MY AINSEL

Chapter Nine

Not to mention mythic creatures in the rubble...

-Wendy Cope, "A Policeman's Lot"

 As they drove out of Illinois late that evening, Shadow asked Wednesday his first question. He saw the WELCOME TO WISCONSIN sign, and said, "So who were the guys that grabbed me in the parking lot? Mister Wood and Mister Stone? Who were they?"

The lights of the car illuminated the winter landscape. Wednesday had announced that they were not to take freeways because he didn't know whose side the freeways were on, so Shadow was sticking to back roads. He didn't mind. He wasn't even sure that Wednesday was crazy.

Wednesday grunted. "Just spooks. Members of the opposition. Black hats."

"I think," said Shadow, "that they think they're the white hats."

"Of course they do. There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous."

"And you?" asked Shadow. "Why are you doing what you're doing?"

"Because I want to," said Wednesday. And then he grinned. "So that's all right."

Shadow said, "How did you all get away? Or did you all get away?"

"We did," said Wednesday. "Although it was a close thing. If they'd not stopped to grab you, they might have taken the lot of us. It convinced several of the people who had been sitting on the fence that I might not be completely crazy."

"So how did you get out?"

Wednesday shook his head. "I don't pay you to ask questions," he said. "I've told you before."

Shadow shrugged.

They spent the night in a Super 8 motel south of La Crosse.

Christmas Day was spent on the road, driving north and east. The farmland became pine forest. The towns seemed to come farther and farther apart.

They ate their Christmas lunch late in the afternoon in a hall-like family restaurant in northern central Wisconsin. Shadow picked cheerlessly at the dry turkey, jam-sweet red lumps of cranberry sauce, tough-as-wood roasted potatoes, and violently green canned peas. From the way he attacked it, and the way he smacked his lips, Wednesday seemed to be enjoying the food. As the meal progressed he became positively expansive-talking, joking, and, whenever she came close enough, flirting with the waitress, a thin blonde girl who looked scarcely old enough to have dropped out of high school.

"Excuse me, m'dear, but might I trouble you for another cup of your delightful hot chocolate? And I trust you won't think me too forward if I say what a mightily fetching and becoming dress that is. Festive, yet classy."

The waitress, who wore a bright red-and-green skirt edged with glittering silver tinsel, giggled and colored and smiled happily, and went off to get Wednesday another mug of hot chocolate.

"Fetching," said Wednesday, thoughtfully, watching her go. "Becoming," he said. Shadow did not think he was talking about the dress. Wednesday shoveled the final slice of turkey into his mouth, flicked at his beard with his napkin, and pushed his plate forward. "Aaah. Good." He looked around him, at the family restaurant. In the background a tape of Christmas songs was playing: the little drummer boy had no gifts to bring, parupapom-pom, rapappom pom, rapappom pom.

"Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however...people stay the same. Some gifts last forever, others are swallowed soon enough by time and by the world. My favorite gift of all is no longer practical. Still, a surprising number of gifts are timeless-the Spanish Prisoner, the Pigeon Drop, the Fawney Rig (that's the Pigeon Drop but with a gold ring instead of a wallet), the Fiddle Game..."

"I've never heard of the Fiddle Game," said Shadow. "I think I've heard of the others. My old cellmate said he'd actually done the Spanish Prisoner. He was a grifter."

"Ah," said Wednesday, and his left eye sparkled. "The Fiddle Game was a fine and wonderful coir. In its purest form it is a two-man grift. It trades on cupidity and greed, as all great grifts do. You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work. So. We are in a hotel or an inn or a fine restaurant, and, dining there, we find a man-shabby, but shabby genteel, not down-at-heel but certainly down on his luck. We shall call him Abraham. And when the time comes to settle his bill-not a huge bill, you understand, fifty, seventy-five dollars-an embarrassment! Where is his wallet? Good Lord, he must have left it at a friend's, not far away. He shall go and obtain his wallet forthwith! But here, mine host, says-Abraham, take this old fiddle of mine for security. It's old, as you can see, but it's how I make my living."

Wednesday's smile when he saw the waitress approaching was huge and predatory. "Ah, the hot chocolate! Brought to me by my Christmas Angel! Tell me my dear, could I have some more of your delicious bread when you get a moment?"

