American Gods (2001), a Horror Mystery by Neil Gaiman: summary

“Old gods, here in this new land without gods. There were new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit-card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper, and of neon.” (Wednesday spoke out before all the gods in America, p.176)

The book is rich of poetic descriptions, elegant writing, and smart narration. I found myself enjoy first-rate novel. The author did fantastic job at creating the character, the writing style is also brilliant. Mystery, mythology, sex, death, horror, history are intertwined that produced a fascinating tale featuring complex, idealistic and passionate character.

The 736-page bestseller is published by William Morrow, an Imprints of HarperCollinsPublisher. The story follows Shadow Moon who lives among the gods in America, Odin chooses him as his errand boy. The gods are now living with human in human's form. When the people came to America, they brought their gods. They brought Odin, Loki and Thor, Anansi, and Leprechauns. The gods rode their minds, traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean. But now people abandon them, they leave them. They love new gods. Wednesday, Odin, wants to gather all the gods, restore the worship for them, but not all of gods welcome the ideas, some of them already enjoy themselves as human.

American Gods (2001), a Horror Mystery by Neil Gaiman: summary

The file said he was sentenced to six years for aggravated assault and battery. He had served three years. On the day the guard proclaimed they would release the letter on that afternoon, Shadow also received a letter from a memorial Hospital. His wife had died in the early morning and it was an automobile accident. Laura had set him an e-ticket, she was a travel agent. The thirty two years-old man worried about the whole e-ticket business.

Robbie, a friend, who owned the Muscle Farm, the place he used to train. Robbie told him his old job was waiting for him. He was thinking about the first he had ever seen Laura. She was Audrey Burton’s friend. He had been sitting with Robbie, talking about something, probably how one of the other trainers had just announced she was opening he own studio, when Laura had walked in a pace or behind Audrey, ad Shadow had found himself staring. She had long, chestnut hair and eyes so blue Shadow mistakenly thought she was wearing contacted lenses.

As the plane took off he fell asleep. Shadow was in dark place, and the thing staring at him at wore a buffalo’s head, rank and furry with huge wet eyes. Its body was a man’s body, oiled and slick. He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, his eyes filled with fire. Shadow was in the earth and under earth, the place where were the forgotten wait. His eyes were liquid black marbles, and his voice was a rumble from beneath world. Lightening burst in blinding flashes around the plane. The captain came on the intercom to tell them that h was going to try and gain some altitude, to get away from the storm.

On the next flight, he was late, everybody was waiting for him. Shadow found a bearded man sat next to him. His hair was a reddish-gray; his beard, little more than stubble, was grayish-red. He was smaller than shadow, but he seemed to take up a hell of a lot of room. The suit looked expensive, and was the color of melted vanilla ice cream. The man knew his name, and his wife’s death. Wednesday offered him a job. Shadow insisted to refuse the job. The man handed him a newspaper. The news item on page seven was the first account of his wife’s death that Shadow had read. It story: how Laura Moon, whose age was given in the article as twenty-seven, and Robbie Burton, thirty-nine, were in Robbie’s car on the interstate, when they swerved into the path of a thirty-two wheeler, which sideswiped them as it tried to change lanes and avoid.

Shadow’s job run errands for his new boss. He would protect him, transport him from place to place. In emergency, but only in emergency, he hurt people who need to be hurt. Shadow was just in a parole but a man at the bar named Mad Sweeney, had mocked him and had a fight bar.

Shadow knew most of the people in the room: Laura’s family, her workmates the travel agency, several of her friends. The all recognized him. Laura lay with her eyes closed, and her arms folded across her chest. She wore a conservative blue suit he did not recognize. Her long brown hair was out of her eyes. Audrey Burton, Robbie’s wife, placed her sprig of summer violets on Laura’s chest. Then she pursed her blackberry colored lips, worked her mouth for a moment and spat, hard, onto Laura’s dead face.

He was now official as an errand boy for Mr. Wednesday. His room was a duplicated of Wednesday’s room. He had already been checked in a room at the motel by his boss. Shadow lay in bed, thinking, his first bed as a freeman. He could have been in his bed at home, but the thought of being there without Laura, surrounded by her things, her scent, her life, was simply too painful. Sleep took him then, without noticing. He was walking through a room bigger than city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. In his dream, he realized that each statue ha a name burning on the floor in front of it. A pricise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could no see one. He said these were gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead.

He woke with his heart jackhammering in his chest, his forehead clammy, entirely awake. There was a woman sitting on the side of his bed. Laura was still wearing the navy-blue suit they had buried her in. Shadow opened the window and then passed her cigarettes and the matches. Her fingers were cold. She lit the cigarette, inhaled, blew out e match. She told him the whole story about how she died. Robbie and her went out to talk about his welcome-back surprise party. They intended to end their relationship. Laura dot very drunk, but he did not. He had to drive, they were driving home. The ghost even kissed Shadow, his wife was solid.

They drove north toward Chicago, visited Wednesday’s old friend, the Slavs. Czernobog. The elder sister Zorya Vechernyaya, an old fortune teller. An old woman was smaller and frailer than her sister introduced herself as Zorya Utrennyaya. She proclaimed her other sister was asleep. The four people lived in that house were all relatives. There were explosions in Shadow’s dream, he did not feel dead. When he opened his eyes, a soft, Eastern European accent, tried to wake him. Shadow were crying out, and moaning. Zorya Polunochnya was the youngest.

