American Gods

“You could bind the ka of a man to his body for five thousand years,” said Jacquel. “Binding or loosing. But that was a long time ago.” He took all the organs that he had removed and replaced them, respectfully, in the body cavity. He replaced the intestines and the breastbone and pulled the skin edges near each other. Then he took a thick needle and thread and, with deft, quick strokes, he sewed it up, like a man stitching a baseball: the cadaver transformed from meat into girl once again.

“I need a beer,” said Jacquel. He pulled off his rubber gloves and dropped them into the bin. He dropped his dark brown overalls into a hamper. Then he took the cardboard tray of jars filled with little red and brown and purple slices of the organs. “Coming?”

They walked up the back stairs to the kitchen. It was brown and white, a sober and respectable room that looked to Shadow as if it had last been decorated in 1920. There was a huge Kelvinator rattling to itself by one wall. Jacquel opened the Kelvinator’s door, put the plastic jars with their slivers of spleen, of kidney, of liver, of heart, inside. He took out three brown bottles. Ibis opened a glass-fronted cupboard, removed three tall glasses. Then he gestured for Shadow to sit down at the kitchen table.

Ibis poured the beer and passed a glass to Shadow, a glass to Jacquel. It was a fine beer, bitter and dark.

“Good beer,” said Shadow.

“We brew it ourselves,” said Ibis. “In the old days the women did the brewing. They were better brewers than we are. But now it is only the three of us here. Me, him, and her.” He gestured toward the small brown cat, fast asleep in a cat-basket in the corner of the room. “There were more of us, in the beginning. But Set left us to explore, what, two hundred years ago? Must be, by now. We got a postcard from him from San Francisco in 1905, 1906. Then nothing. While poor Horus…” He trailed off, in a sigh, and shook his head.

“I still see him, on occasion,” said Jacquel. “On my way to a pickup.” He sipped his beer.

“I’ll work for my keep,” said Shadow. “While I’m here. You tell me what you need doing, and I’ll do it.”

“We’ll find work for you,” agreed Jacquel.

The small brown cat opened her eyes and stretched to her feet. She padded across the kitchen floor and pushed at Shadow’s boot with her head. He put down his left hand and scratched her forehead and the back of her ears and the scruff of her neck. She arched ecstatically, then sprang into his lap, pushed herself up against his chest, and touched her cold nose to his. Then she curled up in his lap and went back to sleep. He put his hand down to stroke her: her fur was soft, and she was warm and pleasant in his lap: she acted like she was in the safest place in the world, and Shadow felt comforted.

The beer left a pleasant buzz in Shadow’s head.

“Your room is at the top of the stairs, by the bathroom,” said Jacquel. “Your work clothes will be hanging in the closet—you’ll see. You’ll want to wash up and shave first, I guess.”

Shadow did. He showered standing in the cast-iron tub and he shaved, very nervously, with a straight razor that Jacquel loaned him. It was obscenely sharp, and had a mother-of-pearl handle, and Shadow suspected it was usually used to give dead men their final shave. He had never used a straight razor before, but he did not cut himself. He washed off the shaving cream, looked at himself naked in the fly-specked bathroom mirror. He was bruised: fresh bruises on his chest and arms overlaying the fading bruises that Mad Sweeney had left him. He looked at his wet, black hair and the dark gray eyes which looked back mistrustfully from the mirror at him, looked at the marks on his coffee-colored skin.

And then, as if someone else were holding his hand, he raised the straight razor, placed it, blade open, against his throat.

It would be a way out, he thought. An easy way out. And if there’s anyone who’d simply take it in their stride, who’d just clean up the mess and get on with things, it’s the two guys sitting downstairs at the kitchen table drinking their beer. No more worries. No more Laura. No more mysteries and conspiracies. No more bad dreams. Just peace and quiet and rest forever. One clean slash, ear to ear. That’s all it’ll take.