American Gods (4 page)

“It was. They redirected it here because of the storms. Didn’t
they make an announcement?”

“Probably. I fell asleep.”

“You’ll need to talk to that man over there, in the red
coat.”

The man was almost as tall as Shadow: he looked like the father
from a seventies sitcom, and he tapped something into a computer and told
Shadow to run—run!—to a gate on the far side of the terminal.

Shadow ran through the airport, but the doors were alre&dy
closed when he got to the gate. He watched the plane pull away from the gate,
through the plate glass.

The woman at the passenger assistance desk (short and brown,
with a mole on the side of her nose) consulted with another woman and made a
phone call (“Nope, that one’s out. they’ve just cancelled it.”), then she
printed out another boarding card. “This will get you there,” she told him. “We’ll
call ahead to the gate and tell them you’re coming.”

Shadow felt like a pea being flicked between three cups, or
a card being shuffled through a deck. Again he ran through the airport, ending
up near where he had gotten off originally.

A small man at the gate took his boarding pass. “We’ve been
waiting for you,” he confided, tearing off the stub of the boarding pass, with
Shadow’s seat assignment—17D—on it. Shadow hurried onto the plane, and they
closed the door behind him.

He walked through first class—there were only four
first-class seats, three of which were occupied. The bearded man in a pale suit
seated next to the unoccupied seat at the very front grinned at Shadow as he
got onto the plane, then raised his wrist and tapped his watch as Shadow walked
past.

Yeah, yeah, I’m making you late, thought Shadow. Let that be
the worst of your worries.

The plane seemed pretty full, as he made his way down toward
the back. Actually, Shadow found, it was completely full, and there was a
middle-aged woman sitting in seat 17D. Shadow showed her his boarding card
stub, and she showed him hers: they matched.

“Can you take your seat, please?” asked the flight
attendant.

“No,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t.” She clicked her tongue
and checked their boarding cards, then she led him back up to the front of the
plane and pointed him to the empty seat in first class. “Looks like it’s your
lucky day,” she told him. “Can I bring you something to drink? We’ll just have
time before we take off. And I’m sure you need one after that.”

“I’d like a beer, please,” said Shadow. “Whatever you’ve
got.”

The flight attendant went away.

The man in the pale suit in the seat beside Shadow tapped
his watch with his fingernail. It was a black Rolex. “You’re late,” said the
man, and he grinned a huge grin with no warmth in it at all.

“Sorry?”

“I said, you’re late.”

The flight attendant handed Shadow a glass of beer.

For one moment, he wondered if the man was crazy, and then
he decided he must have been referring to the plane, waiting for one last
passenger. “Sorry if I held you up,” he said, politely. “You in a hurry?”

The plane backed away from the gate. The flight attendant
came back and took away Shadow’s beer. The man in the pale suit grinned at her
and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll hold onto this tightly,” and she let him keep his
glass of Jack Daniel’s, while protesting, weakly, that it violated airline
regulations. (“Let me be the judge of that, m’dear.”)

‘Time is certainly of the essence,” said the man. “But no. I
was merely concerned that you would not make the plane.”

“That was kind of you.”

The plane sat restlessly on the ground, engines throbbing,
aching to be off.

“Kind my ass,” said the man in the pale suit. “I’ve got a
job for you, Shadow.”

A roar of engines. The little plane jerked forward, pushing
Shadow back into his seat. Then they were airborne, and the airport lights were
falling away below them. Shadow looked at the man in the seat next to him.

His hair was a reddish gray; his beard, little more than stubble,
was grayish red. A craggy, square face with pale gray eyes. The suit looked
expensive, and was the color of melted vanilla ice cream. His tie was dark gray
silk, and the tie pin was a tree, worked in silver: trunk, branches, and deep
roots.

He held his glass of Jack Daniel’s as they took off, and did
not spill a drop.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what kind of job?” he asked.

“How do you know who I am?”

The man chuckled. “Oh, it’s the easiest thing in the world
to know what people call themselves. A little thought, a little luck, a little
memory. Ask me what kind of job.”

“No,” said Shadow. The attendant brought him another glass
of beer, and he sipped at it.