Wednesday passed him a business card. His name was A. Haddok, Director of Security Service. He was now wearing a dark blue jacket, with matching trousers, blue knit tie, a thick blue sweater, a white shirt, and black shoes. He looked like a security guard, Shadow said so. They returned to town, they chose a perfect time for the bank robbery. Snowflakes settled on his dark blue cap, and on his earmuffs. He strode across the street and walked along the block to the bank building, while Shadow walked into the supermarket hall and watched. Wednesday taped a large red OUT OF ORDER notice to the ATM. 

The snow had turned the street scene into interior of a snowglobe, perfect in all its details. While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the black seat, he removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking some cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Wednesday got out the car, and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. They waited the perfect time when the bars and the clubs dropped off Saturday night’s takings.

After the robbery, they met Czernobog again. Shadow was introduced to a man named Nancy. Like others who met Shadow firstly, old Nancy, also called Shadow as a big man. They made their way to a Carousel room. The wall as they entered was hung with antique carousel horses, hundreds of them, some in need of a lick of paint, others in need of a good dusting. And then Shadow saw the Carousel, it was the largest in the world with thousands of light bulbs. It went round all the time, an no one ever rode it. 

He stared, impressed in spite himself, at the hundreds full-sized creatures who circled on the platform of the carousel. Real creature, imaginary creatures, and transformations of the two; each creature was different – he saw mermaid and merman, centaur and unicorn, elephants, bulldog, frog and phoenix, zebra, tiger, manticore, and basilisk, swans pulling a carriage,  a white ox, a fox, twin walruses, even a sea serpent, all of them brightly colored and more than real. The carousel did not even slow down, Nancy explained it was for accumulating power.

Shadow was puzzled to realize that he was far more concerned with breaking the rules by climbing onto the Carousel than he had been aiding and abetting that afternoon’s bank robbery. Each the old men selected amount. Wednesday climbed onto a golden wolf, Czernobog climbed onto an armored centaur. Nancy, chuckling, slithering up onto the back of enormous, leaping lion, captured by the sculptor mid-roar. The three old men were enjoying themselves, riding the biggest carousel in the world. Shadow inspected a bulldog, and a mer-creature, and elephant. He heard himself laugh, over the sound of music. He was happy, then the lights went out, and Shadow saw the gods. The Carousel stretched, shivered and went out. He was falling through ocean of stars.

Wednesday introduced himself as the Highest, One-eyed, Glad of War, Grim, Rider, Grimnir, the Hooded one, he had many names. Shadow acknowledged him as Odin. He was relieved to see that Nancy was now once more an old man wearing yellow gloves, although his shadow shook and shivered changed in the flames of the fire, and what it changed into was not always entirely human. Wednesday walked out into the firelight. He said he had been longer than others. When the people came to America they brought the gods with them. They brought Odin, Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns, Cluracans and Banshees, Kubera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth. They rode there in their mind, and they took root. The gods traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean.

The land was vast. People abandoned the gods, remembered them only as creatures of the old lands. Their true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and they were left. Old gods, here in the new land without gods. There were new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper, and of neon.

The old woman in the red sari stepped into the firelight. She complained why she being called at the meeting, but Wednesday explained to Mama-ji it was not nonsense meeting. Mam-ji admitted that they lived in peace in America for a long time. Back in India, there was an incarnation of her who did much better, but so was it. Her point was to asking the gods to do nothing. People probably would kill the gods. Nothing was resolved, nobody agreed with anything. They were out of the House of Rock, walking past the gift store and heading back into the parking lot.

The restaurant was big and barn-like structure, ten minutes up the road. Shadow had a carfull of Wednesday’s guest to ferry to the restaurant. There were two men and Indian woman, Mama-ji. Shadow pulled up at the restaurant and he let his passengers off by the front of door. He wanted to make the short walk after parking the car, in the cold, to clear his head. Two men kidnapped him. 

There were no windows in the tiny room in which they had locked Shadow. At three morning, by his watch, the spooks returned to interrogate him. Two men in dark suits, with dark hair, and shiny black shoes. He looked at Shadow and smiled like a man advertising toothpaste. He was Mister Stone and his colleague was Mister Wood.

Shadow was bigger than them, but they were armed. And after far too long a time the beating ended. Shadow shivered under the thin blanket, the silver dollar remained cold in his left hand. He wondered whether Wednesday and the others were still at liberty, if they were still alive. Half-sleep, now, and half-delirious, the coin, and the idea of Liberty, and the moon, Zorya Polunochnaya somehow became intertwined in one. 

Laura shook his shoulder. She killed the guards. He walked out the corridor, he found four men were dead: three guards and the man called himself Stone. He had been walking south, he imagined, southern Wisconsin. It was not him, it was his dead wife. He wondered whether Wisconsin had the death penalty. He heard the birds’ video-arcade trilled and zapped and whooped follow him along the side the creek. The black bird produced a voice like stones being struck. Odin’s raven told him to go to Cairo.

