The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (12 page)

The Minotaur sets the pie on the counter, where it is guarded by a painted lead Union soldier whose boots hold Judy-Lou business cards. The Minotaur looks in, sees Devmani in her diaper, her tiny fist clutching an empty Mickey Mouse sippy cup. He can’t tell what’s on television, but the girl is too rapt to notice him.

The Minotaur takes his pie and returns to Room #3. There, befuddled in the maze of doubt and uncertainty, future and past all balled up together, the Minotaur has no choice but to eat that pie.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NO SPOON. NO FORK.
The Minotaur takes off his shirt and lets his fat tongue do the work. It’s like Widow Fisk is in the room with him. Watching. The brown crust of meringue offers no resistance. But resistance comes nonetheless.

It is Tuesday, early morning, and the instant the bull buries his face deep in the butterscotch, a chainsaw roars to life across Business 220 and Danny Tanneyhill plunges his blade into the oak. When the Minotaur pauses, the chainsaw stops, too. Idles. Waits. The Minotaur licks his black lips and dives in again. And again the chainsaw revs up and bites into wood. The Minotaur cannot see Danny Tanneyhill at work, can only imagine the plumes of sawdust rooster-tailing in the morning sun and the beast that is unfurling from the oak. Nor can the overlord of Pygmalia-Blades see through the venetian blinds of Room #3, to the Minotaur and his mess. But each time one takes a bite the other makes a cut. Surely some hoodoo is under way. Some cosmic hocus-pocus. Some karmic skullduggery. What else could explain the synchronicity, and its perfectly timed disturbance?

Disturbance. Abruption. Cataclysm. Rift comes first in the form of sound. Noise. A ruckus of unusual scale, for a Tuesday morning in central Pennsylvania, along Business 220 in the shadow of Scald Mountain. The Minotaur, from inside Room #3, his gums caked with butterscotch custard and piecrust, recognizes the noise. Something mechanical has gone awry. And it’s getting closer.

Closer. He opens the door cautiously. Danny Tanneyhill’s chainsaw blade catches in a knot in the oak, binds, screeches to a halt. Everything stills, and from deep within the stillness, and from way down Business 220, from the direction of Homer’s Gap, calamity appears. It is a minivan, white, hurtling down the road, ricocheting from side ditch to side ditch. The rattle and slap of metal torqued beyond its limits, the clank, calamitous for sure, testifying to what the Minotaur knows. A ball joint has seized in its socket.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.

Smoke boils from the wheel well—right rear—and from the tire dragging flat over the blacktop. It is likely that the driver cannot tell why the van is out of control. They’ll be lucky to get out of this alive, the Minotaur believes. He knows. He listens. The Guptas, too, all three with their heads out the office door. And Danny Tanneyhill with goggles covering his face, sawdust covering everything else, and a still-warm chainsaw dangling from one gloved hand. They all listen. They all watch the van—squealing and clattering—careen back and forth on the road. One side of Business 220 plummets through the trees toward Stink Creek; on the other side Scald Mountain stakes its claim with house-sized chunks of dolomite stone. Any route but the roadway could be deadly.

Ramneek shepherds her granddaughter back inside. She shouldn’t see what may come.

Danny Tanneyhill moves closer to the action.

When it’s clear that the minivan is barreling straight toward the Judy-Lou brick planter full of miniature American flags, Rambabu begins to wave his arms and insist on any other direction. “No, no!” he says in his best English. “No, no!”

And it works. The white van, a Honda Odyssey—dirty, filthy even—skids sideways, dips off the road into the motel lot, misses the brickwork by a hair’s width or less (leaving the tiny flags all aflutter), whips back across Business 220, spins 360 degrees, and comes to a smoking stop half in and half out of the Chili Willie’s parking lot, facing the Minotaur.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, and drops the empty aluminum pie pan he’s been clutching the entire time. Its clatter is deafening.

“Unngh,” he says again.

The front end of the Odyssey juts fully into the road. Traffic is likely, inevitable, imminent.

The tractor trailer that chugs into sight, coming from the turnpike interchange, surprises no one. It blasts a warning from its air horn. The smoke and dust settle enough around the Odyssey for the Minotaur to see inside it. Through the windshield he expects to find terror, panic. The passenger, a boy, maybe a young man, flails about, waving his arms, shaking his head, making audible sounds.
Panic and terror
, the Minotaur thinks. Not the driver. No, not the driver.

She sits behind the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, a conflagration of red hair leaping, and those green eyes. How is it possible that the Minotaur can see that green?

