The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (26 page)

“Tooky,” she says, “cut it out.”

He doesn’t. “Nnnnothing! I see nothing!” Tookus says.

“We’re almost there, Took,” Holly says.

He lassos the Minotaur again.

“Tooky,” Holly says, “cut it out.”

He doesn’t.

“Mmmnn, it’s okay,” the Minotaur says.

Tookus pulls the string taut and traces its length with his fingertip. Back and forth. Back and forth. The Minotaur follows, each back-and-forth a different path, a different life. What if the condom machine hadn’t fallen off the wall onto the boy’s head? What if the blow had been just an inch to one side or the other? What if Daedalus’s plank heifer had collapsed under the burden of desire? What then?

“Titty dick pussy hole,” Tookus says when the Odyssey slows at Adult World and turns into the parking lot of a defunct Kmart. The lot is bustling, the vacated department store repurposed. A banner sags, tied loosely to the
K
and the
t
over the doors. It advertises the Joy Ag-Fest.

“What a weird place for a farmy thing,” Holly says.

It’s true. Joy proper is visible in the distance: its church spires, the courthouse clock tower with its canting weathervane pointing relentlessly groundward. The Joy Ag-Fest, however, is on the fringe, on the periphery, at the edge of Joy. This fact clearly hasn’t deterred festival goers. The strip mall pushes up against a line of wooded hills; the hemlocks and maples seem to be rallying for a takeover. What was the Kmart (and is now, for the moment, the main location of the Ag-Fest) sits in the middle of the long building. Anchor. Crux.

“Move!” Holly says to the couple strolling in front of the Odyssey. But she says it quietly.

Anybody looking down from above—anybody, say, about to hurl themselves from the Joy courthouse clock tower or, say, anybody lashed to the whipping blades of the windmills lining the far ridge—anybody can see that the Ag-Fest is laid out like a cross. Adult World is at the foot of the cross. Adult World, there beyond the pale of its slapdash fencing—desire’s cleave, the purdah, the mechitza, the Zion curtain—Adult World is the footrest, a sub rosa suppedaneum. And on up the cross, the stipes, the nave, a narrow path lined with vendors all the way to the transepts, the patibulum (it depends on perspective, hollow or solid), lined with still more vendors. The strip mall itself—Kmart in the middle, a Goodwill store at one end, Uncle Bubbles Pet & Hunting Supplies at the other—makes up the apse, the altar. Anybody observing from on high could see this, but down in the throng form is not so clear.

“Move!” Holly says again, and taps at the minivan’s horn. She just wants to park the Odyssey.

The couple, middle aged, more or less, lollygags. They wear matching sweatshirts the color of corn. Matching sweatpants, potato brown, work hard to contain their (matching) amorphous bodies. One of them carries a greasy paper plate, balances there a mountain of gravy-soaked French fries. The other carries—clutched under an arm, and awfully stiff—a child. Boy or girl? Hard to say, but stiff as a board for sure. The Minotaur wonders if the child is okay.

“I hate those things,” Holly says.

“Mmmnn?”

Before Holly can answer the couple veers right, stops by a bean-shaped sedan, and props the child against the bumper, his face hidden in folded arms.

“Mmmnn?” the Minotaur says again.

“Booger booger boooooooger,” Tookus says, and wipes his fingers on the Minotaur’s shoulder.

“Those stupid things,” Holly says, pointing at the leaning child. “I mean, what’s the point?”

Then the kid topples, stiff legged, lies still beneath the car. The couple seems unconcerned. Then the Minotaur realizes that it’s not real, the child. It’s a floppy hat, a little sweatshirt sewn to a little pair of jeans, sewn to a little pair of sneakers, and all stuffed just enough to look childlike.

“I mean, really,” Holly says. “What’s the fucking point?”

Holly parks the Odyssey.

“Are you ready to have some fun, Took?” she asks, all the while loading her shoulder bag with rolled coins.

“You stay close, Took,” she says, all the while weaving the yellow shoelace back into the boy’s shoe.

“I’m glad you came,” she says, looking briefly at the Minotaur.

That’s the point
, he thinks.

The crowd, the ever-present potential for herd mentality, nibbles at his peace of mind, but Holly wears jeans, tight jeans, and a white shirt with lots of buttons. The Minotaur tries not to stare. It’s a look that he likes. His train of thought is derailed by a splinter.

“Which way?” Holly asks.