He bought a 1983 Chevy Nova with a full tank of gas, the deal was done in cash. After days he passed the sign telling him he was Now Entering Historical Cairo. He parked his car in a side street and walked to the embankment at the edge of the river. Shadow realized he was not alone. A small girl, wearing old tennis shoes on her feet, and a man’s gray woolen sweater as a dress, was standing on the sidewalk, staring at him. He was Mr. Ibis. The sign beside the door said Ibis and Jacquel, A Family Firm, Funeral Parlor, since 1863.

Salim has been in New York, in America, for a week. Each day he visited two or three different offices, opened his sample case, showed them the copper trinkets, the rings and the bottles; each night he wrote a fax to his brother-in-law, Fuad, at home in Muscat, telling him that he had taken  no orders, or, on one happy day, that he had taken several orders. Fuad was Salim’s sisters’s husband. He was not rich man, but he was the co-owner of a small trinket factory, making knickknacks from copper, brooches and rings and bracelets and statues. Everything was made for export, to other Arab countries, to Europe, to America. Salim had been working for Fuad for six months.

His brother in-law gave him a thousand dollars for miscellaneous traveling expenses and the money, which seemed so huge a sum when first he saw it. Fuad’s business’s partner had booked him a room at the hotel in the evening, he never missed his prayer time. A battered yellow taxi drew up beside him. The cab driver grunted, and pulled away from the curb, into the traffic. The cab driver swore in Arabic, Salim said he was from Muscat, Oman. When he came back to the hotel he was surprised to see the taxi driver standing in the standing in the lobby. The taxi drivers used his bathroom, came out of the shower, wet, with a towel wrapped. When he returned to be bedroom the taxi driver was already asleep in the white sheet, snoring peacefully. Salim climbed into the bed beside him, cuddled close to the ifrit, imagining the desert in his skin. 

The cab driver never said his name, the name on driving permit was not his. When Salim woke, the cold sun creeping into the white room, he was alone. He discovered his sample case was gone, all the bottles, all gone, along with his suitcase, his wallet, his passport, and his tickets back to Oman. He found a pair of jeans, the T-shirt, and the dust-colored woolen sweater discarded on the floor. Beneath them he found a driver’s license in the name of Ibrahim bin Irem, a taxi permit in the same name, and a ring of eyes with an address written on a piece of paper. H tossed the car keys into the air and caught it. Then he put the plastic sunglasses he found I the pockets, and left the hotel room to go and looked for his cab.

Ibis and Jacquel was a small, family owned funeral home: one of the independent funeral homes in the area. They did all their own embalming, but they did not do cremation. Mr. Ibis was not a African-American, he never thought himself as Africans, his clan were the people of the Nile. His people, the Nile folk, they discovered early on that reed boat would take everyone around the world, if they had the patience and enough jars of sweet water. Mr. Jacquel himself worked for the county medical examiner. He did autopsies, saved tissue samples for analysis.

The light was strange, it was still dark outside. He climbed out of bed. He was certain that he had been wearing pajamas when he went to bed, but now he was naked, and the air was cold on his skin. In the mirror, Shadow noticed something strange. The house was still asleep. After fifteen minutes walking, Shadow came to a bridge. A man stood under the bridge, he knew him, Mad Sweeney. The Irishman wanted to take back his gold coin, and warned Shadow not to thrust Wednesday. Sweeney told him, a vision that Shadow were walking on gallows ground, and there were a hempen rope around his neck and a raven-bird one each shoulder, waiting for his eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretched from heaven to hell. Shadow glanced back to the bridge, and saw Sweeney’s pale face, striped with tears and dirt, watching him go. It was the last time Shadow saw Mad Sweeney alive.

A dark blue police cruiser was parked on a side street, and Shadow pulled the hearse behind it. Shadow signed for a John Doe and put it on the gurney. Shadow wondered it was Mad Sweeney. The police said he was only a dead wino, a bottle on Sweeney’s lap. Sweeney awoke and asked Shadow to give him a wake. He accused Shadow had killed him. Shadow insisted that it was the drink, and the cold killed him.

As they drove out of Illinois late that evening, Shadow asked Wednesday his first question. They just passed the Welcome to Wisconsin sign Wednesday just answered that Mister Stone and Mister Wood were only spooks. Members of the opposition, the black hats. Wednesday handed him a ticket named Mike Ainsel. It was obviously somebody’s wallet. Inside the wallet was a driver license with Shadow’s photograph on it, in the name of Michael Ainsel, with an address, a MasterCard for M. Ainsel. He would head to Lakeside on the bus. It almost took two hours to Lakeside, the bus was almost empty. There were two girls, he doubted that they either of them was much more than fourteen years old. They were friends, Shadow decided, eavesdropping without meaning to, not sisters.

A cab driver named Hinzelmann brought him to an apartment. The room was freezing. In the stillness he heard something snap like a shot. He wondered how long he would have to wait until Wednesday came for him. He though his dream, he thought Zorya, the he thought Laura. Shadow opened his eyes and realized that he was hungry and cold, in apartment with a layer of ice clouding the inside of the window glass. Shadow was a big man. He would walk briskly and keep himself warm. He set south, heading for the bridge. Soon he began to cough. The walk, he decided, was a mistake. A dark car passed him. a cop was inside.

