The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (32 page)
“Hanging Johnny” starts out slow and never gains speed. The song is glacial in its movement, meant for the long tedious task of raising an anchor from the seafloor. It is hypnotic and stunningly beautiful in its torpor.
“Well, they call me hanging Johnnyyyyyyyy.”
“Away, boys, awayyyyyyyyy . . .”
By the end of the song the whole damn crew is shoulder to shoulder, spanning the width of the stage, swaying back and forth. Even the Minotaur. Even the Minotaur.
“Sooooo it’s hannnng, boyyyyyyys, hannnnnnnnnnnng!”
The final note becomes a drone, pulsing and throbbing, harmonies colliding in discord.
Then it’s over. The Minotaur’s shanty choir debut has run its course.
“We are The Allegheny Bilge Rats Shanty Choir!” Roger says. “We’re available for weddings, funerals, birthdays, bar and bat mitzvahs, flea dips, prosecutions, persecutions, uprisings, and outbreaks of all kinds. Look for us on YouTube!”
There is a smattering of applause, but nobody onstage pays attention. It doesn’t matter.
Tookus keeps thumping the drum until its owner has to claim it. Tookus wants to stay with the drum, with the beat, in the music. The Minotaur, too, though he wouldn’t say as much.
Tookus is getting agitated; he holds tight to the shoulder strap and will not let go. Holly looks anxious. Things with Tookus can turn quickly bad.
Roger comes to the rescue with another shaker egg.
“This one’s yours to keep, hotshot,” he says to Tookus. “Practice, practice, practice.”
Tookus hesitates, then Roger does a little dance and shakes the egg. The boy grins and swaps.
“Chhka chhka chhka,” Tookus says. “Chhka chhka chhka.”
Turns out, you really can buy “Shanty Panties” at The Allegheny Bilge Rats merchandise table, on display between the Bilge Rats kazoos and the Bilge Rats CDs.
Holly holds a pair up to her hips. “What do you think?” she asks.
She asks the Minotaur.
“Unngh,” he says, quaking in his boots.
She buys two.
Roger gives them each a kazoo.
Roger tries to talk them into staying.
“Let’s go to my house,” he says. “Most of the crew is coming. You can stay the night. We’ll sing some more.”
The Minotaur is willing. Things have changed.
“This was a blast,” Holly says, “but . . .”
All the way to the Odyssey, Holly gushes.
“So much fun,” she says.
“So fucking weird,” she says. “The perfect thing for Took’s last . . .”
“Maybe I should go to music school,” she says. “What do you do with a music degree?”
“Maybe you should come with us to Pittsburgh,” she says. “All the way.”
“Unngh, what?”
“Pittsburgh,” she says. “Come with us. Come with me.”
Everybody is leaving the Ag-Fest at the same time. The parking lot is gridlocked. The Minotaur’s tongue is gridlocked. Always has been. He’d like to say things. To ask things. But words clot against his thick teeth.
“Buckle up, Took,” Holly says, but they’re not moving for a while.
“Chhka chhka chhka,” Tookus says, shaking his egg. “Chhka chhka chhka.”
“Take that out of your mouth, Took,” Holly says. The boy is chewing on his varnished cow chip.
“Chhka chhka chhka,” Tookus says.
“Maybe you should pee before we get on the road, Took,” she says. “Do you have to pee?”
“Chhka chhka chhka,” Tookus says.
“What do you think?” Holly asks.
The Minotaur thinks he would like to watch her dance again, hear her sing again, see her put those shanty panties on and take them off. He puts his fingertips to his nose. She doesn’t know why. He does.
“What do you think, Tooky?” she asks. “We did okay out there, on that stage. On them high seas. Didn’t we?”
“Drunken saillllllllor,” Tookus sings.
The Odyssey, stalled in its progress, holds an unlikely trio. But the heart and the mind together are capable of untold alchemies. A crow alights above them, on the giant red K of the Kmart sign by the parking lot entrance. Sits as sentinel (the crow, maybe the sign, too), taking names. There, in the passenger seat, the Minotaur comes to conclusions. Hatches, even, a plan, albeit fetal. He will go with this redhead, this freckled and green-eyed redhead named Holly, will follow in the fiery tail of her cometlike presence, anywhere. He will go back to the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge and kiss Devmani Gupta right between her beautiful black eyes. He will thank Ramneek for all the
gulab jamun
, and Rambabu for everything else. Before he leaves the office the Minotaur will touch the Ganesh on its wrinkled brass trunk. It will take the Minotaur no time at all to pack up Room #3, his tools and sewing kit. He’ll cross Business 220, walk right into the midst of Danny Tanneyhill’s wooden menagerie, and bless the creatures one by one. The Minotaur will wriggle out from beneath the shadow of Scald Mountain, birthed into a brand-new self, and thus transmogrified will lift his bull horns and walk on his man legs through the covered bridge over Stink Creek, walk right into the heart of Old Scald Village, will stand in the door of the Blacksmith’s Shoppe and let the anvil’s ring wash over him. Will release Widow Fisk. The Minotaur will sever his ties and gather his wits, climb into the Odyssey, and leave behind this land of plaster Nephilim.
