The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (22 page)
“I do not understand, Mr. M,” Rambabu says. “These people and their bloody hands.”
“I thought he was sleeping,” Holly says. “I gave him his medicine.”
Holly will not look at the Minotaur.
Ramneek comes into the room. The room that was to be Bavishya’s. Becky’s. It is ruined. Tookus is not bleeding. Not wounded visibly.
Holly, up off the bed, wrings the sopping towel into the sink. Kneels again. “I’ll pay for the damages,” Holly says. “We’ll sleep in the van.”
The Guptas converse quietly in their native tongue.
“I’m sorry,” Holly says.
“I’m sorry,” Holly says. “I’m sorry.”
Ramneek Gupta lays a hand on Holly’s shoulder. Opens her other hand, in which lies a key to another Judy-Lou room.
“Go,” Ramneek says. “Sleep. In the morning I will make for you the scramble egg and the bacons.”
• • •
Of sleep, the Minotaur gets none, excited as he is by what the coming day promises. This incident, this small-scale destruction, is a gift. A saving grace. It means the trip to Old Scald Village will be delayed, put off, maybe even forgotten. The Minotaur is content to lie in the narrow bed and wait for sunlight to meander down Scald Mountain. When it does, as soon as he can see clearly the lay of the land, he gets to work. The toilet has to be replaced, the plumbing reconnected, the Odyssey’s universal joint and brakes installed. Useful. The Minotaur will be useful all day long.
By midmorning he’s made the trip to Scald Plumbing Supply and has the shiny new American Standard toilet in place on its red wax seal. Rambabu nods in gratitude when the water begins trickling into the tank. Before noon the Minotaur is across Business 220, kneeling on a flattened cardboard box by the side of the jacked-up Odyssey. His hands are slick with axle grease.
Danny Tanneyhill putters around beneath the Pygmalia-Blades awning as if nothing happened. The woodcarver pauses from time to time and stares across the road. Just before noon he sells a carving of an angel to a woman in a convertible VW Bug. She flies away happily.
Just after noon a car pulls up to the Judy-Lou. Two bedraggled parents and half a dozen kids, the whole brood wearing and wielding a mishmash of Old Scald Village Gift Shoppe purchases, pile out of the vehicle. They check in and unload at the far end of the motel. Within minutes Devmani Gupta has joined the gaggle of children running back and forth between the cars and the brick planter, shooting at each other with rubber-tipped arrows and cap guns, squealing and dying giddily all over the place.
The fracas wakes Holly. Holly enters the day. The Minotaur watches as closely as he can without seeming to watch. Tookus follows his sister from the motel room. The kids shoot at each other and laugh and run, and when Tookus tries to join in—“Bang bang bang bang bang,” he says—it scares them. All but Devmani.
“Get in here now!” the sallow-faced mother hollers from their room, and they flock to her call.
The shirtless father steps in the doorway, puffs up his chest, glowering at Tookus. Devmani takes Tookus’s hand and pulls him into the office. Holly goes, too.
Before long the Minotaur smells bacon. And just as he is tightening the final lug nut Holly crosses Business 220 bearing a plate covered in foil. An offering plate. A tithe of sorts. The Minotaur half-expects her to veer left, toward Pygmalia-Blades, but no, she walks right up to the Odyssey.
“Hey,” Holly says. Sheepish. Like she’s been found out. Caught at something. The reflection of her red hair partially eclipses the shiny foil. Holly uncovers a small mountain of bacon and pale yellow egg. “Hungry?”
“Unngh,” the Minotaur answers.
The question is both ridiculously simple and impossibly complicated. He shows the redhead his filthy hands. Holly thinks. Holly reaches and with two fingers wiggles a strip of bacon from the pile. It would be easy enough for her to feed the Minotaur. She holds the bacon up. Given the wide expanse of his bony forehead and the long snout, the Minotaur has to cock his head to see the piece of meat.
Tithe pig
. It’s an old phrase. Easy enough for him to be fed.
“Unngh,” he says. Easy enough to just open his mouth.
“Hey, there!” Danny Tanneyhill says way too loudly as he approaches.
Holly sighs and eats the piece of bacon.
“Everybody sleep okay?” the woodcarver asks.
Nobody answers. Holly crimps the foil back along the edge of the plate. She’s nervous. Twitchy.
“Listen,” Danny says. “I’m sorry about—”
“I slept just fine,” Holly interrupts. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Holly almost drops the covered plate. She will not look at the Minotaur. She glares at the woodcarver.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she repeats.
