American Gods (2 page)

“Is that a joke?” asked Shadow.

“Damn right. Gallows humor. Best kind there is.”

“When did they last hang a man in this state?” asked Shadow.

“How the hell should I know?” Lyesmith kept his orange-blond
hair pretty much shaved. You could see the lines of his skull. “Tell you what,
though. This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. No
gallows dirt. No gallows deals.”

Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death
sentence.

If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison
was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life
creeps back into prison. There are always places to go further down. Life goes
on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let
you out.

In the beginning it was too far away for Shadow to focus on.
Then it became a distant beam of hope, and he learned how to tell himself “this
too shall pass” when the prison shit went down, as prison shit always did. One
day the magic door would open and he’d walk through it. So he marked off the
days on his Songbirds of North America calendar, which was the only calendar
they sold in the prison commissary, and the sun went down and he didn’t see it
and the sun came up and he didn’t see it. He practiced coin tricks from a book
he found in the wasteland of the prison library; and he worked out; and he made
lists in his head of what he’d do when he got out of prison.

Shadow’s lists got shorter and shorter. After two years he
had it down to three things.

First, he was going to take a bath. A real, long, serious
soak, in a tub with bubbles. Maybe read the paper, maybe not. Some days he
thought one way, some days the other.

Second, he was going to towel himself off, put on a robe.
Maybe slippers. He liked the idea of slippers. If he smoked he would be smoking
a pipe about now, but he didn’t smoke. He would pick up his wife in his arms (“Puppy,”
she would squeal in mock horror and real delight, “what are you doingT). He
would carry her into the bedroom, and close the door. They’d call out for
pizzas if they got hungry.

Third, after he and Laura had come out of the bedroom, maybe
a couple of days later, he was going to keep his head down and stay out of
trouble for the rest of his life,

“And then you’ll be happy?” asked Low Key-Lyesmith. That day
they were working in the prison shop, assembling bird feeders, which was barely
more interesting man stamping out license plates.

“Call no man happy,” said Shadow, “until he is dead.”

“Herodotus,” said Low Key. “Hey. You’re learning.”

“Who the fuck’s Herodotus?” asked the Iceman, slotting together
the sides of a bird feeder and passing it to Shadow, who bolted and screwed it
tight.

“Dead Greek,” said Shadow.

“My last girlfriend was Greek,” said the Iceman. “The shit
her family ate. You would not believe. Like rice wrapped in leaves. Shit like
that.”

The Iceman was the same size and shape as a Coke machine,
with blue eyes and hair so blond it was almost white. He had beaten the crap
out of some guy who had made the mistake of copping a feel off his girlfriend
in the bar where she danced and the Iceman bounced. The guy’s friends had
called the police, who arrested the Iceman and ran a check on him which revealed
that the Iceman had walked from a work-release program eighteen months earlier.

“So what was I supposed to do?” asked the Iceman, aggrieved,
when he had told Shadow the whole sad tale. “I’d told him she was my
girlfriend. Was I supposed to let him disrespect me like that? Was I? I mean,
he had his hands all over her.”

Shadow had said, “You tell ‘em,” and left it at that. One
thing he had learned early, you do your own time in prison. You don’t do anyone
else’s time for them.

Keep your head down. Do your own time.

Lyesmith had loaned Shadow a battered paperback copy of Herodotus’s
Histories several months earlier. “It’s not boring. It’s cool,” he said, when
Shadow protested that he didn’t read books. “Read it first, then tell me it’s
cool.”

Shadow had made a face, but he had started to read, and had
found himself hooked against his will.

“Greeks,” said the Iceman, with disgust. “And it ain’t true
what they say about them, neither. I tried giving it to my girlfriend in the
ass, she almost clawed my eyes out.”

Lyesmith was transferred one day, without warning. He left
Shadow his copy of Herodotus. There was a nickel hidden in the pages. Coins
were contraband: you can sharpen the edges against a stone, slice open someone’s
face in a fight. Shadow didn’t want a weapon; Shadow just wanted something to
do with his hands.

