The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (18 page)

“Are you still all right back there?” she says.

The Minotaur answers, but every syllable spills over the tailgate and is lost in the weedy ditches. The Minotaur presses his shoulders against the cab of the truck. There, looking down the narrow mountain road, everything funneling into the vanishing point in retreat, looking at what passes, what is passed, the immediate future slams continuously into him from behind. Locke Mountain rises steeply ahead. But the Minotaur can’t see it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“HEY,” DANNY TANNEYHILL SAYS,
through the screen. “are you holding on tight back there?”

Maybe the Minotaur misheard. Maybe it was a command, rather than a question.

“Unngh,” he says, either way.

What day is it? The Minotaur isn’t sure. Traffic is light. All that’s passed so far in the opposite direction is a boom truck with a wrecking ball snugged tight on its bed.
Dingus Demolitions
.

In the distance, coming up fast on the last straightaway before Locke Mountain lays claim to the topography, the Minotaur sees a car. Oddly green. Locke Mountain Road meets Business 220 on the other side of Homer’s Gap. The mountain will not budge, so the road must rise. Must commit to a steep pitch and switchbacks. The Minotaur is grateful for the slower speed, but the turning this way and that and the motor’s strain are troublesome. He takes what little pleasure he can from the smell of the exhaust. It comforts.

The woman, the redhead, Holly, is talking a lot. The Minotaur can tell she is turning her head as she speaks, working to include him in the conversation. Less so as the miles add up. Danny Tanneyhill tells her about an upcoming lumberjack competition.

“You should do it!” she says.

“Maybe,” he answers. “We’ll see.”

“Regret sucks,” she says.

“Maybe you should come. Be my pit crew. My cheerleader,” he says.

The Minotaur doesn’t hear Holly’s answer. The pickup truck stops short. Danny Tanneyhill almost rear-ends another traveler on the road. The Minotaur cranes his neck, but he can’t quite make out the other vehicle. Danny Tanneyhill backs off, speeds up, backs off, speeds up. Makes no difference. The other car will not go any faster, and the double lines and tight curves mean there’ll be no safe passing until the top. On the next switchback, the vehicles are practically parallel, and moving in opposite directions. It’s a Chevy van. An Astro. One more switchback later the Minotaur sees the big blue shield painted on the door.
Skills of Central PA
. It’s a van for the disabled. A van full of the disabled. Danny Tanneyhill is impatient. He tries once to go around, at a misbegotten pull-off by a gap in the guardrails. Holly curses, and the woodcarver whips back in behind the service van. The Minotaur watches an empty beer can spin madly off the road in their passing.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

“Hold your horses there, killer,” Holly says. “Let’s arrive alive.”

“Sorry,” Danny says, partly to the Minotaur.

The Minotaur is about to say okay, is about to forgive Danny, when a little neon green coupe roars up behind carrying two young men, dark shades propped high on their heads, in full sway of their burgeoning maleness, hoping to pit their dumb luck and their high-performance engine against all that Locke Mountain Road has to offer.

The engine whines like a banshee when the driver downshifts. The exhaust pipe pops and stutters. In other contexts the Minotaur would appreciate the mechanics of the moment. But the two boys are staring right at him like it’s his fault the truck is in their way. They ride close, bumpers almost kissing. They turn up their music; the bass beat pounds everything in sight.

“Assholes,” Holly says through the screen.

“Assholes!” she says again, and louder, when the boys speed past, passing both the pickup truck and the Skills van with nowhere near the road to do so, the passenger taking video all the while on a cell phone, flipping middle fingers like they’re going out of style.

“Retards!” the passenger shrieks, the Doppler effect hacking off the tail of the word.

Then, near the top, the truck stalls. Jerks. Lurches. The Minotaur’s head slams against the cab and window. The wooden football helmet rolls toward him.

“Unngh,” he says.

“Sorry,” he says. Like it’s his fault.

They crest. At the summit of Locke Mountain the rooftops of Joy in the pinched valley below become visible. The courthouse clock tower with its moony face rises over all but the several church spires and steeples, bunched together in the span of a few blocks. Too, on the next ridge, a line of massive windmills, their hundred-foot blades chopping away at the entire morning sky.

“I never get tired of this,” Danny says.

“The near-death experience?” Holly asks.

“No, the view.”

“Same thing,” the Minotaur says. Nobody hears him.

