American Gods (22 page)

“Let me see the coin first,” she said, suspiciously. “I had
an uncle had a double-headed quarter.”

She inspected it, satisfied herself there was nothing
strange about the quarter. Shadow placed the coin head up on his thumb and
cheated the toss, so it wobbled and looked like it was spinning, then he caught
it and flipped it over onto the back of his left hand, and uncovered it with
his right, in front of her.

‘Tails,” she said, happily. “Dinner’s on you.”

“Yup,” he said. “You can’t win them all.”

Shadow ordered the meat loaf, Sam ordered lasagna. Shadow
flipped through the newspaper to see if there was anything in it about dead men
in a freight train. There wasn’t. The only story of interest was on the cover: crows
in record numbers were infesting the town. Local farmers wanted to hang dead
crows around the town on public buildings to frighten the others away;
ornithologists said that it wouldn’t work, that the living crows would simply
eat the dead ones. The locals were implacable. “When they see the corpses of
their friends,” said a spokesman, “they’ll know that we don’t want them here.”

The food came mounded high on plates and steaming, more than
any one person could eat.

“So what’s in Cairo?” asked Sam, with her mouth full.

“No idea. I got a message from my boss saying he needs me
down there.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m an errand boy.”

She smiled. “Well,” she said, “you aren’t/mafia, not looking
like that and driving that piece of shitJWhy does your car smell like bananas,
anyway?”

He shrugged, carried on eating.

Sam narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you’re a banana smuggler,” she
said. “You haven’t asked me what I do yet.”

“I figure you’re at school.”

“UW Madison.”

“Where you are undoubtedly studying art history, women’s
studies, and probably casting your own bronzes. And you probably work in a
coffeehouse to help cover the rent.”

She put down her fork, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. “How the
fuck did you do that?”

“What? Now you say, no, actually I’m studying Romance languages
and ornithology.”

“So you’re saying that was a lucky guess or something?”

“What was?”

She stared at him with dark eyes. “You are one peculiar guy,
Mister ... I don’t know your name.”

“They call me Shadow,” he said.

She twisted her mouth wryly, as if she were tasting
something she disliked. She stopped talking, put her head down, finished her
lasagna.

“Do you know why it’s called Egypt?” asked Shadow when Sam
finished eating.

“Down Cairo way? Yeah. It’s in the delta of the Ohio and the
Mississippi. Like Cairo in Egypt, in the Nile delta.”

“That makes sense.”

She sat back in her chair, ordered coffee and chocolate
cream pie, ran a hand through her black hair. “You married, Mister Shadow?” And
then, as he hesitated, “Gee. I just asked another tricky question, didn’t I?”

“They buried her on Thursday,” he said, picking his words
with care. “She was killed in a car crash.”

“Oh. God. Jesus. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

An awkward pause. “My half sister lost her kid, my nephew,
end of last year. It’s rough.”

“Yeah. It is. What did he die of?”

She sipped her coffee. “We don’t know. We don’t even really
know that he’s dead. He just vanished. But he was only thirteen. It was the
middle of last winter. My sister was pretty broken up about it.”

“Were there any, any clues?” He sounded like a TV cop. He
tried again. “Did they suspect foul play?” That sounded worse.

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

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

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

The waitress handed them the check, and Shadow paid.

“Thanks,” said Sam.

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

“Jesus. What?”

“Herodotus. You ever read his Histories!”

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

“I thought that was the Devil.”

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” said Shadow. “That’s not it.”

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

“I like my theory better,” said Shadow.

“What’s your theory?”

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

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

“Where?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sure,” said Shadow.

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

The road curved: Another Town (pop. 300)T,Ti0me of the runner-up
to the state under-12s speed-skating championship, two huge giant-economy-sized
funeral parlors on each side of the road, and how many funeral jjarlors do you
need, Shadow wondered, when you only have three hundred people ... ?

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

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

“I’m Cherokee,” she said.

“Full-blooded?”

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

“He went back to the reservation?”

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

“I’m sorry.”

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

“There’s always that,” said Shadow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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