The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (17 page)

Holly, from her squat, rolls her eyes and blows at a strand of hair. “Try me,” she says.

The woodcarver doesn’t ask why Holly and the Minotaur are hunkered there, amid the broken glass, pitching coins into ice buckets, but he joins them anyway.

“That fucking church,” he says. “The church from last night. The one on the trailer.”

“I know what church you’re talking about,” Holly says.

“Mmmnn.”

“It fell off,” Danny says, grinning wide.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the church fell off of the trailer! It’s blocking the entrance to that Old Scald Village place down the road, where big boy here works. The dumbass driver tried to turn in too fast or something.”

“Mmmnn, back way?” the Minotaur says. The Old Scald service road is where big deliveries come and go.

“I don’t know anything about your back way,” Danny says. “But that truck is on its side, half in the ditch, and what’s left of the church is jammed up against an old covered bridge.”

The Minotaur looks down Business 220. Drawn. Compelled. Worried.

“There are ambulances and everything,” he says. “Probably squashed some of those shit-heels in their playclothes.”

“Fuck,” Holly says, not quite amused.

“Exactly!” Danny Tanneyhill says. “Let’s go see it!”

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says. Though he wants more than anything to go. “No.”

It’s enough. The spell is broken.

“I don’t have time for that kind of bullshit,” Holly says. “I have to get the van fixed. Somehow.”

Everybody looks across Business 220 at the Odyssey, still canting on its jack.

“Psshh,” Danny says. “We’ve got you covered, darlin’. Me and cowboy here will have you fixed up in no time.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

The smells of the Guptas’ breakfast (the buttery fried bread, garlic, maybe—potatoes, too) drift down the sidewalk. The Minotaur wishes he could go in and sit at their table. Wishes he could take Holly along.

“First of all,” Holly says, “I’m not your darlin’. Second of all, what do you mean? I don’t have time or money to waste.”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” the woodcarver says. “I just mean that between me and the master mechanic here, we can get you up and running lickety-split.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says again. It’s probably true, but he wants a say in the conversation. Wants not to be roped into a responsibility by the woodcarver’s desire.

Holly looks about to cry again. “I can’t afford . . .”

Business 220 stretches silently out of sight. There is crisis at one end. The Minotaur tilts his horns accordingly. What if Widow Fisk is hurt? Or Biddle, even?

“Don’t worry,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “Everything will be okay.”

That’s probably true as well, but the Minotaur interjects anyway.

“Unngh.”

“We’ll make a plan,” Danny says. “Me and cyborg, we’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

“Unngh.”

“Better still,” the woodcarver says, toying with the saw blade around his neck and working hard (and failing) not to look at Holly’s chest, “Mister Wrench here can surely handle the job, and I’ll take you and Spooky down to see all the stupids at the Old Scald—”

“No,” the Minotaur says. “No.”

“No,” Holly says.

“Whatever,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “We’ll stay together, then.”

“I need to check on Took first,” Holly says. She hands a half-full ice bucket to Danny. “Take over.”

He grunts but acquiesces.

The Minotaur follows her into the Judy-Lou office, and deeper still to the Guptas’ apartment. Tookus sits on a couch watching cartoons with Devmani. His hands are fat and white, ghost puppets, blimps. No. Bandages. Holly gasps.

Ramneek comes quickly to her side. “Shhh,” the woman says, taking Holly by the arm. “The boy is fine. His cuts are few and shallow.”

Holly gestures, one hand loosely circling the other.

“The boy simply liked the tape and bandaging. So I kept going.”

The Minotaur is just supposed to go get his tools. Just. Just gather his wrenches and pliers and screwdrivers and go back across Business 220 to meet with the redhead and the woodcarver to talk about the Odyssey. The Minotaur is not supposed to scramble out the back window of Room #3, clamber down the laurel-choked slopes all the way to the bank of Mill Run. Is not, that misguided old bull, supposed to follow the stream west. Is not, but does.

Mill Run, Stink Creek, runs red and foamy.

The Minotaur makes haste.

Finds himself quickly enough at the chaotic mouth of Old Scald Village. Hides there behind a thick clump of cattails, hoping their fat brown bloom spikes will camouflage him. The Minotaur sees but does not want to be seen.

