American Gods: Chapter 19–Postscript

And then he said, grudgingly, “You’re not so dumb.”

He stared in horror as Mr. Nancy talked the barman into turning on the karaoke machine, and then watched in fascinated embarrassment as the old man belted his way through “What’s New Pussycat?” before crooning out a moving, tuneful version of “The Way You Look Tonight.”

The whites of his eyes were clear, and the gray pallor that had touched his skin was gone.

Inside the trunk there were a number of boxes. Nancy rummaged among the boxes.

From the bottom of the trunk he produced a giant economy-sized bottle of generic aspirin.

It was slippery—the snow had already melted, turning the earth to mud under his feet, and the brown grass barely offered traction.

He felt strangely distant as he trudged across the frozen lake, as if he were watching himself on a movie screen—a movie in which he was the hero, a detective, perhaps: there was a feeling of inevitability, now, as if everything that was going to happen would play itself out, and there was nothing he could have done to change a moment of it.

There was a miasma that hung about the car, something that was at the same time a faint, foul smell and was also a bad taste in the back of his throat.

He pulled up on the aerial and the front door locking mechanism popped up.

She wore a scarlet snowsuit, now stained, and her mousy hair was long and her mouth was closed, so Shadow could not see the blue rubber-band braces, but he knew that they were there.

He was under the lake, down in the darkness and the cold, weighed down by his clothes and his gloves and his boots, trapped and swathed in his coat, which seemed to have become heavier and bulkier than he could have imagined.

Information was processed slowly, one datum at a time.

“It’s coffee,” he said, “which is a stimulant. And I splashed a little schnapps into it. Just a little. That’s what we always did in the old days. A doctor wouldn’t recommend it.”

Hinzelmann reached down and picked up the poker. He made no pretense of stirring the fire with it any longer; he held it like a sword, or a baton, the glowing orange-white tip of it waving in the air.

In Shadow’s mind came, unbidden, children, hundreds of them, staring at him with bone-blind eyes, the hair twisting slowly around their faces like fronds of seaweed.

He pushed one of them to the edge of the sofa, picked up an old copy of the Lakeside News and pulled it into its component pages, which he crumpled up and dropped onto the log.

He had killed Hinzelmann and built him a pyre, and now, obeying the last of Hinzelmann’s desires, or simply because it was the only thing he could do to live with himself, he would commit suicide.

Natalie had done a little of everything, from arcane self-defense disciplines and sweat lodges to feng shui and jazz dancing.

Her cheeks were rouged red, and there was a sparkle in her old eyes.

It was one last thing that needed to happen, and if it was the last thing that happened, well, he was going there of his own volition.

He stared at Shadow, then he put his hand out, tentatively. The two men shook hands.

Czernobog walked to the old wooden sideboard, and, bending down, pulled an attaché case from underneath it.

He nodded, curtly, to Shadow.

“I saw you die,” said Shadow. “I stood vigil for your body. You tried to destroy so much, for power. You would have sacrificed so much for yourself. You did that.”

“Again,” said the Lord of Asgard, with an imperious motion of his head, his voice deep and commanding.