American Gods (52 page)

Shadow was scanning the minutes of winter 1878 when Chad
Mulligan knocked and entered, looking shamefaced, like a child bringing home a
bad report card.

“Mister Ainsel,” he said. “Mike. I’m truly sorry about this.
Personally, I like you. But that don’t change anything, you know?”

Shadow said he knew.

“I got no choice in the matter,” said Chad, “but to place
you under arrest for violating your parole.” Then Mulligan read Shadow his
rights. He filled out some paperwork. He took Shadow’s prints. He walked him
down the hall to the county jail, on the other side of the building.

There was a long counter and several doorways on one side of
the room, two glassed-in holding cells and’—a doorway on the other. One of the
cells was occupied—a man slept on a cement bed under a thin blanket. The other
was empty.

There was a sleepy-looking woman in a brawn uniform behind
the counter, watching Jay Leno on a small white portable television. She took
the papers from Chad, and signed for Shadow. Chad hung around, filled in more
papers. The woman came around the counter, patted Shadow down, took all his
possessions—wallet, coins, front door key, book, watch—and put them on the
counter, then gave him a plastic bag with orange clothes in it and told him to
go into the open cell and change into them. He could keep his own underwear and
socks. He went in and changed into the orange clothes and the shower footwear.
It stank evilly in there. The orange top he pulled over his head had LUMBER
COUNTY JAIL written on the back in large black letters.

The metal toilet in the cell had backed up, and was filled
to the brim with a brown stew of liquid feces and sour, beer-ish urine.

Shadow came back out, gave the woman his clothes, which she
put into the plastic bag with the rest of,his possessions. He had thumbed
through the wallet before he handed it over. “You take care of this,” he had
said to the woman. “My whole life is in here.” The woman took the wallet from
him, and assured him that it would be safe with them. She asked Chad if that
wasn’t true, and Chad, looking up from the last of his paperwork, said Liz was
telling the truth, they’d never lost a prisoner’s possessions yet.

Shadow had slipped the four hundred-dollar bills that he had
palmed from the wallet into his socks, when he had changed, along with the
silver Liberty dollar he had palmed as he had emptied his pockets.

“Say,” Shadow asked, when he came out. “Would it be okay if
I finished reading the book?”

“Sorry, Mike. Rules are rules,” said Chad.

Liz put Shadow’s possessions in a bag in the back room. Chad
said he’d leave Shadow in Officer Bute’s capable hands. Liz looked tired and
unimpressed. Chad left. The telephone rang, and Liz—Officer Bute—answered it. “Okay,”
she said. “Okay. No problem. Okay. No problem. Okay.” She put down the phone
and made a face.

“Problem?” asked Shadow.

“Yes. Not really. Kinda. They’re sending someone up from
Milwaukee to collect you.”

“Why is that a problem?”

“I got to keep you in here with me for three hours,” she
said. “And the cell over there”—she pointed to the cell by the door, with the
sleeping man in it—”that’s occupied. He’s on suicide watch. I shouldn’t put you
in with him. But it’s not worth the trouble to sign you in to the county and then
sign you out again.” She shook her head. “And you don’t want to go in there”—she
pointed to the empty cell in which he’d changed his clothes—”because the can is
shot. It stinks in there, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It was gross.”

“It’s common humanity, that’s what it is. The sooner we get
into the new facilities, it can’t be too soon for me. One of the women we had
in yesterday must’ve flushed a tampon away. I tell ‘em not to. We got bins for
that. They clog the pipes. Every damn tampon down that John costs the county a
hundred bucks in plumbers’ fees. So, I can keep you out here, if I cuff you. Or
you can go in the cell.” She looked at him. “Your call,” she said.

“I’m not crazy about them,” he said. “But I’ll take the
cuffs.”

She took a pair from her utility belt, then patted the
semiautomatic in its holster, as if to remind him that it was there. “Hands
behind your back,” she said.

The cuffs were a tight fit: he had big wrists. Then she put
hobbles on his ankles and sat him down on a bench on the far side of the
counter, against the wall. “Now,” she said. “You don’t bother me, and I won’t
bother you.” She tilted the television so that he could see it.

“Thanks,” he said.

