The black bird cocked its head onto one side, a
nd then said, in a voice like stones being struck, “You shadow man.”
“I’m Shadow,” said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn’s rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close.
“Says he will see you in Kay-ro,” tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin’s ravens this was: Huginn or Muninn, Memory or Thought.
“Kay-ro?” he asked.
“In Egypt.”
“How am I going to go to Egypt?”
“Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.”
“Look,” said Shadow, “I don’t want to seem like I’m—Jesus, look . . .” he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. “Okay. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want mysteries.”
“Mysteries,” agreed the bird, helpfully.
“What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It’s a line from a bad spy thriller.”
“Jackal. Friend. Tok. Kay-ro.”
“So you said. I’d like a little more information than that.”
The bird half turned, and pulled another strip of raw venison from the fawn’s ribs. Then it flew off into the trees, the red strip dangling from its beak like a long, bloody worm.
“Hey! Can you at least get me back to a real road?” called Shadow.
The raven flew up and away. Shadow looked at the corpse of the baby deer. He decided that if he were a real woodsman, he would slice off a steak and grill it over a wood fire. Instead, he sat on a fallen tree and ate a Snickers bar and knew that he really wasn’t a real woodsman.
The raven cawed from the edge of the clearing.
“You want me to follow you?” asked Shadow. “Or has Timmy fallen down another well?” The bird cawed again, impatiently. Shadow started walking toward it. It waited until he was close, then flapped heavily into another tree, heading somewhat to the left of the way Shadow had originally been going.
“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.”
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
“Say ‘Nevermore,’ “ said Shadow.
“Fuck you,” said the raven. It said nothing else as they went through the woodland together.
In half an hour they reached a blacktop road on the edge of a town, and the raven flew back into the wood. Shadow observed a Culvers Frozen Custard Butterburgers sign, and, next to it, a gas station. He went into the Culvers, which was empty of customers. There was a keen young man with a shaven head behind the cash register. Shadow ordered two butterburgers and french fries. Then he went into the rest room to clean up. He looked a real mess. He did an inventory of the contents of his pockets: he had a few coins, including the silver Liberty dollar, a disposable toothbrush and toothpaste, three Snickers bars, five chemical heater pads, a wallet (with nothing more in it than his driver’s license and a credit card—he wondered how much longer the credit card had to live), and in the coat’s inside pocket, a thousand dollars in fifties and twenties, his take from yesterday’s bank job. He washed his face and hands in hot water, slicked down his dark hair, then went back into the restaurant and ate his burgers and fries and drank his coffee.
He went back to the counter. “You want frozen custard?” asked the keen young man.
“No. No thanks. Is there anywhere around here I could rent a car? My car died, back down the road a way.”
The young man scratched his head-stubble. “Not around here, Mister. If your car died you could call Triple-A. Or talk to the gas station next door about a tow.”
“A fine idea,” said Shadow. “Thanks.”
He walked across the melting snow, from the Culvers parking lot to the gas station. He bought candy bars and beef jerky sticks and more chemical hand and feet warmers.
“Anywhere hereabouts I could rent a car?” he asked the woman behind the cash register. She was immensely plump, and bespectacled, and was delighted to have someone to talk to.
“Let me think,” she said. “We’re kind of out of the way here. They do that kind of thing over in Madison. Where you going?”