Chapter 5 (p.4)
The police car drove off, and Wednesday shuffled back through the snow to deal with the small line of people who were waiting to give him their money.
“She okay?” asked the manager, putting his head around the door. “Your girlfriend?”
“It was the battery,” said Shadow. “Now I just got to wait.”
“Women,” said the manager. “I hope yours is worth waiting for.”
Winter darkness descended, the afternoon slowly graying into night. Lights went on. More people gave Wednesday their money. Suddenly, as if at some signal Shadow could not see, Wednesday walked over to the wall, removed the OUT OF ORDER signs, and trudged across the slushy road, heading for the car park. Shadow waited a minute, then followed him.
Wednesday was sitting in the back of the car. He had opened the metal case and was methodically laying everything he had been given out on the back seat in neat piles.
“Drive,” he said. “We're heading for the First Illinois Bank over on State Street.”
“Repeat performance?” asked Shadow. “Isn't that kind of pushing your luck?”
“Not at all,” said Wednesday. “We're going to do a little banking.”
While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the back seat and removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking the cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Shadow pulled up outside the bank, stopping the car about fifty yards down the road, well out of camera range. Wednesday got out of the car, and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. Then he opened the night safe, and dropped in the gray bags. He closed it again.
He climbed into the passenger seat. “You're heading for I-90,” said Wednesday. “Follow the signs west for Madison.”
Shadow began to drive.
Wednesday looked back at the bank they were leaving. “There, my boy,” he said, cheerfully, “that will confuse everything. Now, to get the really big money, you need to do that at about 4:30 on a Sunday morning, when the clubs and the bars drop off their Saturday night's takings. Hit the right bank, the right guy making the drop off—they tend to pick them big and honest, and sometimes have a couple of bouncers accompany them, but they aren't necessarily smart—and you can walk away with a quarter of a million dollars for an evening's work.”
“If it's that easy,” said Shadow, “how come everybody doesn't do it?”
“It's not an entirely risk-free occupation,” said Wednesday, “especially not at 4:30 in the morning.”
“You mean the cops are more suspicious at 4:30 in the morning?”
“Not at all. But the bouncers are. And things can get awkward.”
He flicked through a sheaf of fifties, added a smaller stack of twenties, weighed them in his hand, then passed them over to Shadow. “Here,” he said. “Your first week's wages.”
Shadow pocketed the money without counting it. “So, that's what you do?” he asked. “To make money?”
“Rarely. Only when a great deal of cash is needed fast. On the whole, I make my money from people who never know they've been taken, and who never complain, and who will frequently line up to be taken when I come back that way again.”
“That Sweeney guy said you were a hustler.”
“He was right. But that is the least of what I am. And the least of what I need you for, Shadow.”
Snow spun through their headlights and into the windshield as they drove through the darkness. The effect was almost hypnotic.
“This is the only country in the world,” said Wednesday, into the stillness, “that worries about what it is.”
“What?”
“The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”
“And…?”
“Just thinking out loud.”
“So you've been to lots of other countries, then?”
Wednesday said nothing. Shadow glanced at him. “No,” said Wednesday, with a sigh. “No. I never have.”
They stopped for gas, and Wednesday went into the restroom in his security guard jacket with his suitcase, and came out in a crisp, pale suit, brown shoes, and a knee-length brown coat that looked like it might be Italian.
“So when we get to Madison, what then?”
“Take Highway 14 west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?”
“No,” said Shadow. “But I've seen the signs.”
The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world: oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock. Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them. Did the House balance perilously upon the Rock? What was so interesting about the Rock? About the House? He had given it a passing thought, but then forgotten it. Shadow was not in the habit of visiting roadside attractions.
They drove past the capitol dome of Madison, another perfect snowglobe scene in the falling snow, and then they were off the interstate, and driving down country roads. After almost an hour of driving through towns with names like Black Earth, they turned down a narrow driveway, past several enormous, snow-dusted flowerpots entwined with lizard-like dragons. The tree-lined parking lot was almost empty.
“They'll be closing soon,” said Wednesday.
“So what is this place?” asked Shadow, as they walked through the parking lot toward a low, unimpressive wooden building.
“This is a roadside attraction,” said Wednesday. “One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power.”
“Come again?”
“It's perfectly simple,” said Wednesday. “In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples, or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or…well, you get the idea.”
“There are churches all across the States, though,” said Shadow.
“In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat-house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that.”
“You have some pretty whacked-out theories,” said Shadow.
“Nothing theoretical about it, young man,” said Wednesday. “You should have figured that out by now.”
There was only one ticket window open. “We stop selling tickets in half an hour,” said the girl. “It takes at least two hours to walk around, you see.”
Wednesday paid for their tickets in cash.
“Where's the rock?” asked Shadow.
“Under the house,” said Wednesday.
“Where's the house?”
