held out his quarter.
   “Okay,” said Shadow. “But if I show you, you have to remember that a master magician never tells anyone how it’s done.”
   “I promise,” said Leon, gravely. Shadow took the coin in his left hand, then moved Leon’s right hand, showing him how to appear to take the coin in his right hand while actually leaving it in Shadow’s left hand. Then he made Leon repeat the movements on his own.
   After several attempts the boy mastered the move. “Now you know half of it,” said Shadow. “The other half is this: put your attention on the place where the coin ought to be. Look at the place it’s meant to be. If you act like it’s in your right hand, no one will even look at your left hand, no matter how clumsy you are.”
   Sam watched all this with her head tipped slightly on one side, saying nothing.
   “Dinner!” called Marguerite, pushing her way in from the kitchen with a steaming bowl of spaghetti in her hands. “Leon, go wash your hands.”
   There was crusty garlic bread, thick red sauce, good spicy meatballs. Shadow complimented Marguerite on it.
   “Old family recipe,” she told him, “from the Corsican side of the family.”
   “I thought you were Native American.”
   “Dad’s Cherokee,” said Sam. “Mag’s mom’s father came from Corsica.” Sam was the only person in the room who was actually drinking the cabernet. “Dad left her when Mags was ten and he moved across town. Six months after that, I was born. Mom and Dad got married when the divorce came through. When I was ten he went away. I think he has a ten-year attention span.”
   “Well, he’s been out in Oklahoma for ten years,” said Marguerite.
   “Now, my mom’s family were European Jewish,” continued Sam, “from one of those places that used to be communist and now are just chaos. I think she liked the idea of being married to a Cherokee. Fry bread and chopped liver.” She took another sip of the red wine.
   “Sam’s mom’s a wild woman,” said Marguerite, semi-approvingly.
   “You know where she is now?” asked Sam. Shadow shook his head. “She’s in Australia. She met a guy on the Internet who lived in Hobart. When they met in the flesh she decided he was actually kind of icky. But she really liked Tasmania. So she’s living down there, with a woman’s group, teaching them to batik cloth and things like that. Isn’t that cool? At her age?”
   Shadow agreed that it was, and helped himself to more meatballs. Sam told them how all the aboriginal natives of Tasmania had been wiped out by the British, and about the human chain they made across the island to catch them which trapped only an old man and a sick boy. She told him how the thylacines-the Tasmanian tigers-had been killed by farmers, scared for their sheep, how the politicians in the 1930s noticed that the thylacines should be protected only after the last of them was dead. She finished her second glass of wine, poured her third.
   “So, Mike,” said Sam, suddenly, her cheeks reddening, “tell us about your family. What are the Ainsels like?” She was smiling, and there was mischief in that smile.
   “We’re real dull,” said Shadow. “None of us ever got as far as Tasmania. So you’re at school in Madison. What’s that like?”
   “You know,” she said. “I’m studying art history, women’s studies, and casting my own bronzes.”
   “When I grow up,” said Leon, “I’m going to do magic. Poof. Will you teach me, Mike Ainsel?”
   “Sure,” said Shadow. “If your mom doesn’t mind.”
   Sam said, “After we’ve eaten, while you’re putting Leon to bed, Mags, I think I’m going to get Mike to take me to the Buck Stops Here for an hour or so.”
   Marguerite did not shrug. Her head moved, her eyebrow raised slightly.
   “I think he’s interesting,” said Sam. “And we have lots to talk about.”
   Marguerite looked at Shadow, who busied himself in dabbing an imaginary blob of red sauce from his chin with a paper napkin. “Well, you’re grownups,” she said, in a tone of voice that implied that they weren’t, and that even if they were they shouldn’t be.
   After dinner Shadow helped Sam with the washing up-he dried-and then he did a trick for Leon, counting pennies into Leon’s palm: each time Leon opened his hand and counted them there was one less coin than he had counted in. And as for the final penny—“Are you squeezing it? Tightly?”—when Leon opened his hand he found it had transformed into a dime. Leon’s plaintive cries of “How’d you do that? Momma, how’d he do that?” followed him out into the hall.
   Sam handed him his coat. “Come on,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine.
   Outside it was cold.
   Shadow stopped in his apartment, tossed the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council into a plastic grocery bag, and brought it along. Hinzelmann might be down at the Buck, and he wanted to show him the mention of his grandfather.
   They walked down the drive side by side.
   He opened the garage door, and she started to laugh. “Omigod,” she said, when she saw the 4-Runner. “Paul Gunther’s car. You bought Paul Gunther’s car. Omigod.”
   Shadow opened the door for her. Then he went around and got in. “You know the car?”
   “When I came up here two or three years ago to stay with Mags. It was me that persuaded him to paint it purple.”
   “Oh,” said Shadow. “It’s good to have someone to blame.”
   He drove the car out onto the street. Got out and closed the garage door. Got back into the car. Sam was looking at him oddly as he got in, as if the confidence had begun to leak out of her. He put on his seat belt, and she said, “Okay. This is a stupid thing to do, isn’t it? Getting into a car with a psycho killer.”
   “I got you home safe last time,” said Shadow.
   “You killed two men,” she said. “You’re wanted by the feds. And now I find out you’re living under an assumed name next door to my sister. Unless Mike Ainsel is your real name?”
   “No,” said Shadow, and he sighed. “It’s not.” He hated saying it. It was as if he was letting go of something important, abandoning Mike Ainsel by denying him; as if he were taking his leave of a friend.
   “Did you kill those men?”
   “No.”
   “They came to my house, and said we’d been seen together. And this guy showed me photographs of you. What was his name-Mister Hat? No. Mister Town. It was like The Fugitive. But I said I hadn’t seen you.”
   “Thank you.”
   “So,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on. I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine.”
   “I don’t know any of yours,” said Shadow.
   “Well, you know that it was my idea to paint this thing purple, thus forcing Paul Gunther to become such an object of scorn and derision for several counties around that he was forced to leave town entirely. We were kind of stoned,” she admitted.