The slope is more forgiving on the downside of Locke Mountain.

“Pennsyltucky as far as the eye can see,” Danny Tanneyhill says.

At the first short straightaway he stomps the accelerator to pass the Skills van, but the truck isn’t built for speed, so it’s a languid affair. The Minotaur looks over at all the passengers and their scared eyes in the windows. He’s about to wave when Danny’s truck finds some oomph. They pass at last.

At the bottom of the hill, on the outskirts of Joy, Danny skids to a halt by the gas pumps at Yoder’s Amish Country Market. It takes the Minotaur (his body, anyway) a moment to believe they’ve actually stopped.

“Gas,” Danny says. Maybe hoping one of his passengers will contribute to the cost.

“I’m going to call and check on Tookus,” Holly says. “I hope he’s okay.”

Danny rattles the pump’s nozzle into place. “I’m sure the Diphthongs will take good care of him,” he says.

“Don’t be a dick,” Holly says. “You want anything, M?”

Danny makes his best “Who, me?” gesture.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. “N-no thanks.”

Holly pauses at the door, looking closely at something on a bulletin board, and as soon as she goes inside the market the Minotaur realizes that he doesn’t want to be there, in the bed of the truck, under the watchful eyes of the gargantuan plaster Amish man and woman who sit gape mouthed and cockamamie in the outsized buggy by the road’s edge. What is it with these people and their statues? He shivers through a quick memory of the deposed plaster soldier. The Minotaur comes from a place of monumental effigies. He understands, or at least is familiar with, the human need to outsize. But here on the Allegheny Front, in the middle of Pennsylvania, in a fresh millennium, he can’t tell if these characters are supposed to be the founding Yoders or what. It would be hard to say for sure whether they’re laughing or screaming in agony. Danny Tanneyhill, the woodcarver, on the other hand, drawn by genetic affinity, maybe, goes over to rub at the plaster knees and feet.

The Minotaur grunts and climbs out of the truck, almost stepping into the path of the Skills van stopping at the opposite side of the gas pumps.

The Minotaur sees through the window one of the passengers, a grown man, pick a flake of skin from his scalp, then eat it. When the man looks and sees the Minotaur, he smiles with such sincerity that the Minotaur has no choice but to try and smile back. Smiling does not come easily for the Minotaur. Danny talks to himself by the plaster Yoders. When the Minotaur looks back, all the passengers in the Skills van have their faces pressed against the windows. They smile and wave. All of them. Big smiles. Big waves.

The Minotaur meets Holly coming out of the store. She’s tucking a folded piece of paper into her back pocket. Almost secretively. She pats the curve of her backside and winks.

“I got us some pickled okra,” she says, holding up the quart jar for the Minotaur to see.

“Unngh. Back soon,” he answers.

Soon. Very soon.

The Minotaur pauses at the bulletin board, scans the mishmash of fliers and ads and pleas, trying to figure out what Holly might have plucked from the offerings. But there is too much to take in. Cockamamie papers pinned this way and that, some typed out, some with pictures, some just scribbled. Things for sale. Missing cats, dogs, humans. Services offered or hoped for. Too much. The palpable
want
on display overwhelms him.

The inside of Yoder’s Amish Country Market is also too much for the Minotaur to bear. The narrow aisles, the high and deep shelves, those neatly ordered rows and rows and rows of goods, too much. Things in jars, pickled or otherwise. Things in bags. Noodles of all sorts. And candy. So many bags of candy, so many colors. The Minotaur sees a display rack of Bag Balm. Turns away quickly. The Minotaur thinks to get something for Devmani. Doesn’t. The Minotaur is a little desperate but tries not to show it. At the register he reaches for the nearest thing. A cellophane-topped box of something called Gobs, thick white goo sandwiched between, and oozing from, circles of chocolate cake so dark they’re almost black.

“Unngh,” he says to the plump young clerk in her starched bonnet.

“That’ll be three dollars and forty-seven cents,” she says. “We got pennies if you need them.”

The Minotaur takes the box of Gobs and hurries from the store. He looks briefly at the bulletin board by the door, layered thickly with fliers and notices and ads and pleas of one kind or another. Holly and Danny Tanneyhill are standing by the plaster Yoders. Danny is pretending to put his hand under the plaster dress.

