American Gods

An awkward pause. “My half sister lost her kid, my nephew, end of last year. It’s rough.”

“Yeah. It is. What did he die of?”

She sipped her coffee. “We don’t know. We don’t even really know that he’s dead. He just vanished. But he was only thirteen. It was the middle of last winter. My sister was pretty broken up about it.”

“Were there any, any clues?” He sounded like a TV cop. He tried again. “Did they suspect foul play?” That sounded worse.

“They suspected my noncustodial asshole brother-in-law, his father. Who was asshole enough to have stolen him away. Probably did. But this is in a little town in the North Woods. Lovely, sweet, pretty little town where no one ever locks their doors.” She sighed, shook her head. She held her coffee cup in both hands. “Are you sure you aren’t part Indian?”

“Not that I know. It’s possible. I don’t know much about my father. I guess my ma would have told me if he was Native American, though. Maybe.”

Again the mouth twist. Sam gave up halfway through her chocolate cream pie: the slice was half the size of her head. She pushed the plate across the table to Shadow. “You want?” He smiled, said, “Sure,” and finished it off.

The waitress handed them the check, and Shadow paid.

“Thanks,” said Sam.

It was getting colder now. The car coughed a couple of times before it started. Shadow drove back onto the road, and kept going south. “You ever read a guy named Herodotus?” he asked.

“Jesus. What?”

“Herodotus. You ever read his Histories?”

“You know,” she said, dreamily, “I don’t get it. I don’t get how you talk, or the words you use or anything. One moment you’re a big dumb guy, the next you’re reading my friggin’ mind, and the next we’re talking about Herodotus. So no. I have not read Herodotus. I’ve heard about him. Maybe on NPR. Isn’t he the one they call the father of lies?”

“I thought that was the Devil.”

“Yeah, him too. But they were talking about Herodotus saying there were giant ants and gryphons guarding gold mines, and how he made this stuff up.”

“I don’t think so. He wrote what he’d been told. It’s like, he’s writing these histories. And they’re mostly pretty good histories. Loads of weird little details—like, did you know, in Egypt, if a particularly beautiful girl or the wife of a lord or whatever died, they wouldn’t send her to the embalmer for three days? They’d let her body spoil in the heat first.”

“Why? Oh, hold on. Okay, I think I know why. Oh, that’s disgusting.”

“And there’re battles in there, all sorts of normal things. And then there are the gods. Some guy is running back to report on the outcome of a battle and he’s running and running, and he sees Pan in a glade. And Pan says, ‘Tell them to build me a temple here.’ So he says okay, and runs the rest of the way back. And he reports the battle news, and then says, ‘Oh, and by the way, Pan wants you to build him a temple.’ It’s really matter-of-fact, you know?”

“So there are stories with gods in them. What are you trying to say? That these guys had hallucinations?”

“No,” said Shadow. “That’s not it.”

She chewed a hangnail. “I read some book about brains,” she said. “My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It’s just brains.”

“I like my theory better,” said Shadow.

“What’s your theory?”

“That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.”

“Oh.” Silence: only the rattling of the car, the roar of the engine, the growling of the muffler—which did not sound healthy. Then, “Do you think they’re still there?”

“Where?”

“Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked you’d see the gods?”

“Maybe. But I don’t think people’d know that was what they’d seen.”

“I bet it’s like space aliens,” she said. “These days, people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain.”

“I don’t think the gods ever gave rectal probes,” said Shadow. “And they didn’t mutilate cattle themselves. They got people to do it for them.”

She chuckled. They drove in silence for a few minutes, and then she said, “Hey, that reminds me of my favorite god story, from Comparative Religion One-oh-one. You want to hear it?”

“Sure,” said Shadow.