   “I doubt that bit of it’s much of a secret,” said Shadow. “Everyone in Lakeside must have known. It’s a stoner sort of purple.”
   And then she said, very quiet, very fast, “If you’re going to kill me please don’t hurt me. I shouldn’t have come here with you. I am so fucking fucking dumb. I can identify you. Jesus.”
   Shadow sighed. “I’ve never killed anybody. Really. Now I’m going to take you to the Buck,” he said. “We’ll have a drink. Or if you give the word, I’ll turn this car around and take you home. Either way, I’ll just have to hope you aren’t going to call the cops.”
   There was silence as they crossed the bridge.
   “Who did kill those men?” she asked.
   “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
   “I would.” She sounded angry now. He wondered if bringing the wine to the dinner had been a wise idea. Life was certainly not a cabernet right now.
   “It’s not easy to believe.”
   “I,” she told him, “can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.”
   “Really?”
   “I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped, out of breath.
   Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, “Okay. So if I tell you what I’ve learned you won’t think that I’m a nut.”
   “Maybe,” she said. “Try me.”
   “Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?”
   “…Maybe.”
   “And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that they all seem to think there isn’t room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely.”
   “And these gods killed those two men?”

   “No, my wife killed those two men.”
   “I thought you said your wife was dead.”
   “She is.”
   “She killed them before she died, then?”
   “After. Don’t ask.”
   She reached up a hand and flicked her hair from her forehead.
   They pulled up on Main Street, outside the Buck Stops Here. The sign over the window showed a surprised-looking stag standing on its hind legs holding a glass of beer. Shadow grabbed the bag with the book in it and got out.
   “Why would they have a war?” asked Sam. “It seems kind of redundant. What is there to win?”
   “I don’t know,” admitted Shadow.
   “It’s easier to believe in aliens than in gods,” said Sam. “Maybe Mister Town and Mister Whatever were Men in Black, only the alien kind.”
   They were standing on the sidewalk outside the Buck Stops Here and Sam stopped. She looked up at Shadow, and her breath hung on the night air like a faint cloud. She said, “Just tell me you’re one of the good guys.”
   “I can’t,” said Shadow. “I wish I could. But I’m doing my best.”
   She looked up at him, and bit her lower lip. Then she nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “I won’t turn you in. You can buy me a beer.”
   Shadow pushed the door open for her, and they were hit by a blast of heat and music. They went inside.
   Sam waved at some friends. Shadow nodded to a handful of people whose faces-although not their names-he remembered from the day he had spent searching for Alison McGovern, or who he had met in Mabel’s in the morning. Chad Mulligan was standing at the bar, with his arm around the shoulders of a small red-haired woman-the kissing cousin, Shadow figured. He wondered what she looked like, but she had her back to him. Chad’s hand raised in a mock salute when he saw Shadow. Shadow grinned, and waved back at him. Shadow looked around for Hinzelmann, but the old man did not seem to be there this evening. He spied a free table at the back and started walking toward it.
   Then somebody began to scream.
   It was a bad scream, a full-throated, seen-a-ghost hysterical scream, which silenced all conversation. Shadow looked around, certain somebody was being murdered, and then he realized that all the faces in the bar were turning toward him. Even the black cat, who slept in the window during the day, was standing up on top of the jukebox with its tail high and its back arched and was staring at Shadow.
   Time slowed.
   “Get him!” shouted a woman’s voice, parked on the verge of hysteria. “Oh for God’s sake, somebody stop him! Don’t let him get away! Please!” It was a voice he knew.
   Nobody moved. They stared at Shadow. He stared back at them.
   Chad Mulligan stepped forward, walking through the people. The small woman walked behind him warily, her eyes wide, as if she was preparing to start screaming once more. Shadow knew her. Of course he knew her.
   Chad was still holding his beer, which he put down on a nearby table. He said, “Mike.”
   Shadow said, “Chad.”
   Audrey Burton took hold of Chad’s sleeve. Her face was white, and there were tears in her eyes. “Shadow,” she said. “You bastard. You murderous evil bastard.”
   “Are you sure that you know this man, hon?” said Chad. He looked uncomfortable.
   Audrey Burton looked at him incredulously. “Are you crazy? He worked for Robbie for years. His slutty wife was my best friend. He’s wanted for murder. I had to answer questions. He’s an escaped convict.” She was way over the top, her voice trembling with suppressed hysteria, sobbing out her words like a soap actress going for a daytime Emmy. Kissing cousins, thought Shadow, unimpressed.
   Nobody in the bar said a word. Chad Mulligan looked up at Shadow. “It’s probably a mistake. I’m sure we can sort this all out,” he said. Then he said, to the bar, “It’s all fine. Nothing to worry about. We can sort this out. Everything’s fine.” Then, to Shadow, “Let’s step outside, Mike.” Quiet competence. Shadow was impressed.
   “Sure,” said Shadow. He felt a hand touch his hand, and he turned to see Sam staring at him. He smiled down at her as reassuringly as he could.
   Sam looked at Shadow, then she looked around the bar at the faces staring at them. She said to Audrey Burton, “I don’t know who you are. But. You. Are such. A cunt.” Then she went up on tiptoes and pulled Shadow down to her, and kissed him hard on the lips, pushing her mouth against his for what felt to Shadow like several minutes, and might have been as long as five seconds in real, clock-ticking time.
   It was a strange kiss, Shadow thought, as her lips pressed against his: it wasn’t intended for him. It was for the other people in the bar, to let them know that she had picked sides. It was a flag-waving kiss. Even as she kissed him, he became certain that she didn’t even like him-well, not like that.
   Still, there was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.
   And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.
   The story had never made any sense to him as a boy. It did now. So he closed his eyes, threw himself into the kiss and experienced nothing but Sam’s lips and the softness of her skin against his, sweet as a wild strawberry.
