American Gods

Wednesday was sitting in the back of the car. He had opened the metal case, and was methodically laying everything he had been given out on the backseat in neat piles.

“Drive,” he said. “We’re heading for the First Illinois Bank over on State Street.”

“Repeat performance?” asked Shadow. “Isn’t that kind of pushing your luck?”

“Not at all,” said Wednesday. “We’re going to do a little banking.”

While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the backseat and removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking the cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Shadow pulled up outside the bank, stopping the car about fifty yards down the road, well out of camera range. Wednesday got out of the car and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. Then he opened the night safe, and dropped in the gray bags. He closed it again.

He climbed into the passenger seat. “You’re heading for I-90,” said Wednesday. “Follow the signs west for Madison.”

Shadow began to drive.

Wednesday looked back at the bank they were leaving. “There, my boy,” he said, cheerfully, “that will confuse everything. Now, to get the really big money, you need to do that at about four-thirty on a Sunday morning, when the clubs and the bars drop off their Saturday night’s takings. Hit the right bank, the right guy making the drop-off—they tend to pick them big and honest, and sometimes have a couple of bouncers accompany them, but they aren’t necessarily smart—and you can walk away with a quarter of a million dollars for an evening’s work.”

“If it’s that easy,” said Shadow, “how come everybody doesn’t do it?”

“It’s not an entirely risk-free occupation,” said Wednesday, “especially not at four-thirty in the morning.”

“You mean the cops are more suspicious at four-thirty in the morning?”

“Not at all. But the bouncers are. And things can get awkward.”

He flicked through a sheaf of fifties, added a smaller stack of twenties, weighed them in his hand, then passed them over to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Your first week’s wages.”

Shadow pocketed the money without counting it. “So, that’s what you do?” he asked. “To make money?”

“Rarely. Only when a great deal of cash is needed fast. On the whole, I make my money from people who never know they’ve been taken, and who never complain, and who will frequently line up to be taken when I come back that way again.”

“That Sweeney guy said you were a hustler.”

“He was right. But that is the least of what I am. And the least of what I need you for, Shadow.”

Snow spun through their headlights and into the windshield as they drove through the darkness. The effect was almost hypnotic.

“This is the only country in the world,” said Wednesday, into the stillness, “that worries about what it is.”

“What?”

“The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”

“And . . . ?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“So you’ve been to lots of other countries, then?”

Wednesday said nothing. Shadow glanced at him. “No,” said Wednesday, with a sigh. “No. I never have.”

They stopped for gas, and Wednesday went into the rest room in his security guard jacket and his suitcase, and came out in a crisp, pale suit, brown shoes, and a knee-length brown coat that looked like it might be Italian.

“So when we get to Madison, what then?”

“Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. We’ll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?”

“No,” said Shadow. “But I’ve seen the signs.”

The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world: oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock. Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them. Did the House balance perilously upon the Rock? What was so interesting about the Rock? About the House? He had given it a passing thought, but then forgotten it. Shadow was not in the habit of visiting roadside attractions.

They left the interstate at Madison, and drove past the dome of the capitol building, another perfect snow-globe scene in the falling snow, and then they were off the interstate and driving down country roads. After almost an hour of driving through towns with names like Black Earth, they turned down a narrow driveway, past several enormous, snow-dusted flower pots entwined with lizardlike dragons. The tree-lined parking lot was almost empty.

“They’ll be closing soon,” said Wednesday.

“So what is this place?” asked Shadow, as they walked through the parking lot toward a low, unimpressive wooden building.

“This is a roadside attraction,” said Wednesday. “One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power.”

“Come again?”