缇庡浗浼楃 American Gods_061

looked out of the window, at the buildings across the street.
Zorya Utrennyaya went out. Czernobog stared at her as she left. "That's a good woman," he said. "Not like her sisters. One of them is a harpy, the other, all she does is sleep." He put his slippered feet up on a long, low coffee table, a chess board inset in the middle, cigarette burns and mug rings on its surface.
"Is she your wife?" asked Shadow.
"She's nobody's wife." The old man sat in silence for a moment,coach canada outlet, looking down at his rough hands. "No. We are all relatives. We come over here together, long time ago."
From the pocket of his bathrobe, Czernobog produced a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Wednesday pulled out a narrow gold lighter and lit the old man's cigarette. "First we come to New York," said Czernobog. "All our countrymen go to New York. Then, we come out here, to Chicago. Everything got very bad. Even in the old country, they had nearly forgotten me. Here, I am just a bad memory. You know what I did when I got to Chicago?"
"No," said Shadow.
"I get a job in the meat business. On the kill floor. When the steer comes up the ramp, I was a knocker. You know why we are called knockers? Is because we take the sledgehammer and we knock the cow down with it. Bam,cheap foamposites! It takes strength in the arms. Yes? Then the shackler chains the beef up, hauls it up, then they cut the throat. They drain the blood first before they cut the head off. We were the strongest, the knockers." He pushed up the sleeve of his bathrobe, flexed his upper arm to display the muscles still visible under the old skin. "Is not just strong though. There was an art to it. To the blow. Otherwise the cow is just stunned,Cheap Foamposites, or angry. Then, in the fifties, they give us the bolt gun,Homepage. You put it to the forehead, bam! bam! Now you think, anybody can kill. Not so." He mimed putting a metal bolt through a cow's head. "It still takes skill." He smiled at the memory, displaying an iron-colored tooth.
"Don't tell them cow-killing stories." Zorya Utrennyaya carried in their coffee on a red