   “C’mon Mike,” said Chad Mulligan, firmly. “Please. Let’s take it outside.”
   Sam pulled back. She licked her lips, and smiled, a smile that nearly reached her eyes. “Not bad,” she said. “You kiss good for a boy. Okay, go play outside.” Then she turned to Audrey Burton. “But you,” she said, “are still a cunt.”
   Shadow tossed Sam his car keys. She caught them, one-handed. He walked through the bar and stepped outside, followed by Chad Mulligan. A gentle snow had begun to fall, the flakes spinning down into the light of the neon bar sign. “You want to talk about this?” asked Chad.
   Audrey had followed them out onto the sidewalk. She looked as if she were ready to start screaming again. She said, “He killed two men, Chad. The FBI came to my door. He’s a psycho. I’ll come down to the station with you, if you want.”
   “You’ve caused enough trouble, ma’am,” said Shadow. He sounded tired, even to himself. “Please go away.”
   “Chad? Did you hear that? He threatened me!” said Audrey.
   “Get back inside, Audrey,” said Chad Mulligan. She looked as if she were about to argue, then she pressed her lips together so hard they went white, and went back into the bar.
   “Would you like to comment on anything she said?” asked Chad Mulligan.
   “I’ve never killed anyone,” said Shadow.
   Chad nodded. “I believe you,” he said. “I’m sure we can deal with these allegations easily enough. You won’t give me any trouble, will you, Mike?”
   “No trouble,” said Shadow. “This is all a mistake.”
   “Exactly,” said Chad. “So I figure we ought to head down to my office and sort it all out there?”
   “Am I under arrest?” asked Shadow.
   “Nope,” said Chad. “Not unless you want to be. I figure, you come with me out of a sense of civic duty, and we’ll straighten all this out.”
   Chad patted Shadow down, found no weapons. They got into Mulligan’s car. Again Shadow sat in the back, looking out through the metal cage. He thought, SOS. Mayday. Help. He tried to push Mulligan with his mind, as he’d once pushed a cop in Chicago-This is your old friend Mike Ainsel. You saved his life. Don’t you know how silly this is? Why don’t you just drop the whole thing?
   “I figure it was good to get you out of there,” said Chad. “All you needed was some loudmouth deciding that you were Alison McGovern’s killer and we’d’ve had a lynch mob on our hands.”
   “Point.”
   They were silent for the rest of the drive to the Lakeside police building, which, Chad said as they pulled up outside it, actually belonged to the county sheriff’s department. The local police made do with a few rooms in there. Pretty soon the county would build something modern. For now they had to make do with what they had.
   They walked inside.
   “Should I call a lawyer?” asked Shadow.
   “You aren’t accused of anything,” said Mulligan. “Up to you.” They pushed through some swing doors. “Take a seat over there.”
   Shadow took a seat on the wooden chair with cigarette burns on the side. He felt stupid and numb. There was a small poster on the notice board, beside a large NO SMOKING sign: ENDANGERED MISSING it said. The photograph was Alison McGovern’s.
   There was a wooden table with old copies of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek on it. The light was bad. The paint on the wall was yellow, but it might once have been white.
   After ten minutes Chad brought him a watery cup of vending machine hot chocolate. “What’s in the bag?” he asked. And it was only then that Shadow realized he was still holding the plastic bag containing the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council.
   “Old book,” said Shadow. “Your grandfather’s picture’s in here. Or great-grandfather maybe.”
   “Yeah?”
   Shadow flipped through the book until he found the portrait of the town council, and he pointed to the man called Mulligan. Chad chuckled. “If that don’t beat all,” he said.
   Minutes passed, and hours, in that room. Shadow read two of the Sports Illustrateds and he started in on the Newsweek. From time to time Chad would come through, once checking to see if Shadow needed to use the rest room, once to offer him a ham roll and a small packet of potato chips.
   “Thanks,” said Shadow, taking them. “Am I under arrest yet?”
   Chad sucked the air between his teeth. “Well,” he said, “not yet. It doesn’t look like you came by the name Mike Ainsel legally. On the other hand, you can call yourself whatever you want in this state, if it’s not for fraudulent purposes. You just hang loose.”
   “Can I make a phone call?”
   “Is it a local call?”
   “Long distance.”
   “It’ll save money if I put it on my calling card, otherwise you’ll just be feeding ten bucks worth of quarters into that thing in the hall.”
   Sure, thought Shadow. And this way you’ll know the number I dialed, and you’ll probably be listening in on an extension.
   “That would be great,” said Shadow. They wait into an empty office. The number Shadow gave Chad to dial for him was that of a funeral home in Cairo, Illinois. Chad dialed it, handed Shadow the receiver. “I’ll leave you in here,” he said, and went out.
   The telephone rang several times, then it was picked up.
   “Jacquel and Ibis? Can I help you?”
   “Hi. Mister Ibis, this is Mike Ainsel. I helped out there for a few days over Christmas.”
   A moment’s hesitation, then, “Of course. Mike. How are you?”
   “Not great, Mister Ibis. In a patch of trouble. About to be arrested. Hoping you’d seen my uncle about, or maybe you could get a message to him.”
   “I can certainly ask around. Hold on, uh, Mike. There’s someone here who wishes a word with you.”
   The phone was passed to somebody, and then a smoky female voice said “Hi, honey. I miss you.”
   He was certain he’d never heard that voice before. But he knew her. He was sure that he knew her…
   Let it go, the smoky voice whispered in his mind, in a dream. Let it all go.
   “Who’s that girl you were kissing, hon? You trying to make me jealous?”
   “We’re just friends,” said Shadow. “I think she was trying to prove a point. How did you know she kissed me?”
   “I got eyes wherever my folk walk,” she said. “You take care now, hon…” There was a moment of silence, then Mr. Ibis came back on the line and said, “Mike?”
   “Yes.”

   “There’s a problem getting hold of your uncle. He seems to be kind of tied up. But I’ll try and get a message to your aunt Nancy. Best of luck.” The line went dead.