Neither Holly nor Danny Tanneyhill knows what the Minotaur saw.
“All I meant . . . ,” the woodcarver says.
Holly hands him the plate of food.
The Minotaur sticks the bladed end of the lug wrench into the jack’s nut and begins cranking; the Odyssey rocks gently in lowering.
“Look at you go,” Danny Tanneyhill says to the Minotaur, then scoops up a finger full of scrambled egg.
“Done,” the Minotaur says to Holly.
“Thank you so much. I don’t know how I’ll repay—”
“Dude’s a regular wizard with a wrench,” Danny says with egg in his teeth.
“You’ve got egg in your teeth,” Holly says.
Danny goes to work with his tongue. “Anyway,” he says, “I had a great idea.”
“Here you go,” Holly says, offering the Minotaur a napkin.
“You and T-boy have had a hard couple of days,” the woodcarver says.
“Couple of days, huh?” Holly says.
“At least,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “And I want to treat you to something. To show you something. You and your brother.”
The Minotaur snaps the jack into place in the compartment at the rear of the van and slams the door. Of course Holly will say no to whatever it is Danny is offering.
“What?” Holly asks. “What do you want to show me? I’m not sure I want to see anything you’ve got.”
“It’s a place,” Danny says. “A special place. A secret place. Besides, you owe me one.”
“What?” Holly says.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
“I mean, I owe you one,” Danny says, grinning.
Holly looks at the Odyssey, looks (briefly) at the Minotaur, looks up and down Business 220, looks finally at the sun hurtling overhead.
“You sound like a ten-year-old boy,” Holly says.
“Come on! We can take the van. Everybody’s invited, even big boy here.”
Holly backs up against the Odyssey, winces, and touches her rump.
“It’s right over the hill,” Danny says. “We’ll be back by dark.”
Holly sighs.
Holly has a choice to make. Decisions to reach.
“Let me talk to Took,” she says.
“Okey-dokey,” Danny Tanneyhill says.
When Holly gathers herself to cross back over Business 220, the woodcarver starts to follow.
“Alone,” Holly says.
THE MINOTAUR SITS IN THE REAR
of the Odyssey. In the way-back. He had to climb in slowly, navigating the seatbelts and grab bars before plopping into the dead center of the last seat. The tips of his horns brush against the pocked and stained headliner. The Minotaur keeps his head low. Tookus has the middle-row bench seat all to himself, and consumes it fully with his nonstop twitching and flailing and jabbering. Holly drives. Her red hair burns against the high bucket seat’s black fabric. The woodcarver rides shotgun. A cloud of sawdust swirls around him. Maybe not.
“It’s not far,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “Just over Dumb Hundred Road.”
And off they go, the motley cargo of the Odyssey, like a bargain basement ark, understaffed, half baked, harebrained. Forty days and forty nights, or a mere handful of miles. No difference. The Minotaur looks for Holly’s eyes in the mirror. He’s cleaned himself up. He’s tried one final time to decipher the rain-smeared paper from Holly’s pocket. Crumpled it. It’s clear enough; there are some things one never gets to know.
“Blaaaaa-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla,” Tookus says.
“Shhh,” Holly says. “Settle down, Took.”
Tookus is pilloried, held prisoner by his own stroke of misfortune. The brother begins drumming the backs of his hands against the minivan’s roof. The Minotaur wonders if the boy remembers the promised trip to Old Scald Village. Wonders if his sister had to lie, or if the boy’s brain simply let the promise go unnoticed. Tookus begins to box the van’s headliner with both fists.
“Nnnnnothing!” he says. “Nnnnnnnothing. I seeeeeee nooooothing. Nooothing!”
“Okay, okay,” Holly says, and pokes a button on the dashboard. A small video screen drops open from an overhead console.
“Nnnnothing! I seeeeeeeeee nothhhhhhhing,” Tookus says, practically giddy with anticipation.
The screen flickers to life; the Odyssey fills with soundtrack. Peppy. Military through and through. Hup, hup. Left, right, left. Snare drums and brass and those godforsaken piccolos.
“Is that
Hogan’s Heroes
?” the woodcarver asks, laughing. “You know they’re all Jews, right? Even the bad guys.”
“So?” Holly says.
“They’re Jews playing German officers, in a concentration-camp sitcom.”
“We all have to play something,” Holly says.
“Do you remember the one where the fake Hitler—”
“I’ve never watched it,” Holly interrupts. “Tooky, put your earbuds in, please.”
