American Gods (18 page)

“You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the water hole: he
had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front
teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, Brother
Tiger, you go for a swim, I’ll look after your balls for you. He was so proud
of his balls. So he got into the water hole for a swim, and I put his balls on,
and left him my own little spider balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran
away, fast as my legs would take me:

“I didn’t stop till I got to the next town. And I saw Old
Monkey there. You lookin’ mighty fine, Anansi, said Old Monkey. I said to him,
You know what they all singin’ in the town over there? What are they singin’?
he asks me. They singin’ the runniest song, I told him. Then I did a dance, and
I sings,

Tiger’s balls, yeah,

I ate Tiger’s balls

Now ain ‘t nobody gonna stop me ever at all

Nobody put me up against the big black wall

‘Cos I ate that Tiger’s testimonials

I ate Tiger’s balls,

“Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and
shakin’, and stampin’, then he starts singin’ Tiger’s balls, I ate Tiger’s
balls, snappin’ his fingers, spinnin’ around on his two feet. That’s a fine
song, he says, I’m goin’ to sing it to all my friends. You do that, I tell him,
and I head back to the water hole.

“There’s Tiger, down by the water hole, walkin’ up and down,
with his tail switchin’ and swishin’ and his ears and the fur on his neck up as
far as they can go, and he’s snap-pin’ at every insect comes by with his huge:
old saber teeth, and his eyes flashin’ orange fire. He looks mean’ and scary
and big, but danglin’ between his legs, the littlest balls in the littlest
blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see.

“Hey, Anansi, he says, when he sees me, you were supposed to
be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming
hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black
shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I’m wearing.

“I done my best, I tells him, but it was those monkeys, they
come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled
off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away.

“You a liar, Anansi, says Tiger. I’m going to eat your
liver. But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the water hole.
A dozen happy monkeys, boppin’ down the path, clickin’ their fingers and singin’
as loud as they could sing,

Tiger’s balls, yeah,

I ate Tiger’s balls

Now ain’t nobody gonna stop me ever at all

Nobody put me up against the big black wall

‘Cos I ate that Tiger’s testimonials

I ate Tiger’s balls.

“And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he’s off into the
forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And
I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin’ between my
skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin’ monkeys.
So you all remember: just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you got no power.”

Mr. Nancy smiled, and bowed his head, and spread his hands,
accepting the applause and laughter like a pro, and then he turned and walked
back to where Shadow and Czer-nobog were standing.

“I thought I said no stories,” said Wednesday.

“You call that a story?” said Nancy. “I barely cleared my
throat. Just warmed them up for you. Go knock them dead.”

Wednesday walked out into the firelight, a big old man with
a glass eye in a brown suit and an old Armani coat. He stood there, looking at
the people on the wooden benches, saying nothing for longer than Shadow could
believe someone could comfortably say nothing. And, finally, he spoke.

“You know me,” he said. “You all know me. Some of you have
no cause to love me, but love me or not, you know me.”

There was a rustling, a stir among the people on the
benches.

“I’ve been here longer than most of you. Like the rest of you,
I figured we could get by on what we got. Not enough to make us happy, but
enough to keep going.

‘That may not be the case anymore. There’s a storm coming,
and it’s not a storm of our making.”

He paused. Now he stepped forward, and folded his arms
across his chest.

“When the people came to America they brought us with them.
They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and
Kobolds and Banshees, Ku-bera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth, and they brought
you. We rode here in their minds, and we took root. We traveled with the
settlers to the new lands across the ocean.

“The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered
us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to
the new. Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left,
lost and scared and dispossessed, only what little smidgens of worship or
belief we could find. And to get by as best we could.

“So that’s what we’ve done, gotten by,:out on the edges of
things, where no one was watching us too closely.

“We have, let us face it and admit it, iittfelhfluence. We
prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and
we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the
cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods.”

Wednesday paused. He looked from one to another of his listeners,
grave and statesmanlike. They stared back at him impassively, their faces
masklike and unreadable. Wednesday cleared his throat, and he spat, hard into
the fire. It flared and flamed, illuminating the inside of the hall.

“Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover
for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing
knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of
radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon.
Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance.

“They are aware of us, and they fear us, and they hate us,”
said Odin. “You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. They will
destroy us, if they can. It is time for us to band together. It is time for us
to act.”

The old woman in the red sari stepped into the firelight. On
her forehead was a small dark blue jewel. She said, “You called us here for
this nonsense?” And then she snorted, a snort of mingled amusement and
irritation.

Wednesday’s brows lowered. “I called you here, yes. But this
is sense, Mama-ji, not nonsense. Even a child could see that.”

“So I am a child, am I?” She wagged a finger at him. “I was
old in Kalighat before you were dreamed of, you foolish man. I am a child? Then
I am a child, for there is nothing in your foolish talk to see.”

Again, a moment of double vision; Shadow saw the old woman,
her dark face pinched with age and disapproval, but behind her he saw something
huge, a naked woman with skin as black as a new leather jacket, and lips and
tongue the bright red of arterial blood. Around her neck were skulls, and her
many hands held knives, and swords, and severed heads.