   Shadow sat down, expecting Chad to return. He sat in the empty office, wishing he had something to distract him. Reluctantly, he picked up the Minutes once more, opened it to somewhere in the middle of the book, and began to read.
   An ordinance prohibiting expectoration on sidewalks and on the floors of public buildings, or throwing thereon tobacco in any form was introduced and passed, eight to four, in December of 1876.
   Lemmi Hautala was twelve years old and had, “it was feared, wandered away in a fit of delirium” on December 13, 1876. “A search being immediately effected, but impeded by the snows, which are blinding.” The council had voted unanimously to send the Hautala family their condolences.
   The fire at Olsen’s livery stables the following week was extinguished without any injury or loss of life, human or equine.
   Shadow scanned the closely printed columns. He found no further mention of Lemmi Hautala.
   And then, on something slightly more than a whim, Shadow flipped the pages forward to the winter of 1877. He found what he was looking for mentioned as an aside in the January minutes: Jessie Lovat, age not given, “a Negro child,” had vanished on the night of December 28. It was believed that she might have been “abducted by traveling so-called pedlars.” Condolences were not sent to the Lovat family.
   Shadow was scanning the minutes of winter 1878 when Chad Mulligan knocked and entered, looking shamefaced, like a child bringing home a bad report card.
   “Mister Ainsel,” he said. “Mike. I’m truly sorry about this. Personally, I like you. But that don’t change anything, you know?”
   Shadow said he knew.
   “I got no choice in the matter,” said Chad, “but to place you under arrest for violating your parole.” Then Mulligan read Shadow his rights. He filled out some paperwork. He took Shadow’s prints. He walked him down the hall to the county jail, on the other side of the building.
   There was a long counter and several doorways on one side of the room, two glassed-in holding cells and a doorway on the other. One of the cells was occupied-a man slept on a cement bed under a thin blanket. The other was empty.
   There was a sleepy-looking woman in a brown uniform behind the counter, watching Jay Leno on a small white portable television. She took the papers from Chad, and signed for Shadow. Chad hung around, filled in more papers. The woman came around the counter, patted Shadow down, took all his possessions-wallet, coins, front door key, book, watch-and put them on the counter, then gave him a plastic bag with orange clothes in it and told him to go into the open cell and change into them. He could keep his own underwear and socks. He went in and changed into the orange clothes and the shower footwear. It stank evilly in there. The orange top he pulled over his head had Lumber County Jail written on the back in large black letters.
   The metal toilet in the cell had backed up, and was filled to the brim with a brown stew of liquid feces and sour, beerish urine.
   Shadow came back out, gave the woman his clothes, which she put into the plastic bag with the rest of his possessions. He had thumbed through the wallet before he handed it over. “You take care of this,” he had said to the woman. “My whole life is in here.” The woman took the wallet from him, and assured him that it would be safe with them. She asked Chad if that wasn’t true, and Chad, looking up from the last of his paperwork, said Liz was telling the truth, they’d never lost a prisoner’s possessions yet.
   Shadow had slipped the four hundred-dollar bills that he had palmed from the wallet into his socks, when he had changed, along with the silver Liberty dollar he had palmed as he had emptied his pockets.
   “Say,” Shadow asked, when he came out. “Would it be okay if I finished reading the book?”
   “Sorry, Mike. Rules are rules,” said Chad.
   Liz put Shadow’s possessions in a bag in the back room. Chad said he’d leave Shadow in Officer Bute’s capable hands. Liz looked tired and unimpressed. Chad left. The telephone rang, and Liz-Officer Bute-answered it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. No problem. Okay. No problem. Okay.” She put down the phone and made a face.
   “Problem?” asked Shadow.
   “Yes. Not really. Kinda. They’re sending someone up from Milwaukee to collect you.”
   “Why is that a problem?”
   “I got to keep you in here with me for three hours,” she said. “And the cell over there”—she pointed to the cell by the door, with the sleeping man in it—“that’s occupied. He’s on suicide watch. I shouldn’t put you in with him. But it’s not worth the trouble to sign you in to the county and then sign you out again.” She shook her head. “And you don’t want to go in there”—she pointed to the empty cell in which he’d changed his clothes—“because the can is shot. It stinks in there, doesn’t it?”
   “Yes. It was gross.”
   “It’s common humanity, that’s what it is. The sooner we get into the new facilities, it can’t be too soon for me. One of the women we had in yesterday must’ve flushed a tampon away. I tell ‘em not to. We got bins for that. They clog the pipes. Every damn tampon down that John costs the county a hundred bucks in plumbers’ fees. So, I can keep you out here, if I cuff you. Or you can go in the cell.” She looked at him. “Your call,” she said.
   “I’m not crazy about them,” he said. “But I’ll take the cuffs.”
   She took a pair from her utility belt, then patted the semiautomatic in its holster, as if to remind him that it was there. “Hands behind your back,” she said.
   The cuffs were a tight fit: he had big wrists. Then she put hobbles on his ankles and sat him down on a bench on the far side of the counter, against the wall. “Now,” she said. “You don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you.” She tilted the television so that he could see it.
   “Thanks,” he said.
   “When we get our new offices,” she said, “there won’t be none of this nonsense.”
   The Tonight Show finished. An episode of Cheers began. Shadow had never watched Cheers. He had only ever seen one episode of it-the one where Coach’s daughter comes to the bar-although he had seen that several times. Shadow had noticed that you only ever catch one episode of shows you don’t watch, over and over, years apart; he thought it must be some kind of cosmic law.
   Officer Liz Bute sat back in her chair. She was not obviously dozing, but she was by no means awake, so she did not notice when the gang at Cheers stopped talking and getting off one-liners and just started staring out of the screen at Shadow.
   Diane, the blonde barmaid who fancied herself an intellectual, was the first to talk. “Shadow,” she said. “We were so worried about you. You’d fallen off the world. It’s so good to see you again-albeit in bondage and orange couture.”
