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 forgot 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.
"Paul Bunyan?" Shadow said. "What did he ever do?"
"He took up head space," said Whiskey Jack. He bummed a cigarette from Wednesday and the two men sat and smoked.
"It's like the idiots who figure that hummingbirds worry about their weight or tooth decay or some such nonsense, maybe they just want to spare hummingbirds the evils of sugar," explained Wednesday. "So they fill the hummingbird feeders with f**king NutraSweet. The birds come to the feeders and they drink it. Then they die, because their food contains no calories even though their little tummies are full. That's Paul Bunyan for you. Nobody ever told Paul Bunyan stories. Nobody ever believed in Paul Bunyan. He came staggering out of a New York ad agency in 1910 and filled the nation's myth stomach with empty calories."
"I like Paul Bunyan," said Whiskey Jack. "I went on his ride at the Mall of America, few years back. You see big old Paul Bunyan at the top, then you come crashing down. Splash! He's okay by me. I don't mind that he never existed, means he never cut down any trees. Not as good as planting trees though. That's better."
"You said a mouthful," said Johnny Chapman.
Wednesday blew a smoke ring. It hung in the air, dissipating slowly in wisps and curls. "Damn it, Whiskey Jack, that's not the point and you know it."
"I'm not going to help you," said Whiskey Jack. "When you get your ass kicked, you can come back here and if I'm still here I'll feed you again. You get the best food in the fall."
Wednesday said, "All the alternatives are worse."
"You have no idea what the alternatives are," said Whiskey Jack. Then he looked at Shadow. "You are hunting," he said. His voice was roughened by wood smoke and cigarettes.
"I'm working," said Shadow.
Whiskey Jack shook his head. "You are also hunting something," he said. "There is a debt that you wish to pay."
Shadow thought of Laura's blue lips and the blood on her hands, and he nodded.
"Listen. Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother."
Wednesday said, "If you won't play, you won't play. We'll be moving on."
Whiskey Jack's face was impassive. "I'm talking to this young man," he said. "You are beyond help. He is not." He turned back to Shadow. "Tell me your dream," said Whiskey Jack.
Shadow said, "I was climbing a tower of skulls. There were huge birds flying around it. They had lightning in their wings. They were attacking me. The tower fell."
"Everybody dreams," said Wednesday. "Can we hit the road?"
"Not everybody dreams of the Wakinyau, the thunder-bird," said Whiskey Jack. "We felt the echoes of it here."
"I told you," said Wednesday. "Jesus."
"There's a clutch of thunderbirds in West Virginia," said Chapman, idly. "A couple of hens and an old cock-bird at least. There's also a breeding pair in the land, they used to call it the State of Franklin, but old Ben never got his state, up between Kentucky and Tennessee. 'Course, there was never a great number of them, even at the best of times."
Whiskey Jack reached out a hand the color of red clay and touched Shadow's face, gently. "Eyah," he said. "It's true. If you hunt the thunderbird you could bring your woman back. But she belongs to the wolf, in the dead places, not walking the land."
"How do you know?' asked Shadow.
Whiskey Jack's lips did not move. "What did the buffalo tell you?"
"To believe."
"Good advice. Are you going to follow it?"
"Kind of. I guess." They were talking without words, without mouths, without sound. Shadow wondered if, for the other two men in the room, they were standing, unmoving, for a heartbeat or for a fraction of a heartbeat.
"When you find your tribe, come back and see me," said Whiskey Jack. "I can help."
"I shall."
Whiskey Jack lowered his hand. Then he turned to Wednesday. "Are you going to fetch your Ho Chunk?"
"My what?"
"Ho Chunk. It's what the Winnebago call themselves."
Wednesday shook his head. "It's too risky. Retrieving it could be problematic. They'll be looking for it."
"Is it stolen?"
Wednesday looked affronted. "Not a bit of it. The papers are in the glove compartment."
"And the keys?"
"I've got them," said Shadow.
"My nephew, Harry Bluejay, has an '81 Buick. Why don't you give me the keys to your camper? You can take his car."
