American Gods

The body in the back of the bus did not seem to be rotting. He could smell it—a faint odor of Jack Daniel’s, overlaid with something that might have been sour honey. But the smell was not unpleasant. From time to time he would take out the glass eye from his pocket and look at it: it was shattered deep inside, fractured from what he imagined was the impact of a bullet, but apart from a chip to one side of the iris the surface was unmarred. Shadow would run it though his hands, palming it, rolling it, pushing it along with his fingers. It was a ghastly souvenir, but oddly comforting: and he suspected that it would have amused Wednesday to know that his eye had wound up in Shadow’s pocket.

The farmhouse was dark and shut up. The meadows were overgrown and seemed abandoned. The farm roof was crumbling at the back; it was covered in black plastic sheeting. They jolted over a ridge and Shadow saw the tree.

It was silver-gray and it was higher than the farm-house. It was the most beautiful tree Shadow had ever seen: spectral and yet utterly real and almost perfectly symmetrical. It also looked instantly familiar: he wondered if he had dreamed it, then realized that no, he had seen it before, or a representation of it, many times. It was Wednesday’s silver tie pin.

The VW bus jolted and bumped across the meadow, and came to a stop about twenty feet from the trunk of the tree.

There were three women standing by the tree. At first glance Shadow thought that they were the Zorya, but no, they were three women he did not know. They looked tired and bored, as if they had been standing there for a long time. Each of them held a wooden ladder. The biggest also carried a brown sack. They looked like a set of Russian dolls: a tall one—she was Shadow’s height, or even taller—a middle-sized one, and a woman so short and hunched that at first glance Shadow wrongly supposed her to be a child. They looked so much alike that Shadow was certain that the women must be sisters.

The smallest of the women dropped to a curtsy when the bus drew up. The other two just stared. They were sharing a cigarette, and they smoked it down to the filter before one of them stubbed it out against a root.

Czernobog opened the back of the bus and the biggest of the women pushed past him, and, as easily as if it were a sack of flour, she lifted Wednesday’s body out of the back and carried it to the tree. She laid it in front of the tree, about ten feet from the trunk. She and her sisters unwrapped Wednesday’s body. He looked worse by daylight than he had by candlelight in the motel room, and after one quick glance Shadow looked away. The women arranged his clothes, tidied his suit, then placed him at the corner of the sheet and wound it around him once more.

Then the women came over to Shadow.

—You are the one? the biggest of them asked.

—The one who will mourn the All-Father? asked the middle-sized one.

—You have chosen to take the vigil? asked the smallest.

Shadow nodded. Afterward, he was unable to remember whether he had actually heard their voices. Perhaps he had simply understood what they had meant from their looks and their eyes.

Mr. Nancy, who had gone back to the house to use the bathroom, came walking back to the tree. He was smoking a cigarillo. He looked thoughtful.

“Shadow,” he called. “You really don’t have to do this. We can find somebody more suited.”

“I’m doing it,” said Shadow, simply.

“And if you die?” asked Mr. Nancy. “If it kills you?”

“Then,” said Shadow, “it kills me.”

Mr. Nancy flicked his cigarillo into the meadow, angrily. “I said you had shit for brains, and you still have shit for brains. Can’t see when somebody’s tryin’ to give you an out?”

“I’m sorry,” said Shadow. He didn’t say anything else. Nancy walked back to the bus.

Czernobog walked over to Shadow. He did not look pleased. “You must come through this alive,” he said. “Come through this safely for me.” And then he tapped his knuckle gently against Shadow’s forehead and said, “Bam!” He squeezed Shadow’s shoulder, patted his arm, and went to join Mr. Nancy.

The biggest woman, whose name seemed to be Urtha or Urder—Shadow could not repeat it back to her to her satisfaction—told him, in pantomime, to take off his clothes.

“All of them?”

The big woman shrugged. Shadow stripped to his briefs and T-shirt. The women propped the ladders against the tree. One of the ladders—it was painted by hand, with little flowers and leaves twining up the struts—they pointed out to him.

He climbed the nine steps. Then, at their urging, he stepped onto a low branch.

The middle woman tipped out the contents of the sack onto the meadow-grass. It was filled with a tangle of thin ropes, brown with age and dirt, and the woman began to sort them out into lengths, and to lay them carefully on the ground beside Wednesday’s body.