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in: Chapters, Part One: Shadows

Chapter Two

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“ They took her to the cemet'ry
In a big ol' Cadillac
They took her to the ceme'try
But they did not bring her back." 		”

–Old Song

In Chapter Two, Shadow eventually agrees to be Mr. Wednesday's bodyguard after a night of drinking with him and Mad Sweeney. Shadow attends Laura's funeral and encounters Technical Boy.

Plot[]

Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job again and Shadow tells him that his best friend, Robbie Burton, already has a job waiting for him at the Muscle Farm. Mr. Wednesday gives Shadow a news article relating how Laura died in a car accident along with the driver, Robbie Burton. Mad Sweeney arrives at the bar and joins them. Shadow eventually agrees to work for Mr. Wednesday on a six-month trial basis. Shadow begins doing a coin trick and Sweeney does one better. He challenges Shadow to fight him and he'll reveal how he did the trick and then starts a fight with Shadow when Shadow won't accept.

Shadow wakes up hungover the next day in the back of Mr. Wednesday's limo. They stop at a gas station where Shadow cleans up. Mr. Wednesday "pays" for their gas by confusing the cashier into paying them instead. They head into Eagle Point and Mr. Wednesday drops Shadow off at Wendell's Funeral Parlor for Laura's viewing. At the funeral parlor, Audrey Burton arrives and spits in Laura's face. She tells Shadow that Laura died with Audrey's "husband's cock in her mouth."

Shadow arrives at the cemetery for the burial and remains behind until he is the only one left. He tosses in the gold coin he received from Sweeney the night before and begins walking back into town. Audrey follows along beside him in her car as she tells him about Laura and Robbie's affair before taking off again. Shadow trips and falls in the ditch right before he is captured and knocked out.

Shadow wakes up in the back of another limo, sitting across from a fat, young man. He quizzes Shadow about his work for Mr. Wednesday before telling Shadow to relay a message that Mr. Wednesday is forgotten and old while he is the future. He has "reprogrammed reality" and can "delete" Shadow any time. He takes Shadow to the Motel America and releases him.

Myths[]

Mad Sweeney tells Shadow that he is a leprechaun.

Dreams[]

After Laura's funeral, Shadow remembers a conversation with his cellmate, Low Key Lyesmith, where he referred to the prison cemetery as a "bone orchard."

“ That night, he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, or why he found it so repellent. ”

–Shadow's dream in this chapter

Coin tricks[]

Shadow challenges Mr. Wednesday to a coin toss to decide whether or not he will work for him. Mr. Wednesday calls "heads" and Shadow tells him he's wrong because he rigged the coin toss. Mr. Wednesday tells him to look at the coin and it is heads up.

Shadow performs a disappearing coin trick, keeping two coins in his right hand while pretending they are in his left hand. Mad Sweeney then performs his own coin trick, making gold coins magically appear from all over and collecting them into an empty glass. He drops the coins into his pocket where they disappear once more. Shadow is impressed and thinks it is a variation on the "Miser's Dream."

Shadow discovers one of Sweeney's gold coins in his pocket and plays with it for a moment, doing a front-palm and back-palm trick before repocketing it.

When Shadow arrives at the funeral parlor, he does a front palm, back palm, Down palm trick with Sweeney's gold coin.

Places[]

People[]

Notes and trivia[]

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