Shadow climbed in gratefully, Chad Mulligan introduced himself as the chief police of Lakeside. Chad Mulligan drove Shadow across the street to Lakeside Realty. Missy Gunther, her hair freshly set and lacquered, did not need an introduction. She knew exactly who Mike Ainsel was. Why that nice Mr. Borson, his uncle Emerson, such a nice man, about six, eight weeks ago now, and rented the apartment. She gave him an envelope. It contained a passport. The apartment grew colder, he went out of his apartment and knocked on the next door.

Marguerite Olsen wrote for the local news. Darren Olsen met Marge at campus, and he brought her to Lakeside. He was studying hotel management. She was a journalism major. Darren managed the hotel, and they had two boys. He couldn’t find the courage  to tell Margie that he had lost the job. He started out as a job hunter. Pretty soon he was drinking the time way, getting stoned, more than probably meeting the occasional working girl for a little instant gratification. She got the kids, they lost the house. He left, Marge moved into apartment. Sandy was older, a good kid, the kind of a boy who worshiped his daddy. Leon was pretty small. Two weeks later, Sandy vanished.

By the time that Mr. Wednesday arrived and they now were going to Las Vegas. Now it was late in the afternoon. Shadow, who had not been in San Francisco since he was a boy. Wednesday introduced him to Easter. The afternoon sun at her back burned her hair into a platinum aura. Easter asked his name. When he was a kid, his mother was a secretary at a bunch of U.S. embassies, Shadow and his mother went from city to city all over Northern Europe. Then she got sick and had to take early retirement and they came back to the States.

She was wondering why she should help Wednesday. Easter was one of the gods. She was as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of them. She was doing well. On her festival day people still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wore flowers in their bonnets and they gave each other flowers. Wednesday needed her energy, her power. Wednesday kissed his finger, touched it to her cheek. As she walked, Easter dropped a ten-dollar bill from the floor. Shadow picked up the money, and gave it to her politely. She took those money, and walked away. In the taxi on the way to the airport, Wednesday still confused about the ten dollars. Easter had asymptomatic gonorrhea. She suspected she might be infected, but does nothing about it. Someone announced that their plane was boarding.

Chief of Police Cad Mulligan knocked on the apartment door and asked Shadow if he knew girl named Alison McGovern. She was on the bus when he came into town. Alison vanished. There was over five thousand people lived in and around the town. When people asked Shadow his occupation, he said he worked for his uncle as antiques dealer all over the country.

Now Shadow drove into South Dakota. It was the midday on the second day of the drive, and they were almost there. Shadow tell him about Alison, but Wednesday sounded interested. It was Saturday morning. Shadow answered the door. Marguerite Olsen was there. She invited him to come over for dinner. Chad Mulligan wanted to know if she had seen Shadow around. His second cousin was in town, she was a widow.

The feds already asked Sam, Marge’s younger sister, about Shadow. They came to her house. It was ridiculous for Sam when Shadow said it was his dead wife that killed the two men. Audrey Burton was a step behind Chad Mulligan Her face was white, and there were tears in her eyes. She had been screaming. Shadow. She accused him as an escaped convict. Nobody in the bar said a word.

They changed cars at five in the morning, in Minneapolis, in the airport’s long-term parking lot. Shadow took the orange uniform and the handcuffs and leg hobbles, put them in the brown paper bag that had briefly held his possessions, folded the whole thing up and dropped it into a parking lot garbage can. They killed Wednesday, none of the gods were safe any longer. They wrapped the body, Wednesday was heavy. They would take the body to a world tree in Virginia. Nancy said they would put Wednesday’s body at the foot of the tree. There were three women standing by the tree. They looked tired and bored, as if they had been standing there for a long time. The women unwrapped Wednesday’s body. The women arranged his clothes, tidied his suit, then placed him at the corner of the sheet.

Shadow was the one to take the vigil, though Nancy had already warned him not to do that. One of the woman told him, in pantomime, to take off his clothes. The woman propped the ladders against the tree. Shadow climbed nine steps. Then, at their arguing, he stepped onto a low branch. They climbed their own ladders now, and they began to knot the ropes, intricate and elegant knots, and they wrapped the ropes first about the tree, and then about Shadow. 

The ropes went under his arms, between his legs, around his waist, his ankles, his chest, binding him to the tree. The final rope was tied, loosely, about his neck. They took the ladders away. He was entirely naked by the point. They left him there alone. The first day that Shadow hung form the tree he experienced only discomfort, that edged slowly into pain and fear, and occasionally, an emotion, that was somewhere between boredom and apathy. By the following morning the pain was omnipresent. Sometimes Shadow burned, sometimes he froze. When he opened his eyes, Shadow noticed that there was a young man in the tree with him. He was sitting on a branch high above Shadow’s head. Shadow called him Horus. When he looked down he saw Laura.

The darkness that he entered this time was deep, and lit a single star, and it was final. Te tree was gone, and the world was gone. The sky was now the color of midnight. His body ached, but it was the ache of lack of use, not the torture ache of a body that hung on a tree until it was dead. He observed without surprise, that he was now fully dressed.

He was barefoot. He experienced a profound moment of déjà vu: this was what he had been wearing when he stood at Czernobog’s apartment the night when Zorya Polunochnaya had come to him and told him about the constellation called Odin’s Wain. She had taken the moon and from the sky for him.

