It was more than a hundred years before Leif the Fortunate, son of Erik the Red, rediscovered that land, which he would call Vineland. His gods were already waiting for him when he arrived: Tyr, one-handed, and gray Odin gallows-god, and Thor of the thunders.
They were there.
They were waiting.
Chapter Four
Let the Midnight Special
Shine its light on me
Let the Midnight Special
Shine its ever-lovin' light on me
-"The Midnight Special," traditional
Shadow and Wednesday ate breakfast at a Country Kitchen across the street from their motel. It was eight in the morning, and the world was misty and chill.
"You still ready to leave Eagle Point?" asked Wednesday. "I have some calls to make, if you are. Friday today. Friday's a free day. A woman's day. Saturday tomorrow. Much to do on Saturday."
"I'm ready," said Shadow. "Nothing keeping me here."
Wednesday heaped his plate high with several kinds of breakfast meats. Shadow took some melon, a bagel, and a packet of cream cheese. They went and sat down in a booth.
"That was some dream you had last night," said Wednesday.
"Yes," said Shadow. "It was." Laura's muddy footprints had been visible on the motel carpet when he got up that morning, leading from his bedroom to the lobby and out the door.
"So," said Wednesday. "Why'd they call you Shadow?"
Shadow shrugged. "It's a name," he said. Outside the plate glass the world in the mist had become a pencil drawing executed in a dozen different grays with, here and there, a smudge of electric red or pure white. "How'd you lose your eye?"
Wednesday shoveled half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. "Didn't lose it," he said. "I still know exactly where it is."
"So what's the plan?"
Wednesday looked thoughtful. He ate several vivid pink slices of ham, picked a fragment of meat from his beard, dropped it onto his plate. "Plan is as follows. Tomorrow night we shall be meeting with a number of persons preeminent in their respective fields-do not let their demeanor intimidate you. We shall meet at one of the most important places in the entire country. Afterward we shall wine and dine them. I need to enlist them in my current enterprise."
"And where is this most important place?"
"You'll see, m'boy. I said one of them. Opinions are justifiably divided. I have sent word to my colleagues. We'll stop off in Chicago on the way, as I need to pick up some money. Entertaining, in the manner we shall need to entertain, will take more ready cash than I currently have available. Then on to Madison." Wednesday paid and they left, walked back across the road to the motel parking lot. Wednesday tossed Shadow the car keys.
He drove down to the freeway and out of town.
"You going to miss it?" asked Wednesday. He was sorting through a folder filled with maps.
"The town? No. I didn't really ever have a life here. I was never in one place too long as a kid, and I didn't get here until I was in my twenties. So this town is Laura's."
"Let's hope she stays here," said Wednesday.
"It was a dream," said Shadow. "Remember."
"That's good," said Wednesday. "Healthy attitude to have. Did you f**k her last night?"
Shadow took a breath. Then, "That is none of your damn business. And no."
"Did you want to?"
Shadow said nothing at all. He drove north, toward Chicago. Wednesday chuckled, and began to pore over his maps, unfolding and refolding them, making occasional notes on a yellow legal pad with a large silver ballpoint pen.
Eventually he was finished. He put his pen away, put the folder on the backseat. "The best thing about the states we're heading for," said Wednesday, "Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there, is they have the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full br**sts with the veins running through them like a good cheese."
"Only when you were younger?" asked Shadow. "Looked like you were doing pretty good last night."
"Yes." Wednesday smiled. "Would you like to know the secret of my success?"
"You pay them?"
"Nothing so crude. No, the secret is charm. Pure and simple."
"Charm, huh? Well, like they say, you either got it or you ain't."
"Charms can be learned," said Wednesday.
Shadow tuned the radio to an oldies station, and listened to songs that were current before he was born. Bob Dylan sang about a hard rain that was going to fall, and Shadow wondered if that rain had fallen yet, or if it was something that was still going to happen. The road ahead of them was empty and the ice crystals on the asphalt glittered like diamonds in the morning sun.
Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.
They parked outside a squat black brownstone. The sidewalk was clear of snow. They walked to the lobby. Wednesday pressed the top button on the gouged metal intercom box. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Then, experimentally, he began to press the other buttons, for other tenants, with no response.
"It's dead," said a gaunt old woman, coming down the steps. "Doesn't work. We call the super, ask him when he going to fix, when he going to mend the heating, he does not care, goes to Arizona for the winter for his chest." Her accent was thick, Eastern European, Shadow guessed.
Wednesday bowed low. "Zorya, my dear, may I say how unutterably beautiful you look? A radiant creature. You have not aged."
