American Gods

The light was strange. It was, he checked his watch, 6:45 A.M., and still dark outside, although the room was filled with a pale blue dimness. He climbed out of bed. He was certain that he had been wearing pajamas when he went to bed, but now he was naked, and the air was cold on his skin. He walked to the window and closed it.

There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field of snow.

There was an idea that hovered at the edge of his perception. Something about transience. It flickered and was gone.

He could see as well as if it were full daylight.

In the mirror, Shadow noticed something strange. He stepped closer, and stared, puzzled. All his bruises had vanished. He touched his side, pressing firmly with his fingertips, feeling for one of the deep pains that told him he had encountered Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood, hunting for the greening blossoms of bruise that Mad Sweeney had gifted him with, and finding nothing. His face was clear and unmarked. His sides, however, and his back (he twisted to examine it) were scratched with what looked like claw marks.

He hadn’t dreamed it, then. Not entirely.

Shadow opened the drawers, and put on what he found: an ancient pair of blue-denim Levi’s, a shirt, a thick blue sweater, and a black undertaker’s coat he found hanging in the wardrobe at the back of the room.

He wore his own old shoes.

The house was still asleep. He crept through it, willing the floorboards not to creak, and then he was outside, and he walked through the snow, his feet leaving deep prints on the sidewalk. It was lighter out than it had seemed from inside the house, and the snow reflected the light from the sky.

After fifteen minutes of walking, Shadow came to a bridge with a big sign on the side of it warning him he was now leaving historical Cairo. A man stood under the bridge, tall and gangling, sucking on a cigarette and shivering continually. Shadow thought he recognized the man.

And then, under the bridge in the winter darkness, he was close enough to see the purple smudge of bruise around the man’s eye, and he said, “Good morning, Mad Sweeney.”

The world was so quiet. Not even cars disturbed the snowbound silence.

“Hey, man,” said Mad Sweeney. He did not look up. The cigarette had been rolled by hand.

“You keep hanging out under bridges, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow, “people gonna think you’re a troll.”

This time Mad Sweeney looked up. Shadow could see the whites of his eyes all around his irises. The man looked scared. “I was lookin’ for you,” he said. “You gotta help me, man. I fucked up big time.” He sucked on his hand-rolled cigarette, pulled it away from his mouth. The cigarette paper stuck to his lower lip, and the cigarette fell apart, spilling its contents onto his ginger beard and down the front of his filthy T-shirt. Mad Sweeney brushed it off, convulsively, with blackened hands, as if it were a dangerous insect.

“My resources are pretty much tapped out, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow. “But why don’t you tell me what it is you need. You want me to get you a coffee?”

Mad Sweeney shook his head. He took out a tobacco pouch and papers from the pocket of his denim jacket and began to roll himself another cigarette. His beard bristled and his mouth moved as he did this, although no words were said aloud. He licked the adhesive side of the cigarette paper and rolled it between his fingers. The result looked only distantly like a cigarette. Then he said, “ ‘M not a troll. Shit. Those bastards’re fucken mean.”

“I know you’re not a troll, Sweeney,” said Shadow, gently. “How can I help you?”

Mad Sweeney flicked his brass Zippo, and the first inch of his cigarette flamed and then subsided to ash. “You remember I showed you how to get a coin? You remember?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. He saw the gold coin in his mind’s eye, watched it tumble into Laura’s casket, saw it glitter around her neck. “I remember.”

“You took the wrong coin, man.”

A car approached the gloom under the bridge, blinding them with its lights. It slowed as it passed them, then stopped, and a window slid down. “Everything okay here, gentlemen?”

“Everything’s just peachy, thank you, officer,” said Shadow. “We’re just out for a morning walk.”

“Okay now,” said the cop. He did not look as if he believed that everything was okay. He waited. Shadow put a hand on Mad Sweeney’s shoulder, and walked him forward, out of town, away from the police car. He heard the window hum closed, but the car remained where it was.

Shadow walked. Mad Sweeney walked, and sometimes he staggered.

The police car cruised past them slowly, then turned and went back into the city, accelerating down the snowy road.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you,” said Shadow.