Shadow was not superstitious. He did not believe in anything
he could not see. Still, he could feel disaster hovering above the prison in
those final weeks, just as he had felt it in the days before the robbery. There
was a hollowness in the pit of his stomach that he told himself was simply a
fear of going back to the world on the outside. But he could not be sure. He
was more paranoid than usual, and in prison usual is very, and is a survival
skill. Shadow became more quiet, more shadowy, than ever. He found himself
watching the body language of the guards, of the other inmates, searching for a
clue to the bad thing that was going to happen, as he was certain that it
would.

A month before he was due to be released Shadow sat in a
chilly office, facing a short man with a port-wine birthmark on his forehead.
They sat across a desk from each other; the man had Shadow’s file open in front
of him, and was holding a ballpoint pen. The end of the pen was badly chewed.

“You cold, Shadow?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. “A little.”

The man shrugged. “That’s the system,” he said. “Furnaces
don’t go on until December the first. Then they go off March the first. I don’t
make the rules.” He ran his forefinger down the sheet of paper stapled to the
inside left of the folder. “You’re thirty-two years old?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You look younger.”

“Clean living.”

“Says here you’ve been a model inmate.”

“I learned my lesson, sir.”

“Did you really?” He looked at Shadow intently, the
birthmark on his forehead lowering. Shadow thought about telling the man some
of his theories about prison, but he said nothing. He nodded instead, and
concentrated on appearing properly remorseful.

“Says here you’ve got a wife, Shadow”

“Her name’s Laura.”

“How’s everything there?”

“Pretty good. She’s come down to see me as much as she
could—it’s a long way to travel. We write and I call her when I can.”

“What does your wife do?”

“She’s a travel agent. Sends people all over the world.”

“How’d you meet her?”

Shadow could not decide why the man was asking. He considered
telling him it was none of his business, then said, “She was my best buddy’s
wife’s best friend. They set us up on a blind date. We hit it off.”

“And you’ve got a job waiting for you?”

“Yessir. My buddy, Robbie, the one I just told you about, he
owns the Muscle Farm, the place I used to train. He says my old job is waiting
for me.”

An eyebrow raised. “Really?”

“Says he figures I’ll be a big draw. Bring back some
old-timers, and pull in the tough crowd who want to be tougher.”

The man seemed satisfied. He chewed the end of his ballpoint
pen, then turned over the sheet of paper.

“How do you feel about your offense?”

Shadow shrugged. “I was stupid,” he said, and meant it.

The man with the birthmark sighed. He ticked off a number of
items on a checklist. Then he riffled through the papers in Shadow’s file. “How’re
you getting home from here?” he asked. “Greyhound?”

“Flying home. It’s good to have a wife who’s a travel agent.”
The man frowned, and the birthmark creased. “She sent you a ticket?”

“Didn’t need to. Just sent me a confirmation number. Electronic
ticket. All I have to do is turn up at the airport in a month and show ‘em my
ED, and I’m outta here.”

The man nodded, scribbled one final note, then he closed the
file and put down the ballpoint pen. Two pale hands rested on the gray desk
like pink animals. He brought his hands close together, made a steeple of his
forefingers, and stared at Shadow with watery hazel eyes.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “You have someone to go back to,
you got a job waiting. You can put all this behind you. You got a second
chance. Make the most of it.”

The man did not offer to shake Shadow’s hand as he rose to
leave, nor did Shadow expect him to.

The last week was the worst In some ways it was worse than
the whole three years put together. Shadow wondered if it was the weather:
oppressive, still, and cold. It felt as if a storm was on the way, but the
storm never came. He had the jitters and the heebie-jeebies, a feeling deep in
his stomach that something was entirely wrong. In the exercise yard the wind
gusted. Shadow imagined that he could smell snow on the air.

He called his wife collect. Shadow knew that the phone companies
whacked a three-dollar surcharge on every call made from a prison phone. That
was why operators are always real polite to people calling from prisons, Shadow
had decided: they knew that he paid their wages.

“Something feels weird,” he told Laura. That wasn’t the
first thing he said to her. The first thing was “I love you,” because it’s a
good thing to say if you can mean it, and Shadow did.

