Chapter 8 (p.5)
He could see as well as if it were full daylight.
In the mirror, Shadow noticed something strange. He stepped closer, and stared, puzzled. All his bruises had vanished. He touched his side, pressing firmly with his fingertips, feeling for one of the deep pains that told him he had encountered Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood, hunting for the greening blossoms of bruise that Mad Sweeney had gifted him with, and finding nothing. His face was clear and unmarked. His sides, however, and his back (he twisted to examine it) were scratched with what looked like claw marks.
He hadn't dreamed it, then. Not entirely.
Shadow opened the drawers, and put on what he found: an ancient pair of blue-denim Levis, a shirt, a thick blue sweater, and a black undertaker's coat he found hanging in the wardrobe at the back of the room. He wondered again who the clothes had belonged to.
He wore his own old shoes.
The house was still asleep. He crept through it, willing the floorboards not to creak, and then he was outside (out through the front door, not the mortuary, not this morning, not when he didn't have to), and he walked through the snow, his feet leaving deep prints in the virgin snow, his steps crunching as they pushed the soft snow deep onto the sidewalk. It was lighter out than it had seemed from inside the house, and the snow reflected the light from the sky.
After fifteen minutes walking, Shadow came to a bridge, with a big sign on the side of it warning him he was now leaving historical Cairo. A man stood under the bridge, tall and gangling, sucking on a cigarette and shivering continually. Shadow thought he recognized the man, but the light on the snow was playing tricks on his eyes, and he walked closer and closer in order to be sure. The man wore a patched denim jacket and a baseball cap.
And then, under the bridge in the winter darkness he was close enough to see the purple smudge of bruise around the man's eye, and he said, “Good morning, Mad Sweeney.”
The world was so quiet. Not even cars disturbed the snowbound silence.
“Hey, man,” said Mad Sweeney. He did not look up. The cigarette had been rolled by hand. Shadow wondered if the man was smoking a joint. No, the smell was tobacco.
“You keep hanging out under bridges, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow, “people gonna think you're a troll.”
This time Mad Sweeney looked up. Shadow could see the whites of his eyes all around his irises. The man looked scared. “I was lookin' for you,” he said. “You gotta help me, man. I fucked up big-time.” He sucked on his hand-rolled cigarette, pulled it away from his mouth. The cigarette paper stuck to his lower lip, and the cigarette fell apart, spilling its contents onto his ginger beard and down the front of his filthy T-shirt. Mad Sweeney brushed it off, convulsively, with blackened hands, as if it were a dangerous insect.
“My resources are pretty much tapped out, Mad Sweeney,” said Shadow. “But why don't you tell me what it is you need. You want me to get you a coffee?”
Mad Sweeney shook his head. He took out a tobacco pouch and papers from the pocket of his denim jacket and began to roll himself another cigarette. His beard bristled and his mouth moved as he did this, although no words were said aloud. He licked the adhesive side of the cigarette paper and rolled it between his fingers. The result looked only distantly like a cigarette. Then he said, “'M not a troll. Shit. Those bastards're fucken mean.”
“I know you're not a troll, Sweeney,” said Shadow, gently, hoping that he did not sound as if he were patronizing the man. “How can I help you?”
Mad Sweeney flicked his Zippo, and the first inch of his cigarette flamed and then subsided to ash. “You remember I showed you how to get a coin? You remember?”
“Yes,” said Shadow. He saw the gold coin in his mind's eye, watched it tumble into Laura's casket, saw it glitter around her neck. “I remember.”
“You took the wrong coin, man.”
A car approached the gloom beneath the bridge, blinding them with its lights. It slowed as it passed them, then stopped, and a window slid down. “Everything okay here, gentlemen?”
“Everything's just peachy thank you, officer,” said Shadow. “Just out for a morning walk.”
“Okay now,” said the cop. He did not look as if he believed that everything was okay. He waited. Shadow put a hand on Mad Sweeney's shoulder, and walked him forward, out of town, away from the police car. He heard the window hum closed, but the car remained where it was.
Shadow walked. Mad Sweeney walked, and sometimes he staggered. They passed a sign saying FUTURE CITY. Shadow imagined a city of spires and Frank R. Paul towers, all gleaming in gentle primary colors, bubble-domed air-cars flitting from tower to tower like glittering hoverflies. That was Future City and somehow Shadow didn't think it was ever going to be built in Cairo.
The police car cruised past them slowly, then turned, and went back into the city, accelerating down the snowy road.
“Now, why don't you tell me what's troubling you,” said Shadow.
“I did it like he said. I did it all like he said, but I gave you the wrong coin. It wasn't meant to be that coin. That's for royalty. You see? I shouldn't even have been able to take it. That's the coin you'd give to the King of America himself. Not some pissant bastard like you or me. And now I'm in big trouble. Just give me the coin back, man. You'll never see me again, if you do, I swear to fucken Bran, okay? I swear by the years I spent in the fucken trees.”
“You did it like who said, Sweeney?”
“Grimnir. The dude you call Wednesday. You know who he is? Who he really is?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
There was a panicked look in the Irishman's crazy blue eyes. “It was nothing bad. Nothing you can—nothing bad. He just told me to be there at that bar and to pick a fight with you. He said he wanted to see what you were made of.”
“He tell you to do anything else?”
Sweeney shivered and twitched; Shadow thought it was the cold for a moment, then knew where he'd seen that shuddering shiver before. In prison: it was a junkie shiver. Sweeney was in withdrawal from something, and Shadow would have been willing to bet it was heroin. A junkie leprechaun? Mad Sweeney pinched off the burning head of his cigarette, dropped it on the ground, put the unfinished yellowing rest of it into his pocket. He rubbed his filthy fingers together, breathed on them to try and rub warmth into them. His voice was a whine now. “Listen, just give me the fucken coin, man. What do you want it for? Huh? Hey, you know there's more where that came from. I'll give you another, just as good. Hell, I'll give you a shitload, man.”
He took off his filthy baseball cap—then, with his right hand, he stroked the air, producing a large golden coin. He dropped it into his cap. And then he took another from a wisp of breath steam, and another, catching and grabbing them from the still morning air until the baseball cap was brimming with them and Sweeney was forced to hold it with both hands.
He extended the baseball cap filled with gold to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Take them, man. Just give me back the coin I gave to you.” Shadow looked down at the cap, wondered how much its contents would be worth.
“Where am I going to spend those coins, Mad Sweeney?” Shadow asked. “Are there a lot of places you can turn your gold into cash?”
He thought the Irishman was going to hit him for a moment, but the moment passed and Mad Sweeney just stood there, holding out his gold-filled cap with both hands like Oliver Twist. And then tears swelled in his blue eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. He took the cap and put it—now empty of everything except a greasy sweatband—back over his thinning scalp. “You gotta, man,” he was saying. “Didn't I show you how to do it? I showed you how to take coins from the hoard. I showed you where the hoard was. The treasure of the sun. Just give me that first coin back. It didn't belong to me.”
“I don't have it any more.”