From somewhere deep in the festival’s belly comes a wailing. Ecstatic or woeful, animal or other. Hard to tell. Everything smells like cotton candy and things deep fried. The Minotaur is at home in these scents.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, tipping his horns toward the fray.

But before they can move the trio has to wait for the bean-shaped sedan to pass. “Look,” Holly says, pointing at the forgotten plate of French fries on the roof of the car, the tiny trickle of gravy creeping down the window.

It’s crowded, and the crowd seems hardly agrarian. It’s not so unlike the masses that flock to Old Scald Village to watch the battles. Few of them come to learn anything about the history of the events, the places. They come, it seems, to be entertained, expectant and entitled. And what passes for entertainment is terrifying.

“I think I hear a tuba,” Holly says, grinning. “Or a sousaphone. Let’s go find your boyfriend.”

The Minotaur, Tookus, and Holly merge into the funneling herd.

Tookus yips or cackles (something happy) and rushes over to the very first vendor’s table, crowded with things made of feathers (painted, glittered, or not) and glued to other things.

“Wait up, Tooky,” Holly says, but she’s already fishing in her purse for money.

The Minotaur cranes his veiny neck, looking up the double row of tables as far as he can see. There must be thirty, forty vendors at least on this stretch alone—Ambrosial Emporium, The Nut Lady, Wee People, and Novelty Marshmallow Shooters among them. Tookus makes the noise again. The Minotaur will follow this addle-brained boy and his redheaded sister to every single table if necessary. That’s the point.

Led by Tookus, they stop next at Lovers-Not-Fighters Pitbull Rescue. The front edge of the table is lined with bulldog bobbleheads. A mug of free pencils nudges against a huge water dish ringed with baby-blue paw prints, the dish serving as the collection plate for donations. There’s a wire crate under the table where half a dozen pups sleep, belly up. The rescue organization volunteer sits in a folding chair. She wears a pink smock. She looks tired. Behind her a poster stands on an easel. The pictures are horrific. She’s flanked by two battle-scarred dogs on leashes. They look even more tired. Tookus bumps the table, and the bobbleheads go wild. The leashed dogs pay no attention. One pants and scratches himself. Snorts, bends to lick at his outsized balls. The Minotaur notices the missing eye, the stitched line that begins on the dog’s forehead and ends somewhere under its jaw.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

Holly has already pulled a roll of dimes from her bag. She gives it to Tookus and points at the water dish. He points at the bobbleheads.

“Damn,” Holly says.

It’s the bobbleheads. They’ve all synchronized, tongues lolling, eyes wide, each and every one nodding at the same time ever so slightly to the left, as if looking at the Minotaur. He shrugs his big shoulders, like it happens all the time. He’s about to say something when Tookus bolts across the crowded midway. He doesn’t go far; the pull of Novelty Marshmallow Shooters is too great.

“Tookus,” Holly says.

But the boy has already picked up one of the guns, an army green contraption made of half-inch PVC pipe, a tee, a couple of elbows, some straight pieces. Other colors (pink, camo, black, blue) are lined up on the table, other sizes, too, and some of the guns have brass nipples. Air power. A bowl of mini-marshmallows sits in the middle of the table. Mini-marshmallows litter the macadam around the booth and trail off in both directions, most of them squashed flat.

Tookus loads up, places his mouth around the blowpipe, and does in fact blow. “I shot your boooooooooob,” he says to his sister.

Holly laughs. “Okay, killer,” she says. “Put the weapon down.”

He does as he is told, then reconsiders. Then reconsiders. Picks up, reloads, fires at a woman galumphing by. She pushes a dilapidated stroller; the toddler is singing nonsense.

“Fatty fat fat ass,” Tookus says, dead on target.

The woman may or may not feel the blow. Holly doesn’t wait to find out. The Minotaur watches her drag Tookus to the edge of the crowd and scold him. No. The Minotaur watches her. All of her. The boy grins sheepishly the rest of the way up the row. The Minotaur watches Holly follow.

Once again they don’t get very far. Something smells familiar. Before the Minotaur can identify the scent Tookus takes him by the arm. Pulls him over to the Wee People booth. Wee People. Those little stuffed kids, faces buried in folded arms. Not real, no matter how convincing they look, leaning there in a knee-high line around the table, against the canopy’s guy wires, and in and out of the small cargo trailer parked in back. Not real.

“Goddamn,” Holly says. “These things creep me out. I’ll be over there.”