“When we get our new offices,” she said, “there won’t be
none of this nonsense.”

The Tonight Show finished. An episode of Cheers began.
Shadow had never watched Cheers. He had only ever seen one episode of it—the
one where Coach’s daughter comes to the bar—although he had seen that several
times. Shadow had noticed that you only ever catch one episode of shows you don’t
watch, over and over, years apart; he thought it must be some kind of cosmic
law.

Officer Liz Bute sat back in her chair. She was not
obviously dozing, but she was by no means awake, so she did not notice when the
gang at Cheers stopped talking and getting off one-liners and just started
staring out of the screen at Shadow.

Diane, the blonde barmaid who fancied herself an
intellectual, was the first to talk. “Shadow,” she said. “We were so worried
about you. You’d fallen off the world. It’s so good to see you again—albeit in
bondage and orange ~coutur&”

“What I figure is the thing to do,” pontificated bar bore
Cliff, “is to escape in hunting season, when everybody’s wearing orange anyway.”

Shadow said nothing.

“Ah, cat got your tongue, I see,” said Diane. “Well, you’ve
led us a merry chase!”

Shadow looked away. Officer Liz had begun, gently, to snore.
Carla, the little waitress, snapped, “Hey, jerk-wad! We interrupt this
broadcast to show you something that’s going to make you piss in your friggin’
pants. You ready?”

The screen flickered and went black. The words LIVE FEED
pulsated in white at the bottom left of screen. A subdued female voice said, in
voice-over, “It’s certainly not too late to change to the winning side. But you
know, you also have the freedom to stay just where you are. That’s what it
means to be an American. That’s the miracle of America. Freedom to believe
means the freedom to believe the wrong thing, after all. Just as freedom of
speech gives you the right to stay silent.”

The picture now showed a street scene. The camera lurched
forward, in the manner of handheld video cameras in real-life documentaries.

A man with thinning hair, a tan, and a faintly hangdog expression
filled the frame. He was standing by a wall sipping a cup of coffee from a
plastic cup. He looked into the camera, and said, “Terrorists hide behind
weasel words, like ‘freedom fighter.’ You and I know that they are murdering
scum, pure and simple. We’re risking our lives to make a difference.”

Shadow recognized the voice. He had been inside the man’s
head once. Mr. Town sounded different from insidehis voice was deeper, more
resonant—but there was no mistaking it.

The cameras pulled back to show that Mr. Town was standing
outside a brick building on an American street. Above the door was a set-square
and compass framing the letter G.

“In position,” said somebody offscreen.

“Let’s see if the cameras inside the hall are rolling,” said
the female voice-over voice.

The words LIVE FEED continued to blink at the bottom left of
the screen. Now the picture showed the interior of a small hall: the room was
underlit. Two men sat at a table at the far end of the room. One of them had
his back to the camera. The camera zoomed in to them awkwardly. For a moment
they were out of focus, and then they became sharp once more. The man facing
the camera got up and began to pace, like a bear on a chain. It was Wednesday.
He looked as if, on some level, he was enjoying this. As they came into focus
the sound came on with a pop.

The man with his back to the screen was saying, “—we are offering
is the chance to end this, here and now, with no more bloodshed, no more
aggression, no mottTpain, no more loss of life. Isn’t that worth giving up a
little?”

Wednesday stopped pacing and turned. His nostrils flared. “First,”
he growled, “you have to understand that you are asking me to speak for all of
us. Which is manifestly nonsensical. Secondly, what on earth makes you think
that I believe that you people are going to keep your word?”

The man with his back to the camera moved his head. “You do
yourself an injustice,” he said. “Obviously you people have no leaders. But you’re
the one they listen to. They pay attention to you. And as for keeping my word,
well, these preliminary talks are being filmed and broadcast live,” and he
gestured back toward the camera. “Some of your people are watching as we speak.
Others will see videotapes. The camera does not lie.”

“Everybody lies,” said Wednesday.

Shadow recognized the voice of the man with his back to the
camera. It was Mr. World, the one who had spoken to Town on the cellphone while
Shadow was in Town’s head.

“You don’t believe,” said Mr. World, “that we will keep our
word?”

“I think your promises were made to be broken and your oaths
to be forsworn. But I will keep my word.”