“Why not?”

“I’m going home. I’ve got a job waiting for me there. I don’t
want any other job.”

The man’s craggy smile did not change, outwardly, but now he
seemed, actually, amused. “You don’t have a job waiting for you at home,” he
said. “You have nothing waiting for you there. Meanwhile, I am offering you a
perfectly legal job—good money, limited security, remarkable fringe benefits.
Hell, if you live that long, I could throw in a pension plan. You think maybe
you’d like one of them?”

Shadow said, “You must have seen my name on the side of my
bag.”

The man said nothing.

“Whoever you are,” said Shadow, “you couldn’t have known I
was going to be on this plane. I didn’t know I was going to be on this plane,
and if my plane hadn’t been diverted to St. Louis, I wouldn’t have been. My
guess is you’re a practical joker. Maybe you’re hustling something. But I think
maybe we’ll have a better time if we end this conversation here.”

The man shrugged.

Shadow picked up the in-flight magazine. The little plane jerked
and bumped through the sky, making it harder to concentrate. The words floated
through his mind like soap bubbles, there as he read them, gone completely a
moment later.

The man sat quietly in the seat beside him, sipping his Jack
Daniel’s. His eyes were closed.

Shadow read the list of in-flight music channels available
on transatlantic flights, and then he was looking at the map of the world with
red lines on it that showed where the airline flew. Then he had finished
reading the magazine, and, reluctantly, he closed the cover and slipped it into
the pocket.

The man opened his eyes. There was something strange about
his eyes, Shadow thought. One of them was a darker gray than the other. He
looked at Shadow. “By the way,” he said, “I was sorry to hear about your wife,
Shadow. A great loss.”

Shadow nearly hit the man, then. Instead he took a deep
breath. (“Like I said, don’t piss off those bitches in airports,” said Johnnie
Larch, in the back of his mind, “or they’ll haul your sorry ass back here
before you can spit”) He counted to five.

“So was I,” he said.

The man shook his head. “If it could but have been any other
way,” he said, and sighed.

“She died in a car crash,” said Shadow. “There are worse
ways to die.”

The man shook his head, slowly. For a moment it seemed to
Shadow as if the man was insubstantial; as if the plane had suddenly become more
real, while his neighbor had become less so.

“Shadow,” he said. “It’s not a joke. It’s not a trick. I can
pay you better than any other job you find will pay you. You’re an ex-con.
There won’t be a long line of people elbowing each other out of the way to hire
you.”

“Mister whoever-the-fuck you are,” said Shadow, just loud
enough to be heard over the din of the engines, “there isn’t enough money in
the world.”

The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS
show about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it’s
only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a
chimp grins, it’s a threat.

“Work for me. There may be a little risk, of course, but if
you survive you can have whatever your heart desires. You could be the next
king of America. Now,” said the man, “who else is going to pay you that well?
Hmm?” “Who are you?” asked Shadow. “Ah, yes. The age of information—young lady,
could you pour me another glass of Jack Daniel’s? Easy on the ice—not, of
course, that there has ever been any other kind of age. Information and knowledge:
two currencies that have never gone out of style.” “I said, who are you?”

“Let’s see. Well, seeing that today certainly is my day—why
don’t you call me Wednesday? Mister Wednesday. Although given the weather, it
might as well be Thursday, eh?” “What’s your real name?”

“Work for me long enough and well enough,” said the man in
the pale suit, “and I may even tell you that. There. Job offer. Think about it.
No one expects you to say yes immediately, not knowing whether you’re leaping
into a piranha tank or a pit of bears. Take your time.” He closed his eyes and
leaned back in his seat.

“I don’t think so,” said Shadow. “I don’t like you. I don’t
want to work with you.”

“Like I say,” said the man, without opening his eyes, “don’t
rush into it. Take your time.”

The plane landed with a bump, and a few passengers got off.
Shadow looked out of the window: it was a little airport in the middle of
nowhere, and there were still two little airports to go before Eagle Point.
Shadow transferred his glance to the man in the pale suit—Mr. Wednesday? He
seemed to be asleep.