Tookus wiggles the little plastic orbs into his ears, plugs the cord into place, grins madly, and turns his head from side to side in slow arcs.
“It keeps him quiet,” Holly says.
They drive by Old Scald Village. Holly stares, unflinching, straight ahead. The Minotaur has to close his eyes.
“Yo, cowboy,” Danny Tanneyhill calls back. “I saw the poster for your blood fest.”
“Unngh?”
“The shoot-’em-up at Old Scald this weekend. You ready to get your dead on?”
“Shhh!” Holly says.
The Minotaur opens his eyes, sees Holly in the mirror, quickly averts her look.
“Why do you have to talk so goddamn much?” Holly says to the woodcarver.
“There go them wadded panties again,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “I was just trying to—”
“Yes,” the Minotaur manages to stammer. “Dead.”
He notices something dangling from the thin crevice at the bottom of Tookus’s seat back. He reaches for it. The Minotaur knows the thing between his fingers is fabric, but that’s all he knows. He tugs once, twice, and on the third time the crumby stuffed mermaid doll is birthed.
“Unngh,” he grunts.
The Minotaur begins picking bits of food and detritus from the doll. Butterscotch and gunpowder. The scents fill the Minotaur’s big snout. He can’t separate them. There is a tear in the mermaid’s tail. The Minotaur doesn’t mean to pull so much stuffing out.
“I didn’t bring any money,” Holly says.
“This better be good,” Holly says.
“This better be free,” Holly says.
The Minotaur knows that all her coins sit in their tight paper rolls in the motel room.
The Odyssey’s windows are tinted, and the Minotaur looks out at the muted world as it passes. The sign says that the Scald Mt. Rod & Gun Club has adopted the highway, but the Minotaur knows an orphan when he sees it.
“How much farther?” Holly asks.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, too quietly for anyone to hear.
Tookus giggles loudly and suddenly and hits the van’s roof with both fists. Danny Tanneyhill jumps in his seat, turns as if he’s going to speak. As if.
There is more that the Minotaur wants to say.
“Turn right,” Danny says, and just before they leave Business 220 an ambulance passes, lights whipping the day into froth, siren at full roar. Holly begins touching the front of her shirt, looks as if she’s about to reach over to Danny, but instead turns and plants her thumb in the center of her brother’s shirt.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Danny asks.
“Looking for a button,” she says. “If you don’t touch a button when you see an ambulance, you’ll be the next person to ride in one.”
Danny Tanneyhill laughs. Danny Tanneyhill talks a blue streak. Talks about his chainsaw. Talks about its splintery outcomes.
“Tell me a secret about yourself,” Danny says to Holly.
“No.”
“Come on,” he says. “Don’t be such a pussy.”
“Stop looking at my tits,” Holly says.
“I’m not looking at your tits,” Danny lies. “Tell me one little secret.”
Even the Minotaur can tell he’s looking at Holly’s breasts. The Minotaur is certain Holly will not take the woodcarver’s bait. Certain.
“When I was little,” Holly says, “I used to eat scabs.”
“Yum,” Danny says, then jumps right back into his own narrative. “One time my folks took us to this backwoods retarded zoo. I was a little little kid. We pulled up a long bumpy driveway. Dirt. I spilled a cup of Cheerios in my lap.”
The Minotaur wishes he had earbuds like Tookus. Though they probably wouldn’t stay in his ears. The Minotaur wishes he had different ears.
Danny Tanneyhill continues. “There was a barn with a huge monster pigeon head painted on the side. I was looking the pigeon in the eye. I wasn’t watching out the other window. My mama shrieked, ‘Look at that! I never saw a pigeon like that before!’ It wasn’t a pigeon. It was an ostrich, or an emu, some huge motherfucker. My mama laughed when it stuck its nasty head in the window. Laughed when it started pecking the Cheerios out of my crotch. I was trapped in the car seat, and I was wearing shorts. It pecked and pecked, and she laughed and laughed, until I was bleeding. I was too scared to make a sound.”
“Yum,” Holly says.
“Whose?” Danny asks. “Whose scabs did you eat?”
“Mine,” Holly says. “Mostly. Mostly mine.”
“Nnnnothing! I seeeeeeeeee nothhhhhhhing,” Tookus says, and smacks himself on the forehead until Holly stops the van and makes him quit. Someone has posted No Trespassing signs every few yards on the left side of the road.
“You never did tell me where you’re headed,” Danny says.
“I didn’t?” Holly says with feigned surprise. “Gosh! How inconsiderate of me.”