The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (28 page)

It’s not about the words. It doesn’t have to be about the words. Some sing with closed eyes. Some see everything. Others look at nothing.

Gwen is gone. More or less. She is there on the stage, in the body, but the song has consumed her being.

“To God and to the Lamb . . .”

The lyric is shackled to the beat; the beat will not yield.

“La la la la!” Tookus hatchets the air. Gets louder and louder. “
La la la la la!
”

Her brother’s ruckus breaks Holly’s spell. She goes to the boy’s side. “Shhh, Tooky,” she whispers. “Not so loud. Shhh.”

“
La la la la la!
”

“I will sing, I will sing! To God and to the Lamb . . .”

“
La la la la la!
”

Louder and louder the boy gets, his arm now chopping free of time and pace.

The Minotaur watches, wants to help, wants the song not to stop.

Holly takes a deep breath, encircles her brother, whispering in his ear. But the music has riled the boy. He will not be soothed.

“
La la la la la!
”

Up, down, up, down.

The Minotaur watches a balloon escape the tiny fist of a girl wearing a safety-orange onesie. The balloon orbits as it rises. The Minotaur sees enough to know. A unicorn rears there. Her father catches it in the nick of time.

Tookus pulls away from Holly and begins to swing both arms. People look. People gawk. Some aim cell-phone cameras. All is fodder. The Minotaur steps in, wraps the boy in his arms, picks him up bear-hug fashion, carries him away from the table, away from the song. The song continues. The song always continues.

“And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on! I’ll sing on!”

They are a spectacle, for a moment, the three of them. But the rubbernecking populace has a short attention span. As soon as Tookus calms the cameras point elsewhere. The Minotaur carries Tookus all the way into the Ag-Fest building.

“What in God’s name was that?” Holly asks, looking back over her shoulder, through the door, wanting more of the sounds, the song, but unable to say so.

Widow Fisk. Gwen. The Minotaur didn’t expect her. He looks back, too, over his meaty shoulder. Will he see her again? He would like to tell her that things are changing. Things have changed.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

Tookus squirms in the Minotaur’s grip. Things have changed. They’re inside now. The Ag-Fest building bustles in a different way. Sort of. The parade float, its wheels perfectly chocked, is blocking the ingress, intentionally or not. The float, wreathed in garlands and bunting, is cordoned off. Atop it, on a throne made of giant Slinky boxes, sits the Joy Slinky Queen, right beneath the banner that names her so.

“What is it with these people and their Slinkys?” Holly asks. Then she reads the poster.

Tookus squirms again. The Minotaur releases the boy from his grip.

“Oh,” she says. “They’re made here.”

Several other posters contain much Slinky history and photos of all the Slinky Queens in succession. Actual Slinkys are even on display. The Minotaur can’t tell new from old.

“Took,” Holly says, “do you want to go up and meet the Slinky Queen?”

Somebody answers for him. “
You’ve opened the gates of hell!
”

They all hear it. It’s loud enough, and spoken with such raging confidence that it’s hard not to believe. But nobody else seems to be paying attention.

“
You’ve opened the gates of hell!
”

Tookus smiles. Makes a face. “Bulllly bull bull,” he says, then walks the few steps over to the arcade game plugged in right by the door. Why not?

“
You’ve opened the gates of hell!
”

The voice is ragged, repetitive, the speaker turbaned, wild eyed, swarthy. Somewhere out of sight goats bleat. On the game’s monitor are gunfire, bomb blasts, gibberish meant to be Arabic.

“
You’ve opened the gates of hell!
”

“I don’t know about hell,” Holly says, “but this place gets weirder by the minute.”

Tookus wants to play. The flickering terrorist on the small screen beckons, challenges.

“Bang bang bang!” Tookus says.

The goats concur.

“Not now, Took,” Holly says.

The Minotaur doesn’t know about hell either. “Unngh,” he says.

They stand for a moment, maybe at the gates of hell, and look into the teeming festival crowd. No kitsch vendors here. Tables and bins of vegetables and fruits, cakes and pies, things brined and pickled. Farther back, smelled and heard at the moment, rather than seen, animals. The competition is stiff.

“Where to?” Holly asks.

“Bang bang,” Tookus says, tugging at his sister’s arm.

“Not now, Took.”

A bedraggled family of four shuffles in from the parking lot. The kids, rabid post-toddlers, circle their parents’ legs, demanding everything.

“Give me a quarter.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I have to poop.”