   “What I figure is the thing to do,” pontificated bar bore Cliff, “is to escape in hunting season, when everybody’s wearing orange anyway.”
   Shadow said nothing.
   “Ah, cat got your tongue, I see,” said Diane. “Well, you’ve led us a merry chase!”
   Shadow looked away. Officer Liz had begun, gently, to snore. Carla, the little waitress, snapped, “Hey, jerk-wad! We interrupt this broadcast to show you something that’s going to make you piss in your friggin’ pants. You ready?”
   The screen flickered and went black. The words Live Feed pulsated in white at the bottom left of screen. A subdued female voice said, in voice-over, “It’s certainly not too late to change to the winning side. But you know, you also have the freedom to stay just where you are. That’s what it means to be an American. That’s the miracle of America. Freedom to believe means the freedom to believe the wrong thing, after all. Just as freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent.”
   The picture now showed a street scene. The camera lurched forward, in the manner of handheld video cameras in real-life documentaries.
   A man with thinning hair, a tan, and a faintly hangdog expression filled the frame. He was standing by a wall sipping a cup of coffee from a plastic cup. He looked into the camera, and said, “Terrorists hide behind weasel words, like ‘freedom fighter.’ You and I know that they are murdering scum, pure and simple. We’re risking our lives to make a difference.”
   Shadow recognized the voice. He had been inside the man’s head once. Mr. Town sounded different from inside, his voice was deeper, more resonant-but there was no mistaking it.
   The cameras pulled back to show that Mr. Town was standing outside a brick building on an American street. Above the door was a set-square and compass framing the letter G.
   “In position,” said somebody offscreen.
   “Let’s see if the cameras inside the hall are rolling,” said the female voice-over voice.
   The words Live Feed continued to blink at the bottom left of the screen. Now the picture showed the interior of a small hall: the room was underlit. Two men sat at a table at the far end of the room. One of them had his back to the camera. The camera zoomed in to them awkwardly. For a moment they were out of focus, and then they became sharp once more. The man facing the camera got up and began to pace, like a bear on a chain. It was Wednesday. He looked as if, on some level, he was enjoying this. As they came into focus the sound came on with a pop.
   The man with his back to the screen was saying, “-we are offering is the chance to end this, here and now, with no more bloodshed, no more aggression, no more pain, no more loss of life. Isn’t that worth giving up a little?”
   Wednesday stopped pacing and turned. His nostrils flared. “First,” he growled, “you have to understand that you are asking me to speak for all of us. Which is manifestly nonsensical. Secondly, what on earth makes you think that I believe that you people are going to keep your word?”
   The man with his back to the camera moved his head. “You do yourself an injustice,” he said. “Obviously you people have no leaders. But you’re the one they listen to. They pay attention to you. And as for keeping my word, well, these preliminary talks are being filmed and broadcast live,” and he gestured back toward the camera. “Some of your people are watching as we speak. Others will see videotapes. The camera does not lie.”
   “Everybody lies,” said Wednesday.
   Shadow recognized the voice of the man with his back to the camera. It was Mr. World, the one who had spoken to Town on the cellphone while Shadow was in Town’s head.
   “You don’t believe,” said Mr. World, “that we will keep our word?”
   “I think your promises were made to be broken and your oaths to be forsworn. But I will keep my word.”
   “Safe conduct is safe conduct,” said Mr. World, “and a flag of truce is what we agreed. I should tell you, by the way, that your young protйgй is once more in our custody.”
   Wednesday snorted. “No,” he said. “He’s not.”
   “We were discussing the ways to deal with the coming paradigm shift. We don’t have to be enemies. Do we?”
   Wednesday seemed shaken. He said, “I will do whatever is in my power…”
   Shadow noticed something strange about the image of Wednesday on the television screen. A red glint burned on his left eye, the glass one. The dot left a phosphor-dot afterimage as he moved. He seemed unaware of it.
   “It’s a big country,” said Wednesday, marshaling his thoughts. He moved his head and the red laser-pointer dot slipped to his cheek. Then it edged up to his glass eye once more. “There is room for-”

   There was a bang, muted by the television speakers, and the side of Wednesday’s head exploded. His body tumbled backward.
   Mr. World stood up, his back still to the camera, and walked out of shot.
   “Let’s see that again, in slow motion this time,” said the announcer’s voice, reassuringly.
   The words Live Feed became Replay. Slowly now the red laser pointer traced its bead onto Wednesday’s glass eye, and once again the side of his face dissolved into a cloud of blood. Freeze frame.
   “Yes, it’s still God’s Own Country,” said the announcer, a news reporter pronouncing the final tag line. “The only question is, which gods?”
   Another voice-Shadow thought that it was Mr. World’s, it had that same half-familiar quality-said, “We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.”
   On Cheers, Coach assured his daughter that she was truly beautiful, just like her mother.
   The telephone rang, and Officer Liz sat up with a start. She picked it up. Said, “Okay. Okay. Yes. Okay.” Put the phone down. She got up from behind the counter, and said to Shadow, “I’m going to have to put you in the cell. Don’t use the can. The Lafayette sheriff’s department should be here to collect you soon.”
   She removed the cuffs and the hobble, locked him into the holding cell. The smell was worse, now that the door was closed.
   Shadow sat down on the concrete bed, slipped the Liberty dollar from his sock, and began moving it from finger to palm, from position to position, from hand to hand, his only aim to keep the coin from being seen by anyone who might look in. He was passing the time. He was numb.
   He missed Wednesday, then, sudden, and deep. He missed the man’s confidence, his attitude. His conviction.
   He opened his hand, looked down at Lady Liberty, a silver profile. He closed his fingers over the coin, held it tightly. He wondered if he’d get to be one of those guys who got life for something they didn’t do. If he even made it that far. From what he’d seen of Mr. World and Mr. Town, they would have little trouble pulling him out of the system. Perhaps he’d suffer an unfortunate accident on the way to the next holding facility. He could be shot while making a break for it. It did not seem at all unlikely.
