Wednesday only grunted.
Each hill they came to was harder to climb.
Shadow began to feel headachy. There was a pounding quality to the starlight, something that resonated with the pulse in his temples and his chest. At the bottom of the next hill he stumbled, opened his mouth to say something and, without warning, he vomited.
Wednesday reached into an inside pocket, and produced a small hip flask. “Take a sip of this,” he said. “Only a sip.”
The liquid was pungent, and it evaporated in his mouth like a good brandy, although it did not taste like alcohol. Wednesday took the flask away, and pocketed it. “It’s not good for the audience to find themselves walking about backstage. That’s why you’re feeling sick. We need to hurry to get you out of here.”
They walked faster, Wednesday at a solid trudge, Shadow stumbling from time to time, but feeling better for the drink, which had left his mouth tasting of orange peel, of rosemary oil and peppermint and cloves.
Wednesday took his arm. “There,” he said, pointing to two identical hillocks of frozen rock-glass to their left. “Walk between those two mounds. Walk beside me.”
They walked, and the cold air and bright daylight smashed into Shadow’s face at the same time.
They were standing halfway up a gentle hill. The mist had gone, the day was sunny and chill, the sky was a perfect blue. At the bottom of the hill was a gravel road, and a red station wagon bounced along it like a child’s toy car. A gust of wood smoke came from a building nearby. It looked as if someone had picked up a mobile home and dropped it on the side of the hill thirty years ago. The home was much repaired, patched, and, in places, added onto.
As they reached the door it opened, and a middle-aged man with sharp eyes and a mouth like a knife slash looked down at them and said, “Eyah, I heard that there were two white men on their way to see me. Two whites in a Winnebago. And I heard that they got lost, like white men always get lost if they don’t put up their signs everywhere. And now look at these two sorry beasts at the door. You know you’re on Lakota land?” His hair was gray, and long.
“Since when were you Lakota, you old fraud?” said Wednesday. He was wearing a coat and a flap-eared cap, and already it seemed to Shadow unlikely that only a few moments ago under the stars he had been wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a tattered cloak. “So, Whiskey Jack. I’m starving, and my friend here just threw up his breakfast. Are you going to invite us in?”
Whiskey Jack scratched an armpit. He was wearing blue jeans, and an undershirt the gray of his hair. He wore moccasins, and he seemed not to notice the cold. Then he said, “I like it here. Come in, white men who lost their Winnebago.”
There was more wood smoke in the air inside the trailer, and there was another man in there, sitting at a table. The man wore stained buckskins, and was barefoot. His skin was the color of bark.
Wednesday seemed delighted. “Well,” he said, “it seems our delay was fortuitous. Whiskey Jack and Apple Johnny. Two birds with one stone.”
The man at the table, Apple Johnny, stared at Wednesday, then he reached down a hand to his crotch, cupped it and said, “Wrong again. I jes’ checked and I got both of my stones, jes’ where they oughtta be.” He looked up at Shadow, raised his hand, palm out. “I’m John Chapman. You don’t mind anything your boss says about me. He’s an asshole. Always was an asshole. Always goin’ to be an asshole. Some people is jes’ assholes, and that’s an end of it.”
“Mike Ainsel,” said Shadow.
Chapman rubbed his stubbly chin. “Ainsel,” he said. “That’s not a name. But it’ll do at a pinch. What do they call you?”
“Shadow.”
“I’ll call you Shadow, then. Hey, Whiskey Jack”—but it wasn’t really Whiskey Jack he was saying, Shadow realized. Too many syllables. “How’s the food looking?”
Whiskey Jack took a wooden spoon and lifted the lid off a black iron pot, bubbling away on the range of the wood-burning stove. “It’s ready for eating,” he said.
He took four plastic bowls and spooned the contents of the pot into the bowls, put them down on the table. Then he opened the door, stepped out into the snow, and pulled a plastic gallon jug from the snowbank. He brought it inside, and poured four large glasses of a cloudy yellow-brown liquid, which he put beside each bowl. Last of all, he found four spoons. He sat down at the table with the other men.
Wednesday raised his glass suspiciously. “Looks like piss,” he said.
“You still drinking that stuff?” asked Whiskey Jack. “You white men are crazy. This is better.” Then, to Shadow, “The stew is mostly wild turkey. John here brought the applejack.”
“It’s a soft apple cider,” said John Chapman. “I never believed in hard liquor. Makes men mad.”
The stew was delicious, and it was very good apple cider. Shadow forced himself to slow down, to chew his food, not to gulp it, but he was more hungry than he would have believed. He helped himself to a second bowl of the stew and a second glass of the cider.
“Dame Rumor says that you’ve been out talking to all manner of folk, offering them all manner of things. Says you’re takin’ the old folks on the warpath,” said John Chapman. Shadow and Whiskey Jack were washing up, putting the leftover stew into Tupperware bowls. Whiskey Jack put the bowls into the snowdrifts outside his front door, and put a milk crate on top of the place he’d pushed them, so he could find them again.
“I think that’s a fair and judicious summary of events,” said Wednesday.
“They’ll win,” said Whiskey Jack flatly. “They won already. You lost already. Like the white man and my people. Mostly they won. And when they lost, they made treaties. Then they broke the treaties. So they won again. I’m not fighting for another lost cause.”
“And it’s no use you lookin’ at me,” said John Chapman, “for even if I fought for you—which’n I won’t—I’m no use to you. Mangy rat-tailed bastards jes’ picked me off and clean forgo
t me.” He stopped. Then he said, “Paul Bunyan.” He shook his head slowly and he said it again. “Paul Bunyan.” Shadow had never heard two such innocuous words made to sound so damning.