A slow smile spread over Sweeney’s face. “There, now,” he said. “Like a little yapping dog, it’s finally ready to fight. Hey, everybody,” he called to the room, “there’s going to be a lesson learned. Watch this!” He swung a huge fist at Shadow’s face. Shadow jerked back: Sweeney’s hand caught him beneath the right eye. He saw blotches of light, and felt pain.
And with that, the fight began.
Sweeney fought without style, without science, with nothing but enthusiasm for the fight itself: huge, barreling roundhouse blows that missed as often as they connected.
Shadow fought defensively, carefully, blocking Sweeney’s blows or avoiding them. He became very aware of the audience around them. Tables were pulled out of the way with protesting groans, making a space for the men to spar. Shadow was aware at all times of Wednesday’s eyes upon him, of Wednesday’s humorless grin. It was a test, that was obvious, but what kind of a test? In prison Shadow had learned there were two kinds of fights: don’t fuck with me fights, where you made it as showy and impressive as you could, and private fights, real fights which were fast and hard and nasty, and always over in seconds.
“Hey, Sweeney,” said Shadow, breathless, “why are we fighting?”
“For the joy of it,” said Sweeney, sober now, or at least, no longer visibly drunk. “For the sheer unholy fucken delight of it. Can’t you feel the joy in your own veins, rising like the sap in the springtime?” His lip was bleeding. So was Shadow’s knuckle.
“So how’d you do the coin production?” asked Shadow. He swayed back and twisted, took a blow on his shoulder intended for his face.
“To tell the truth,” grunted Sweeney, “I told you how I did it when first we spoke. But there’s none so blind—ow! Good one!—as those who will not listen.”
Shadow jabbed at Sweeney, forcing him back into a table; empty glasses and ashtrays crashed to the floor. Shadow could have finished him off then. The man was defenseless, in no position to be able to do anything, sprawled back as he was.
Shadow glanced at Wednesday, who nodded. Shadow looked down at Mad Sweeney. “Are we done?” he asked. Mad Sweeney hesitated, then nodded. Shadow let go of him, and took several steps backward. Sweeney, panting, pushed himself back up to a standing position.
“Not on yer ass!” he shouted. “It ain’t over till I say it is!” Then he grinned, and threw himself forward, swinging at Shadow. He stepped onto a fallen ice-cube, and his grin turned to open-mouthed dismay as his feet went out from under him, and he fell backward. The back of his head hit the barroom floor with a definite thud.
Shadow put his knee into Mad Sweeney’s chest. “For the second time, are we done fighting?” he asked.
“We may as well be, at that,” said Sweeney, raising his head from the floor, “for the joy’s gone out of me now, like the pee from a small boy in a swimming pool on a hot day.” And he spat the blood from his mouth and closed his eyes and began to snore, in deep and magnificent snores.
Somebody clapped Shadow on the back. Wednesday put a bottle of beer into his hand.
It tasted better than mead.
Shadow woke up stretched out in the back of a sedan car. The morning sun was dazzling, and his head hurt. He sat up awkwardly, rubbing his eyes.
Wednesday was driving. He was humming tunelessly as he drove. He had a paper cup of coffee in the cup holder. They were heading along what looked like an interstate highway, with the cruise control set to an even sixty-five. The passenger seat was empty.
“How are you feeling, this fine morning?” asked Wednesday, without turning around.
“What happened to my car?” asked Shadow. “It was a rental.”
“Mad Sweeney took it back for you. It was part of the deal the two of you cut last night.”
“Deal?”
“After the fight.”
“Fight?” He put one hand up and rubbed his cheek, and then he winced. Yes, there had been a fight. He remembered a tall man with a ginger beard, and the cheering and whooping of an appreciative audience. “Who won?”
“You don’t remember, eh?” Wednesday chuckled.
“Not so you’d notice,” said Shadow. Conversations from the night before began to jostle in his head uncomfortably. “You got any more of that coffee?”
The big man reached beneath the passenger seat and passed back an unopened bottle of water. “Here. You’ll be dehydrated. This will help more than coffee, for the moment. We’ll stop at the next gas station and get you some breakfast. You’ll need to clean yourself up, too. You look like something the goat dragged in.”
“Cat dragged in,” said Shadow.
“Goat,” said Wednesday. “Huge rank stinking goat with big teeth.”
Shadow unscrewed the top of the water and drank. Something clinked heavily in his jacket pocket. He put his hand into the pocket and pulled out a coin the size of a half-dollar. It was heavy, and a deep yellow in color. It was also slightly sticky. Shadow palmed it in his right hand, classic palm, then produced it from between his third and fourth fingers. He front-palmed it, holding it between his first and his little finger, so it was invisible from behind, then slipped his two middle fingers under it, pivoting it smoothly into a back-palm. Finally he dropped the coin back into his left hand, and he placed it into his pocket.
“What the hell was I drinking last night?” asked Shadow. The events of the night were crowding around him now, without shape, without sense, but he knew they were there.
Mr. Wednesday spotted an exit sign promising a gas station, and he gunned the engine. “You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“You were drinking mead,” said Wednesday. He grinned a huge grin.
Mead.
Yes.
Shadow leaned back in the seat, and sucked down water from the bottle, and let the night before wash over him. Most of it, he remembered. Some of it, he didn’t.
In the gas station Shadow bought a Clean-U-Up Kit, which contained a razor, a packet of shaving cream, a comb, and a disposable toothbrush packed with a tiny tube of toothpaste. Then he walked into the men’s restroom and looked at himself in the mirror.
He had a bruise under one eye—when he prodded it, experimentally, with one finger, he found it hurt deeply—and a swollen lower lip. His hair was a tangle, and he looked as if he had spent the first half of last night fighting and then the rest of the night fast asleep, fully dressed, in the back seat of a car. Tinny music played in the background: it took him some moments to identify it as the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill.”
Shadow washed his face with the restroom’s liquid soap, then he lathered his face and shaved. He wet his hair and combed it back. He brushed his teeth. Then he washed the last traces of the soap and the toothpaste from his face with lukewarm water. Stared back at his reflection: clean-shaven, but his eyes were still red and puffy. He looked older than he remembered.
He wondered what Laura would say when she saw him, and then he remembered that Laura wouldn’t say anything ever again and he saw his face, in the mirror, tremble, but only for a moment.
He went out.
“I look like shit,” said Shadow.
“Of course you do,” agreed Wednesday.