American Gods (6 page)

“We haven’t made a bargain.”

“Sure we have. You work for me now. You protect me. You
transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in
an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my
death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs
are adequately taken care of.”

“He’s hustling you,” said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly
ginger beard. “He’s a hustler.”

“Damn straight I’m a hustler,” said Wednesday. ‘That’s why I
need someone to look out for my best interests.”

The song on the jukebox ended, and for a moment’the bar fell
quiet, every conversation at a lull.

“Someone once told me mat you only get those everybody-shuts-up-at-once
moments at twenty past or twenty to the hour,” said Shadow.

Sweeney pointed to the clock above the bar, held in the massive
and indifferent jaws of a stuffed alligator head. The time was 11:20.

“There,” said Shadow. “Damned if I know why that happens.”

“I know why,” said Wednesday. “Drink your mead.”

Shadow knocked the rest of the mead back in one long gulp. “It
might be better over ice,” he said.

“Or it might not,” said Wednesday. “It’s terrible stuff.”

“That it is,” agreed Mad Sweeney. “You’ll excuse me for a
moment, gentlemen, but I find myself in deep and urgent need of a lengthy piss.”
He stood up and walked away, an impossibly tall man. He had to be almost seven
feet tall, decided Shadow.

A waitress wiped a cloth across the table and took their
empty plates. Wednesday told her to bring the same again for everyone, although
this time Shadow’s mead was, to be on the rocks.

“Anyway,” said Wednesday, “that’s what I need of you.”

“Would you like to know what I want?” asked Shadow.

“Nothing could make me happier.”

The waitress brought the drink. Shadow sipped his mead on
the rocks. The ice did not help—if anything it sharpened the sourness, and made
the taste linger in the mouth after the mead was swallowed. However, Shadow
consoled himself, it did not taste particularly alcoholic. He was not ready to
be drunk. Not yet.

He took a deep breath.

“Okay,” said Shadow. “My life, which for three years has
been a long way from being the greatest life there has ever been, just took a
distinct and sudden turn for the worse. Now there are a few things I need to
do. I want to go to Laura’s funeral. I want to say goodbye. I should wind up
her stuff. If you still need me, I want to start at five hundred dollars a
week.” The figure was a stab in the dark. Wednesday’s eyes revealed nothing. “If
we’re happy working together, in six months’ time you raise it to a thousand a
week.”

He paused. It was the longest speech he’d made in years. “You
say you may need people to be hurt. Well, I’ll hurt people if they’re trying to
hurt you. But I don’t hurt people for fun or for profit. I won’t go back to
prison. Once was enough.”

“You won’t have to,” said Wednesday.

“No,” said Shadow. “I won’t.” He finished the last of the
mead. He wondered, suddenly, somewhere in the back of his head, whether the
mead was responsible for loosening his tongue. But the words were coming out of
him like the water spraying from a broken fire hydrant in summer, and he could
not have stopped them if he had tried. “I don’t like you, Mister Wednesday, or
whatever your real name may be. We are not friends. I don’t know how you got
off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. But I’m at a
loose end right now. When we’re done, I’ll be gone. And if you piss me off, I’ll
be gone too. Until then, I’ll work for you.”

“Very good,” said Wednesday. “Then we have a compact. And we
are agreed.”

“What the hell,” said Shadow. Across the room, Mad Sweeney
was feeding quarters into the jukebox. Wednesday spat in his hand and extended
it. Shadow shrugged. He spat in his own palm. They clasped hands. Wednesday
began to squeeze. Shadow squeezed back. After a few seconds his hand began to
hurt. Wednesday held the grip a little longer, and then he let go.

“Good,” he said. “Good. Very good. So, one last glass of
evil, vile fucking mead to seal our deal, and then we are done.”

“It’ll be a Southern Comfort and Coke f6r me,” said Sweeney,
lurching back from the jukebox.

The jukebox began to play the Velvet Underground’s “Who
Loves the Sun?” Shadow thought it a strange song to find on a jukebox. It
seemed very unlikely. But then, this whole evening had become increasingly
unlikely.