“Safe conduct is safe conduct,” said Mr. World, “and a flag
of truce is what we agreed. I should tell you, by the way, that your young
prot6g6 is once more in our custody.”

Wednesday snorted. “No,” he said. “He’s not.”

“We were discussing the ways to deal with the coming paradigm
shift. We don’t have to be enemies. Do we?”

Wednesday seemed shaken. He said, “I will do whatever is in
my power ...”

Shadow noticed something strange about the image of
Wednesday on the television screen. A red glint burned on his left eye, the
glass one. The dot left a phosphor-dot afterimage as he moved. He seemed
unaware of it.

“It’s a big country,” said Wednesday, marshaling his
thoughts. He moved his head and the red laser-pointer dot slipped to his cheek.
Then it edged up to his glass eye once more. “There is room for—”

There was a bang, muted by the television speakers, and the
side of Wednesday’s head exploded. His body tumbled backward.

Mr. World stood up, his back still to the camera, and walked
out of shot.

“Let’s see that again, in slow motion this time,” said the announcer’s
voice, reassuringly.

The words LIVE FEED became REPLAY. Slowly now the red laser
pointer traced its bead onto Wednesday’s glass eye, and once again the side of
his face dissolved into a cloud of blood. Freeze frame.

“Yes, it’s still God’s Own Country,” said the announcer, a
news reporter pronouncing the final tag line. “The only question is, which gods?”

Another voice—Shadow thought that it was Mr. World’s, it had
that same half-familiar quality—said, “We now return you to your regularly
scheduled programming.”

On Cheers, Coach assured his daughter that she was truly beautiful,
just like her mother.

The telephone rang, and Officer Liz sat up with a start. She
picked it up. Said, “Okay. Okay. Yes. Okay.” Put the phone down. She got up
from behind the counter, and said to Shadow, “I’m going to have to put you in
the cell. Don’t use the can. The Lafayette sheriff’s department should be here
to collect you soon.”

She removed the cuffs and the hobble, locked him into the
holding cell. The smell was worse, now that the door was closed.

Shadow sat down on the concrete bed, slipped the Liberty dollar
from his sock, and began moving it from fingep to palm, from position to
position, from hand tp hand, his only aim to keep the coin from being seen
byjujyone who might look in. He was passing the time. He was numb.

He missed Wednesday, then, sudden, and deep. He missed the
man’s confidence, his attitude. His conviction.

He opened his hand, looked down at Ladf Liberty, a silver profile.
He closed his fingers over the coin, held it tightly. He wondered if he’d get
to be one of those guys who got life for something they didn’t do. If he even
made it that far. From what he’d seen of Mr. World and Mr. Town, they would
have little trouble pulling him out of the system. Perhaps he’d suffer an
unfortunate accident on the way to the next holding facility. He could be shot
while making a break for it. It did not seem at all unlikely.

There was a stir of activity in the room on the other side
of the glass. Officer Liz came back in. She pressed a button, a door that
Shadow could not see opened, and a black deputy in a brown sheriff’s uniform
entered and walked briskly over to the desk.

Shadow slipped the dollar coin back into his sock.

The new deputy handed over some papers, Liz scanned them and
signed. Chad Mulligan came in, said a few words to the new man, then he
unlocked the cell door and walked inside.

“Okay. Folk are here to pick you up. Seems you’re a matter
of national security. You know that?”

“It’ll make a great front-page story for the Lakeside News,”
said Shadow.

Chad looked at him without expression. “That a drifter got
picked up for parole violations? Not much of a story.”

“So that’s the way it is?”

“That’s what they tell me,” said Chad Mulligan. Shadow put
his hands in front of him this time, and Chad cuffed him. Chad locked on the
ankle hobbles, and a rod from the cuffs to the hobbles.

Shadow thought, They’ll take me outside. Maybe I can make a
break for it—in hobbles and cuffs and lightweight orange clothes, out into the
snow, and even as he thought it he knew how stupid and hopeless it was.

Chad walked him out into the office. Liz had turned the TV
off now. The black deputy looked him over. “He’s a big guy,” he said to Chad.
Liz passed the new deputy the paper bag with Shadow’s possessions in it, and he
signed for it.