Czernobog shook his head abruptly. “No. They would not meet us there. They can do nothing to us, there. It is a bad place for all of us.”
“That’s just why they’ve proposed to make the handover at the center.”
Czernobog seemed to think about this for a while. And then he said, “Perhaps.”
“When we get back on the road,” said Shadow, “you can drive. I need to sleep.”
Determining the exact center of anything can be problematic at best. With living things—people, for example, or continents—the problem becomes one of intangibles: What is the center of a man? What is the center of a dream? And in the case of the continental United States, should one count Alaska when one attempts to find the center? Or Hawaii?
As the twentieth century began, they made a huge model of the USA, the lower forty-eight states, out of cardboard, and to find the center they balanced it on a pin, until they found the single place it balanced.
Near as anyone could figure it out, the exact center of the continental United States was several miles from Lebanon, in Smith County, Kansas, on Johnny Grib’s hog farm. By the 1930s, the people of Lebanon were all ready to put a monument up in the middle of the hog farm, but Johnny Grib said that he didn’t want millions of tourists coming in and tramping all over and upsetting the hogs, and the locals figured he had a point, so they put the monument to the geographical center of the United States two miles north of the town. They built a park, and a stone monument to put in the park, and put a brass plaque to go on the monument to tell you that you were indeed looking at the exact geographic center of the United States of America. They blacktopped the road from the town to the little park, and, certain of the influx of tourists just waiting to come to Lebanon, they even built a motel by the monument. They brought in a little mobile chapel as well, and took off the wheels. Then they waited for the tourists and the holidaymakers to come: all the people who wanted to tell the world they’d been at the center of America, and marveled, and prayed.
The tourists did not come. Nobody came.
It’s a sad little park, now, with a mobile chapel in it a little bigger than an ice-fishing hut that wouldn’t fit a small funeral party, and a motel whose windows look like dead eyes.
“Which is why,” concluded Mr. Nancy, as they drove into Humansville, Missouri (pop. 1,084), “the exact center of America is a tiny run-down park, an empty church, a pile of stones, and a derelict motel.”
“Hog farm,” said Czernobog. “You just said that the real center of America was a hog farm.”
“This isn’t about what is,” said Mr. Nancy. “It’s about what people think is. It’s all imaginary anyway. That’s why it’s important. People only fight over imaginary things.”
“My kind of people?” asked Shadow. “Or your kind of people?”
Nancy said nothing. Czernobog made a noise that might have been a chuckle, might have been a snort.
Shadow tried to get comfortable in the back of the bus. He had slept a little, but only a little. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Worse than the feeling he had had in prison, worse than the feeling he had had back when Laura had come to him and told him about the robbery. This was bad. The back of his neck prickled, he felt sick and, several times, in waves, he felt scared.
Mr. Nancy pulled over in Humansville, parked outside a supermarket. Mr. Nancy went inside, and Shadow followed him in. Czernobog waited in the parking lot, stretching his legs, smoking his cigarette.
There was a young fair-haired man, little more than a boy, restocking the breakfast cereal shelves.
“Hey,” said Mr. Nancy.
“Hey,” said the young man. “It’s true, isn’t it? They killed him?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Nancy. “They killed him.”
The young man banged several boxes of Cap’n Crunch down on the shelf. “They think they can crush us like cockroaches,” he said. He had an eruption of acne across one cheek and over his forehead. He had a silver bracelet high on one forearm. “We don’t crush that easy, do we?”
“No,” said Mr. Nancy. “We don’t.”
“I’ll be there, sir,” said the young man, his pale blue eyes blazing.
“I know you will, Gwydion,” said Mr. Nancy.
Mr. Nancy bought several large bottles of RC Cola, a six-pack of toilet paper, a pack of evil-looking black cigarillos, a bunch of bananas and a pack of Doublemint chewing gum. “He’s a good boy. Came over in the seventh century. Welsh.”
The bus meandered first to the west and then to the north. Spring faded back into the dead end of winter. Kansas was the cheerless gray of lonesome clouds, empty windows and lost hearts. Shadow had become adept at hunting for radio stations, negotiating between Mr. Nancy, who liked talk radio and dance music, and Czernobog, who favored classical music, the gloomier the better, leavened with the more extreme evangelical religious stations. For himself, Shadow liked oldies stations.
Toward the end of the afternoon they stopped, at Czernobog’s request, on the outskirts of Cherryvale, Kansas (pop. 2,464). Czernobog led them to a meadow outside the town. There were still traces of snow in the shadows of the trees, and the grass was the color of dirt.
“Wait here,” said Czernobog.
He walked, alone, to the center of the meadow. He stood there, in the winds of the end of February, for some time. At first he hung his head, then he began gesticulating.
“He looks like he’s talking to someone,” said Shadow.
“Ghosts,” said Mr. Nancy. “They worshiped him here, over a hundred years ago. They made blood-sacrifice to him, libations spilled with the hammer. After a time, the townsfolk figured out why so many of the strangers who passed through the town didn’t ever come back. This was where they hid some of the bodies.”
Czernobog came back from the middle of the field. His moustache seemed darker now, and there were streaks of black in his gray hair. He smiled, showing his iron tooth. “I feel good, now. Ahh. Some things linger, and blood lingers longest.”
They walked back across the meadow to where they had parked the VW bus. Czernobog lit a cigarette, but did not cough. “They did it with the hammer,” he said. “Grimnir, he would talk of the gallows and the spear, but for me, it is one thing…” He reached out a nicotine-colored finger and tapped it, hard, in the center of Shadow’s forehead.
“Please don’t do that,” said Shadow, politely.
“Please don’t do that,” mimicked Czernobog. “One day I will take my hammer and do much worse than that to you, my friend, remember?”
“Yes,” said Shadow. “But if you tap my head again, I’ll break your hand.”
Czernobog snorted. Then he said, “They should be grateful, the people here. There was such power raised. Even thirty years after they forced my people into hiding, this land, this very land, gave us the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was.”
“Judy Garland?” asked Shadow.
Czernobog shook his head curtly.
“He’s talking about Louise Brooks,” said Mr. Nancy.
Shadow decided not to ask who Louise Brooks was. Instead he said, “So, look, when Wednesday went to talk to them, he did it under a truce.”