The old woman glared at him. "He don't want to see you. I don't want to see you neither. You bad news."
"That's because I don't come if it isn't important."
The woman sniffed. She carried an empty string shopping bag, and wore an old red coat, buttoned up to her chin. She looked at Shadow suspiciously.
"Who is the big man?" she asked Wednesday. "Another one of your murderers?"
"You do me a deep disservice, good lady. This gentleman is called Shadow. He is working for me, yes, but on your behalf. Shadow, may I introduce you to the lovely Miss Zorya Vechernyaya."
"Good to meet you," said Shadow.
Birdlike, the old woman peered up at him. "Shadow," she said. "A good name. When the shadows are long, that is my time. And you are the long shadow." She looked him up and down, then she smiled. "You may kiss my hand," she said, and extended a cold hand to him.
Shadow bent down and kissed her thin hand. She had a large amber ring on her middle finger.
"Good boy," she said. "I am going to buy groceries. You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. So I bring home the bread. Do you think you will be here for supper?"
"I would hope so," said Wednesday.
"Then you had better give me some money to buy more food," she said. "I am proud, but I am not stupid. The others are prouder than I am, and he is the proudest of all. So give me money and do not tell them that you give me money."
Wednesday opened his wallet, and reached in. He took out a twenty. Zorya Vechernyaya plucked it from his fingers, and waited. He took out another twenty and gave it to her.
"Is good," she said. "We will feed you like princes. Now, go up the stairs to the top. Zorya Utrennyaya is awake, but our other sister is still asleep, so do not be making too much noise."
Shadow and Wednesday climbed the dark stairs. The landing two stories up was half filled with black plastic garbage bags and it smelled of rotting vegetables.
"Are they gypsies?" asked Shadow.
"Zorya and her family? Not at all. They're not Rom. They're Russian. Slavs, I believe."
"But she does fortune-telling."
"Lots of people do fortune-telling. I dabble in it myself." Wednesday was panting as they went up the final flight of stairs. "I'm out of shape."
The landing at the top of the stairs ended in a single door painted red, with a peephole in it.
Wednesday knocked at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, louder this time.
"Okay! Okay! I heard you! I heard you!" The sound of locks being undone, of bolts being pulled, the rattle of a chain. The red door opened a crack.
"Who is it?" A man's voice, old and cigarette-roughened.
"An old friend, Czernobog. With an associate."
The door opened as far as the security chain would allow. Shadow could see a gray face, in the shadows, peering out at them. "What do you want, Votan?"
"Initially, simply the pleasure of your company. And I have information to share. What's that phrase?…Oh yes. You may learn something to your advantage."
The door opened all the way. The man in the dusty bathrobe was short, with iron-gray hair and craggy features. He wore gray pinstripe pants, shiny from age, and slippers. He held an unfiltered cigarette with square-tipped fingers, sucking the tip while keeping it cupped in his fist-like a convict, thought Shadow, or a soldier. He extended his left hand to Wednesday. "Welcome then, Votan."
"They call me Wednesday these days," he said, shaking the old man's hand.
A narrow smile; a flash of yellow teeth. "Yes," he said. "Very funny. And this is?"
"This is my associate. Shadow, meet Mr. Czernobog."
"Well met," said Czernobog. He shook Shadow's left hand with his own. His hands were rough and callused, and the tips of his fingers were as yellow as if they had been dipped in iodine.
"How do you do, Mr. Czernobog?"
"I do old. My guts ache, and my back hurts, and I cough my chest apart every morning."
"Why you are standing at the door?" asked a woman's voice. Shadow looked over Czernobog's shoulder, at the old woman standing behind him. She was smaller and frailer than her sister, but her hair was long and still golden. "I am Zorya Utrennyaya," she said. "You must not stand there in the hall. You must go in, sit down. I will bring you coffee."
Through the doorway into an apartment that smelted like overboiled cabbage and cat box and unfiltered foreign cigarettes, and they were ushered through a tiny hallway past several closed doors to the sitting room at the far end of the corridor, and were seated on a huge old horsehair sofa, disturbing an elderly gray cat in the process, who stretched, stood up, and walked, stiffly, to a distant part of the sofa, where he lay down, warily stared at each of them in turn, then closed one eye and went back to sleep. Czernobog sat in an armchair across from them.
Zorya Utrennyaya found an empty ashtray and placed it beside Czernobog. "How you want your coffee?" she asked her guests. "Here we take it black as night, sweet as sin."
"That'll be fine, ma'am," said Shadow. He looked out of the window, at the buildings across the street.