The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (4 page)

“Catch your breath,” Widow Fisk said.

Sometimes it really is just that simple.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY SAY THAT, IN THE OLD DAYS,
bridges were covered, were built to resemble barns, so that farm animals would feel more at home and not stampede as they were driven across streams and rivers. They say that bridges were covered to keep snow off, to keep the oiled planks of the roadbed from becoming dangerously slippery in the rain, to cover up unsightly trusses, to provide shelter to travelers caught in storms. Shelter. They say—some of them, the hopeful—that bridges were covered to secret away one’s love. To kiss there unseen. Shelter. They say.

The Minotaur comes and goes. He has for centuries. And there have been many bridges.

The Minotaur pauses, as he walks, midway through the covered bridge that serves, in more ways than one, as the entrance to Old Scald Village. He rests his heavy snout against one of the wooden trusses. The Minotaur likes this portal, both ingress and egress, a breach in the terribly human construct of time.

“Mmmnn,” he says. The Minotaur likes this bridge.

Music—or something like music, anyway—drifts into earshot from somewhere in the village. The Minotaur considers going back to see, to listen. Ponders it. But his history with music, that very human endeavor, is itself ponderous. He is drawn in. He is kept away. After the day he’s had, the portentous little unicorn girl, the lozenge in his throat, the Minotaur cannot fathom navigating his big horned head back through the village and the people. No matter how much he’d like to track the song to its source, to be in the presence of sound shaped by human intent.

“Mmmnn,” he says.

He likes this bridge. He liked it the first time he ventured through. Though the timing has to be right. He tries to wait until Biddle and the rest have left, or are occupied somewhere deep in the village. The Minotaur doesn’t want either the generosity of an offered ride or whatever comes with a passing stare.

The single-lane bridge spans the weed-choked banks of Mill Run (when the upstream paper mill is in high production, Widow Fisk calls it Stink Creek). No lights are inside the bridge, and though there are gaps at the roof gable, there is, at nearly a hundred and twenty feet, a very real into-and-out-of-the-shadows experience for all who pass through.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, and with his horn resting against the plank wall feels the ghosts of the old traffic, hoofed and otherwise, in the wood grain.

To get anything from Old Scald Village, you have to cross this bridge, to move through, to let go of something behind and be willing to accept what’s ahead, no matter your direction of travel.

Timing. It’s often all about timing. The day has been strange. Portentous. There in the bridge, shadowed, sheltered, the Minotaur feels time careen. Past, present, and future roil. He can feel it in the planks at his feet. They vibrate. They rumble. No. It’s a vehicle, a pickup truck, leaving the village, its coming felt through the wing walls of the abutment. The Minotaur hurries over the boards, out of the bridge’s squarely gaped mouth. He turns, pretending to see something interesting, maybe even important, flopping around down in the murky water of Mill Run.

As the truck passes, the Minotaur hears it slow, feels the soft impact on his back, feels a sudden damp, then sees the empty McDonald’s soda cup bounce at his feet, down the creek bank. The Minotaur is torn. He wants to watch the cup float downstream and out of sight. He doesn’t. He looks back at the truck that is now spinning its wheels in the gravel and barreling toward Business 220 a few yards away. It’s an unfamiliar truck. No. He’s seen it before. It is April, late afternoon. Dangling from the truck’s trailer hitch, a pair of bulbous chrome testicles. Bull’s balls. Huge. Truck nuts. They swing madly, glint madly, in the afternoon sun.

“Catch your breath,” Widow Fisk said.

“Unngh.”

Business 220. The Minotaur knows this stretch of road well. Business 220 lies keen along the base of Scald Mountain, running north and south all the way to Homer’s Gap, its two lanes a precursor to the turnpike high above. The truck peels out of the gravel drive and fishtails to the left. The white stench of burning rubber hangs in the windless moment and dissipates slowly. A mile, maybe less, up the road, the Moonglo Roller Rink struggles to stay in business; Battery Boyz: Batteries for Everyday Life fares only a little better. Beyond that shopping center, a turnpike junction and the commercial enterprises that fester around it. The Minotaur never ventures left. The Judy-Lou and the Guptas (all of them, maybe) lie to the right.