Not real. Over there. Not real. All that the little faces imply. All the, what, embarrassment? Shame? Sadness? Not real. The little dresses and little Mary Janes, the little overalls and boots, not real. There is no life inside the figures. None. Tookus kneels by the table’s edge and tugs on the Minotaur’s sleeve. Holly is over there. The Minotaur can’t tell what she’s looking at. Tookus wants the Minotaur to kneel with him. The vendor, maybe the Wee People maker, is trying to get something out of his teeth with a credit card. He’s paying no attention to the boy and the bull-man. What’s the point? He’s seen it all anyway. Tookus pulls.

“Mmmnn,” he says.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, getting down on one knee.

The boy folds his arms on the table, rests his forehead there, face hidden. Real. Not real.

“Mmmnn,” Tookus says, peering out just enough.

“Okay,” the Minotaur says, and (as best he can) hides his big bull face. The Minotaur wonders how long he’ll have to stay. He’ll stay as long as it takes. That’s the point.

Tookus begins to speak. Uninterrupted. “Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. Now I lay me . . .”

Tookus prays. Real. Not real. The Minotaur prays, too. No. Don’t be silly. There is no prayer for him.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. Then his non-prayer is answered.

“I hear music,” Holly says, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “This way.”

This way. Anywhere. That’s the point. Something smells familiar. Other things reek of the new. Tented stages are at both ends of the crossbeam row that traverses the front of the strip mall. Vendors to the left; vendors to the right. Holly veers right, tows her brother past the tables of baubles and geegaws and tchotchkes, past the tables of good causes with their free handouts (and hefty tax on the conscience) and thematically chosen tithe plates. The Minotaur navigates the crowd deftly. Turning his horns this way and that. Following the redhead in her blue jeans and white shirt. He fits right in. No. Not really. The Minotaur steps, both seen and unseen, through it all. There is no mystery here. It’s how humans behave. It’s how humans have always behaved.

Holly follows the sound. It is music of sorts, to be sure, but struggling under the burden. The squawks and honks and drumbeats are just this side of rhythm. A herky-jerky siren song pulls them to one stub of the Joy Ag-Fest. But the stage is empty. Just beyond the canopy the Minotaur sees a young woman painting the Uncle Bubbles Pet & Hunting Supplies storefront window.
Angel Sale. Today Only. Buy 1, Get 1 Free.
Big looping letters.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, confounded by the bargain. He wouldn’t know what to do with even one angel. Then he sees the painted fins and the gills, the cartoonish grin and bright eyes. Angelfish, two for the price of one. Sees, too, something standing by the Uncle Bubbles front door, something not quite right, something even more disturbing than cut-rate angels.

But before the Minotaur can go investigate, Holly wrangles his attention. “Look,” she says.

He does, and when the Joy Junior High marching band makes its cacophonous way out of the Ag-Fest building and down through the crowd, toward the stage, she has to pull Tookus out of the way and hold him tight. What was it she said about her brother the night of the mountain pies and the church on the road? “This guy was a monster on the alto sax.” Tookus squirms. The Minotaur understands monster, but not saxophone. He does know, however, what it means to lose a part of one’s self. Tookus writhes. The Minotaur can’t tell if he is terrified or ready to join in.
Let him go
, the Minotaur thinks.

They are children, the entire rank and file of noisemakers, still on the cusp of humanness. Goggle eyed, gangly limbs akimbo. Embodying both galumph and scurry. So much more like ducklings, pups; like hatchlings, cubs, shoats; like whelps; like fingerlings. So much less like grown humans. And when the gawky glockenspiel player—the sweet poult, the cosset—trips over her flopping spats and nearly drops her instrument, catching the Minotaur’s eye the very instant shame boils up in beautiful florets on her cheeks, the Minotaur is overcome with, what? Is it love? Love for her nascence? Love for the (eternal) brevity of her blush?

They bottleneck and bumble to a halt, all trying to get up onto the small stage at the same time, bump their mangy blue hats, the mottled white plumes, together. The band teacher—a nervous little man with an uncooperative toupee, a man who looks like he stepped right out of an animated television show—flits around wagging his impotent baton. The Minotaur watches. The Minotaur wonders. Tookus is sputtering wetly through his loose fist, trying to sound saxophone-like. The Minotaur sees a tall, skinny boy (with bad posture) raise his trombone into place, sees the look in the boy’s eye (the one not covered by a sheaf of pink hair), knows that the boy wishes his instrument were a weapon, a machine gun, maybe, maybe even dreams it so, and each note he blows—raking the trombone’s tarnished bell back and forth at the crowd, at the backs of his bandmates—each note is a bullet, deadly and true.