The crow grows impatient on its perch. Caws, retches up a break in the traffic.
“Are you ready, big boy?” Holly asks.
Is she talking to him? The Minotaur chews mindlessly on his fingertip. What will he say? How will he answer?
“Pussy,” he says. It’s the word closest to his lips “It’s called pussy.”
Holly laughs.
“Whoa, Nellie,” she says.
“Give a girl some warning,” she says.
The Minotaur didn’t mean to say it aloud. Didn’t intend to speak his mind. But having done so, he will accept the consequences. The Minotaur takes the Picasso puppet from his pocket, puts it on the horn closer to Holly.
“Oooo,” Holly says in that same strange accent. “You do know how to satisfy Meester Pablo.”
Tookus laughs, sings part of a line from a shanty. “Shave his bellllllyyyyyyy!”
Holly grabs hold of the tune. “Shave his belly with a rusty razor!”
The Minotaur takes the toy version of himself and sets it on the dashboard, facing the road. One of them is a charlatan, a huckster. He’ll gift the toy to Devmani. She’ll like it. The Minotaur takes the Confederate cap and the toy pistol from where he secreted them inside his jacket. Offers them back to Tookus.
“Bang bang bang,” Tookus says, happily shooting at everything they pass.
Holly sings. Tookus sings. They all sing. Even the Minotaur. Even the Minotaur.
It is a joyous few miles. Bang bang bang.
“Peeeeee!” Tookus says in the middle of a song.
And as it happens the four staggered hearts of a Love’s Travel Stop & Country Store marquee are in sight. The crow may have some hand in the circumstance. The travel center sits at a crossroads in a basin of flat land poked and prodded by the Allegheny Mountains on all sides.
“I told you,” she says, pulling the van up to the curb.
The lot and the store throb with busyness, with coming and going. Even inside the Odyssey the Minotaur feels the crackling energy of people not quite where they want to be, not sure they want to go there anyway.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, prepared to bless and comfort them all.
“Let’s get this over with,” Holly says.
OVER WITH.
“Bang bang,” Tookus says, and cocks the Confederate cap high on his head.
“Bang bang,” he says, taking aim at his sister and the Minotaur.
“Bang bang,” he says, taking out an imaginary target.
Tookus shoves the pistol into his waistband and heads for the door.
“Wait up, Tookus,” Holly says, following her addle-brained brother.
The Minotaur watches her walk. Sashay. Swoon, Minotaur. Anywhere.
She waits by the entrance, asks the Minotaur to go in with Tookus.
“Keep him out of trouble,” she says.
Anywhere. Love’s Travel Stop & Country Store, for instance.
The plaza swarms with travelers. And with the food court here, the restrooms there, and the convenience store over yonder, it’s ready to meet any need. Mark the hustle and bustle. Slow down, Minotaur. Bless them all.
Most of the food-court tables and booths are occupied. Chitter chatter, chitter chatter. Just people being people. Bless them all. Bless the couples and the families. Bless those traveling alone. Bless the security guard hunched over and eating by himself in a corner booth. Bless the pouty teens and all their piercings. Swoon, Minotaur.
A giant backlit map of the Keystone State spans the eight-foot wall between the men’s and women’s restrooms. Holly heads for Pittsburgh.
“Be back in jiffy,” she says.
“Meet you right here,” she says.
“Don’t leave without me.”
The Minotaur follows Tookus toward Philadelphia.
The boy goes into a stall and locks it. “Drunkennnn sailllllor,” he says. “Shave his belllllyyyy.”
The Minotaur goes into the open stall beside Tookus and sits down to wait.
As long as it takes
, he thinks.
That’s the point
. The Minotaur sits up straight because there isn’t room in the stall for him to do otherwise. The Love’s bathroom smells of disinfectant and is clean enough, though at the bottom of his stall door, written in Sharpie and upside down, is a little missive about what Minky wants to do to Pooter in no uncertain terms, and with an illustration.
“Hoeeeeecakes warm!” Tookus says. Bellows, really.
The boy is taking a long time. The Minotaur goes out to wait for Holly, for instructions, if necessary. It seems the right thing to do. As soon as the Minotaur steps into the food-court area, Tookus lets rip another lyric. Everybody looks up.
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
The security guard cranes his neck to get a better view. The Keystone State map shines behind the Minotaur. His horns span hundreds of miles. Of course they do. He’s in the way. He’s blocking the door. The Minotaur steps clear, steps up to the low decorative fencing that delineates the dining area. Two fake plants flank and beautify the trash can. The Minotaur tries to find somewhere to look. Tries to be unobtrusive in his benevolence. Settles on an old man sitting alone at a table right by the trash receptacle. He’s ancient, as humans go. A colorless overcoat, colorless pants and shoes. His downcast eyes runny and yellowed. His skin, all his visible flesh, wizened and dappled with liver spots. He mumbles to himself and scribbles on a napkin. Balls it up, shoves it aside into a mound of other crumpled napkins. The ink bleeds through. Nothing is decipherable.