“I did not call you a child, Mama-ji,” said Wednesday, peaceably.
“But it seems self-evident—”

“The only thing that seems self-evident,” said the old
woman, pointing (as behind her, through her, above her, a black finger,
sharp-taloned, pointed in echo), “is your own desire for glory. We’ve lived in
peace in this country for a long time. Some of us do better than others, I
agree. I do well. Back in India, there is an incarnation of me who does much
better, but so be it. I am not envious. I’ve watched the new ones rise, and I’ve
watched them fall again.” Her hand fell to her side. Shadow saw that the others
were looking at her: a mixture of expressions—respect, amusement, embarrassment—in
their eyes. “They worshiped the railroads here, only a blink of an eye ago. And
now the iron gods are as forgotten as the emerald hunters ...”

“Make your point, Mama-ji,” said Wednesday.

“My point?” Her nostrils flared. The corners of her mouth
turned down. “I—and I am obviously only a child—say that we wait. We do nothing.
We don’t know that they mean us harm.”

“And will you still counsel waiting when they come in the
night and they kill you, or they take you away?”

Her expression was disdainful and amused: it was all in the
lips and the eyebrows and the set of the nose. “If they try such a thing,” she
said, “they will find me hard to catch, and harder still to kill.”

A squat young man sitting on the bench behind her hrrumphed
for attention, then said, with a booming voice, “All-Father, my people are
comfortable. We make the best of what we have. If this war of yours goes
against us, we could lose everything.”

Wednesday said, “You have already lost everything. I am offering
you the chance to take something back.”

The fire blazed high as he spoke, illuminating the faces of
the audience.

I don’t really believe, Shadow thought. / don’t believe any
of this. Maybe I’m still fifteen. Mom’s still alive and I haven’t even met
Laura yet. Everything that’s happened so far has been some kind of especially
vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe
with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our
touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if
we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road
our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end. Then the fire burned
out, and there was darkness in Valaskjalf, Odin’s Hall.

“Now what?” whispered Shadow.

“Now we go back to the carousel room,” muttered Mr. Nancy. “And
old One-Eye buys us all dinner, greases some palms, kisses some babies, and no
one says the gee-word anymore.”

“Gee-word?”

“Gods. What were you doin’ the day they handed out brains,
boy, anyway?”

“Someone was telling a story about stealing a tiger’s balls,
and I had to stop and find out how it ended.”

Mr. Nancy chuckled.

“But nothing was resolved. Nobody agreed to anything.”

“He’s workin’ them slowly. He’ll land ‘em one at a time. You’ll
see. They’ll come around in the end.”

Shadow could feel that a wind was coming up from somewhere,
stirring his hair, touching his face, pulling at him.

They were standing in the room of the biggest carousel in
the world, listening to the “Emperor Waltz.”

There was a group of people, tourists by the look of them,
talking with Wednesday over at the other side of the room, as many people as
there had been shadowy figures in Wednesday’s hall. “Through here,” boomed
Wednesday, and he led them through the only exit, formed to look like the
gaping mouth of a huge monster, its sharp teeth ready to rend them all to
slivers. He moved among them like a politician, cajoling, encouraging, smiling,
gently disagreeing, pacifying.

“Did that happen?” asked Shadow.

“Did what happen, shit-for-brains?” asked Mr. Nancy.

“The hall. The fire. Tiger balls. Riding the carousel.”

“Heck, nobody’s allowed to ride the carousel. Didn’t you see
the signs? Now hush.”

The monster’s mouth led to the Organ Room, which puzzled
Shadow—hadn’t they already come through that way?

It was no less strange the second time. Wednesday led them
all up some stairs, past life-sized models of the four horsemen of the
apocalypse hanging from the ceiling, and they followed the signs to an early
exit.

Shadow and Nancy brought up the rear. And then they were out
of the House on the Rock, walking past the gift store and heading back into the
parking lot.

“Pity we had to leave before the end,” said Mr. Nancy. “I
was kind of hoping to see the biggest artificial orchestra in the whole world.”

“I’ve seen it,” said Czernobog. “It’s not so much.”

The restaurant was ten minutes up the road. Wednesday had
told each of his guests that tonight’s dinner was on him, and had organized
rides to the restaurant for any of them who didn’t have their own
transportation.

Shadow wondered how they had gotten to the House on the Rock
in the first place, without their own transportation, and how they were going
to get away again, but he said nothing. It seemed the smartest thing to say.

Shadow had a earful of Wednesday’s guests to ferry to the restaurant:
the woman in the red sari sat in the front seat beside him. There were two men
in the backseat: the squat, peculiar-looking young man whose name Shadow had
not properly caught, but which sounded like Elvis and another man, in a dark
suit, who Shadow could not remember.

He had stood beside the man as he got into the car, had
opened and closed the door for him, and was unable to remember anything about
him. He turned around in the driver’s seat and looked at him, carefully noting
his face, his hair, his clothes, making certain he would know him if he met him
again, and turned back to start the car, to find that the man had slipped from
his mind. An impression of wealth was left behind, but nothing more.

I’m tired, thought Shadow. He glanced to his right and snuck
a glance at the Indian woman. He noted the tiny silver necklace of skulls that
circled her neck; her charm bracelet of heads and hands that jangled, like tiny
bells, when she moved; the dark blue jewel on her forehead. She smelled of
spices, of cardamom and nutmeg and flowers. Her hair was pepper-and-salt, and
she smiled when she saw him look at her.

“You call me Mama-ji,” she said.

“I am Shadow, Mama-ji,” said Shadow.

“And what do you think of your employer’s plans, Mister
Shadow?”

He slowed, as a large black truck sped past, overtaking them
with a spray of slush. “I don’t ask, he don’t tell,” he said.