   There was a stir of activity in the room on the other side of the glass. Officer Liz came back in. She pressed a button, a door that Shadow could not see opened, and a black deputy in a brown sheriff’s uniform entered and walked briskly over to the desk.
   Shadow slipped the dollar coin back into his sock.
   The new deputy handed over some papers, Liz scanned them and signed. Chad Mulligan came in, said a few words to the new man, then he unlocked the cell door and walked inside.
   “Okay. Folk are here to pick you up. Seems you’re a matter of national security. You know that?”
   “It’ll make a great front-page story for the Lakeside News,” said Shadow.
   Chad looked at him without expression. “That a drifter got picked up for parole violations? Not much of a story.”
   “So that’s the way it is?”
   “That’s what they tell me,” said Chad Mulligan. Shadow put his hands in front of him this time, and Chad cuffed him. Chad locked on the ankle hobbles, and a rod from the cuffs to the hobbles.
   Shadow thought, They’ll take me outside. Maybe I can make a break for it-in hobbles and cuffs and lightweight orange clothes, out into the snow, and even as he thought it he knew how stupid and hopeless it was.
   Chad walked him out into the office. Liz had turned the TV off now. The black deputy looked him over. “He’s a big guy,” he said to Chad. Liz passed the new deputy the paper bag with Shadow’s possessions in it, and he signed for it.
   Chad looked at Shadow, then at the deputy. He said to the deputy, quietly, but loudly enough for Shadow to hear, “Look. I just want to say, I’m not comfortable with the way this is happening.”
   The deputy nodded. “You’ll have to take it up with the appropriate authorities, sir. Our job is simply to bring him in.”
   Chad made a sour face. He turned to Shadow. “Okay,” said Chad. “Through that door and into the sally port.”
   “What?”
   “Out there. Where the car is.”
   Liz unlocked the doors. “You make sure that orange uniform comes right back here,” she said to the deputy. “The last felon we sent down to Lafayette, we never saw the uniform again. They cost the county money.” They walked Shadow out to the sally port, where a car sat idling. It wasn’t a sheriff’s department car. It was a black town car. Another deputy, a grizzled white guy with a mustache, stood by the car, smoking a cigarette. He crushed it out underfoot as they came close, and opened the back door for Shadow.
   Shadow sat down, awkwardly, his movements hampered by the cuffs and the hobble. There was no grille between the back and the front of the car.
   The two deputies climbed into the front of the car. The black deputy started the motor. They waited for the sally port door to open.
   “Come on, come on,” said the black deputy, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel.
   Chad Mulligan tapped on the side window. The white deputy glanced at the driver, then he lowered-the window. “This is wrong,” said Chad. “I just wanted to say that.”
   “Your comments have been noted, and will be conveyed to the appropriate authorities,” said the driver.
   The doors to the outside world opened. The snow was still falling, dizzying into the car’s headlights. The driver put his foot on the gas, and they were heading back down the street and on to Main Street.
   “You heard about Wednesday?” said the driver. His voice sounded different, now, older, and familiar. “He’s dead.”
   “Yeah. I know,” said Shadow. “I saw it on TV.”
   “Those fuckers,” said the white officer. It was the first thing he had said, and his voice was rough and accented and, like the driver’s, it was a voice that Shadow knew. “I tell you, they are fuckers, those fuckers.”
   “Thanks for coming to get me,” said Shadow.
   “Don’t mention it,” said the driver. In the light of an oncoming car his face already seemed to look older. He looked smaller, too. The last time Shadow had seen him he had been wearing lemon-yellow gloves and a check jacket. “We were in Milwaukee. Had to drive like demons when Ibis called.”
   “You think we let them lock you up and send you to the chair, when I’m still waiting to break your head with my hammer?” asked the white deputy gloomily, fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. His accent was Eastern European.
   “The real shit will hit the fan in an hour or less,” said Mr. Nancy, looking more like himself with each moment, “when they really turn up to collect you. We’ll pull over before we get to Highway 53 and get you out of those shackles and back into your own clothes.” Czernobog held up a handcuff key and smiled.
   “I like the mustache,” said Shadow. “Suits you.”
   Czernobog stroked it with a yellowed finger. “Thank you.”
   “Wednesday,” said Shadow. “Is he really dead? This isn’t some kind of trick, is it?”
   He realized that he had been holding on to some kind of hope, foolish though it was. But the expression on Nancy’s face told him all he needed to know, and the hope was gone.


* * *


Coming to America
14,000 B.C.

   Cold it was, and dark, when the vision came to her, for in the far north daylight was a gray dim time in the middle of the day that came, and went, and came again: an interlude between darknesses.
   They were not a large tribe as these things were counted then: nomads of the Northern Plains. They had a god, who was the skull of a mammoth, and the hide of a mammoth fashioned into a rough cloak. Nunyunnini, they called him. When they were not traveling, he rested on a wooden frame, at man height.
   She was the holy woman of the tribe, the keeper of its secrets, and her name was Atsula, the fox. Atsula walked before the two tribesmen who carried their god on long poles, draped with bearskins, that it should not be seen by profane eyes, nor at times when it was not holy.
   They roamed the tundra, with their tents. The finest of the tents was made of caribou hide, and it was the holy tent, and there were four of them inside it: Atsula, the priestess, Gugwei, the tribal elder, Yanu, the war leader, and Kalanu, the scout. She called them there, the day after she had her vision.
   Atsula scraped some lichen into the fire, then she threw in dried leaves with her withered left hand: they smoked, with an eye-stinging gray smoke, and gave off an odor that was sharp and strange. Then she took a wooden cup from the wooden platform, and she passed it to Gugwei. The cup was half filled with a dark yellow liquid.
