The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (13 page)

“Hey, there,” the woodcarver says, jutting his sawdust-covered arm into the space. “I’m Danny.”

Holly pauses long enough for it to be a thing, then shakes Danny’s hand. “Stop looking at my tits,” Holly says, pointing at the carver.

Danny Tanneyhill turns away, smirking.

“Titties,” the boy says. “Tittie tittie tittie.”

“Shhh,” Holly says. “Be quiet, Tookus.”

But it’s too much to ask. Something has tipped inside her damaged younger brother. All the fear of the accident giving way. Funny bone. Funny.

“Titties,” he says, giggling so hard he can barely get the word out. “Tittie tittie tittie.”

Tookus turns his head, tries to bite his sister’s breast. Holly squirms out of reach. Tookus makes a grab and finds his mark.

“Titties,” he says.

Eventually Holly calms her brother down.

“I don’t know what happened,” she says, turning toward the Odyssey.

“Um, ball joint,” the Minotaur says, finally, thankfully, able to help. He knows without doubt what went wrong.

Danny Tanneyhill jockeys for position. “It sounded to me like—”

“Ball joint!” the Minotaur says again, louder. “Ball joint seized.”

Holly stands and helps Tookus to his feet. She’s been holding the concrete goose head the whole time, and when she tucks it into her back pocket, when the denim draws tight over her round behind, the spell (old and tired but no less potent) is cast. The Minotaur’s eye twitches. Danny Tanneyhill clears his throat. They both move a little closer, and each is fully aware of where the other stands.

“Come on,” she says, probably to her brother, but they all follow.

Crises averted, though the landscape has been altered in many ways, some more perceptible than others. Time becomes a little less persnickety. The Minotaur goes back to Room #3, cleans himself up. Tuesday morning slips into Tuesday afternoon, and somewhere along the way the redhead, Holly, kicks at the Odyssey’s still-hot rear wheel and curses. Tookus, her brother, sits in the van’s open side door. The young man’s arms fling hither and yon with no discernable rhythm or reason; too, his scarred head jerks and twitches this way and that, after nothing whatsoever. He sits there dropping the loose change that spilled during the earlier hullabaloo along Business 220 back into the five-gallon glass carboy nearly full with nickels, dimes, and quarters, sits there almost smiling, speaking his mind (as if he has a choice). Though there is some discernment at work.

Whenever Danny Tanneyhill, the woodcarver, comes near, Tookus speaks one way: “Dick dick dooo-dooo head. Shit licker, booger eater. Fuckerrrr.”

When the Minotaur passes, Tookus sings a different song: “Butterscotch piieeeeeeee. Punkin’ piieeeeeeee. Apple piieeeeeeee.”

Holly comes over once or twice to comfort him, to quiet him, and only then does the boy quiet. But still he pushes.

“Titties,” he says, and tries to grab a handful.

“Shhh, Tookus. Settle down.” She removes his hand, kisses it.

All the while, the rest mill about. The Guptas huddle up and talk; Ramneek cradles the little bowl full of blood-tinted water like an offering; Rambabu strokes his thick black mustache. Danny Tanneyhill tries to talk about his work, but nobody listens; he offers the pot of cold hot dogs but finds no takers.

Turns out the brother and sister are traveling with all their worldly possessions: the Honda Odyssey and its contents—a couple suitcases, a few books, a concrete goose statue (the neck snapped off when the van spun in the road) belonging to their dead grandmother (Tookus insisted it come along), and a big jug of pocket change Holly saved from year after greasy year of waiting tables at Snarky’s Six Packs & Subs. Turns out that’s about all they have.

There are negotiations that the Minotaur isn’t privy to. The Guptas open their hearts. The Guptas lead Holly by the hand to the door of Room #7, with its new pillows and billowy curtains, the cleansing cloud of incense. The Guptas offer the stranded travelers, the wanderers—Rambabu says the word
yatri
, and Ramneek clucks approval—deep discounts at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge. “Clean bathrooms. Comfortable beds. Free Wi-Fi.” Only the Minotaur knows what their offering means.

Way up on the mountain the turnpike roars its indifference. Old Scald Village is still just down the road, but the Minotaur can’t see it. He can’t see anything but the undercarriage of the Honda Odyssey. No. He sees purpose. It looks better, even, than his battlefield deaths.

Late afternoon finds the van perched catawampus on a jack and three wheels, finds a toolbox open on a thick blanket, the sockets and wrenches polished and gleaming, finds the Minotaur on that same blanket sprawled underneath the vehicle. All anyone can see of him is legs.
Purpose
, he thinks.
Purpose
.

