CHAPTER 4 (p.1)
Let the Midnight Special
Shine its light on me
Let the Midnight Special
Shine its ever-lovin’ light on me
—“THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL,” TRADITIONAL SONG
Shadow and Wednesday ate breakfast at a Country Kitchen across the street from their motel. It was eight in the morning, and the world was misty and chill.
“You still ready to leave Eagle Point?” asked Wednesday, at the breakfast bar. “I have some calls to make, if you are. Friday today. Friday's a free day. A woman's day. Saturday tomorrow. Much to do on Saturday.”
“I'm ready,” said Shadow. “Nothing keeping me here.”
Wednesday heaped his plate high with several kinds of breakfast meats. Shadow took some melon, a bagel, and a packet of cream cheese. They went and sat down in a booth.
“That was some dream you had last night,” said Wednesday.
“Yes,” said Shadow. “It was.” Laura's muddy footprints had been visible on the motel carpet when he got up that morning, leading from his bedroom to the lobby and out the door.
“So,” said Wednesday. “Why'd they call you Shadow?”
Shadow shrugged. “It's a name,” he said. Outside the plate glass the world in the mist had become a pencil drawing executed in a dozen different grays with, here and there, a smudge of electric red or pure white. “How'd you lose your eye?”
Wednesday shoveled half a dozen pieces of bacon into his mouth, chewed, wiped the fat from his lips with the back of his hand. “Didn't lose it,” he said. “I still know exactly where it is.”
“So what's the plan?”
Wednesday looked thoughtful. He ate several vivid pink slices of ham, picked a fragment of meat from his beard, dropped it onto his plate. “Plan is as follows. On Saturday night, which, as I have already remarked, is tomorrow, we shall be meeting with a number of persons preeminent in their respective fields—do not let their demeanor intimidate you. We shall meet at one of the most important places in the entire country. Afterward we shall wine and dine them. There will be, at a guess, thirty or forty of them. Perhaps more. I need to enlist them in my current enterprise.”
“And where is the most important place in the country?”
“One of them, m'boy. I said one of them. Opinions are justifiably divided. I have sent word to my colleagues. We'll stop off in Chicago on the way, as I need to pick up some money. Entertaining, in the manner we shall need to entertain, will take more ready cash than I happen to have available. Then on to Madison.”
“I see.”
“No, you don't. But all will become clear in time.”
Wednesday paid and they left, walked back across the road to the motel parking lot. Wednesday tossed Shadow the car keys. He drove down to the freeway and out of town.
“You going to miss it?” asked Wednesday. He was sorting through a folder filled with maps.
“The town? No. Too many Laura memories. I didn't really ever have a life here. I was never in one place too long as a kid, and I didn't get here until I was in my twenties. So this town is Laura's.”
“Let's hope she stays here,” said Wednesday.
“It was a dream,” said Shadow. “Remember.”
“That's good,” said Wednesday. “Healthy attitude to have. Did you fuck her last night?”
Shadow took a breath. Then, “That is none of your damn business. And no.”
“Did you want to?”
Shadow said nothing at all. He drove north, toward Chicago. Wednesday chuckled, and began to pore over his maps, unfolding and refolding them, making occasional notes on a yellow legal pad with a large silver ballpoint pen.
Eventually he was finished. He put his pen away, put the folder on the back seat. “The best thing about the states we're heading for,” said Wednesday, “Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there, is it has the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese.”
“Only when you were younger?” asked Shadow. “Looked like you were doing pretty good last night.”
“Yes.” Wednesday smiled. “Would you like to know the secret of my success?”
“You pay them?”
“Nothing so crude. No, the secret is charm. Pure and simple.”
“Charm, huh? Well, like they say, you either got it or you ain't.”
“Charms can be learnt,” said Wednesday.
“So where are we going?” asked Shadow.
“There's an old friend of mine we need to talk to. He's one of the people who'll be coming to the get-together. Old man, now. He's expecting us for dinner.”
They drove north and west, toward Chicago.
“Whatever's happening with Laura,” said Shadow, breaking the silence. “Is it your fault? Did you make it happen?”
“No,” said Wednesday.
“Like the kid in the car asked me: would you tell me if it was?”
“I'm as puzzled as you are.”
Shadow tuned the radio to an oldies station, and listened to songs that were current before he was born. Bob Dylan sang about a hard rain that was going to fall, and Shadow wondered if that rain had fallen yet, or if it was something that was still going to happen. The road ahead of them was empty and the ice crystals on the asphalt glittered like diamonds in the morning sun.
Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.
They parked outside a squat black brownstone. The sidewalk was clear of snow. They walked to the lobby. Wednesday pressed the top button on the gouged metal intercom box. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Then, experimentally, he began to press the other buttons, for other tenants, with no response.
“It's dead,” said a gaunt old woman, coming down the steps. “Doesn't work. We call the super, ask him when he going to fix, when he going to mend the heating, he does not care, goes to Arizona for the winter for his chest.” Her accent was thick, Eastern European, Shadow guessed.
Wednesday bowed low. “Zorya, my dear, may I say how unutterably beautiful you look? A radiant creature. You have not aged.”
The old woman glared at him. “He don't want to see you. I don't want to see you neither. You bad news.”
“That's because I don't come if it isn't important.”
The woman sniffed. She carried an empty string shopping bag, and wore an old red coat, buttoned up to her chin, and, perched on her gray hair, a green velvet hat that was, in appearance, a little bit flowerpot, a little bit bread-loaf. She looked at Shadow suspiciously.
“Who is the big man?” she asked Wednesday. “Another one of your murderers?”
“You do me a deep disservice, good lady. This gentleman is called Shadow. He is working for me, yes, but on your behalf. Shadow, may I introduce you to the lovely Miss Zorya Vechernyaya.”
“Good to meet you,” said Shadow.
Bird-like, the old woman peered up at him. “Shadow,” she said. “A good name. When the shadows are long, that is my time. And you are the long shadow.” She looked him up and down, then she smiled. “You may kiss my hand,” she said, and extended a cold hand to him.
Shadow bent down and kissed her thin hand. She had a large amber ring on her middle finger.
“Good boy,” she said. “I am going to buy groceries. You see, I am the only one of us who brings in any money. The other two cannot make money fortune-telling. This is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. It is a bad thing, and it troubles people, so they do not come back. But I can lie to them, tell them what they want to hear. I tell the pretty fortunes. So I bring home the bread. Do you think you will be here for supper?”
“I would hope so,” said Wednesday.
“Then you had better give me some money to buy more food,” she said. “I am proud, but I am not stupid. The others are prouder than I am, and he is the proudest of all. So give me money and do not tell them that you give me money.”