Shadow took the quarter he had used for the coin toss from
the table, enjoying the sensation of a freshly milled coin against his fingers,
producing it in his right hand between forefinger and thumb. He appeared to
take it into his left hand in one smooth movement, while casually
finger-palming it. He closed his left hand on the imaginary quarter. Then he
took a second quarter in his right hand, between finger and thumb, and, as he
pretended to drop that coin into the left hand, he let the palmed quarter fall
into his right hand, striking the quarter he held there on the way. The chink
confirmed the illusion that both coins were in his left hand, while they were
now both held safely in his right.

“Coin tricks is it?” asked Sweeney, his chin raising, his
scruffy beard bristling. “Why, if it’s coin tricks we’re doing, watch this.”

He took an empty glass from the table. Then he reached out
and took a large coin, golden and shining, from the air. He dropped it into the
glass. He took another gold coin from the air and tossed it into the glass,
where it clinked against the first. He took a coin from the candle flame of a
candle on the wall, another from his beard, a third from Shadow’s empty left
hand, and dropped them, one by one, into the glass. Then he curled his fingers
over the glass, and blew hard, and several more golden coins dropped into the
glass from his hand. He tipped the glass of sticky coins into his jacket
pocket, and then tapped the pocket to show, unmistakably, that it was empty.

“There,” he said. “That’s a coin trick for you.”

Shadow, who had been watching closely, put his head on one
side. “I need to know how you did it.”

“I did it,” said Sweeney, with the air of one confiding a
huge secret, “with panache and style. That’s how I did it.” He laughed,
silently, rocking on his heels, his gappy teeth bared.

“Yes,” said Shadow. “That is how you did it. You’ve got to
teach me. All the ways of doing the Miser’s Dream that I’ve read, you’d be
hiding the coins in the hand that holds the glass, and dropping them in while
you produce and vanish the coin in your right hand.”

“Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me,” said Mad
Sweeney. “It’s easier just to pick them out of the air.”

Wednesday said, “Mead for you, Shadow. I’ll stick with
Mister Jack Daniel’s, and for the freeloading Irishman ... ?”

“A bottled beer, something dark for preference,” said
Sweeney. “Freeloader, is it?” He picked up what was left of his drink, and
raised it to Wednesday in a toast. “May the storm pass over us, and leave us
hale and unharmed,” he said, and knocked the drink back.

“A fine toast,” said Wednesday. “But it won’t.”

Another mead was placed in front of Shadow.

“Do I have to drink this?”

“I’m afraid you do. It seals our deal. Third time’s the
charm, eh?”

“Shit,” said Shadow. He swallowed the mead in two large
gulps. The pickled-honey taste filled his mouth.

“There,” said Mr. Wednesday. “You’re my man, now.”

“So,” said Sweeney, “you want to know the trick of how it’s
done?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. “Were you loading them in your sleeve?”

“They were never in my sleeve,” said Sweeney. He chortled to
himself, rocking and bouncing as if he were a lanky, bearded volcano preparing
to erupt with delight at his own brilliance. “It’s the simplest trick in the
world. I’ll fight you for it.”

Shadow shook his head. “I’ll pass.”

“Now there’s a fine thing,” said Sweeney to the room. “Old
Wednesday gets himself a bodyguard, and the feller’s too scared to put up his
fists, even.”

“I won’t fight you,” agreed Shadow.

Sweeney swayed and sweated. He fiddled with the peak of his
baseball cap. Then he pulled one of his coins out of the air and placed it on
the table. “Real gold, if you were wondering,” said Sweeney. “Win or lose—and
you’ll lose—it’s yours if you fight me. A big fellow like you—who’d’a thought
you’d be a fucken coward?”

“He’s already said he won’t fight you,” said Wednesday. “Go
away, Mad Sweeney. Take your beer and leave us in peace.”

Sweeney took a step closer to Wednesday. “Call me a freeloader,
will you, you doomed old creature? You coldblooded, heartless old tree-hanger.”
His face was turning a deep, angry red.

Wednesday put out his hands, palms up, pacific. “Foolishness,
Sweeney. Watch where you put your words.”

Sweeney glared at him. Then he said, with the gravity of the
very drunk, “You’ve hired a coward. What would he do if I hurt you, do you
think?”

Wednesday turned to Shadow. “I’ve had enough of this,” he
said. “Deal with it.”

Shadow got to his feet and looked up into Mad Sweeney’s
face: how tall was the man? he wondered. “You’re bothering us,” he said. “You’re
drunk. I think you ought to leave now.”