He has several options. Decisions to make. If he shows himself, if he helps in this moment of need, maybe he’ll be forgiven. Pardoned. No. The Minotaur is a realist. He knows human nature. The old covered bridge, both ingress and egress, is blocked, battered by the wrecked church. The whole scene is clotted with familiar faces. Smitty pretending some authority. Biddle smirking, doing something with his cell phone. Tow trucks. Men with wenches and cables and jacks and testosterone in abundance. An ambulance is present, its rear door gaping wide. The Minotaur looks long and hard, finds no one stretchered. Doc sits dejected on a rotting railroad tie, holding a rubber forearm and hand, his ersatz knowledge useless. And Widow Fisk? The Minotaur can’t find her there.

Throwing caution to the wind, he circumnavigates the small-scale calamity, rushes, top heavy in his need, through the backyards of Old Scald Village, making his way to the Welcome Center, where he thinks he sees the
Open
sign in the window, making his way to Widow Fisk, to Gwen, to make sure she’s okay, to maybe even say he’s sorry. He’ll just march right through the Gift Shoppe and into her office, and if anybody tries to stop him the Minotaur will . . . will . . .

“Hey!”

The Minotaur looks up. Up from his studied tread. Up and into the eyes of Destiny. The broom maker. She’s in her open window. He’s in the backyard of the Broom Shack.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.

She wields a weapon, a stiff cane besom broom.

The Minotaur runs. It is not a pretty sight. He makes a lopsided sort of gallop across the graveled main street of Old Scald Village, runs past the Cooper’s Shack, through the stockade and its adjacent pasture, runs, wheezing by now, around the other side of the covered bridge, heads farther down and back over Business 220, sidles along the shoulder of the road, more in the ditch than out, paying so much attention to being unseen by anyone in attendance at the Old Scald Village crisis that he trips over something and falls flat on his bull face.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

“Muutate,” comes the answer. Gravelly and harsh. More retch than language.

It’s the giant plaster soldier speaking. The giant plaster soldier, knocked from its base (by the Dingus truck, no doubt), lies in pieces on its plaster belly. Much like the Minotaur.

“Ch-ch-changeling!” the solider squawks.

The Minotaur sits up and kicks the hideous beast. A crow wriggles from the gaping neck hole, hops onto the soldier’s back, struts up and down, looks at the grounded Minotaur, fluffs its black self up to gargantuan size, vomits a dissonant curse, then flies away.

By the time the Minotaur returns, everybody at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge is mad at him.

“Where the hell did you go?” Danny Tanneyhill asks.

“We knocked on your door, Mister M,” Rambabu says.

Holly doesn’t speak, but her look says enough.

“Unngh, sorry,” the Minotaur says, squatting by the shallow maw of the Odyssey’s empty wheel well.

The Minotaur shows Holly the damage. So much damage. So much need. He tells her what is needed to get the vehicle back on the road.

Holly kneels there with him. She binds her red hair tightly in a ponytail. She wears snug jeans, not the loose boxers. And the Mighty Mouse shirt still. It rides a little high, and the swath of soft belly flesh is so pale it threatens to gobble up all of the day’s light. She’s doing calculations in her head, tapping out sums, or maybe counting days. Holly cries. Says she doesn’t have the money. Says she doesn’t have the time.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. He has some bills folded in the bottom of his haversack.

“Hey,” Danny Tanneyhill says, “my buddy owns a salvage yard!”

Holly doesn’t know what that means. Danny Tanneyhill explains.

“You’re not fucking with me, are you?” Holly asks. “You better not be fucking with me.”

The woodcarver strikes a saintly pose, palms up, eyes full of forced compassion.

“I don’t have time . . . We can’t . . . ,” Holly says.

“Have a little faith, darlin’,” he says.

“I told you,” Holly says, “I’m not your darlin’. Can we go? Can we go right now?”

“We’ll take my truck,” Danny says.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

“I’m gonna get Tooky,” Holly says.

The man and the Minotaur watch her cross Business 220. Watch her lug the man in the moon into her room and close the door.

“Can you handle this?” Danny asks. He touches the saw-blade necklace that hangs beneath his dirty T-shirt and toes at the brake drum on the ground. He probably means the repair job.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, touching a horn tip (the one that touched Holly’s thigh) and snapping a socket on a ratchet. He means several things.

The woodcarver and the half-bull mill around, waiting for the girl to return.

