American Gods

A dark blue police cruiser was parked on a side street, and Shadow pulled up the hearse behind it. There were two cops inside the cruiser, drinking their coffee from thermos tops. They had the engine running to keep warm. Shadow tapped on the side window.

“Yeah?”

“I’m from the funeral home,” said Shadow.

“We’re waiting for the medical examiner,” said the cop. Shadow wondered if it was the same man who had spoken to him under the bridge. The cop, who was black, got out of the car, leaving his colleague in the driver’s seat, and walked Shadow back to a Dumpster. Mad Sweeney was sitting in the snow beside the Dumpster. There was an empty green bottle in his lap, a dusting of snow and ice on his face and baseball cap and shoulders. He didn’t blink.

“Dead wino,” said the cop.

“Looks like it,” said Shadow.

“Don’t touch anything yet,” said the cop. “Medical examiner should be here any time now. You ask me, the guy drank himself into a stupor and froze his ass.”

“Yes,” agreed Shadow. “That’s certainly what it looks like.”

He squatted down and looked at the bottle in Mad Sweeney’s lap. Jameson Irish whiskey: a twenty-dollar ticket out of this place. A small green Nissan pulled up, and a harassed middle-aged man with sandy hair and a sandy mustache got out, walked over. He touched the corpse’s neck. He kicks the corpse, thought Shadow, and if it doesn’t kick him back . . .

“He’s dead,” said the medical examiner. “Any ID?”

“He’s a John Doe,” said the cop.

The medical examiner looked at Shadow. “You working for Jacquel and Ibis?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Shadow.

“Tell Jacquel to get dentals and prints for ID and identity photos. We don’t need a post. He should just draw blood for toxicology. Got that? Do you want me to write it down for you?”

“No,” said Shadow. “It’s fine. I can remember.”

The man scowled fleetingly, then pulled a business card from his wallet, scribbled on it, and gave it to Shadow, saying, “Give this to Jacquel.” Then the medical examiner said “Merry Christmas” to everyone, and was on his way. The cops kept the empty bottle.

Shadow signed for the John Doe and put it on the gurney. The body was pretty stiff, and Shadow couldn’t get it out of a sitting position. He fiddled with the gurney, and found out that he could prop up one end. He strapped John Doe, sitting, to the gurney and put him in the back of the hearse, facing forward. Might as well give him a good ride. He closed the rear curtains. Then he drove back to the funeral home.

The hearse was stopped at a traffic light when Shadow heard a voice croak, “And it’s a fine wake I’ll be wanting, with the best of everything, and beautiful women shedding tears and their clothes in their distress, and brave men lamenting and telling fine tales of me in my great days.”

“You’re dead, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow. “You take what you’re given when you’re dead.”

“Aye, that I shall,” sighed the dead man sitting in the back of the hearse. The junkie whine had vanished from his voice now, replaced with a resigned flatness, as if the words were being broadcast from a long, long way away, dead words being sent out on a dead frequency.

The light turned green and Shadow put his foot gently down on the gas.

“But give me a wake, nonetheless,” said Mad Sweeney. “Set me a place at table and give me a stinking drunk wake tonight. You killed me, Shadow. You owe me that much.”

“I never killed you, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow. It’s twenty dollars, he thought, for a ticket out of here. “It was the drink and the cold killed you, not me.”

There was no reply, and there was silence in the car for the rest of the journey. After he parked at the back, Shadow wheeled the gurney out of the hearse and into the mortuary. He manhandled Mad Sweeney onto the embalming table as if he were hauling a side of beef.

He covered the John Doe with a sheet and left him there, with the paperwork beside him. As he went up the back stairs he thought he heard a voice, quiet and muted, like a radio playing in a distant room, which said, “And what would drink or cold be doing killing me, a leprechaun of the blood? No, it was you losing the little golden sun killed me, Shadow, killed me dead, as sure as water’s wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end.”

Shadow wanted to point out to Mad Sweeney that that was a kind of bitter philosophy, but he suspected it was the being dead that made you bitter.

He went upstairs to the main house, where a number of middle-aged women were putting Saran Wrap on casserole dishes, popping the Tupperware tops onto plastic pots of cooling fried potatoes and macaroni and cheese.

Mr. Goodchild, the husband of the deceased, had Mr. Ibis against a wall, and was telling him how he knew none of his children would come out to pay their respects to their mother. The apple don’t fall far from the tree, he told anyone who would listen to him. The apple don’t fall far from the tree.