The waitress-what was she, Shadow wondered: sixteen, seventeen?-looked at the floor and her cheeks flushed crimson. She put down the chocolate with shaking, hands and retreated to the edge of the room, by the slowly rotating display of pies, where she stopped and stared at Wednesday. Then she slipped into the kitchen to fetch Wednesday his bread.

"So. The violin-old, unquestionably, perhaps even a little battered-is placed away in its case, and our temporarily impecunious Abraham sets off in search of his wallet. But a well-dressed gentleman, only just done with his own dinner, has been observing this exchange, and now he approaches our host: could he, perchance, inspect the violin that honest Abraham left behind?

"Certainly he can. Our host hands it over, and the well-dressed man-let us call him Barrington-opens his mouth wide, then remembers himself and closes it, examines the violin reverentially, like a man who has been permitted into a holy sanctum to examine the bones of a prophet. 'Why!' he says, 'this is-it must be-no, it cannot be-but yes, there it is-my lord! But this is unbelievable!" and he points to the maker's mark, on a strip of browning paper inside the violin-but still, he says, even without it he would have known it by the color of the varnish, by the scroll, by the shape.

"Now Barrington reaches inside his pocket and produces an engraved business card, proclaiming him to be a preeminent dealer in rare and antique musical instruments. 'So this violin is rare?' asks mine host. 'Indeed it is,' says Barrington, still admiring it with awe, 'and worth in excess of a hundred thousand dollars, unless I miss my guess. Even as a dealer in such things I would pay fifty-no, seventy-five thousand dollars, good cash money, for such an exquisite piece. I have a man on the West Coast who would buy it tomorrow, sight unseen, with one telegram, and pay whatever I asked for it.' And then he consults his watch, and his face falls. 'My train-' he says. 'I have scarcely enough time to catch my train! Good sir, when the owner of this inestimable instrument should return, please give him my card, for, alas, I must be away.' And with that, Barrington leaves, a man who knows that time and the train wait for no man.

"Mine host examines the violin, curiosity mingling with cupidity in his veins, and a plan begins to bubble up through his mind. But the minutes go by, and Abraham does not return. And now it is late, and through the door, shabby but proud, comes our Abraham, our fiddle player, and he holds in his hands a wallet, a wallet that has seen better days, a wallet that has never contained more than a hundred dollars on its best day, and from it he takes the money to pay for his meal or his stay, and he asks for the return of his violin.

"Mine host puts the fiddle in its case on the counter, and Abraham takes it like a mother cradling her child. 'Tell me,' says the host (with the engraved card of a man who'll pay fifty thousand dollars, good cash money, burning his inside breast pocket), 'how much is a violin like this worth? For my niece has a yearning on her to play the fiddle, and it's her birthday coming up in a week or so.'

" 'Sell this fiddle?' says Abraham. 'I could never sell her. I've had her for twenty years, I have, fiddled in every state of the union with her. And to tell the truth, she cost me all of five hundred dollars back when I bought her.'

"Mine host keeps the smile from his face. 'Five hundred dollars? What if I were to offer you a thousand dollars for it, here and now?'

"The fiddle player looks delighted, then crestfallen, and he says, 'But lordy, I'm a fiddle player, sir, it's all I know how to do. This fiddle knows me and she loves me, and my fingers know her so well I could play an air upon her in the dark. Where will I find another that sounds so fine? A thousand dollars is good money, but this is my livelihood. Not a thousand dollars, not for five thousand."

"Mine host sees his profits shrinking, but this is business, and you must spend money to make money. 'Eight thousand dollars,' he says. 'It's not worth that, but I've taken a fancy to it, and I do love and indulge my niece.'

"Abraham is almost in tears at the thought of losing his beloved fiddle, but how can he say no to eight thousand dollars?-especially when mine host goes to the wall safe and removes not eight but nine thousand dollars, all neatly banded and ready to be slipped into the fiddle player's threadbare pocket. 'You're a good man,' he tells his host. 'You're a saint! But you must swear to take care of my girl!' and, reluctantly, he hands over his violin."

"But what if mine host simply hands over Barrington's card and tells Abraham that he's come into some good fortune?" asked Shadow.

