The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (10 page)

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

“Remember when that dog—”

The Minotaur interrupts. “Unngh.”

They lay the pillory on the bank; mud sloughs from its plank base. They go back for the picnic table. It rests on its side, one wide bench jutting from the water. Righting the table is easy enough, but when the Minotaur and Biddle go to lift it they come up against a truth.

“Gooooddamm it. This son of a bitch is heavy.”

“Unnnnnngh.”

The big man cannot walk backward. The Minotaur and Biddle switch sides, sloshing the pond water into a brown soup in their slow circumnavigation. They grunt into the task. Biddle, overweight, unfit, bearing even a portion of such a burden, can move through the water only a few paces at a time.

“Let me . . . catch . . . my breath,” he says.

The Minotaur can wait forever. Biddle babbles nonstop. Talks about nothing. So far he hasn’t mentioned the previous day. The Minotaur wonders if luck is on his side. Maybe so. Maybe not. Sweat drips from beneath Biddle’s brim. Two cars slow on Business 220 and enter the village. It’s time for the rest of the employees and volunteers to arrive. Maybe everybody will pretend nothing happened.

“Did you hear?” Biddle asks. “Did you hear about Gwen?”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“Gwen?” Biddle says again, straining against the table’s bulk. They’ve moved it less than halfway to the bank.

“Who?” The Minotaur gets the word out.

“Gwen,” Biddle says. “The old bat who runs the Gift Shoppe.”

“Unngh?” the Minotaur says, then works hard for the rest. “Ff . . . isk. Widow Fisk?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Biddle says. “That’s her. Gwen.”

The half-bull’s imagination goes to a fully human place. He sees Widow Fisk dead in a handful of scenarios, each bloodier than the last.

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says.

“Yes it is, dumbass. Her name’s Gwen. Gwen Harschberger, or something like that. Widow Fisk is her character. She plays Widow Fisk. Did you really think—”

“No,” the Minotaur says as decisively as possible, but is clearly embarrassed by his stupidity.

“She got busted last night,” Biddle says. He takes his cap off, fans his face. “Got busted for DUI. They say she was so drunk she couldn’t even get out of the car.”

“Who?” the Minotaur asks.

“Everybody,” Biddle says. “They say she spent the night in jail.”

The Minotaur lifts his end of the table and pulls. Biddle nearly topples.

“Whoa, big boy!” Biddle braces himself and laughs. “First I heard she was buck naked in the car. Then somebody said she had on that goddamn costume. But everybody said she fought tooth and nail till they dragged her ass to the station.”

Biddle yammers away. The Minotaur’s mind reels. At the far end of the village the weathervane on top of the barn cants downward and refuses to pivot. The Minotaur had planned to repair it later in the week. The barn, a small timber frame thing with a gabled tin roof, holds a meager herd: a couple of goats, a bony and swaybacked heifer, and (inexplicably) a llama. Half a dozen chickens peck around in the dirt pen. Once, just after the Minotaur arrived at Old Scald Village, they asked him to strip off his shirt and join—mingle with—the livestock. To act like an actual bull, a whole bull. It was a mistake. He took care to position himself so that only his horned head and fat snout were visible. He wasn’t afraid of bloat or black leg or foot rot. The Minotaur was unconcerned about lumpy jaw or wooden tongue. Pride is a tiny little human worry. And dignity is present even in the thick, the heart, of the muck. As for the cow, the Minotaur imagined her bovine consciousness and his place in it. Then the kids saw more than his snout and horns and, spooked, ran to their mamas. It was a short-lived experiment. In fact it was Widow Fisk who came and told him to get dressed, to come up out of the stable. She brought him a pan of warm water and a towel.

“You know, don’t you?” Biddle starts. “You know what we’re all wondering?”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“We’re all wondering if you got a picture of Destiny’s butthole while you were up there.”

The Minotaur is slow to anger. Few things rattle him to the point of action. It wouldn’t take much to push Biddle over. But the Minotaur doesn’t get the chance.

Biddle screams. Biddle, a look of utter terror peeling his lips back from his gums, beats at the water by his thigh and screams. The Minotaur can make out a word or two, but mostly Biddle just shrieks and pounds.

“Arrhhhh . . . after me . . . oooooob . . .”

Biddle tries to run. Biddle, on dry flat land, would find running difficult. Biddle, in tight rubber waders, hip deep in a pond with a thick muddy bed, takes two steps and falls. When the fat man breaches, dirty water spews from his mouth. His hat floats away.