   Atsula had found the pungh mushrooms, each with seven spots, only a true holy woman could find a seven-spotted mushroom-and had picked them at the dark of the moon, and dried them on a string of deer cartilage.
   Yesterday, before she slept, she had eaten the three dried mushroom caps. Her dreams had been confused and fearful things, of bright lights moving fast, of rock mountains filled with lights spearing upward like icicles. In the night she had woken, sweating, and needing to make water. She squatted over the wooden cup and filled it with her urine. Then she placed the cup outside the tent, in the snow, and returned to sleep.
   When she woke, she picked the lumps of ice out from the wooden cup, leaving a darker, more concentrated liquid behind.
   It was this liquid she passed around, first to Gugwei, then to Yanu and to Kalanu. Each of them took a large gulp of the liquid, then Atsula took the final draft. She swallowed it, and poured what was left on the ground in front of their god, a libation to Nunyunnini.
   They sat in the smoky tent, waiting for their god to speak. Outside, in the darkness, the wind wailed and breathed.
   Kalanu, the scout, was a woman who dressed and walked as a man: she had even taken Dalani, a fourteen-year-old maiden, to be her wife. Kalanu blinked her eyes tightly, then she got up and walked over to the mammoth skull. She pulled the mammoth-hide cloak over herself, and stood so her head was inside the mammoth skull.
   “There is evil in the land,” said Nunyunnini in Kalanu’s voice. “Evil, such that if you stay here, in the land of your mothers and your mother’s mothers, you shall all perish.”
   The three listeners grunted.

   “Is it the slavers? Or the great wolves?” asked Gugwei, whose hair was long and white, and whose face was as wrinkled as the gray skin of a thorn tree.
   “It is not the slavers,” said Nunyunnini, old stone-hide. “It is not the great wolves.”
   “Is it a famine? Is a famine coming?” asked Gugwei.
   Nunyunnini was silent. Kalanu came out of the skull and waited with the rest of them.
   Gugwei put on the mammoth-hide cloak and put his head inside the skull.
   “It is not a famine as you know it,” said Nunyunnini, through Gugwei’s mouth, “although a famine will follow.”
   “Then what is it?” asked Yanu. “I am not afraid. I will stand against it. We have spears, and we have throwing rocks. Let a hundred mighty warriors come against us, still we shall prevail. We shall lead them into the marshes, and split their skulls with our flints.”
   “It is not a man thing,” said Nunyunnini, in Gugwei’s old voice. “It will come from the skies, and none of your spears or your rocks will protect you.”
   “How can we protect ourselves?” asked Atsula. “I have seen flames in the skies. I have heard a noise louder than ten thunderbolts. I have seen forests flattened and rivers boil.”
   “Ai…,” said Nunyunnini, but he said no more. Gugwei came out of the skull, bending stiffly, for he was an old man, and his knuckles were swollen and knotted.
   There was silence. Atsula threw more leaves on the fire, and the smoke made their eyes tear.
   Then Yanu strode to the mammoth head, put the cloak about his broad shoulders, put his head inside the skull. His voice boomed. “You must journey,” said Nunyunnini. “You must travel to sunward. Where the sun rises, there you will find a new land, where you will be safe. It will be a long journey: the moon will swell and empty, die and live, twice, and there will be slavers and beasts, but I shall guide you and keep you safe, if you travel toward the sunrise.”
   Atsula spat on the mud of the floor, and said, “No.” She could feel the god staring at her. “No,” she said. “You are a bad god to tell us this. We will die. We will all die, and then who will be left to carry you from high place to high place, to raise your tent, to oil your great tusks with fat?”
   The god said nothing. Atsula and Yanu exchanged places. Atsula’s face stared out through the yellowed mammoth bone.
   “Atsula has no faith,” said Nunyunnini in Atsula’s voice. “Atsula shall die before the rest of you enter the new land, but the rest of you shall live. Trust me: there is a land to the east that is manless. This land shall be your land and the land of your children and your children’s children, for seven generations, and seven sevens. But for Atsula’s faithlessness, you would have kept it forever. In the morning, pack your tents and your possessions, and walk toward the sunrise.”
   And Gugwei and Yanu and Kalanu bowed their heads and exclaimed at the power and wisdom of Nunyunnini.
   The moon swelled and waned and swelled and waned once more. The people of the tribe walked east, toward the sunrise, struggling through the icy winds, which numbed their exposed skin. Nunyunnini had promised them truly: they lost no one from the tribe on the journey, save for a woman in childbirth, and women in childbirth belong to the moon, not to Nunyunnini.
   They crossed the land bridge.
   Kalanu had left them at first light to scout the way. Now the sky was dark, and Kalanu had not returned, but the night sky was alive with lights, knotting and flickering and winding, flux and pulse, white and green and violet and red. Atsula and her people had seen the northern lights before, but they were still frightened by them, and this was a display like they had never seen before.
   Kalanu returned to them, as the lights in the sky formed and flowed.
   “Sometimes,” she said to Atsula, “I feel that I could simply spread my arms and fall into the sky.”
   “That is because you are a scout,” said Atsula, the priestess. “When you die, you shall fall into the sky and become a star, to guide us as you guide us in life.”
   “There are cliffs of ice to the east, high cliffs,” said Kalanu, her raven-black hair worn long, as a man would wear it. “We can climb them, but it will take many days.”
   “You shall lead us safely,” said Atsula. “I shall die at the foot of the cliff, and that shall be the sacrifice that takes you into the new lands.”
   To the west of them, back in the lands from which they had come, where the sun had set hours before, there was a flash of sickly yellow light, brighter than lightning, brighter than daylight. It was a burst of pure brilliance that forced the folk on the land bridge to cover their eyes and spit and exclaim. Children began to wail.
   “That is the doom that Nunyunnini warned us of,” said Gugwei the old. “Surely he is a wise god and a mighty one.”
   “He is the best of all gods,” said Kalanu. “In our new land we shall raise him up on high, and we shall polish his tusks and skull with fish oil and animal fat, and we shall tell our children, and our children’s children and our seventh children’s children, that Nunyunnini is the mightiest of all gods, and shall never be forgotten.”