He knew, suddenly, what happened next. Zorya Plunochnaya was there. She smiled when she saw him. He reached the pocket of his jeans, and was relieved when he felt the familiar weight of coin. He eased out, held it between finger and thumb: a 1922 Liberty dollar. He remembered then that his clothes were really at the foot of the tree. She closed her hand around the dollar. It was no longer a silver coin though. The face he saw on the coin was the indeterminate face of the moon in the summer sky, the face that was only visible until you stared at it, where upon it would become dark seas and shapes on the moon’s cratered surface.

She pulled her hand out of his head. A flame, like a candle-flame but burning with a clear magnesium-white luminance, was flickering on the tip of her forefinger. If this was a afterlife, he thought, it was a lot like the House on the Rock: part diorama, part nightmare. He was looking at himself in prison blues, in the warden’s office, as the warden told him Laura died in a car crash. At the trial, nobody mentioned the bank robbery, although he was certain everybody wanted to. Nobody talked about the money. Nobody even mentioned Laura. 

In the hospital bed his mother was dying again, as she had died when he was sixteen-year-old. He walked away from the hospital room. He saw his mother first, he could not believe how young she was. Shadow and his mother were arguing. His mother only said his father died, but she even could not show his picture. Now Shadow was staring at a woman who looked like just his mother. She was dancing. Shadow found that he was completely unsurprised when he recognized the man who danced with her. She was not very drunk, but she unused to drink, and in a week or so she would take a ship to Norway.

Wednesday was not wearing a suit and tie, but the pin silver in the shape of a silver tree he wore over the pocket of his glitters and glints when the mirror- ball light caught it. He already thought that he was dead on the tree. He saw Mr. Ibis, then they were on their way to the Hall of Dead. Shadow was not scared of the shifting darkness, nor of being dead, nor even of the dog-headed creature the size of grain silo who stared at then as they approached. He looked up at the creature, Mister Jacquel. The hands of Anubis came down, huge dark hands, and they picked Shadow up and brought him close. The jackal head examined him as dispassionately, as Mr. Jacquel had examined dead girl on the slab. He knew all that all his faults, all his failings, all his weakness were being taking out and weighed and measured; that he was, in some way, being dissected, and sliced, and tasted.

Shadow began to weep, painfully, in the palm of the dark god’s hands. He was tiny child again, as helpless, and as powerless as he had ever been. Anubis put Shadow’s heart on the other pan of the scales. They would feed Shadow’s heart to Ammet, the Eater of Souls. When Thoth asked him to choose, Shadow wanted nothing. Now dying on the tree, Shadow utterly alive. 

Rocky City, the eighth wonder of the world, the painted letter advertised that the tourists can see seven states from Rocky City. Lookout Mountain is not much of a mountain. It resembles an impossibly high and commanding hill, brown from a distance, green with trees and houses from up close. The Chickamauga, a branch of Cherokee, lived there when the white men came; they called the mountain Chattotonoogee, which has been translated as the mountain that rises to a paint. For whoever controlled Lookout Mountain controlled the land; that was legend. It was a sacred site, after all, and it was the high place.

There are tunnels and caves, some very old, beneath Lookout Mountain. For the most part they are blocked off now, although a local business excavated an underground waterfall, which he called Ruby Falls. It is a tourist attraction, although the biggest tourist attraction of all is at the top Lookout Mountain. That is Rocky Mountain.  

They came to Lookout Mountain from all across the Unites States. They were no tourists. They came by car and they came by bus, and they came by plane, and by railroad, and on foot. The Chinese men and women, the Mexicans arrived, all smiles. They kept coming. They clumped together in informal companies. The moon swelled and rose in the east, a day away from full. There are so many of them waiting there, the moonlight, at the Foot of Lookout Mountain.

Shadow had burned so strangely, with his own light, up on the tree. She had chided him once, on that day when they had walked and held hands, for not being alive. Laura was thirsty. Shadow had told her to go to the farmhouse, that they would give her water to drink there. Death hurt Laura, although the hurt consisted mostly of absences, of things that were not there: a parching thirst that drained every cell of her. The room, she realized, was not empty. Three women sat on the elderly couch, as if they had come as a matched set in outlandish artistic exhibition. The women were dressed identical foggray skirts and sweaters. Soon enough, the small woman returned. She was carrying a brown earthenware jug of water. Laura raised the jug to her lips, the water flowed into her.

When Tom had transferred to the Agency it had all seemed simple. He had been sitting in Mr. World office at two in that morning, and he had been told what he was to do. Mr. World warned him not to touch Shadow. Mr. Town’s hatred of Shadow had become a part of him. As he was falling asleep he would see Shadow’s solemn face, see that smile was not a smile, the way Shadow had of smiling without smiling that made Town want to sink his fist into the man’s gut.

The tree was large, there was a naked man tied to the trunk a little way above the ground by a webwork of ropes, and there was something wrapped in a sheet at the front of the tree. He pushed at the sheet with his foot, Wednesday’s ruined half-a-face stared out of him. It was not touched by the insects, it did not even smell bad. Town reached the tree, found Shadow still alive. He cut the stick of the tree, then he jabbed the stick in the air toward Shadow, in a stabbing motion. On the tree Shadow’s body began to bleed.