"Then we're out the cost of two dinners," said Wednesday. He wiped the remaining gravy and leftovers from his plate with a slice of bread, which he ate with lip-smacking relish.

"Let me see if I've got it straight," said Shadow. "So Abraham leaves, nine thousand dollars the richer, and in the parking lot by the train station he and Barrington meet up. They split the money, get into Barrington's Model A Ford, and head for the next town. I guess in the trunk of that car they must have a box filled with hundred-dollar violins."

"I personally made it a point of honor never to pay more than five dollars for any of them," said Wednesday. Then he turned to the hovering waitress. "Now, my dear, regale us with your description of the sumptuous desserts available to us on this, our Lord's natal day." He stared at her-it was almost a leer-as if nothing that she could offer him would be as toothsome a morsel as herself. Shadow felt deeply uncomfortable: it was like watching an old wolf stalking a fawn too young to know that if it did not run, and run now, it would wind up in a distant glade with its bones picked clean by the ravens.

The girl blushed once more and told them that dessert was apple pie à la mode-"That's with a scoop of vanilla ice cream"-Christmas cake à la mode, or a red-and-green whipped pudding. Wednesday stared into her eyes and told her that he would try the Christmas cake à la mode. Shadow passed.

"Now, as grifts go," said Wednesday, "the fiddle game goes back three hundred years or more. And if you pick your chicken correctly you could still play it anywhere in America tomorrow."

"I thought you said that your favorite grift was no longer practical," said Shadow.

"I did indeed. However, that is not my favorite. No, my favorite was one they called the Bishop Game. It had everything: excitement, subterfuge, portability, surprise. Perhaps, I think from time to time, perhaps with a little modification, it might..." he thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Its time has passed. It is, let us say, 1920, in a city of medium to large size-Chicago, perhaps,-or New York, or Philadelphia. We are in a jeweler's emporium. A man dressed as a clergyman-and not just any clergyman, but a bishop, in his purple-enters and picks out a necklace-a gorgeous and glorious confection of diamonds and pearls, and pays for it with a dozen of the crispest hundred-dollar bills.

"There's a smudge of green ink on the topmost bill and the store owner, apologetically but firmly, sends the stack of bills to the bank on the corner to be checked. Soon enough, the store clerk returns with the bills. The bank says they are none of them counterfeit. The owner apologizes again, and the bishop is most gracious, he well understands the problem, there are such lawless and ungodly types in the world today, such immorality and lewdness abroad in the world and shameless women, and now that the underworld has crawled out of the gutter and come to live on the screens of the picture palaces, what more could anyone expect? And the necklace is placed in its case, and the store owner does his best not to ponder why a bishop of the church would be purchasing a twelve-hundred-dollar diamond necklace, nor why he would be paying good cash money for it.

"The bishop bids him a hearty farewell, and walks out on the street, only for a heavy hand to descend on his shoulder. 'Why Soapy, yez spalpeen, up to your old tricks, are you?' and a broad beat cop with an honest Irish face walks the bishop back into the jewelry store.

" 'Beggin' your pardon, but has this man just bought anything from you?' asks the cop. 'Certainly not,' says the bishop. 'Tell him I have not.' 'Indeed he has,' says the jeweler. 'He bought a pearl and diamond necklace from me-paid for it in cash as well.' 'Would you have the bills available, sir?' asks the cop.

"So the jeweler takes the twelve hundred-dollar bills from the cash register and hands them to the cop, who holds them up to the light and shakes his head in wonder. 'Oh, Soapy, Soapy,' he says, 'these are the finest that you've made yet! You're a craftsman, that you are!'

"A self-satisfied smile spreads across the bishop's face. 'You can't prove nothing,' says the bishop. 'And the bank said that they were on the level. It's the real green stuff.' 'I'm sure they did,' agrees the cop on the beat, 'but I doubt that the bank had been warned that Soapy Sylvester was in town, nor of the quality of the hundred-dollar bills he'd been passing in Denver and in St. Louis.' And with that he reaches into the bishop's pocket and pulls out the necklace. "Twelve hundred dollars' worth of diamonds and pearls in exchange for fifty cents' worth of paper and ink,' says the policeman, who is obviously a philosopher at heart. 'And passing yourself off as a man of the church. You should be ashamed,' he says, as he claps the handcuffs on the bishop, who is obviously no bishop, and he marches him away, but not before he gives the jeweler a receipt for both the necklace and the twelve hundred counterfeit dollars. It's evidence, after all."