“It’s after me, M! Please help me! Please!”

With Biddle chopping up the water as he flops and flails to the bank, the Minotaur can’t see anything. The fat barrel maker is still caterwauling when he crawls out of the pond and onto the grass, and keeps it up as he quick-waddles, dripping, around the Tailor Shoppe and out of sight.

When the water stills the Minotaur sees something bobbing just beneath the surface, something bumping against the picnic table. He reaches in.

It’s the trout. The trout he’s seen propped against the fence. A secret part of the vandal’s endeavor, revealed by Biddle. The fish knocks its big plaster head against the underside of the picnic table, as if trying to get to the surface. A sonorous thud if there ever was one. The Minotaur wonders if they thought they were returning the big fish to its home. The Minotaur wonders if the fish knows the difference. It would not surprise him. The Minotaur hooks his arm through the caved-in eye socket and lifts. Muddy water gushes from everywhere. The black mouth gapes.

What now?

“Hey! Chopped steak!”

It’s Smitty. He stands on the bank, hammer in one hand and what is clearly a branding iron in the other. The very air pops and sizzles. It would not be hard to imagine the man spitting nails.

“Hey, T-bone! Mitch wants you in his office. Now!”

Smitty doesn’t wait around, though it seems like he wants to. The Minotaur gives the trout a shove toward deeper water, then sloshes out of the pond. He pauses at the bank, fishes the Bag Balm from his pocket, and tosses it underhanded at his own muddy wake. The can of salve doesn’t sink. The can of salve floats. The Minotaur considers, for the briefest moment, going back in after it.

Mitch runs Personnel. Whatever that means. The Minotaur has seen him maybe three times total since coming to the village. As far as the Minotaur can tell nobody sees him regularly. But everybody knows that Mitch’s office is upstairs in the Welcome Center, and he’s likely right behind the narrow rectangular two-way mirror near the ceiling in the center’s lobby (the one overlooking the ping-pong-table-sized scale model of what Old Scald Village would look like if money were easy and more people really cared).

The Minotaur knocks lightly.

Mitch hems. Mitch haws. His nametag is shaped like the state of Pennsylvania. Mitch fiddles with the tag the whole time he speaks. When Mitch eventually comes around to the point, it is that the Minotaur has to leave the village.

“Not forever,” Mitch says. But he won’t be any more specific.

The Minotaur sees the schedule for the upcoming Encampment Weekend spread out on Mitch’s desk. There are circles and red X’s everywhere. The Minotaur smells like pond water. Mitch smells like hot dogs. His office, his desk in particular, sits right over the Welcome Center’s concessions counter.

“I know Destiny is trouble,” Mitch says. “I know it for a fact. And between you and me, I don’t blame you for what you did, M.”

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says. No.

“I’ve been tempted myself,” Mitch says. And then he makes like he’s squeezing an ass with both hands.

The Minotaur offers to stay in the Old Jail. To spend his days in the pillory.

“Put yourself in my shoes, M,” Mitch says. “Destiny can mess things up for all of us.”

No, the Minotaur says, but says it to himself.

He walks back to the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge slowly. On the way he picks a strand of honeysuckle vine. If Devmani Gupta is done with her nap he’ll teach her how to pluck the threadlike stamens from the pale yellow flowers. He’ll show her the droplets of clear sweet nectar.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?
The Minotaur is in something of a pickle. He has moved countless times through the centuries. Been booted right out of one era and grafted himself onto the next. Made do. Trudged along dragging a (less and less) blood-drenched history behind, pushing a tepid eternity before. The Minotaur is, after all, part draft animal. Part beast of burden. The Minotaur will lean into the yoke when necessary. Dray. Dray.

He didn’t mean the trespass with Destiny. Didn’t mean to put his snout up her dress, didn’t mean to have her broom maker’s scents on his face, her tastes on his bullish tongue. He didn’t mean to steal the Bag Balm. He didn’t mean to think Widow Fisk was really Widow Fisk. He is not prepared to go just yet. He was still grappling with her questions. Was almost considering possibilities. But the horn sometimes has a mind of its own. He was willing to spend day after day locked in the stocks, willing to accept the ribbing, the ridicule. But Mitch said no. The Minotaur needs a plan. The Minotaur likes plans. Even flawed plans. It’s one of his more human traits. He likes process and order. These things help him to navigate his eternity, to break down
forever
into tolerable bits. Tolerable.

