American Gods

“Someone has to stay with the body. It’s a tradition. We’ll find somebody.”

“He wanted me to do it.”

“No,” said Czernobog. “It will kill you. Bad, bad, bad idea.”

“Yeah? It’ll kill me? To stay with his body?”

“It’s not what I’d want at my funeral,” said Mr. Nancy. “When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie.”

“I never saw that movie,” said Czernobog.

“Of course you did. It’s right at the end. It’s the high school movie. All the children goin’ to the prom.”

Czernobog shook his head.

Shadow said, “The film’s called Carrie, Mr. Czernobog. Okay, one of you tell me about the vigil.”

Nancy said, “You tell him. I’m drivin’.”

“I never heard of no film called Carrie. You tell him.”

Nancy said, “The person on the vigil—gets tied to the tree. Just like Wednesday was. And then they hang there for nine days and nine nights. No food, no water. All alone. At the end they cut the person down, and if they lived . . . well, it could happen. And Wednesday will have had his vigil.”

Czernobog said, “Maybe Alviss will send us one of his people. A dwarf could survive it.”

“I’ll do it,” said Shadow.

“No,” said Mr. Nancy.

“Yes,” said Shadow.

The two old men were silent. Then Nancy said, “Why?”

“Because it’s the kind of thing a living person would do,” said Shadow.

“You are crazy,” said Czernobog.

“Maybe. But I’m going to hold Wednesday’s vigil.”

When they stopped for gas Czernobog announced he felt sick and wanted to ride in the front. Shadow didn’t mind moving to the back of the bus. He could stretch out more, and sleep.

They drove on in silence. Shadow felt that he’d made a decision; something big and strange.

“Hey. Czernobog,” said Mr. Nancy, after a while. “You check out the technical boy back at the motel? He was not happy. He’s been screwin’ with something that screwed him right back. That’s the biggest trouble with the new kids—they figure they know everythin’, and you can’t teach them nothin’ but the hard way.”

“Good,” said Czernobog.

Shadow was stretched out full length on the seat in the back. He felt like two people, or more than two. There was part of him that felt gently exhilarated: he had done something. He had moved. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t wanted to live, but he did want to live, and that made all the difference. He hoped he would live though this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world; and he wondered if Laura would appreciate the joke.

There was another part of him—maybe it was Mike Ainsel, he thought, vanished off into nothing at the press of a button in the Lakeside Police Department—who was still trying to figure it all out, trying to see the big picture.

“Hidden Indians,” he said out loud.

“What?” came Czernobog’s irritated croak from the front seat.

“The pictures you’d get to color in as kids. ‘Can you see the hidden Indians in this picture? There are ten Indians in this picture, can you find them all?’ And at first glance you could only see the waterfall and the rocks and the trees, then you see that if you just tip the picture on its side that shadow is an Indian . . .” He yawned.

“Sleep,” suggested Czernobog.

“But the big picture,” said Shadow. Then he slept, and dreamed of hidden Indians.

* * *

The tree was in Virginia. It was a long way away from anywhere, on the back of an old farm. To get to the farm they had had to drive for almost an hour south from Blacksburg, to drive roads with names like Pennywinkle Branch and Rooster Spur. They got turned around twice and Mr. Nancy and Czernobog both lost their tempers with Shadow and with each other.

They stopped to get directions at a tiny general store, set at the bottom of the hill in the place where the road forked. An old man came out of the back of the store and stared at them: he wore Oshkosh B’Gosh denim overalls and nothing else, not even shoes. Czernobog selected a pickled hog’s foot from a jar on the counter and went outside to eat it on the deck, while the man in the overalls drew Mr. Nancy maps on the back of napkins, marking off turnings and local landmarks.

They set off once more, with Mr. Nancy driving, and they were there in ten minutes. A sign on the gate said ASH.

Shadow got out of the bus and opened the gate. The bus drove through, jolting through the meadowland. Shadow closed the gate. He walked a little behind the bus, stretching his legs, jogging when the bus got too far in front of him, enjoying the sensation of moving his body.

He had lost all sense of time on the drive from Kansas. Had they been driving for two days? Three days? He did not know.