Devmani, the granddaughter, watches the whole scene unfold, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk right by the office door. During that time she retrieves the Minotaur’s (mostly) empty aluminum pie pan, drags her skinny brown fingers across its bottom until it is clean, then licks. She finds an old room key and pokes two eyeholes, pretends it’s a mask. Then, for a long while, she wears it as a hat. Lords over all like a tinfoil
baba
, like an aluminous rani. But the pie pan keeps falling off, no matter how she bends and crimps it. Eventually Devmani gives up.

Up. The Minotaur looks up, his nose nearly pressed against the Odyssey’s grimy muffler. He’s had the wheel and the damaged parts disassembled for a while, has named them all: the crosstie, the knuckle, the toe control arm, the strut and shock absorber, etc. As long as he’s there, on his back, under the Honda, breathing in the smells of miles traveled, the Minotaur may as well inspect the exhaust system. Rattle and clank.

It is a world view that he knows well, feels good in. On his back beneath the vehicle, all that is seeable is contained in the squashed rectangle of space between the undercarriage and the ground, and he sees it bottom up, head over heels, topsy-turvy, arsy-varsy.

When the door closes across Business 220 the Minotaur tweaks his head to look, to watch her come from Room #7. It is Holly, no doubt, the red hair, and now a red dress that she moves fluidly within. The Minotaur stills himself. She could be going anywhere, about to do anything. She crosses the road into the Chili Willie’s lot. Less and less of her is visible as she approaches. Gone, her face. Gone, her chest, her waist, her thighs. The Minotaur picks up a wrench, any old wrench, searches urgently for a nut.

“Hey,” Holly says, nudging the Minotaur’s calf with her sandaled toe. The stars there, painted on blue-polished nails, make perfect sense in this world. Arsy-varsy. Topsy-turvy. If the Odyssey weren’t above him, the mass of nothingness overhead would come down and crush the Minotaur where he lies.

He emerges from under the Honda slowly, so as not to snag his horns. And just as slowly finds more and more of Holly there. Her legs, her torso, that face, those eyes.

“Is it bad?” she asks.

“Unngh,” he says. It is. “Mmmnn, not so.”

He stands, dusts himself off. The Minotaur wants to explain the ball-joint apparatus to Holly. He wishes he had more tools, a better tongue. The Minotaur wants something to occupy his hands, so he picks up the brake calipers. They fit well in his grip.

“Thanks again,” Holly says. She looks intently, unflinchingly, at the Minotaur.

“Mmmnn?” he says.

“For saving Tookus’s ass,” she says. “I swear, that boy . . .” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

Holly squats and peers beneath the van. The Minotaur tries not to look at the way her backside fills out the thin cotton dress. When she comes back from her squat, Holly points at the Minotaur’s shoulder, covered now in his soldier’s jacket.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “That stupid pole . . .”

Then Danny Tanneyhill appears. “Yo, yo, cyborg,” he says, pointing at the brake mechanism dangling from the Minotaur’s hand. “We come in peace.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, dropping his handful to the blanket.

“You look different,” Danny says to Holly. The tone has intention.

“And you’re still looking at my tits,” Holly says. But even the Minotaur can tell that she’s looking at Danny’s chest, at the saw blade and the deep scar beneath it. He’s brushed the sawdust from his face and body.

Danny Tanneyhill laughs, gets on his knees, and looks at the Honda’s wheel well. “You’re doing a great job,” he says. “Keep it up.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. He wants to talk about the Odyssey.

“Where’s, um, your brother?” Danny asks.

“Tookus is asleep,” Holly says. “I had to give him a double dose of medicine, after what happened. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Holly tucks a strand of red hair over one ear, dabs at the sweat on her upper lip. The Minotaur wishes she’d left both alone. He starts putting the sockets back into their red plastic tray, in order of size.

“Come over when he wakes up,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “I’m cooking mountain pies. We’ll have a good feed.”

Holly kneels, picks up a wrench, and hands it to the Minotaur. She’s not answering on purpose.

“Of course,” Danny says, “you could feast on M&Ms and Cheetos from the vending machine. I hear they’re top shelf.”

“Mountain pies?” Holly says. She slips a small box-end wrench on her index finger and spins it round and round. “What the hell is a mountain pie?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Danny Tanneyhill says.