Clouds covered top of Lookout Mountain. Easter sat some distance away from the crowd at the bottom of the mountain, watching the down the hills to the east. The hawk hopped toward her, uncertainly, and then it was no longer a hawk, but a young man. He spent to long a bird, she thought. Horus asked her to see the man on the tree. A ghost hurt, in his side, the blood came. There was on war. If he was gone forever, it was all forever.

Another several hour’s pointless driving, and by now Tom hated GPS as much he hated Shadow. He had thought finding his way to the farm, to the great silver ash tree, had been hard; finding his way away from the farm was much harder. There were heavy clouds coming in, it was getting fast, it felt like night, not morning. His cell phone gave him only a No Service message. Nor was there around that he could ask. So when he saw a woman walking along the side of the roads, he found himself smiling, involuntarily. He let the woman climbed his car, then he introduced him as Mack. She found a stick on the seat, Town asked her to throw it on the back. The woman said her name was Laura.

Mr. World was waiting for the stick. He would to throw it over the armies as they came together. As he threw it, it would become a spear. As the spear arcs over the battle, dedicated the battle to Odin.

At the foot of Lookout Mountain, which is scarcely more than a very high hill, men and women were gathered around a small bonfire on the rain. An old man with iron-gray hair, Czernobog, was holding a sledgehammer. He urged his friends it was the right time to begin the battle. A voice came from one of the three warrior-women, then she said it did not matter whether it was the good time or bad time, but they had been killing. A very tall Chinese man said the first head was his.

He could no remember his real name. He felt empty and cleansed, in that place that was not a place. He was without form and void. In the dark, Whiskey Jack, told him they came to revive Shadow. They were in Jack’s shack. There were a plastic cooler filled with chunks of river-ice out there, and in the ice, a dozen cans of Budweiser. The churning noise as the water crashed and fell filled the air. Jack said America was not good country for gods.

The hawk-headed man and Easter reached the tree. The wet ropes that held Shadow to the tree had long ago weathered and rotted, and they parted easily as the two people pulled on them. The body on the tree slipped, and slid down towards the root. They caught him as he fell. The golden sun bathed the body on the floor of the meadow with its radiance and its heat. The woman dragged the fingers of the right hand lightly across the body’s chest. She lowered her lips towards Shadow’s lips. And she breathed to his lung, a gentle in and out. His eyes fluttered, and then they opened. Easter said the old gods and the new god would fight soon. Suddenly she became aware of his nakedness.

Tom was in the way to deliver the stick to Mr. World, but he asked Laura to spend a night with him. Laura gave him deathly hug and reminded him about Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood.

Once he was dressed, Shadow looked more normal. Shadow clambered awkwardly onto the thunder’s birds’ back. He felt like a mouse on the back of the hawk. It was exactly like riding the lightning.

Laura took the stick from the back seat of the car. She left Mr. Town in front of the seat of the car, and climbed out the vehicle, walked through the rain to the Rock City. At in the end, a man stood up and gave her a small bow. The man recognized Laura from the photographs of her up above Shadow’s bed. Laura adjusted her grip on the stick, and she waited for the man she knew as Mr. World to come to her. She stabbed the stick into her chest as her dedication to Shadow, just below the breastbone, felt it writhe and change in her hands as the stick became spear. The boundary between sensation and pain had diffused since she had died. She also pushed the spear thrust into Mr. World. She could feel his hot blood spurting onto her back. She felt Mr. World stumble behind her, and she stumbled too, and then she slipped into the blood. 

Thunder rumbled, and it rattled the branches of the trees and shook deep inside the huge rocks, and the rain fell with cold violence. A voice from behind him, in the shadows, sai quietly that Shadow never disappoint him. Wednesday was proud of him. Loki Lie-Smith sat on the ground with his back to a metal cage. Shadow asked Wednesday his wife, gut Loki reminded him that Laura was not good for him. She went away. There was nothing to see, he was just in the wrong place. This was Rocky City. It had been a place of awe and worship for thousands of years; today that was thousands of millions of tourists who walked through the garden. The sky was dark, it was the lightning, Shadow realized. People populate the darkness with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. The mountaintop was an arena.

There were old gods in that place; gods with skins the brown of old mushrooms, the pink of chicken flesh, the yellow of autumn leaves. Shadow recognized the old gods, he met them already. There were ifrits, piskies, giants, and dwarfs. He saw the Mama-ji from Carousel. He recognized the new ones too. There were somebody who had to be a rail road baron, in antique suit. There were the great gods of the airplanes, hers to all the dreams of heavier-than air travel. There was an arrogances to the new ones.

The roaring, whoompfing sound of something catching on fire echoed across the arena. There were a silence I the high place. Then the shocking cracking, the lightning bolt frozen. Cracked to the mountaintop, and the arena went entirely dark. The light was going out. The gods were leaving that place, first in handfuls, and then by scores, and finally in their hundreds.

A spider the size of a Rottweiler scuttled heavily toward him, on seven legs; its cluster of eyes glowed faintly. The spider was close enough and its voice said that Shadow did a good job. It was Mr. Nancy’s voice. He found Laura stretched out on the ground. The floor beneath her was with sticky blood. She was in her side, where Loki have must dropped her after he had pulled the spear out of them both.