“Juney said poop!”

“
You’ve opened the gates of hell!
”

The mother feeds quarters into the slot.

“I wanna play.”

“Move!”

“It’s my turn to shoot.”

“Daddy, I want to kill the sand niggers.”

The goats bleat again.

“G-goats,” the Minotaur says, preferring any company, caprine included, to the ignorant herd that just entered. The Minotaur leads the way.

“Come on, Tookus,” Holly says.

“Bang bang bang bang,” Tookus says, leaning against her pull.

“Hey,” she says, “I see tractors, Took. How about a tractor ride?”

That’s all it takes. The Minotaur follows, the promise of tractors too sweet to resist.

The tractors are corralled at the rear and in the center of the vast building, each dealer setting up camp in a different quadrant of the make-believe farmyard, bright green Astro Turf laid out within the post-and-rail fence line. A barn-and-silo façade, overly bright and oddly scaled, rises against the back wall. Tookus, enthralled, wants to ride them all: the blue Fords, the red red Kubotas, the pea green John Deeres. But Holly promised more than she can deliver. No tractor rides are available. Only brochures and enthusiastic salesmen. Holly somehow (flirting too subtly for the Minotaur to fathom) convinces the Ford dealer to let Tookus climb up onto the big black springy seat of the largest machine on site. No more. The Minotaur watches Holly slip a business card into her back pocket. Watches the tractor dealer ogle the redhead’s backside, then try to come to terms with the Minotaur’s horns. All the tractors are brand spanking new, radiant and beautiful. Almost beastlike in their simple mechanics. The Minotaur reaches into an engine housing. He doesn’t care who sees it. He runs his palm over the manifolds. Intake. Exhaust. They are cool and still. Waiting. The smells of the new tires and engines are more than the Minotaur can bear. Too, the array of farming implements with their toothy blades and wheels and rakes and more. Sexier still the names: tiller, reaper, picker, planter, plow.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, heading for no good reason to the Farm Arts & Crafts Competition tables, Holly and Tookus hot on his heels.

“Don’t touch,” Holly says when her brother reaches for the painted eggs.

“Those are quail,” the young woman behind the table says. She sits on a three-legged stool, hunched over and so bent into her task that she speaks without looking up.

“Those are quail,” she says. “The little ones are finch. Then chicken, then goose.”

The eggs are painted. Two dozen perch in open paper cartons angled along the table’s edge. Several nests, some real, others made of curled paper or ribbon, hold still more eggs. All sit like fat jeweled orbs lined with sharp geometries or brilliant swirls. They sit as if they possess all the weight in the world. And who’s to say they don’t? The Minotaur wants to feel the impossible heft.

“This single big boy here is emu,” she says, leaning back with one tiny paintbrush in her hand. “And I’m gonna win first prize with it.”

A droplet of gold paint is on brush’s fine hairs. So small. A whole day’s worth of sunlight is captured there. The emu egg, raised like magic, looks to be levitating from a jeweler’s vise. It is dazzling. An azure blue laced with gold and dotted with fiery red. Little pots of paint surround her workspace. Her fingers are tipped in color.

“First prize,” she says.

“Egggggggzzzzz,” Tookus says. But he keeps his hands to himself.

A placard in crisp calligraphy reads,
The Perfect Gift For Any Occasion
; reads,
Fine Jewelry
; reads,
Make Great Christmas Ornaments
; reads,
Special Requests Taken
.

“Ornaments, huh?” Holly says.

She picks up a red bauble, holds it to the Minotaur’s horns. “You ever decorate those things for Christmas?” she asks.

The Minotaur chuckles. Though it could be mistaken for another kind of sound. Holly picks up a delicate pair of earrings. Finch eggs painted sage green with ocher stars. She holds them to her own ears.

Horns
, the Minotaur thinks.

“What do you think?” Holly asks.

Horns. They look stunning. The green and yellow against her freckled flesh and the red hair. Perfect.

She looks at the price tag and returns the eggs to the table. “Another time, maybe,” she says. “Wait up, Took.”

“Goats,” Tookus says. He lowers his head into the crowd and aims at the
Petting Zoo
sign, beyond the corn-shucking contest.

The Minotaur pauses, thinks, acts without overthinking. He digs in the deep pocket of his Confederate gray trousers, lays some folded bills on the egg painter’s table. He doesn’t count. He hopes.

“These,” he says, pointing to the sage and ocher finch eggs.