   “Gods are great,” said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. “But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return…”
   And there is no telling how long she might have continued in this blasphemy, had it not been interrupted in a manner that brooked no argument.
   The roar that erupted from the west was so loud that ears bled, that the people could hear nothing for some time, temporarily blinded and deafened but alive, knowing that they were luckier than the tribes to the west of them.
   “It is good,” said Atsula, but she could not hear the words inside her head.
   Atsula died at the foot of the cliffs when the spring sun was at its zenith. She did not live to see the New World, and the tribe walked into those lands with no holy woman.
   They scaled the cliffs, and they went south and west, until they found a valley with fresh water, and rivers that teemed with silver fish, and deer that had never seen man before and were so tame it was necessary to spit and to apologize to their spirits before killing them.
   Dalani gave birth to three boys, and some said that Kalanu had performed the final magic and could do the man-thing with her bride; while others said that old Gugwei was not too old to keep a young bride company when her husband was away; and certainly once Gugwei died, Dalani had no more children.
   And the ice times came and the ice times went, and the people spread out across the land, and formed new tribes and chose new totems: ravens and foxes and ground sloths and great cats and buffalo, each a beast that marked a tribe’s identity, each beast a god.
   The mammoths of the new lands were bigger, and slower, and more foolish than the mammoth of the Siberian plains, and the pungh mushrooms, with their seven spots, were not to be found in the new lands, and Nunyunnini did not speak to the tribe any longer.
   And in the days of the grandchildren of Dalani and Kalanu’s grandchildren, a band of warriors, members of a big and prosperous tribe, returning from a slaving expedition in the north to their home in the south, found the valley of the first people: they killed most of the men, and they took the women and many of the children captive.
   One of the children, hoping for clemency, took them to a cave in the hills in which they found a mammoth skull, the tattered remnants of a mammoth-skin cloak, a wooden cup, and the preserved head of Atsula the oracle.
   While some of the warriors of the new tribe were for taking the sacred objects away with them, stealing the gods of the first people and owning their power, others counseled against it, saying that they would bring nothing but ill luck and the malice of their own god (for these were the people of a raven tribe, and ravens are jealous gods).
   So they threw the objects down the side of the hill, into a deep ravine, and took the survivors of the first people with them on their long journey south. And the raven tribes, and the fox tribes, grew more powerful in the land, and soon Nunyunnini was entirely forgotten.

Part Three:
The Moment of the Storm

Chapter 14

   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 briefly 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 flake of tobacco from between his teeth and spat it out onto the frozen slush. “And how many of you is that? Ten? Twenty?”
   The barrel-chested man’s beard bristled. “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 bastard 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 sprawling. It was like being gently patted on the back by a wrecking 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 pointed. “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 hawked, and spat, and put his hand to his chest, massaging 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 smoothly. “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 admiration, and my sympathy.” He squeezed Shadow’s hand with his own catcher’s-mitt fist. It hurt. “You tell his corpse when you see it. Tell him that Alviss son of Vindalf will keep the faith.”
   The VW bus smelled of patchouli, of old incense 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 ramp, grinding the gears.
   “Just like he said, Alviss son of Vindalf. He’s the king of the dwarfs. The biggest, mightiest, greatest of all the dwarf 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 spoke 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 erased, 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 paperback 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 truce, while they hand over the body.”
   “They lie,” said Czernobog. “They want to lure 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 chuckled. It sounded like a metal ball rattling in a dry skull. “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 shrugged. He crunched 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, thumping the bottom of the ketchup bottle, blobbing ketchup over his burnt fries. “I can get more pussy 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 continental 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 hog 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 hogs, so they put the monument to the geographical 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 brass plaque on the monument. They blacktopped the road from the town, and, certain of the influx 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 chapel 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 chuckle, 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

   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 Crunch down on the shelf. “They think they can crush us like cockroaches,” he said. He had a tarnished silver bracelet 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 meandered 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 adept 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, leavened 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 outskirts 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 streaks 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 gallows 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,” mimicked 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 curtly.
   “He’s talking about Louise Brooks,” said Mr. Nancy.
   Shadow decided 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 reassurance. “Nobody else is going to kill you. Nobody but me.”


* * *

   Shadow found the center of America at evening that same day, before it was fully 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 squat 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 illuminated 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 demolished.”
   “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 condemned 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 perfectly 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 mischief, 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 offense, 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 mildew, 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 fumbling. “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 deserted. There was a bed frame in there, with a mattress 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 tugged at his clothes. The tiny snowflakes were little more than a crystalline dust that gusted 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 attained the same deep shade of purple. Somewhere ahead of him-in this light, distances were impossible to judge-the flames of a bonfire flickered, 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 ambled ahead of him.
   The bonfire burned in the middle of a grove 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 flickering 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 chestnut horse with a white mane, little bigger than a pony. The dog was still alive: every few seconds it would kick spasmodically, and it was making a strained whimpering noise as it dangled 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 slashed 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 symbolizes 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 cynical 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 horrifying 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: rib cages and fire-eyed skulls stared and stuck and jutted from the flames, sputtering trace-element colors into the night, greens and yellows and blues-was flaring and crackling and burning hotly. “Three days of the tree, three days in the underworld, three days to find my way back.”
   The flames sputtered 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, hoarsely. “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 hissed.

   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 poised by her lips to remove crumbs.
   “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 spurted 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 slurped 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 clichйs. 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 wireless 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 inhaled 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 bragged 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 bent 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 doorway, 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 scuff 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. Evolutionary 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, primly.
   “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 butt. 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 gutter, 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 Frisbee, Laura eating a root-beer float without a spoon, Laura giggling, 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 whine 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 sobbing. Or perhaps, “It’s just meat.” Shadow could not tell.
   “Quiet!” came a bellow 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.”