The two of them driving down to Florida. They had been driving since dawn, Mr. Nancy had sat up front in the passenger seat, and from time to time. Shadow was driving a rental, and he came out of the forest slowly. He entered the town of the Lakeside three weeks after he was certain he had left it for good. There was a chain across the short driveway that let own to the lake, and a wring sign for forbidden entrance to people or to vehicle. 

Shadow ignored the warnings and scrambled down to the bank. The car obviously empty, they were locked. There was a thunk from behind him as the trunk released. The smell was bad, there was a girl in the trunk. Her eyes were open, and she looked as if she had been crying when she died, and the tears that had frozen on her cheeks had still not melted. Every single person who drove over the bridge through to the town saw her, but nobody knew her. Somebody had put her there. He could see Alison McGovern’s white face staring at him from the open trunk. Shadow also found Sandy Olsen, and three other kids in silent and cold.      

His head hit something solid, he was pushing against ice on the top of the lake. There was no strength left in his arms, nothing to hold on to, nothing to push against. The cold was bearable, he was dying. His head banged the ice, he had frozen to death. He opened his eyes, the old man called him Mike. He wondered how an old man half his height and perhaps a third of his weight, had been able to drag him, unconscious, across the ice, or get him up the bank to a car. Hinzelmann, the cab driver, had killed the kid every winter in return the lake and prosperity that he had given to the people of Lakeside. People knew that. Hinzelmann told that he was a god before and was a kobold, people had given their children to him before the Romans came to the Black Forest. Although Shadow had reminded him that soon people would caught him. They had computer, they would track the pattern. Every year a kid was going to vanish.  

Chad Mulligan had heard everything about his old man, the lake, and the vanishing children. Suddenly, Hinzelmann tried to attack the police and Shadow. The noise of the shot, in the close quarters of the old man, was deafening. Chad and Mulligan left Hinzelmann’s body. Shadow drove south, he was on his way to keep his final appointment. The Coffee House closed at eight, at ten past eight he saw Samantha Black Crow walked out the place in company of a smaller woman whose pigtailed hair was a peculiar shade of red. It had been a good kiss, Shadow reflected, but Sam had never looked at him the way she looked at the pigtailed girl, and she never would. Then Shadow ran after her, and put the flowers into Sam’s hand. He hurried away, so she could not give them back. He was no in hurry.  

He drove to Czerbonog’s apartment. Shadow told the two sisters that Zorya Polunochnaya came to him in under world. Reykjavik in Iceland is a strange city, even for those who have seen many strange cities. There were tourists, but not too many in early July. Shadow was in the hillside when an old man nodded to him. He was ridiculously tall. Later Shadow recognized the old man, he was Odin.

******

August 15, 2017

Sekapur Sirih

Luar biasa, baru sepuluh halaman pertama fiksi telah mampu menarik perhatian dari segi tulisan disertai kisah yang sangat unik. Para dewa hidup di antara manusia, para dewa yang sudah terlupakan dan tidak disembah lagi, sebagian dari mereka ingin diingat manusia kembali. Mulanya, para perantau Amerika membawa tuhannya dalam pikirannya, kehidupannya, dan mempraktekkan keyakinannya, salah satunya Odin yang kini terlupakan.

Shadow Moon dipilih oleh Wednesday, Odin, sebagai asistennya. Shadow lelaki yang baru saja keluar dari penjara, terpilih menjadi pengikut dan penjaga setia lelaki tua itu. Lelaki bertubuh besar itu mengalmi hal-hal mistis dan juga berkesempatan bertemu para dewa. Walau banyak sisi supranatural termasuk melihat makhluk-makhul aneh, bertemu mendiang istrinya Laura, namun penulis juga membawa kehidupan Shadow senyata mungkin sebagai manusia, bagaimana ia bertemu orang-orang baru di tempat-tempat yang dia tinggali, dan menghadapi kesulitan menjadi buronan, dituduh pembunuh, untuk hal yang tidak dilakukannya.

Buku setebal 736 halaman terbitan William Morrow, 2017 merupakan cetakan ke sepuluh sejak terbitannya tahun 2001, dan juga telah diangkat dalam serial televisi. Penulis berasal dari Inggris dan kini menetap di Amerika.

Tulisan elegan, intelektual, dan didominasi kalimat-kalimat indah dan puitis. Fiksi ini mengandung sejarah, misteri, horror, sex, tema unik, dan imajinasi tinggi, tetapi kurang tepat bagi pembelajar pemula.

Ringkasan Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: American Gods (2001), karya Neil Gaiman

Sipir penjara menggiring lelaki bertubuh besar ke kantor. Hari itu adalah hari terakhir baginya mendekam di penjara. Seharusnya, ia menjalani hukuman enam tahun penjara, ia bebas dalam tiga tahun. Semua mengenalnya berperangai baik. Hari bahagia yang dinanti-nanti, ia sudah membayangkan kembali ke rumahnya dan bertemu istrinya Laura. Tiket pesawat telah diatur oleh istrinya, seorang pekerja agen travel.