The Minotaur goes directly to the Skills van. The official state logo on the Astro’s door is circular, and toothed like a sprocket. The small print around the circle is dirty and hard to read, but the Minotaur can make out
Social Services
and
Special Needs
. Over his lifetime the Minotaur has yet to meet a human who didn’t have some sort of special need, but the occupants of the van—all of them pressed against the windows now, watching him approach—may need more than most. The Minotaur stands by the Chevrolet’s door long enough to determine that no one is going to open it. He tugs. They gasp.

Eight, maybe ten people are inside the van. The Minotaur cannot with certainty determine the ages or genders of most. The Minotaur wouldn’t try. It’s not important. There is fear, genuine fear, in the eyes that register any kind of emotion. The Minotaur does not want to frighten.

“Gobs,” he says, offering the box.
G
’s come easily to his mouth. “Gobs.”

“Gobs,” the person in the closest seat repeats. Bucktoothed. Rheumy eyed. And grinning big. “Gobs!”

Then they all start—“Gobs Gobs Gobs Gobs”—and somebody reaches into the box, takes a bite. Then they all do. “Gobs Gobs Gobs.” Somebody slides over, makes room for the Minotaur.

Gobs! The Minotaur takes a bite. The Minotaur considers the invitation. Why not? It is a viable option; he has nothing else to do. No other real obligations. The Minotaur has left whole lives behind many times. Has abandoned much. Has been abandoned by much. He could just climb right into the Skills van and eat Gobs all the way down the road. At the moment the outcome is hard for his bullish imagination to grasp, but could it be any worse, any better, traveling with the Skills van full of compromised humans than where he’s headed now? Gobs!

They gesture. They beckon. The Minotaur considers the invitation seriously. Would he be more welcome? More useful? More or less monstrous? He thinks about Holly and her damaged brother. The Minotaur wishes he’d brought some napkins.

“Hey, M,” Holly says, peering around the van. “What’s up?”

“Gobs,” the Minotaur says, and because the word works so well on his tongue, repeats it. “Gobs.”

She smiles. It’s soft. And sad. And beautiful. “You’ve got a little . . .” Holly makes a wipe at something imaginary on her own chin.

The Minotaur touches himself but misses the mark. Holly licks her thumb tip and dabs off a blot of white Gob cream from the corner of his mouth.

“Unngh, thanks.”

“Want to trade places?” Holly asks.

It takes the Minotaur too long to realize that she’s talking about seats in the truck. Bed or cab. Danny comes to the rescue. He raps on the truck bed three times.

“Climb in, cowboy. We don’t have far to go.”

“That’s what they all say,” Holly answers.

The Minotaur watches Danny Tanneyhill look over at the Skills van, then shudder. The man at least has the good common sense not to say anything.

“Rain,” the woodcarver says.

They all look skyward. True enough. On the far ridge the wind turbines churn up a turgid gray cloud bank.

“My mama used to say, ‘It’s comin’ up a cloud,’” Holly says.

True enough.

The Minotaur settles onto his spare-tire seat against the cab of the truck. If he didn’t know any better he’d swear that the oversized eyeballs of both plaster Yoders stare straight at him all the way down Locke Mountain Road.

The Minotaur hears Holly spin the lid of the jar; he smells vinegar instantly. It’s a timeless aroma, and always welcome.

“What’s that?” Danny Tanneyhill asks.

“Okra,” Holly says. “Pickled okra.”

Even without looking the Minotaur knows she’s offering the jar to the driver. The Minotaur hopes against all hope that the woodcarver hates what he tastes. The Minotaur wants to share the jar, the experience, with the redhead.

“Not bad,” Danny says.

It takes some wiggling, but Holly slides the window screen open enough to stick her hand through, a glistening and pale green okra pod in her fingers. She doesn’t speak. The Minotaur takes it directly between his teeth, onto his tongue.

“Mmmnn.”

Holly talks and parses out the quart jar of pickled okra one pod at a time. She seems to be telling a story. The Minotaur hears only about half the story, but he gets his fair share of okra.

They pass through farmland, steep and stony pastures delineated by sagging barbed wire. They pass the derelict Deer Masters: Expert Meat Processing (“From Dead to Sausage in No Time”). The yellow trailer marquee, surrounded by weeds, reads
Fuck You
on one side and
Fuck Me
on the other. They pass another sign, messy black letters brushed onto a sheet of plywood:
Clean fill wanted
.