Tookus sings.
The old man looks up and into the Minotaur’s eyes. Looks into the Minotaur. The old man wipes his wet mouth on his sleeve, rakes a wormlike tongue across his teeth, rooting in the gums, hisses, and speaks. No, shouts.
“ ’Bout goddamn time!”
The old man gets up and shuffles toward the exit.
The Minotaur is rattled. Should he bless this man? This moment? He doesn’t know. He turns to the map at his back. Maps make sense. This one, laced by color-coded roads and streets and highways, is almost a living thing. It’s like he is looking at the innards, the circulatory or nerve system, of an immovable leviathan. He leans close, listens for a heartbeat. The Minotaur locates himself, his companions, and Love’s in a perfect circle alongside a blue artery that splits, then parallels a ridge of the Allegheny Front.
You Are Here.
The red heart says so. The Minotaur wants to believe.
You Are Here.
Here, at the junction of a north-south interstate and an east-west turnpike, at Love’s Travel Stop & Country Store. The Minotaur traces the spot. Locates Business 220. Sees without meaning to Joy Furnace, marked plain as day on the map. And called a Local Attraction. It’s more than that. Just ask the Minotaur. He decides, then and there, to take Holly and Tookus to see it. To take them into the high stone walls, to be inside of, to share, Joy Furnace with him.
You Are Here.
“Are ya lost, big boy?” somebody asks.
Discombobulated by the old man, the Minotaur can’t answer. Off beam, out of joint, shaken, for the moment, anyway, the Minotaur looks into the face of his interrogator. No. False. Insist on the truth. The question was soft. Caring, even. The Minotaur comes about, looks. And finds that she is official. She wears the Love’s smock.
“Can I help you find your way?” she asks. Eyes black. Nose thin, beakish.
The Minotaur cannot tell how old she is. Even standing still she seems to flit back and forth. It’s hard to see her clearly. But there is no denying her smells. The molt. The twiggy nest’s filth. Keratin. The Minotaur is sure he hears the scritch and scratch of talons inside her boots. And is that a trail of blackish down settling around those boots?
“Unngh, no,” the Minotaur says. “Thanks, but no.”
The Love’s employee smiles, a very corvidae smile. “Okay, then,” she says.
She swoops through the Employees Only door. As it closes behind her, the Minotaur hears a caw. He’d swear it.
“Caw.”
No. It’s Holly. She comes out of the bathroom, zipping her pants.
“Hey,” she says, “is that boy still in there?”
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
It wouldn’t surprise him at all if Holly were to waltz right into the men’s restroom to retrieve her brother. Not at all. She looks about to do just that. Looks at the Minotaur, picks, deliberately, something from his coat, right over his brass button. It’s a tiny black feather. Holly holds it aloft on one fingertip. Blows gently. The feather lifts up and away. Holly winks at the Minotaur. ’Nuff said.
“Hurry up, Took!” she calls into bathroom.
“I’m going to get us some water,” she says. “And some Tic Tacs. You hold down the fort.”
The Minotaur watches her walk away. It never gets old. Steady, big boy, you have a fort to hold down.
A gangly kid in a Love’s smock rolls a trash can up to the old man’s table and sweeps all the crumpled napkins into it. The security guard stands, slurps the last bit of cola from an extra-large cup. No. The Minotaur sees the truth. Insist on it. The man is not a security guard. He’s a game warden. His uniform crisp and green. His shield radiant. His duties? Of and about the natural world. He’s pink cheeked. And if he has any hair at all the Minotaur can’t see it. See it. The Minotaur sees things in a new light. Everything happens for a reason. Or not. The game warden is there. Maybe he’s there for a reason. Maybe, sometimes, the peace and quiet of the outdoors get to the man. Maybe the natural world is too pure, too purely brutal. Maybe he longs for complication. Maybe he gets tired of bag limits and worrying about seven-inch trout. And those god-damn poachers. It’s too much sometimes. Sometimes he likes to come inside, maybe, to bathe in the pure artificial light of Love’s Travel Stop, to eat bad food and fret over his alopecia. To worry, amid the other worriers, about whether the baby in his wife’s belly will be retarded. They wouldn’t use that word, but the goddamn ultrasound showed some problems. Bless him. Bless the game warden. Maybe he just needs to think, maybe even to talk, to confess, to tell someone, anyone, about what he did down at the quarry with that Rite Aid cashier. Not because he doesn’t love his wife. Not at all. Bless the game warden, who is just scared and lonely, like everybody else. Who just wants someone to tell him everything is going to be okay. Maybe the Minotaur. Bless him.