Di saat menerima surat pembebasannya, ia juga menerima sepucuk surat. Berita kematian istrinya, yang beberapa saat lalu diterima pihak penjara. Kecelakaan mobil telah merenggut nyawa Laura. Dengan hati yang pedih, ia akhirnya sampai pada hari pemakaman istrinya. Dalam perjalanan pesawat, ia terpaksa duduk bersebelahan dengan  lelaki dalam balutan jas mahal, dan memperkenalkan dirinya Wednesday. Lelaki tua itu menawarkan pekerjaan dengan gaji menggiurkan.

Semua orang yang hadir di pemakaman mengenal Shadow, ia juga mengenali mereka semua. Audrey Burton adalah istri dari temannya Robbie. Sebelum masuk penjara, Shadow bekerja pada Robbie. Audrey adalah teman dekat Laura. Setangkai bunga dilekatkan pada sahabatnya, namun ia juga meludahi jasad Laura. Suaminya tengah berselingkuh dengan Laura, dan keduanya mati bersama dalam kecelakaan. Kencan terakhir, Laura ingin mengakiri hubungan mereka, Shadow akan segera keluar dari penjara.

Tidak banyak yang mau mempekerjakan mantan napi, akhirnya Shadow menerima pekerjaan dari Wednesday, sebagai pelindung dan pesuruh dari tuan barunya. Pekerjaan pertama mereka mengunjungi teman lama Wednesday berdarah Slavia. Setelah pertemuanya dengan bos barunya, ia kerap bermimpi aneh-aneh, terkadang melihat makhluk aneh, dan juga dikunjugi istrinya. Ia benar-benar dapat menyentuh istrinya yang sudah meninggal. Banyak hal-hal mistis dialaminya, hingga suatu saat ia akhirnya ia bias menerima bahwa Wednesday adalah Odin.

Setelah mendapat kepercayaan Shadow pun diajak menyaksikan pertemuan para dewa Amerika pada sebuah tempat yang aneh dan terselubung. Para perantau Amerika telah melupakan tuhan mereka, pelindung dan dewa yang mereka sembah pada mulanya. Para perantau telah memiliki tuhan yang baru: teknologi, internet, televisi, telepon, dan kartu kredit. Untuk melanjutkan hidup Wednesday harus merampok bank, dan hidup berpindah-pindah dari satu kota ke kota lain. Para dewa lain juga menjalani hidup yang tidak mudah hidup di antara manusia dengan berbagai kebutuhan. Easter/Paskah, wanita cantik lebih memilih hidup senang-senang dan menularkan penyakit kelamin. Dia tidak begitu berambisi ingin dipuja seperti Wednesday dan dewa lain. Masih banyak manusia yang merayakan festival Paskah baginya, hiasan, dan telur paskah. Easter sudah merasa cukup dengan hal itu.

Shadow hidup berpindah bekerja sebagai pekerja kamar mayat, berpura-pura menjadi penjual barang antic untuk bias hidup di lingkungannya. Nasib naas baginya ketika secara tidak sengaja, Audrey teman Laura mendapatinya di sebuah kota kecil. Ia sudah nyaman dan menyuki kota itu. Tempat aman bagi Shadow, ia dalam pelarian, dituduh membunuh dua anggota federal. Shadow sempat diculik dua orang, disiksa, dan dikurung. Laura, sang hantu, membantunya keluar dengan membunuh para penjaga penjaraya dan dua agen federal. Petugas pun mendatangi Audrey dan tetangga apartemen Shadow. Berganti identitas, berganti pekerjaan, dan berpindah kota dengan resiko tinggi adalah tidak mudah. Terbunuhnya dua anggota federal dan hukumannya, adalah hukuman mati.

Wednesday sudah mengatur segalanya, dari nama samaran, pekrjaan, tempat tinggal dan keuangan. Mereka melakukan pengumpulan para dewa dari satu kota ke kota lain. Tidak mudah bagi Odin, karena kebanyakan dewa sudah menimati hidupnya, dan acuh, dan bahkan saling bertikai. Tak jarang juga, dewa membuat masalah pada manusia, membunuh manusia, dengan penyamaran dalam bentuk supir taksi, pelacur, dan penjual barang antik, dan pengusaha pemakaman. Tubuh Odin terbunuh, tetapi tidak dengan rohnya. Shadow sebagai anak buah, menjadi penanggung-jawab ritual pelepasan Odin. Shadow digantung pada pohon hidup yang ada pada sebuah bukit suci, di mana jasad Odin disemayamkan.

Shadow sekarat dan mengalami perjalanan mistis hingga ke ruang pengadilan kegelapan. Dia melihat semua rekaman hidupnya, dan juga kesalahan dan kekonyolan dalam hidupnya. Ia melihat ibunya sekarat, juga menyaksikan pertengkarannya dengan ibunya tentang siapa ayahnya. Ibunya tidak pernah memberitahu siapa ayahnya dan bahkan tidak pernah menunjukkan selembar fotonya. Dalam penglihatan lain, ia melihat ibunya sedang berdansa dengan seorang pria yang ia kenal. Lelaki itu adalah Wednesday, Odin.

Hatinya ditimbang, lalu Shadow diberikan hak untuk memilih Surga atau Neraka. Tetapi ia tidak memilih apapun. Pikirannya kembali, ia menyadari bahwa ia masih hidup di gantungan pohon, seseorang menyelamatkannya, dan ia masih bertemu dengan dewa-dewa lainnya.

******

15 Agustus 2017