American Gods

Sweeney shivered and twitched; Shadow thought it was the cold for a moment, then knew where he’d seen that shuddering shiver before. In prison: it was a junkie shiver. Sweeney was in withdrawal from something, and Shadow would have been willing to bet it was heroin. A junkie leprechaun? Mad Sweeney pinched off the burning head of his cigarette, dropped it on the ground, put the unfinished yellowing rest of it into his pocket. He rubbed his filthy fingers together, breathed on them to try and rub warmth into them. His voice was a whine now. “Listen, just give me the fucken coin, man. What do you want it for? Huh? Hey, you know there’s more where that came from. I’ll give you another, just as good. Hell, I’ll give you a shitload, man.”

He took off his filthy baseball cap—then, with his right hand, he stroked the air, producing a large golden coin. He dropped it into his cap. And then he took another from a wisp of breath steam, and another, catching and grabbing them from the still morning air until the baseball cap was brimming with them and Sweeney was forced to hold it with both hands.

He extended the baseball cap filled with gold to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Take them, man. Just give me back the coin I gave to you.” Shadow looked down at the cap, wondered how much its contents would be worth.

“Where am I going to spend those coins, Mad Sweeney?” Shadow asked. “Are there a lot of places you can turn your gold into cash?”

He thought the Irishman was going to hit him for a moment, but the moment passed and Mad Sweeney just stood there, holding out his gold-filled cap with both hands like Oliver Twist. And then tears swelled in his blue eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. He took the cap and put it—now empty of everything except a greasy sweatband—back over his thinning scalp. “You gotta, man,” he was saying. “Didn’t I show you how to do it? I showed you how to take coins from the hoard. I showed you where the hoard was. The treasure of the sun. Just give me that first coin back. It didn’t belong to me.”

“I don’t have it any more.”

Mad Sweeney’s tears stopped, and spots of color appeared in his cheeks. “You, you fucken—” he said, and then the words failed him and his mouth opened and closed, soundlessly.

“I’m telling you the truth,” said Shadow. “I’m sorry. If I had it, I’d give it back to you. But I gave it away.”

Sweeney’s filthy hands clamped on Shadow’s shoulders, and the pale blue eyes stared into his. The tears had made streaks in the dirt on Mad Sweeney’s face. “Shit,” he said. Shadow could smell tobacco and stale beer and whiskey-sweat. “You’re telling the truth, you fucker. Gave it away and freely and of your own will. Damn your dark eyes, you gave it a-fucken-way.”

“I’m sorry.” Shadow remembered the whispering thump the coin had made as it landed in Laura’s casket.

“Sorry or not, I’m damned and I’m doomed.” The tears were flowing once more, and clear snot began to run from the man’s nose. His words dissolved, then, into syllables which never quite congealed together into words. “Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah,” he said. “Muh-muh-muh-muh-muh.” He wiped his nose and his eyes on his sleeves, muddying his face into strange patterns, wiping the snot all over his beard and moustache.

Shadow squeezed Mad Sweeney’s upper arm in an awkward male gesture. I’m here, it said.

“’Twere better I had never been conceived,” said Mad Sweeney, at length. Then he looked up. “The fellow you gave it to. Would he give it back?”

“It’s a woman. And I don’t know where she is. But no, I don’t believe she would.”

Sweeney sighed, mournfully. “When I was but a young pup,” he said, “there was a woman I met, under the stars, who let me play with her bubbies, and she told me my fortune. She told me that I would be undone and abandoned west of the sunrise, and that a dead woman’s bauble would seal my fate. And I laughed and poured more barley wine and played with her bubbies some more, and I kissed her full on her pretty lips. Those were the good days—the first of the gray monks had not yet come to our land, nor had they ridden the green sea to westward. And now.” He stopped, mid-sentence. His head turned and he focused on Shadow. “You shouldn’t trust him,” he said, reproachfully.

“Who?”

“Wednesday. You mustn’t trust him.”

“I don’t have to trust him. I work for him.”

“Do you remember how to do it?”

“What?” Shadow felt he was having a conversation with half a dozen different people. The self-styled leprechaun sputtered and jumped from persona to persona, from theme to theme, as if the remaining clusters of brain cells were igniting, flaming, and then going out for good.

“The coins, man. The coins. I showed you, remember?” He raised two fingers to his face, stared at them, then pulled a gold coin from his mouth. He tossed the coin to Shadow, who stretched out a hand to catch it, but no coin reached him.

“I was drunk,” said Shadow. “I don’t remember.”