A slow smile spread over Sweeney’s face. “There, now,” he
said. He swung a huge fist at Shadow. Shadow jerked back: Sweeney’s hand caught
him beneath the right eye. He saw blotches of light, and felt pain.

And with that, the fight began.

Sweeney fought without style, without science, with nothing
but enthusiasm for the fight itself: huge, barreling roundhouse blows that
missed as often as they connected.

Shadow fought defensively, carefully, blocking Sweeney’s
blows or avoiding them. He became very aware of the audience around them.
Tables were pulled out of the way with protesting groans, making a space for
the men to spar. Shadow was aware at all times of Wednesday’s eyes upon him, of
Wednesday’s humorless grin. It was a test, that was obvious, but what kind of a
test?

In prison Shadow had learned there were two kinds of fights:
don’t fuck with me fights, where you made it as showy and impressive as you
could, and private fights, real fights, which were fast and hard and nasty, and
always over in seconds.

“Hey, Sweeney,” said Shadow, breathless, “why are we fighting?”

“For the joy of it,” said Sweeney, sober now, or at least,
no longer visibly drunk. “For the sheer unholy fucken delight of it. Can’t you
feel the joy in your own veins, rising like the sap in the springtime?” His lip
was bleeding. So was Shadow’s knuckle.

“So how’d you do the coin production?” asked Shadow. He
swayed back and twisted, took a blow on his shoulder intended for his face.

“I told you how I did it when first we spoke,” grunted
Sweeney. “But there’s none so blind—ow! Good one!—as those who will not listen.”

Shadow jabbed at Sweeney, forcing him back into a table;
empty glasses and ashtrays crashed to the floor. Shadow could have finished him
off then.

Shadow glanced at Wednesday, who nodded. Shadow looked down
at Mad Sweeney. “Are we done?” he asked. Mad Sweeney hesitated, then nodded.
Shadow let go of him, and took several steps backward. Sweeney, panting, pushed
himself back up to a standing position.

“Not on yer ass!” he shouted. “It ain’t over till I say it
is!” Then he grinned, and threw himself forward, swinging at Shadow. He stepped
onto a fallen ice cube, and his grin turned to openmouthed dismay as his feet
went out from under him, and he fell backward. The back of his head hit the
barroom floor with a definite thud.  —\

Shadow put his knee into Mad Sweeney’s chest. “For the second
time, are we done fighting?” he asked.

“We may as well be, at that,” said Sweeney, raising his head
from the floor, “for the joy’s gone out of me now, like the pee from a small
boy in a swimming pool on a hot day.” And he spat the blood from his mouth and
closed his eyes and began to snore, in deep and magnificent snores.

Somebody clapped Shadow on the back. Wednesday put a bottle
of beer into his hand. It tasted better than mead.

Shadow woke up stretched out in the back of a sedan. The
morning sun was dazzling, and his head hurt. He sat up awkwardly, rubbing his
eyes.

Wednesday was driving. He was humming tunelessly as he
drove. He had a paper cup of coffee in the cup holder. They were heading along
an interstate highway. The passenger seat was empty.

“How are you feeling, this fine morning?” asked Wednesday,
without turning around.

“What happened to my car?” asked Shadow. “It was a rental.”

“Mad Sweeney took it back for you. It was part of the deal
the two of you cut last night. After the fight.”

Conversations from the night before began to jostle uncomfortably
in Shadow’s head. “You got anymore of that coffee?”

The big man reached beneath the passenger seat and passed
back an unopened bottle of water. “Here. You’ll be dehydrated. This will help
more than coffee, for the moment. We’ll stop at the next gas station and get
you some breakfast. You’ll need to clean yourself up, too. You look like
something the goat dragged in.”

“Cat dragged in,” said Shadow.

“Goat,” said Wednesday. “Huge rank stinking goat with big
teeth.”

Shadow unscrewed the top of the water and drank. Something
clinked heavily in his jacket pocket. He put his hand into the pocket and
pulled out a coin the size of a half-dollar. It was heavy, and a deep yellow in
color.

In the gas station Shadow bought a Clean-U-Up Kit, which
contained a razor, a packet of shaving cream, a comb, and a disposable
toothbrush packed with a tiny tube of toothpaste. Then he walked into the men’s
rest room and looked at himself in the mirror. He had a bruise under one
eye—when he prodded it, experimentally, with one finger, he found it hurt
deeply—and a swollen lower lip.