American Gods

He wondered whether Wisconsin had the death penalty. He wondered whether that would matter. He wanted to understand what was going on—and to find out how it was all going to end. And finally, producing a half-rueful grin, he realized that most of all he wanted everything to be normal. He wanted never to have gone to prison, for Laura still to be alive, for none of this ever to have happened.

“I’m afraid that’s not exactly an option, m’boy,” he thought to himself, in Wednesday’s gruff voice, and he nodded agreement. Not an option. You burned your bridges. So keep walking. Do your own time . . .

A distant woodpecker drummed against a rotten tree.

Shadow became aware of eyes on him: a handful of red cardinals stared at him from a skeletal elder bush then returned to pecking at the clusters of black elderberries. They looked like the illustrations in the Songbirds of North America calendar. He heard the birds’ video-arcade trills and zaps and whoops follow him along the side of the creek. Eventually, they faded away.

The dead fawn lay in a glade in the shadow of a hill, and a black bird the size of a small dog was picking at its side with a large, wicked beak, rending and tearing gobbets of red meat from the corpse. The animal’s eyes were gone, but its head was untouched, and white fawn spots were visible on its rump. Shadow wondered how it had died.

The black bird cocked its head onto one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, “You shadow man.”

“I’m Shadow,” said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn’s rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close.

“Says he will see you in Kay-ro,” tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin’s ravens this was: Huginn or Muninn, Memory or Thought.

“Kay-ro?” he asked.

“In Egypt.”

“How am I going to go to Egypt?”

“Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.”

“Look,” said Shadow, “I don’t want to seem like I’m—Jesus, look . . .” he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. “Okay. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want mysteries.”

“Mysteries,” agreed the bird, helpfully.

“What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It’s a line from a bad spy thriller.”

“Jackal. Friend. Tok. Kay-ro.”

“So you said. I’d like a little more information than that.”

The bird half turned, and pulled another strip of raw venison from the fawn’s ribs. Then it flew off into the trees, the red strip dangling from its beak like a long, bloody worm.

“Hey! Can you at least get me back to a real road?” called Shadow.

The raven flew up and away. Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn’t a real woodsman.

The raven cawed from the edge of the clearing.

“You want me to follow you?” asked Shadow. “Or has Timmy fallen down another well?” The bird cawed again, impatiently. Shadow started walking toward it. It waited until he was close, then flapped heavily into another tree, heading somewhat to the left of the way Shadow had originally been going.

“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.”

The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.

“Say ‘Nevermore,’ “ said Shadow.

“Fuck you,” said the raven. It said nothing else as they went through the woodland together.

In half an hour they reached a blacktop road on the edge of a town, and the raven flew back into the wood. Shadow observed a Culvers Frozen Custard Butterburgers sign, and, next to it, a gas station. He went into the Culvers, which was empty of customers. There was a keen young man with a shaven head behind the cash register. Shadow ordered two butterburgers and french fries. Then he went into the rest room to clean up. He looked a real mess. He did an inventory of the contents of his pockets: he had a few coins, including the silver Liberty dollar, a disposable toothbrush and toothpaste, three Snickers bars, five chemical heater pads, a wallet (with nothing more in it than his driver’s license and a credit card—he wondered how much longer the credit card had to live), and in the coat’s inside pocket, a thousand dollars in fifties and twenties, his take from yesterday’s bank job. He washed his face and hands in hot water, slicked down his dark hair, then went back into the restaurant and ate his burgers and fries and drank his coffee.

He went back to the counter. “You want frozen custard?” asked the keen young man.

“No. No thanks. Is there anywhere around here I could rent a car? My car died, back down the road a way.”