“Hmmm,” Holly answers, and looks back and forth between the woodcarver and the man-bull.

“You, too, big boy,” Danny says to the Minotaur. “Come one, come all.”

“Mmmnn.”

It is Tuesday at Old Scald Village. Everyone is preparing for the upcoming Encampment Weekend. The Minotaur does not have to be there to know that Biddle is sitting in his Cooper’s Shack on a low stool, sitting by the bucket of wet staves, trying to stay awake. Knows, the Minotaur, even in his absence, that the handful of interns from Allegheny Community College are probably getting high in the Old Round Schoolhouse, and that afterward they’ll go either to Sojourner’s Tavern for fresh cider and donuts or to the hayloft in Riggle’s Barn, where they’ll do things that young people like to do to each other. The Minotaur knows Smitty. Knows the fires are stoked, that the bellows heaves madly, the hammer pounds and pounds. Smitty, on Tuesday, makes nails. The Minotaur feels sure that Destiny, the broom maker, is on her stave horse. The Minotaur smells her there. As for Widow Fisk, the Minotaur can only hope.

It is Tuesday, near dusk. Night creeps in and strips colors from the scene. Everything is purplish. There have been many Tuesdays in the Minotaur’s life. He wonders how this one will end. The Minotaur stands in the cramped bathroom and scrubs the grease from beneath his nails. He goes to the window and looks across Business 220, sees Danny Tanneyhill stack several logs into a pyramid inside of a fire pit made out of a cut-down metal drum. The minivan is still on its jack. Its owners are nowhere to be seen. The Minotaur returns to the sink, his scrub brush. It is Tuesday. Room #3 at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge is smaller than it was the day before.

Soon enough there is commotion down the row of rooms. The Minotaur hears Tookus first.

“Dark. Ddddark. Black ass. Moony moon.”

The Minotaur parts the blinds to watch Holly and her brother scurry across the road. She leads him by one hand. His other swings about madly. The Minotaur takes a dab of toothpaste and polishes the buttons on his soldier’s jacket. By the time he crosses over to Pygmalia-Blades the fire rages in its pit. The Minotaur smells the gasoline residue.

“Pull up a chair, hotshot,” Danny says. “Make yourself at home.”

“Peeecan piieeeeeee,” Tookus says.

The Minotaur is adaptable, above all else. But sometimes the process is slow, glacial in its movement. There are no chairs around the Pygmalia-Blades fire. Just stumps and benches made of logs, dragged into a semicircle.

Tookus stands at the canopy’s edge, running a finger over the swells and muscles of the Hulk carving. All of them.

“Green. Green fucker. Fucking green fuck. Dick green ass green. Green asshole.”

Holly sits on a low stump close to her brother, the yellowish incandescence from the droplights pooling in the red dress that is pooling between her thighs. She sits looking doubtfully at Danny Tanneyhill, who is opening his four mountain-pie makers on a card table just inside the trailer. The Minotaur sits opposite; he doesn’t want to crowd anyone. If asked the Minotaur might say that he thinks gravity pulls harder at night. That the whole earth, on its wobbly axis, whips quicker through a sunless sky. It sure feels that way. But nobody is going to ask. The Minotaur is grateful for the pop and crackle of the fire and the low buzz from the hanging lamps. Things rustle all over the darkening mountain. Crepuscular things venturing out of their dens, while the diurnal creatures tuck in for the night. The Minotaur envies both. Time to eat, time to sleep, time to rut. No time for nonsense. The neon
Vacancy
sign in the Judy-Lou office window flickers on and begins its syrupy pulse. Even Business 220 seems to be nodding off.

Danny Tanneyhill steps into the middle of their circle with two bottles of beer clenched between the fingers of his left hand. He offers first to Holly, who grunts softly, twists off the cap, and chugs the bottle empty.

“Damn, I needed that,” she says, and reaches for the other beer.

The carver whistles his approval and lets Holly take the second bottle.

“How about you, big boy?” he asks the Minotaur.

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says. “Water.”

“Help yourself,” Danny says, returning to the pies. “In the cooler.”

Mountain pies are not complicated. In fact much of the appeal is rooted in their (nostalgia-oozing) back-to-nature simplicity. The pie makers are two heavy metal rods hinged at one end (wooden handles at the other), and near the hinge a pair of cast-iron wells that close together to form a compartment just the right size for two slices of bread and the filling of your choice. Butter the bread, layer or spoon in your filler, close up tight, and put the business end into the fire for half a dozen minutes, give or take.