“You never said where you disappeared to,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “I thought maybe you . . .”

Holly emerges from the Judy-Lou office. It’s enough to shut the woodcarver up.

“Took’s watching
Gilligan’s Island
with the little girl,” she says. “He wants to stay. I hope he’ll be all right.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, trying to sound comforting. He gathers the necessary tools, looks at the Odyssey’s damaged parts.

Danny Tanneyhill sings to himself, “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.”

Holly keeps looking back at the motel. “He’ll be fine, right? She’ll keep him . . . I just need a break, just a little time.”

“Mmmnn, yes,” the Minotaur says. “Safe.”

Danny Tanneyhill sings even louder as he loads a stubby carving of a football helmet painted Pittsburgh Steelers black and gold: “The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed.”

“What’s that for?” Holly asks, grabbing the faceguard.

“Bargaining power,” the carver says. “And you never even thanked me for the man in the moon.”

“It almost killed me,” she says. “Thanks for that.”

Danny Tanneyhill climbs into the driver’s seat and cranks the engine. Revs it. The passenger door stands wide open. Holly looks at the Minotaur, shrugs, and climbs in. She scoots close to Danny and pats the seat.

“Your turn,” she says.

So the Minotaur climbs in, and right away the horns are a problem. He has to cock and angle his big head to keep from gouging the headliner or Holly. Everything smells like sawdust and sweat.

“Unngh,” he says.

“You could roll down the window,” Holly says.

The Minotaur thinks it over: one horn in, one horn out. Sawdust and sweat. The Minotaur wishes he could stay.

“No,” he says, and gets out of the truck.

Danny gooses the throttle. Sings, “If not for the courage of the fearless crew . . .”

“Let’s switch,” Holly says. “You sit in the middle.”

The redhead is lovely. He’d like to ride beside her. But the Minotaur has better sense.

“Back,” he says, and climbs over the side into the bed of Danny Tanneyhill’s pickup truck.

Holly is mumbling protest when Danny slides open the cab’s rear window. The Minotaur drags the unsecured spare tire from the tailgate to the front of the bed, positions it in the center, and sits. His horns nearly span the width of the window. Unless he lowers his snout the tips rise above the truck’s roof.

“It’s like you’re right up here with us,” Danny says through the screen.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“We don’t have too far to go,” Danny says. “Just on the other side of Joy. Up over Locke Mountain.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

Danny Tanneyhill is overly cautious and stalls the truck. The Minotaur’s big head bobbles and knocks against the cab.

“You okay back there?” Holly asks.

The Minotaur’s reply is trumped by the spinning tires and spray of gravel as Danny pulls onto Business 220, driving toward midday, toward Locke Mountain, driving away from Old Scald Village, the cooper, the blacksmith, the broom maker, Widow Fisk, and the Minotaur’s regular deaths (and the empty promises they hold). Even before Chili Willie’s is out of sight, the Minotaur smells the marijuana coming from the cab. He hears snippets of conversation bounce around the truck and filter through the window mesh.

“I had nightmares about monster cocks made of wood,” she says, “chasing me down the road.”

“Those weren’t nightmares,” he says.

Laughter.

“Thanks, anyway,” she says. “For the man in the moon, and my broken toe.”

The Minotaur looks skyward. Shudders. He is not afraid of the man in the moon. But he doesn’t want to listen to them talk in the cab. The Minotaur wants to reposition himself. He gets to his knees, then squats. Though he has pretty good balance on stable ground, in the bed of the moving truck, top heavy as he is, the Minotaur has to stay low. He grabs the rail and turns his bulky head into the wind. Looks ahead. Immediately the Minotaur finds himself once again in a pickle. There is nothing streamlined about a half-man half-bull. Such a creature is not meant to move swiftly through life, to take on the world at a good clip. The very instant the Minotaur comes about in the bed of the truck, the wind begins to buffet and whip his big noggin. The pickup truck, with Danny Tanneyhill at the wheel and Holly at his side, plows down Business 220 effortlessly. But the very air that roils up over the hood, the windshield, the roof, all that passing wind slams head on into the Minotaur, roars in his deep black nostrils, barricading breath, flaps his ears like little gray handkerchiefs in a tempest. The Minotaur works hard to keep his mouth shut, his lips from flapping, too. Silly, this, he thinks, then quickly turns back around and plops himself on the spare tire.