"Was it really counterfeit?" asked Shadow.

"Of course not! Fresh banknotes, straight from the bank, only with a thumbprint and a smudge of green ink on a couple of them to make them a little more interesting."

Shadow sipped his coffee. It was worse than prison coffee. "So the cop was obviously no cop. And the necklace?"

"Evidence," said Wednesday. He unscrewed the top from the salt shaker, poured a little heap of salt on the table. "But the jeweler gets a receipt, and assurance that he'll get the necklace straight back as soon as Soapy comes to trial. He is congratulated on being a good citizen, and he watches proudly, already thinking of the tale he'll have to tell at the next meeting of the Oddfellows tomorrow night, as the policeman marches the man pretending to be a bishop out of the store, twelve-hundred-dollars in one pocket, a twelve hundred dollar diamond necklace in the other, on their way to a police station that'll never see hide nor hair of either of them."

The waitress had returned to clear the table. "Tell me my dear," said Wednesday. "Are you married?"

She shook her head.

"Astonishing that a young lady of such loveliness has not yet been snapped up." He was doodling with his fingernail in the spilled salt, making squat, blocky, runelike shapes. The waitress stood passively beside him, reminding Shadow less of a fawn and more of a young rabbit caught in an eighteen-wheeler's headlights, frozen in fear and indecision.

Wednesday lowered his voice, so much so that Shadow, only across the table, could barely hear him. "What time do you get off work?"

"Nine," she said, and swallowed. "Nine-thirty latest."

"And what is the finest motel in this area?"

"There's a Motel 6," she said. "It's not much."

Wednesday touched the back of her hand, fleetingly, with the tips of his fingers, leaving crumbs of salt on her skin. She made no attempt to wipe them off. "To us," he said, his voice an almost inaudible rumble, "it shall be a pleasure palace."

The waitress looked at him. She bit her thin lips, hesitated, then nodded and fled for the kitchen.

"C'mon," said Shadow. "She looks barely legal."

"I've never been overly concerned about legality," Wednesday told him. "And I need her, not as an end in herself, but to wake me up a little. Even King David knew that there is one easy prescription to get warm blood flowing through an old frame: take one virgin, call me in the morning."

Shadow caught himself wondering if the girl on night duty in the hotel back in Eagle Point had been a virgin. "Don't you ever worry about disease?" he asked. "What if you knock her up? What if she's got a brother?"

"No," said Wednesday. "I don't worry about diseases. I don't catch them. Unfortunately-for the most part-people like me fire blanks, so there's not a great deal of interbreeding. It used to happen in the old days. Nowadays, it's possible, but so unlikely as to be almost unimaginable. So no worries there. And many girls have brothers, and fathers. It's not my problem. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I've left town already."

"So we're staying here for the night?"

Wednesday rubbed his chin. "I shall stay in the Motel 6," he said. Then he put his hand into his coat pocket. He pulled out a front door key, bronze-colored, with a card tag attached on which was typed an address: 502 Northridge Rd, Apt #3. "You, on the other hand, have an apartment waiting for you, in a city far from here." Wednesday closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, gray and gleaming and fractionally mismatched, and he said, "The Greyhound bus will be coming through town in twenty minutes. It stops at the gas station. Here's your ticket." He pulled out a folded bus ticket, passed it across the table. Shadow picked it up and looked at it.

"Who's Mike Ainsel?" he asked. That was the name on the ticket.

"You are. Merry Christmas."

"And where's Lakeside?"

"Your happy home in the months to come. And now, because good things come in threes..." He took a small, gift-wrapped package from his pocket, pushed it across the table. It sat beside the ketchup bottle with the black smears of dried ketchup on the top. Shadow made no move to take it.

"Well?"

Reluctantly, Shadow tore open the red wrapping paper to reveal a fawn-colored calfskin wallet, shiny from use. It was obviously somebody's wallet. Inside the wallet was a driver's license with Shadow's photograph on it, in the name of Michael Ainsel, with a Milwaukee address, a MasterCard for M. Ainsel, and twenty crisp fifty-dollar bills. Shadow closed the wallet, put it into an inside pocket.

