American Gods

Abruptly, and without transition, he was not falling. Now he was in a cave, and he was no longer alone. Shadow stared into familiar eyes: huge, liquid black eyes. They blinked.

Under the earth: yes. He remembered this place. The stink of wet cow. Firelight flickered on the wet cave walls, illuminating the buffalo head, the man’s body, skin the color of brick clay.

“Can’t you people leave me be?” asked Shadow. “I just want to sleep.”

The buffalo man nodded, slowly. His lips did not move, but a voice in Shadow’s head said, “Where are you going, Shadow?”

“Cairo.”

“Why?”

“Where else have I got to go? It’s where Wednesday wants me to go. I drank his mead.” In Shadow’s dream, with the power of dream logic behind it, the obligation seemed unarguable: he drank Wednesday’s mead three times, and sealed the pact—what other choice of action did he have?

The buffalo-headed man reached a hand into the fire, stirring the embers and the broken branches into a blaze. “The storm is coming,” he said. Now there was ash on his hands, and he wiped it onto his hairless chest, leaving soot-black streaks.

“So you people keep telling me. Can I ask you a question?”

There was a pause. A fly settled on the furry forehead. The buffalo man flicked it away. “Ask.”

“Is this true? Are these people really gods? It’s all so . . .” He paused. Then he said, “impossible,” which was not exactly the word he had been going for but seemed to be the best he could do.

“What are gods?” asked the buffalo man.

“I don’t know,” said Shadow.

There was a tapping, relentless and dull. Shadow waited for the buffalo man to say something more, to explain what gods were, to explain the whole tangled nightmare that his life seemed to have become. He was cold.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Shadow opened his eyes, and, groggily, sat up. He was freezing, and the sky outside the car was the deep luminescent purple that divides the dusk from the night.

Tap. Tap. Someone said, “Hey, mister,” and Shadow turned his head. The someone was standing beside the car, no more than a darker shape against the darkling sky. Shadow reached out a hand and cranked down the window a few inches. He made some waking-up noises, and then he said, “Hi.”

“You all right? You sick? You been drinking?” The voice was high—a woman’s or a boy’s.

“I’m fine,” said Shadow. “Hold on.” He opened the door, and got out, stretching his aching limbs and neck as he did so. Then he rubbed his hands together, to get the blood circulating and to warm them up.

“Whoa. You’re pretty big.”

“That’s what they tell me,” said Shadow. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sam,” said the voice.

“Boy Sam or girl Sam?”

“Girl Sam. I used to be Sammi with an i, and I’d do a smiley face over the i, but then I got completely sick of it because like absolutely everybody was doing it, so I stopped.”

“Okay, girl Sam. You go over there, and look out at the road.”

“Why? Are you a crazed killer or something?”

“No,” said Shadow, “I need to take a leak and I’d like just the smallest amount of privacy.”

“Oh. Right. Okay. Got it. No problem. I am so with you. I can’t even pee if there’s someone in the next stall. Major shy bladder syndrome.”

“Now, please.”

She walked to the far side of the car, and Shadow took a few steps closer to the field, unzipped his jeans, and pissed against a fence post for a very long time. He walked back to the car. The last of the gloaming had become night.

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You must have a bladder like Lake Erie. I think empires rose and fell in the time it took you to pee. I could hear it the whole time.”

“Thank you. Do you want something?”

“Well, I wanted to see if you were okay. I mean, if you were dead or something I would have called the cops. But the windows were kind of fogged up so I thought, well, he’s probably still alive.”

“You live around here?”

“Nope. Hitchhiking down from Madison.”

“That’s not safe.”

“I’ve done it five times a year for three years now. I’m still alive. Where are you headed?”

“I’m going as far as Cairo.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m going to El Paso. Staying with my aunt for the holidays.”

“I can’t take you all the way,” said Shadow.

“Not El Paso, Texas. The other one, in Illinois. It’s a few hours south. You know where you are now?”

“No,” said Shadow. “I have no idea. Somewhere on Highway Fifty-two?”

“The next town’s Peru,” said Sam. “Not the one in Peru. The one in Illinois. Let me smell you. Bend down.” Shadow bent down, and the girl sniffed his face. “Okay. I don’t smell booze. You can drive. Let’s go.”

“What makes you think I’m giving you a ride?”

“Because I’m a damsel in distress,” she said, “And you are a knight in whatever. A really dirty car. You know someone wrote ‘Wash me!’ on your rear window?” Shadow got into the car and opened the passenger door. The light that goes on in cars when the front door is opened did not go on in this car.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

She climbed in. “It was me,” she said. “I wrote it. While there was still enough light to see.”