The Minotaur pauses at the turnoff to Old Scald Village and looks directly across Business 220. Looks at the fifteen-foot-tall plaster Union soldier standing with a
Welcome
sign dangling from his musket. The plaster soldier is a weatherworn but commanding presence. The blue paint on his jacket and trousers, faded and chipped. The bayonet snapped off long ago. Behind the statue, a steep bank dense with rhododendrons. The white flowers splay obscenely. It is spring. Rut is in the air. The Minotaur looks up and down the road. There is no traffic. The soldier stands tall, cocky, his cap askance, and mute; his unyielding silence is too much for the Minotaur.

The Minotaur slips a finger between the buttons of his army coat and scratches at his scar, his transition. That thin ridge where bull flesh gives way to man flesh. Every day the Minotaur touches this harsh divide, certain that it moves. Some days—some years, decades, centuries, even—he is sure beyond doubt that the line is falling down and down his lean belly. That he is becoming more fully bull. That eventually thick gray hide will cover his legs. And his hands, his feet, will be cloven hooves. Other centuries he knows that the scar is creeping up his ribcage. That he’ll wake some morning, in some distant future, almost man. Fully human. Both scenarios are terrifying.

The Minotaur reaches into his pocket, tapping the tin of Bag Balm. The Minotaur is not a thief. The Minotaur stole the salve. Both facts are true. Every balm has its antithesis. Though he hasn’t driven in a long while, the Minotaur knows this stretch of road well. He knows the soldier well. Knows the silence.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, expecting nothing in return.

So when the plaster soldier retches a response—“Arrrwk”—the Minotaur is more than surprised.

“Unngh,” he says again, shaking his big bull head.

“Arrrwk,” the soldier replies.

The Minotaur’s ears are dwarfed by his horns. Hearing clearly is sometimes difficult. He lifts the pitiful gray flaps of skin and wiggles a fat fingertip into each ear canal. With very human palms, he rubs hard at his wide-set eyes. The Minotaur has known monsters of all sorts. Has known that sages and soothsayers crop up where you least expect. The Minotaur is ready to accept the voice of this monstrously patient creature he’s passed daily for year after mute year. It means nothing more than rethinking. Change is at hand. The evidence is everywhere.

The Minotaur looks up at the newfound oracle, ready to follow.

“Mmmnn,” he says almost eagerly.

“Cawww.”

When the crow pokes its insidious black head overtop the plaster soldier’s cap and caws again, disappointment is swift. The moment is rendered. No augur, this. More harpy than haruspex, the crow caws again. Laughing. Surely laughing.

The Minotaur throws a piece of horehound candy at the crow, misses by a wide berth. It was a halfhearted gesture anyway. The crow flies off. A car speeds by on Business 220, a percussive bass thump momentarily filling the air. The plaster soldier bites his tongue. And the Minotaur is left alone with his shame, that most human emotion.

A life as long as the Minotaur’s—that half-man half-bull, and fully scapegoat—a life that long doubles back on itself from time to time. Caves in. The miniscule tectonics of being alive, among the wholly human, always unsettling. The world shifts continuously beneath his feet. The Minotaur came from misspent want, from the planked birth canal, came from blood-drenched stone walls, from yellow thread. Belayed by desire, the beast pulled himself along. Pulled himself through centuries, through zeitgeists and kitchens, through paradigms and junkyards. Pulls still. Home.

The Minotaur walks home. Home. Walks without rifle or side knife. Walks in his Confederate gray wool uniform. Walks with both horns. Both horns, always. Home. For the moment, for the past few years, with the Guptas at the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge, a mere quarter-mile from Old Scald Village, down Business 220 where the road pulls away from the mountain just enough for Chili Willie’s Soft Serve to stake its paved claim.

It is April, and the ice-cream stand across the road from the motel opens in May. The windows lack shutters or blinds; the interior of Chili Willie’s is stark, sterile. The parking lot is empty. Almost. In the corner nearest the road another kind of army stands guard around a painted cargo trailer and its canvas portico. The regiment in a loose semicircle, all products of, results of,
Pygmalia-Blades: Danny Tanneyhill, CEO (Top Dog, Kingpin, Head Honcho, Guru, Overlord, and Emcee)
. It’s emblazoned on the trailer. Danny Tanneyhill is a chainsaw carver. An artist. That’s emblazoned on the trailer, too. Danny Tanneyhill is nowhere in sight, but signs of fresh cuts abound.