Wednesday bristled. "What kind of trade is that?"
Whiskey Jack shrugged. "You know how hard it will be to bring back your camper from where you abandoned it? I'm doing you a favor. Take it or leave it. I don't care." He closed his knife-wound mouth.
Wednesday looked angry, and then the anger became rue, and he said, "Shadow, give the man the keys to the Winnebago." Shadow passed the car keys to Whiskey Jack.
"Johnny," said Whiskey Jack, "will you take these men down to find Harry Bluejay? Tell him I said, for him to give them his car."
"Be my pleasure," said John Chapman.
He got up and walked to the door, picked up a small burlap sack sitting next to it, opened the door, and walked outside. Shadow and Wednesday followed him. Whiskey Jack waited in the doorway. "Hey," he said to Wednesday. "Don't come back here, you. You are not welcome."
Wednesday extended his finger heavenward. "Rotate on this," he said affably.
They walked downhill through the snow, pushing their way through the drifts. Chapman walked in front, his bare feet red against the crust-topped snow. "Aren't you cold?" asked Shadow.
"My wife was Choctaw," said Chapman.
"And she taught you mystical ways to keep out the cold?"
"Nope. She thought I was crazy," said Chapman. "She used t'say, 'Johnny, why don't you jes' put on boots?' " The slope of the hill became steeper, and they were forced to stop talking. The three men stumbled and slipped on the snow, using the trunks of birch trees on the hillside to steady themselves, and to stop themselves from falling. When the ground became slightly more level, Chapman said, "She's dead now, a'course. When she died I guess maybe I went a mite crazy. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to you." He clapped Shadow on the arm. "By Jesus and Jehosophat, you're a big man."
"So they tell me," said Shadow.
They trudged down that hill for about half an hour, until they reached the gravel road that wound around the base of it, and the three men began to walk along it, toward the cluster of buildings they had seen from high on the hill.
A car slowed and stopped. The woman driving it reached over, wound down the passenger window, and said, "You bozos need a ride?"
"You are very gracious, madam," said Wednesday. "We're looking for a Mister Harry Bluejay."
"He'll be down at the rec hall," said the woman. She was in her forties, Shadow guessed. "Get in."
They got in. Wednesday took the passenger seat, John Chapman and Shadow climbed into the back. Shadow's legs were too long to sit in the back comfortably, but he did the best he could. The car jolted forward, down the gravel road.
"So where did you three come from?" asked the driver.
"Just visiting with a friend," said Wednesday.
"Lives on the hill back there," said Shadow.
"What hill?" she asked.
Shadow looked back through the dusty rear window, looking back at the hill. But there was no high hill back there; nothing but clouds on the plains.
"Whiskey Jack," he said.
"Ah," she said. "We call him Inktomi here. I think it's the same guy. My grandfather used to tell some pretty good stories about him. Of course, all the best of them were kind of dirty." They hit a bump in the road, and the woman swore. "You okay back there?"
"Yes ma'am," said Johnny Chapman. He was holding onto the backseat with both hands.
"Rez roads," she said. "You get used to them."
"Are they all like this?" asked Shadow.
"Pretty much," said the woman. "All the ones around here. And don't you go asking about all the money from casinos, because who in their right mind wants to come all the way out here to go to a casino? We don't see none of that money out here."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." She changed gear with a crash and a groan. "You know the white population all around here is falling? You go out there, you find ghost towns. How you going to keep them down on the farm, after they seen the world on their television screens? And it's not worth anyone's while to farm the Badlands anyhow. They took our lands, they settled here, now they're leaving. They go south. They go west. Maybe if we wait for enough of them to move to New York and Miami and L.A. we can take the whole of the middle back without a fight."
"Good luck," said Shadow.
They found Harry Bluejay in the rec hall, at the pool table, doing trick shots to impress a group of several girls. He had a blue jay tattooed on the back of his right hand, and multiple piercings in his right ear.
"Ho hoka, Harry Bluejay," said John Chapman.
"Fuck off, you crazy barefoot white ghost," said Harry Bluejay, conversationally. "You give me the creeps."