“So tell me,” said Shadow, “why does everyone care about me? They act like I’m important. Why does it matter what I do.”
“You’re an investment,” said Loki. “You were important to us because you were important to Wednesday. As for the why of it…I don’t think any of us know. He did. He’s dead. Just another one of life’s little mysteries.”
“I’m tired of mysteries.”
“Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.”
“So you’re their driver. You drive for all of them?”
“Whoever needs me,” said Loki. “It’s a living.”
He raised his wristwatch to his face, pressed a button: the dial glowed a gentle blue, which illuminated his face, giving it a haunting, haunted appearance. “Five to midnight. Time,” said Loki. “Time to light the candles. Say a few words about the dearly departed. Do the formalities. You coming?”
Shadow took a deep breath. “I’m coming,” he said.
They walked down the dark motel corridor. “I bought some candles for this, but there were plenty of old ones around too,” said Loki. “Old stumps and stubs and candle-ends in the rooms, and in a box in a closet. I don’t think I missed any. And I got a box of matches. You start lighting candles with a lighter, the end gets too hot.”
They reached room five.
“You want to come in?” asked Loki.
Shadow didn’t want to enter that room. “Okay,” he said. They went in.
Loki took a box of matches from his pocket, and thumb-nailed a match into flame. The momentary flare hurt Shadow’s eyes. A candlewick flickered and caught. And another. Loki lit a new match, and continued to light candles: they were on the windowsills and on the headboard of the bed and on the sink in the corner of the room. They showed him the room by candlelight.
The bed had been hauled from its position against the wall into the middle of the motel room, leaving a few feet of space between the bed and the wall on each side. There were sheets draped over the bed, old motel sheets, moth-holed and stained, which Loki must have found in a closet somewhere. On top of the sheets lay Wednesday, perfectly still.
He was fully dressed, in the pale suit he had been wearing when he was shot. The right side of his face was untouched, perfect, unmarred by blood. The left side of his face was a ragged mess, and the left shoulder and front of the suit was spattered with dark spots, a pointillist mess. His hands were at his sides. The expression on that wreck of a face was far from peaceful: it looked hurt—a soul-hurt, a real down deep hurt, filled with hatred and anger and raw craziness. And, on some level, it looked satisfied.
Shadow imagined Mr. Jacquel’s practiced hands smoothing that hatred and pain away, rebuilding a face for Wednesday with mortician’s wax and make-up, giving him a final peace and dignity that even death had denied him.
Still, the body seemed no smaller in death. It had not shrunk. And it still smelled faintly of Jack Daniel’s.
The wind from the plains was rising: he could hear it howling around the old motel at the exact imaginary center of America. The candles on the windowsill guttered and flickered.
He could hear footsteps in the hallway. Someone knocked on a door, called, “Hurry up please, it’s time,” and they began to shuffle in, heads lowered.
Town came in first, followed by Media and Mr. Nancy and Czernobog. Last of all came the fat kid: he had fresh red bruises on his face, and his lips were moving all the time, as if he were reciting some words to himself, but he was making no sound. Shadow found himself feeling sorry for him.
Informally, without a word being spoken, they ranged themselves about the body, each an arm’s length away from the next. The atmosphere in the room was religious—deeply religious, in a way that Shadow had never previously experienced. There was no sound but the howling of the wind and the crackling of the candles.
“We are come together, here in this godless place,” said Loki, “to pass on the body of this individual to those who will dispose of it properly according to the rites. If anyone would like to say something, say it now.”
“Not me,” said Town. “I never properly met the guy. And this whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable.”
Czernobog said, “These actions will have consequences. You know that? This can only be the start of it all.”
The fat kid started to giggle, a high-pitched, girlish noise. He said, “Okay. Okay I’ve got it.” And then, all on one note, he recited:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…”
and then he broke off, his brow creasing. He said, “Shit. I used to know the whole thing,” and he rubbed his temples and made a face and was quiet.
And then they were all looking at Shadow. The wind was screaming now. He didn’t know what to say. He said, “This whole thing is pitiful. Half of you killed him or had a hand in his death. Now you’re giving us his body. Great. He was an irascible old fuck but I drank his mead and I’m still working for him. That’s all.”
Media said, “In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world there’s a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail is—well, it’s magic, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That’s how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate on that.”
And Mr. Nancy cleared his throat and said, “So. I got to say it, because nobody else here will. We are at the center of this place: a land that has no time for gods, and here at the center it has less time for us than anywhere. It is a no-man’s land, a place of truce, and we observe our truces, here. We have no choice. So. You give us the body of our friend. We accept it. You will pay for this, murder for murder, blood for blood.”
Town said, “Whatever. You could save yourselves a lot of time and effort by going back to your homes and shooting yourselves in the heads. Cut out the middleman.”
“Fuck you,” said Czernobog. “Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.”
“Leave it, old man,” said Town.
“The blood-dimmed tide is loose,” said the fat kid. “I think that comes next.”
The wind howled.
“Okay,” said Loki. “He’s yours. We’re done. Take the old bastard away.”
He made a gesture with his fingers, and Town, Media and the fat kid left the room. He smiled at Shadow. “Call no man happy, huh, kid?” he said. And then he, too, walked away.
“What happens now?” asked Shadow.
“Now we wrap him up,” said Anansi. “And we take him away from here.”
They wrapped the body in the motel sheets, wrapped it well in its impromptu shroud, so there was no body to be seen, and they could carry it. The two old men walked to each end of the body, but Shadow said, “Let me see something,” and he bent his knees and slipped his arms around the white-sheeted figure, pushed him up and over his shoulder. He straightened his knees, until he was standing, more or less easily. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got him. Let’s put him into the back of the car.”