Impulsively, Shadow stood up, grabbed his bag, and stepped
off the plane, down the steps onto the slick, wet tarmac, walking at an even
pace toward the lights of the terminal. A light rain spattered his face.

Before he went inside the airport building, he stopped, and
turned, and watched. No one else got off the plane. The ground crew rolled the
steps away, the door was closed, and it took off. Shadow walked inside and he
rented what turned out, when he got to the parking lot, to be a small red
Toyota.

Shadow unfolded the map they’d given him. He spread it out
on the passenger’s seat. Eagle Point was about 250 miles away.

The storms had passed, if they had come this far. It was
cold and clear. Clouds scudded in front of the moon, and for a moment Shadow
could not be certain whether it was the clouds or the moon that were moving.

He drove north for an hour and a half.

It was getting late. He was hungry, and When he realized how
hungry he really was, he pulled off at the next exit and drove into the town of
Nottamun (pop. 1301). He filled the gas tank at the Amoco and asked the bored
woman at the cash register where he could get something to eat.

“Jack’s Crocodile Bar,” she told him. “It’s west on County
Road N.”

“Crocodile Bar?”

“Yeah. Jack says they add character.” She drew him a map on
the back of a mauve flyer, which advertised a chicken roast for the benefit of
a young girl who needed a new kidney. “He’s got a couple of crocodiles, a
snake, one a them big lizard things.”

“An iguana?” “That’s him.”

Through the town, over a bridge, on for a couple of miles,
and he stopped at a low, rectangular building with an illuminated Pabst sign.

The parking lot was half empty. 3 Inside the air was thick
with smoke and “Walking After Midnight” was playing on the jukebox. Shadow
looked around for the crocodiles, but could not see them. He wondered if the
woman in the gas station had been pulling his leg.

“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender. “House beer, and a hamburger
with all the trimmings. Fries.”

“Bowl of chili to start? Best chili in the state.” “Sounds
good,” said Shadow. “Where’s the rest room?” The man pointed to a door in the
corner of the bar. There was a stuffed alligator head mounted on the door.
Shadow went through the door.

It was a clean, well-lit rest room. Shadow looked around the
room first; force of habit. (“Remember, Shadow, you can’t fight back when you’re
pissing,” Low Key said, low key as always, in the back of his head.) He took
the urinal stall on the left. Then he unzipped his fly and pissed for an age,
feeling relief. He read the yellowing press clipping framed at eye level, with
a photo of Jack and two alligators.

There was a polite grunt from the urinal immediately to his
right, although he had heard nobody come in.

The man in the pale suit was bigger standing than he had
seemed sitting on the plane beside Shadow. He was almost Shadow’s height, and
Shadow was a big man. He was staring ahead of him. He finished pissing, shook
off the last few drops, and zipped himself up. Then he grinned, like a fox
eating shit from a barbedwire fence. “So,” said Mr. Wednesday, “you’ve had time
to think, Shadow. Do you want a job?”

In a dark red room—the color of the walls is close to that
of raw liver—is a tall woman dressed cartoonishly in too-tight silk shorts, her
breasts pulled up and pushed forward by the yellow blouse tied beneath them.
Her black hair is piled high and knotted on top of her head. Standing beside
her is a short man wearing an olive T-shirt and expensive blue jeans. He is
holding, in his right hand, a wallet and a Nokia mobile phone with a
red-white-and-blue faceplate.

The red room contains a bed, upon which are white
satin-style sheets and an oxblood bedspread. At the foot of the bed is a small
wooden table, upon which is a small stone statue of a woman with enormous hips,
and a candleholder. The woman hands the man a small red candle. “Here,” she
says. “Light it.” “Me?”

“Yes,” she says. “If you want to have me.” “I shoulda just
got you to suck me off in the (Jar.” “Perhaps,” she says. “Don’t you want me?”
Her hand runs up her body from thigh to breast, a gesture of presentation, as
if she were demonstrating a new product.

Red silk scarves over the lamp in the corner of the room
make the light red.

The man looks at her hungrily, then he takes the candle from
her and pushes it into the candleholder. “You got a light?”