“Hello,” said Laura. “I love you too. What feels weird?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe the weather. It feels like
if we could only get a storm; everything would be okay.”

“It’s nice here,” she said. “The last of the leaves haven’t
quite fallen. If we don’t get a storm, you’ll be able to see them when you get
home.”

“Five days,” said Shadow.

“A hundred and twenty hours, and then you come home,” she
said.

“Everything okay there? Nothing wrong?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m seeing Robbie tonight. We’re
planning your surprise welcome-home party.”

“Surprise party?”

“Of course. You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

“Not a thing.”

“That’s my husband,” she said. Shadow realized that he was
smiling. He had been inside for three years, but she could still make him
smile.

“Love you, babes,” said Shadow. “Love you, puppy,” said
Laura. Shadow put down the phone.

When they got married Laura told Shadow that she wanted a
puppy, but their landlord had pointed out they weren’t allowed pets under the
terms of their lease. “Hey,” Shadow had said, “I’ll be your puppy. What do you
want me to do? Chew your slippers? Piss on the kitchen floor? Lick your nose?
Sniff your crotch? I bet there’s nothing a puppy can do I can’t do!” And he
picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all and began to lick her nose while
she giggled and shrieked, and then he carried her to the bed.

In the food hall Sam Fetisher sidled over to Shadow and
smiled, showing his old teeth. He sat down beside Shadow and began to eat his
macaroni and cheese. “We got to talk,” said Sam Fetisher. Sam Fetisher was one
of the blackest men that Shadow had ever seen. He might have been sixty. He
might have been eighty. Then again, Shadow had met thirty-year-old crackheads
who looked older man Sam Fetisher. “Mm?” said Shadow. “Storm’s on the way,”
said Sam. “Feels like it,” said Shadow. “Maybe it’ll snow soon.” “Not that kind
of storm. Bigger storm than that coming. I tell you, boy, you’re better off in
here than out on the street when the big storm comes.” “Done my time,” said
Shadow. “Friday, I’m gone.” Sam Fetisher stared at Shadow. “Where you from?” he
asked.

“Eagle Point. Indiana.”

“You’re a lying fuck,” said Sam Fetisher. “I mean
originally. Where are your folks from?”

“Chicago,” said Shadow. His mother had lived in Chicago as a
girl, and she had died there, half a lifetime ago.

“Like I said. Big storm coining. Keep your head down,
Shadow-boy. It’s like ... what do they call those things continents ride around
on? Some kind of plates?”

“Tectonic plates?” Shadow hazarded.

“That’s it. Tectonic plates. It’s like when they go riding,
when North America goes skidding into South America, you don’t want to be in
the middle. You dig me?”

“Not even a little.”

One brown eye closed in a slow wink. “Hell, don’t say I didn’t
warn you,” said Sam Fetisher, and he spooned a trembling lump of orange Jell-O
into his mouth.

“I won’t.”

Shadow spent the night half-awake, drifting in and out of
sleep, listening to his new cellmate grunt and snore in the bunk below him.
Several cells away a man whined and howled and sobbed like an animal, and from
time to time someone would scream at him to shut the fuck up. Shadow tried not
to hear. He let the empty minutes wash over him, lonely and slow.

Two days to go. Forty-eight hours, starting with oatmeal and
prison coffee, and a guard named Wilson who tapped Shadow harder than he had to
on the shoulder and said, “Shadow? This way.”

Shadow checked his conscience. It was quiet, which did not,
he had observed, in a prison, mean that he was not in deep shit. The two men
walked more or less side by side, feet echoing on metal and concrete.

Shadow tasted fear in the back of his throat, bitter as old
coffee. The bad thing was happening ....

There was a voice in the back of his head whispering that
they were going to slap another year onto his sentence, drop him into solitary,
cut off his hands, cut off his head. He told himself he was being stupid, but
his heart was pounding fit to burst out of his chest.

“I don’t get you, Shadow,” said Wilson, as they walked.

“What’s not to get, sir?”

“You. You’re too fucking quiet. Too polite. You wait like
the old guys, but you’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight?”