Danny Tanneyhill sets up shop in Chili Willie’s parking lot every spring and fills the air with the smells of sawn wood, of gasoline and two-cycle engine exhaust. The Guptas are by and large indifferent. Today Danny Tanneyhill is nowhere in sight, and the Minotaur looks for footprints in the sawdust that blankets the macadam. He’s never actually met the overlord of Pygmalia-Blades, never had an up-close interaction, but Danny Tanneyhill, the way he sits in that folding chair in his trailer, surrounded by paints, saws and blades, cans of oil, gasoline jugs, and God knows what else, the way he just sits between cuts and thinks, ponders, studies—it puts the Minotaur on edge. Danny Tanneyhill seems always to be eyeing him. Scrutinizing. Judging. Sizing up the Minotaur, it seems.

The Minotaur straddles Business 220’s fading edge line—one booted foot on the pavement, the other on the grassy shoulder—and plots his next move. The day has taken its toll. The old bull can feel change welling up from the muddled core of his consciousness. There is a path just beyond the Chili Willie’s lot, a path nearly hidden by a thick bank of honeysuckle. The Minotaur knows the path well enough. It leads to a secret place. Secret enough. But not today.

The Minotaur looks around. He sees no Gupta. Danny Tanneyhill is nowhere in sight, but his herd, his flock, his congregation, is ever present. The grizzly bear, its wicked claws and odd near-smile, standing a full eight feet tall, closest to the road. A couple of black bears, considerably smaller but no less threatening in their dark crouches. The avocado green Hulk’s gargantuan shoulders push against the canvas roof and its guy lines. There is more. So much more. And the chainsaw is present in all of them. A fish-and-eagle thing that the Minotaur can’t quite figure out. A totem, maybe. A woman towering over a line of angels and busts of Beethoven, SpongeBob SquarePants, and somebody in a cowboy hat; she’s scantily clad, wooden hands on wooden hips, and puckering as if to kiss. The Minotaur is never one to question issues of scale. There is more still, and the ragtag menagerie makes him just as anxious, if not more so, than Danny Tanneyhill himself. But the stacks of logs waiting to be cut, the stumps, and the most pitiable, the rejects, the mistakes—headless, limbless trunks—these are the most troubling.

The Minotaur steps lightly but hastily those last few feet and into the custodial, albeit stubby, arms of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge, right across the road from Pygmalia-Blades.

Home. The Judy-Lou Motor Lodge. The marquee promises much:
Clean & Quiet Rooms; Family Owned and Operated Since 19--
(other numbers long gone);
Weekly Rates; Free HBO; Free Wi-Fi; Free Coffee & Mountain Views.
A baker’s dozen of tiny American flags rising in as many odd angles from the plantless concrete planter by the office window offers a drooping testament to all that free-ness.

The crux, the heart, of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge is the central office and the unseeable apartment behind it. A rakish awning, cocked skyward, juts out to the road’s edge. The office sits at the vertex of ten rooms, five on each side, angling ever so slightly north and south. Or south and north. So much depends on one’s perspective. Even the Minotaur knows this.

He sees Ramneek Gupta, wife of Rambabu Gupta. Watches as she goes from room to room.

“Good afternoon, Mister M,” she says.

She stands in the office doorway. Stands in her saffron sari. Ramneek Gupta looks at the Minotaur and smiles, that blood-red bindi and those black eyes open all the way from antiquity to the present moment.

The Minotaur feels welcomed in her gaze. “Mmmnn,” he replies.

Too, he’d find it impossible to pick between the rich and complicated scents of masala wafting out from behind her and the manic soundtrack from the Cartoon Network that plays all the livelong day on an out-ofsight television. Each gives comfort.

“The clocks, Mister M,” she says. “They all stopped. The electricity serves a mysterious god.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, and his fingertips tingle from yesterday’s shock.

“Did your day pass pleasantly at the Old Scald Village?” Ramneek asks. “Did you die well?”

“I did,” the Minotaur says.

He likes the Guptas. He likes the little cluster of bells that tinkle every time the front door of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge opens or closes. He likes the dusty and diminutive Ganesh statuette tucked into the small grotto over the
Things To Do In The Area
brochure stand. Likes, too, the Pack ’N Play wedged into the tight cranny between the check-in desk and the wall, right beneath the fax machine, as well as the crib’s occasional occupant.

Rambabu leans out from Room #7. “Come see, Mister M,” he says.

And the Guptas show, with abundant tenderness, how they’ve readied the room for Becky’s return. The boxy space transformed by color, by fabric, by love and hope. Incense curls a smoky finger beneath the Minotaur’s snout. He almost sneezes.