“Okay,” she says. She doesn’t count.

“Good choice,” she says. She looks up and winks at the Minotaur.

“Let me get you a little box,” she says.

Petting zoos are problematic for the Minotaur. His allegiances get tugged and strained. And he inevitably gets pawed and poked. Petting zoos are best avoided. But for Holly, for Tookus, the Minotaur will endure. They are already inside the gate, shuffling through the scattered yellow straw. There’s a small crowd, but mercifully all the kids are clumped around some poor creature at the back of the stall. Holly proffers a quarter; Tookus thumbs the coin into the gumball machine cum food pellet dispenser. The goats and sheep, three little pigs, the single llama, all swarm the boy and begin to nudge at him with their assorted snouts. The Minotaur slows in his approach. The petting zoo’s warden, the gatekeeper, is a farm wife. Pragmatic. No-nonsense. Careful in her emotional dealings. She eyeballs the Minotaur, speculating.
What if? What if?
The woman smiles, to herself mostly, and takes off her gloves. Her hands are powerful and callused. She opens the gate and tips her head at the Minotaur.

“Unngh,” he says, tipping his horns at the farm wife. “No.”

The Minotaur stands outside the bent-pipe corral and watches Tookus and his sister. The boy is excited. Happy. Holly is happy. The Minotaur sees it in her eyes. He’ll stand there, he’ll wait, as long as it takes. That’s the point.

The Minotaur looks into the petting zoo compound, his back to the rest of the thronging Ag-Fest. Kids love a petting zoo. Parents welcome the distraction, the photo ops. He wonders what unfortunate beast is getting all the attention at the far end of the stall, and when the crowd shifts the Minotaur is able to see the papier-mâché horn tied to the bony forehead of a haggard dwarf donkey.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. Yet another portent? Change is afoot.

The ersatz unicorn’s horn leans to one side, the tip bent and cracked. The ends of the rope that ought to be holding the horn upright dangle from the donkey’s mouth. The creature chews mindlessly. The Minotaur looks away, not wanting to make eye contact.

The Minotaur watches Holly, Tookus, and the rest tromp around in the muck. Watches the farm wife’s son flit about with his little shovel and broom, barely able to keep up with all the droppings. Watches the woman in charge standing by the cages in the corner (some of them holding weary or terrified bunnies or potbellied pigs; a turtle the size of a pie pan scratches at her boot), standing there in rubber gloves, one hand perched and ready on a holstered bottle of antiseptic spray. Everything is just this side of disease outbreak. The Minotaur couldn’t be more content.

Then he hears them.

“Give me another quarter.”

“I’m still hungry.”

“I have to poop.”

“Juney said poop again!”

The Minotaur turns to gauge their distance. Catches the mother’s eye. Or more accurately, gets caught in it.

“I want to pet that thing,” she says way too loudly.

The Minotaur’s skin crawls. All of it. Mercifully Holly comes to the rescue.

“Where to now?” she asks.

But Tookus wants to show the Minotaur what Holly bought for him. A petting zoo souvenir.

“Poooooop,” he says, holding up the shellacked cow chip by its leather strand. “Uuuuunicorn pooooooooooop.”

The tight swirls, the striations of light and dark matter captured in varnish, look like a tiny galaxy. Tookus hangs the cow chip proudly around his neck.

The Minotaur opens his palm; it holds the box, his gift to Holly.

She makes a sound, a soft coo (maybe speech, maybe not), and tries not to tear up after she hooks the finch eggs into her ears.

“I wish . . . ,” she says, looking back and forth between Tookus and the Minotaur. “I wish we didn’t have to go to Pittsburgh. To . . . I wish we could just stay here forever.”

She says it plain as day. The Minotaur hears it. He thinks so, anyway. But they’re on the move. Things are different. Things are changing. Through the eons of his horned life the Minotaur has come to understand that it is sometimes—often, even—the shortest distances one has to traverse that are the most treacherous. He couldn’t say as much out loud. But he knows it.

Treacherous.

It should not surprise the Minotaur that Old Scald Village has a table at Ag-Days. But it does. He sees the poster advertising next weekend’s Encampment. It’s propped on an easel. Big happy letters advertise the scheduled battles. The Minotaur sees the photographs. Widow Fisk’s bonneted face. A battle under way, the picture perfectly capturing the tongues of fire and smoke from the cannons. The Minotaur imagines himself there, belly up in the April mud, the blue blue sky the only thing holding him to the earth.