The Minotaur keeps some things in a cardboard box under the double bed in Room #3 at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge. Some things gathered over the years to help with transitions. The contents change over time—the container, too. For now the Jumbo Corndogs Bulk-Pack box holds a coiled orange extension cord, a crescent wrench, a pair of channel locks, screwdrivers. There’s a sewing kit in a small leather case. And a full set of kitchen knives in a canvas roll. The tools are clean. The knives are sharp. These things are remnants from recent pasts. They may be useful again. But he is not ready to make use. Nor, for the moment, can he bear the Guptas’ kindness.

Traffic is light on Business 220. The Minotaur clutches the honeysuckle vine and stands by the roadside, looking down an overgrown path. He knows where it leads. It is Monday morning, but that no longer matters. The Minotaur wishes it were night. In the free market of breath, the commerce of daytime can suffocate. It is sometimes easier to breathe, to wait, at night. The Minotaur envies the plaster trout, finally at home at the bottom of the murky pond. At night the Minotaur knows where to go. It is day. The Minotaur decides to go there anyway.

Joy Furnace. It says so on the information kiosk. It doesn’t matter to the Minotaur that there are hundreds of other abandoned limestone kilns in the state, each with its own red dot on the plastic map; Joy Furnace is the one he stumbled into those few years ago. It doesn’t matter that the furnaces fired all day and all night, cooking quarried limestone down to its powdery essence. Dozens of men huffed the toxic air all day, all night—mules, too, and horses.

Joy Furnace. Gone are the eight-story-high exhaust stacks, the steel cylinders lining the core of each furnace. Nothing is left of the narrow-gauge railroad track that ran along the skinny space carved out of the hillside overhead, where the hopper cars fed chunks of limestone into the fires. Nothing left. There may be some mule bones buried in the grass.

It’s not important to the Minotaur why he left the highway that day years ago. No official vine-covered
Historic Site
sign jutted up from the ditch. The rutted dirt road that led into the woods was blocked by a thick and sagging chain, from which hung the cautionary
No Trespassing, PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The Minotaur is nomadic by default. An intuitive vagabond. He may have been drawn, he may have been compelled, or he may have simply stepped over the chain and wandered up the dirt path for no good reason at all. Nevertheless he did walk off the road, step over the chain, and wander up the dirt path to the remains of Joy Furnace—the stacked-stone foundations of five massive kilns in a row, perfectly aligned, each base twenty-plus feet wide, twenty-plus feet deep, each wall rising two full stories, the front and rear walls pierced by arched portals high enough, wide enough, for even a Minotaur to come and go with ease. It took the Minotaur’s breath. The tomblike beauty of the structures, each capped by crumbling brickwork, looking parapet-like from below. Or maybe they are plinths waiting patiently in the woods for whatever they’re meant to bear. Abandoned. All abandoned now. They took his breath.

The Minotaur stumbled on, those years ago, past the sole information placard mounted on waist-high posts in the grass. He did not see the faded photograph of the scale model of what Joy Furnace probably looked like in the industry’s heyday. Didn’t read the paragraph about Henceforth Joy, the namesake of the village that grew (just down the river) around the success of the business. Henceforth Joy did not survive the voyage across the ocean; her father never recovered from her death. But Joy Furnace thrived for decades, then in its ruined glory drew buffs and hobbyists for another ten years. The town itself struggles. The Minotaur missed, too, that last paragraph, the one staking the claims: “Lime is a key ingredient in other industries that touch our lives—making steel, paper, and glass, refining sugar, and tanning leather.” Though most of this text was obscured by a Sharpie drawing of an overly endowed stick figure and its own claim: “Tommi has the biggest dick of all.”

The Minotaur ignored it all and walked right through the arched doorway of the center kiln. Walked onto the cooling floor, where the quicklime was spread before being shoveled into wheelbarrows. The Minotaur looked around. What architectural black magic was this? The kiln’s foundation, from the outside, was square. Exactingly square. But inside, eight uniform walls surrounded the Minotaur. The octagon. The geometric dance between circle and square. The give-and-take between heaven and earth. Liminal and everlasting. That day the Minotaur stood in the center of the holy space, his heavy boots crunching on the black pellets of coke, the crumbled rock, and looked up. Eight uniform walls of stacked stone rose high over his horned noggin. Skinks and beetles scurried in the cracks. Weeds rooted in the crevices. Up the Minotaur looked to a perfectly round disk of blue sky.