“Yes. You want to know what we’re waiting for? Why we didn’t strike last night?”
The fat kid nodded. He was sweating, but it was a cold sweat.
“We didn’t strike yet, because I’m waiting for a stick.”
“A stick?”
“That’s right. A stick. And do you know what I’m going to do with the stick?”
A head shake. “Okay. I’ll bite. What?”
“I could tell you,” said Mr. World, soberly. “But then I’d have to kill you.” He winked, and the tension in the room evaporated.
The fat kid began to giggle, a low, snuffling laugh in the back of his throat and in his nose. “Okay,” he said. “
Mr. World shook his head. He rested a hand on the fat kid’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “You really want to know?”
“Sure.”
“Well,” said Mr. World, “seeing that we’re friends, here’s the answer: I’m going to take the stick, and I’m going to throw it over the armies as they come together. As I throw it, it will become a spear. And then, as the spear arcs over the battle, I’m going to shout, ‘I dedicate this battle to Odin.’”
“Huh?” said the fat kid. “Why?”
“Power,” said Mr. World. He scratched his chin. “And food. A combination of the two. You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Let me show you. It’ll be just like this,” said Mr. World. “Watch!” He took the wooden-bladed hunter’s knife from the pocket of his Burberry and, in one fluid movement, he slipped the blade of it into the soft flesh beneath the fat kid’s chin, and pushed hard upward, toward the brain. “I dedicate this death to Odin,” he said, as the knife sank in.
There was a leakage onto his hand of something that was not actually blood, and a sputtering sparking noise behind the fat kid’s eyes. The smell on the air was that of burning insulation wire, as if somewhere a plug was overloading.
The fat kid’s hand twitched spastically, and then he fell. The expression on his face was one of puzzlement, and misery. “Look at him,” said Mr. World, conversationally, to the air. “He looks as if he just saw a sequence of zeroes and ones turn into a cluster of brightly colored birds, and then just fly away.”
There was no reply from the empty rock corridor.
Mr. World shouldered the body as if it weighed very little, and he opened the pixie diorama and dropped the body beside the still, covering it with its long black raincoat. He would dispose of it that evening, he decided, and he grinned his scarred grin: hiding a body on a battlefield would almost be too easy. Nobody would ever notice. Nobody would care.
For a little while there was silence in that place. And then a gruff voice which was not Mr. World’s cleared its throat in the shadows, and said, “Good start.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
—A SINGER’S COMMENTARY ON “THE BALLAD OF SAM BASS,”
None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers and triumphs over all opposition.
Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.
So, none of this is happening. Such things could not occur in this day and age. Never a word of it is literally true, although it all happened, and the next thing that happened, happened like this:
At the foot of Lookout Mountain, which is scarcely more than a very high hill, men and women were gathered around a small bonfire in the rain. They stood beneath the trees, which provided poor cover, and they were arguing.
The lady Kali, with her ink-black skin and white, sharp teeth, said, “It is time.”
Anansi, with lemon-yellow gloves and silvering hair, shook his head. “We can wait,” he said. “While we
There was a murmur of disagreement from the crowd.