"Thanks," he said.

"Think of it as a Christmas bonus. Now, let me walk you down to the Greyhound. I shall wave to you as you ride the gray dog north."

They walked outside the restaurant. Shadow found it hard to believe how much colder it had gotten in the last few hours. It felt too cold to snow, now. Aggressively cold. This was a bad winter.

"Hey. Wednesday. Both of the scams you were telling me about-the violin scam and the bishop one, the bishop and the cop-" He hesitated, trying to form his thought, to bring it into focus.

"What of them?"

Then he had it. "They're both two-man scams. One guy on each side. Did you used to have a partner?" Shadow's breath came in clouds. He promised himself that when he got to Lakeside he would spend some of his Christmas bonus on the warmest, thickest winter coat that money could buy.

"Yes," said Wednesday. "Yes. I had a partner. A junior partner. But, alas, those days are gone. There's the gas station, and there, unless my eye deceives me, is the bus." It was already signaling its turn into the parking lot. "Your address is on the key," said Wednesday. "If anyone asks, I am your uncle, and I shall be rejoicing in the unlikely name of Emerson Borson. Settle in, in Lakeside, nephew Ainsel. I'll come for you within the week. We shall be traveling together. Visiting the people I have to visit. In the meantime, keep your head down and stay out of trouble."

"My car...?" said Shadow.

"I'll take good care of it. Have a good time in Lakeside," said Wednesday. He thrust out his hand, and Shadow shook it. Wednesday's hand was colder than a corpse's.

"Jesus," said Shadow. "You're cold."

"Then the sooner I am making the two-backed beast with the little hotsy-totsy lass from the restaurant in a back room of the Motel 6, the better." And he reached out his other hand and squeezed Shadow's shoulder.

Shadow experienced a dizzying moment of double vision: he saw the grizzled man facing him, squeezing his shoulder, but he saw something else: so many winters, hundreds and hundreds of winters, and a gray man in a broad-brimmed hat walking from settlement to settlement, leaning on his staff, staring in through windows at the firelight and a joy and a burning life he would never be able to touch, never even be able to feel...

"Go," said Wednesday, his voice a reassuring growl. "All is well, and all is well, and all shall be well."

Shadow showed his ticket to the driver. "Hell of a day to be traveling," she said. And then she added, with a certain grim satisfaction, "Merry Christmas."

The bus was almost empty. "When will we get into Lakeside?" asked Shadow.

"Two hours. Maybe a bit more," said the driver. "They say there's a cold snap coming." She thumbed a switch and the doors closed with a hiss and a thump.

Shadow walked halfway down the bus, put the seat back as far as it would go, and he started to think. The motion of the bus and the warmth combined to lull him, and before he was aware that he was becoming sleepy, he was asleep.

***

In the earth, and under the earth. The marks on the wall were the red of wet clay: handprints, fingermarks, and, here and there, crude representations of animals and people and birds.

The fire still burned and the buffalo man still sat on the other side of the fire, staring at Shadow with huge eyes, eyes like pools of dark mud. The buffalo lips, fringed with matted brown hair, did not move as the buffalo voice said, "Well, Shadow? Do you believe yet?"

"I don't know," said Shadow. His mouth had not moved either, he observed. Whatever words were passing between the two of them were not being spoken, not in any way that Shadow understood speech. "Are you real?"

"Believe," said the buffalo man.

"Are you..." Shadow hesitated, and then he asked, "Are you a god too?"

The buffalo man reached one hand into the flames of the fire and he pulled out a burning brand. He held the brand in the middle. Blue and yellow flames licked his red hand, but they did not burn.

"This is not a land for gods," said the buffalo man. But it was not the buffalo man talking anymore, Shadow knew, in his dream: it was the fire speaking, the crackling and the burning of the flame itself that spoke to Shadow in the dark place under the earth.

"This land was brought up from the depths of the ocean by a diver," said the fire. "It was spun from its own substance by a spider. It was shat by a raven. It is the body of a fallen father, whose bones are mountains, whose eyes are lakes.

"This is a land of dreams and fire," said the flame.

The buffalo man put the brand back on............