The truck horn wails again, closer. Some things cannot be explained. The truck horn screams.

“No, no! No, no!” Rambabu Gupta says.

Those green eyes look out, look at the Minotaur, the shirtless horned half-man half-bull standing in the doorway of Room #3. It is not exactly fear he sees in those eyes. The Minotaur thinks to move, maybe to wave down the approaching semi, to push against the Odyssey, to help in some way. But before he can do so the girl, the woman, the driver, slams the gearshift into reverse and stomps the accelerator. With one rear wheel locked, the vehicle’s backward trajectory is herky-jerky and loud, but move it does, in fits and starts, off the macadam and into Chile Willie’s safe arms. And in the nick of time, too. The semi speeds by, its mammoth payload (a disassembled carnival ride, something spiderlike) rattles and yanks against the come-along pulleys and the webbing tie-downs that flap madly every inch of its journey. The truckdriver may have given a wolf whistle in passing.

As soon as the coast is clear, as soon as the threat of danger has passed, and even before the spray of gravel and dust settles, the woman breaks down, crying, heaving sobs. The minivan’s passenger is out of his seat, out of sight in the rear of the Honda. The Minotaur sees the redhead reach back, crying still. The Minotaur wants to help. Rambabu Gupta plucks one tiny flag and crosses the road. A goggle-clad Danny Tanneyhill, chainsaw in hand, approaches the Odyssey.

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, and follows suit. He wants to help this woman in crisis. Wants to say the right thing. But his thick tongue, in perpetual bovoid torpor, gets left behind.

“Damn,” the chainsaw artist says, wiping at the plastic shield. “Damn.”

“It is a beautiful day after all,” the motel proprietor says, maybe wiping tears from his eyes, and reaching out to offer the flag.

“Stay back!” the driver says like she means it. Tear-streaked face be damned, nosebleed notwithstanding, there is no frailty in her command. She’s pointing something at them. The Minotaur squints, and though he tries to see it any other way he finally concludes that she is aiming the swooping neck and head of a concrete goose. Bang bang. Honk honk.

Rambabu wiggles the flag gently, a drooping gesture of peace. Danny Tanneyhill puts the chainsaw down, raises the goggles onto his forehead, and holds his palms up. There, shirtless as well, sweat and sawdust clotting his chest hairs and the glinting blade that hangs around his neck, the man looks glorious.
Like a god
, the Minotaur thinks. The Minotaur, his own bare chest and his dark seam flecked and smeared with pie, tiny crests of meringue at the rim of each deep nostril, is sure he looks less than godlike.

“Are you okay?” Danny asks.

“Mmmnn?” the Minotaur says, hoping it sounds like a question.

“Stay back,” she says again from the driver’s seat.

There is commotion in the van, a babbling, and an odd, irregular, and manic clinking. Something bouncing off of glass. She reaches back but is constrained by the seatbelt. The Minotaur and the others look on. Step closer. That’s when the redhead gets out, puts herself between the Honda and the modest onslaught.

“I told you,” she says, aiming the concrete goose head menacingly.

And though the young woman is slight and lean, standing with feet wide and rooted, tight skinny jeans, sandals, stars painted on her toenails, her tank top a soft gray and ribbed and (though the Minotaur feels a little guilty for noticing) clearly the only thing covering her small breasts, the way she wields that goose head, the muscles and tendons of her thin arm flexing just beneath the freckled flesh, the way her red hair claims space in the blue sky, the way the green fire rages in her eyes, the Minotaur and everybody else know they are in the presence of, what? Power? Change? A force of nature, no doubt.

“I’ll break your goddamn . . . ,” she says.

Her fist clenches the ridiculous weapon. Her whole body trembles. Everybody sees this. The redhead looks frantically back and forth between the van and her attackers.

“Took?” she says. “Are you okay?”

The van’s passenger peeks up over the dashboard, his eyes flitting wildly, unable to land anywhere for long. He bobs, pistonlike, up and down. Into sight, out of sight.

“You are bleeding, missus,” Rambabu says, touching his own upper lip.

“Can we help?” Danny Tanneyhill asks, scratching at and fiddling with his saw-blade necklace.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, trying to be very still.

It is true enough. The trickle of blood traces a thin red trajectory from her nostrils, circumnavigates her parted lips, splits her chin down the middle—her throat, too, and sternum—and gets caught by the low neckline of her tank top. There the saturated fabric is darker, a tiny half-moon tipped on its side. The woman touches her lip, then her chin, licks her fingertip, looks more and more unsure.

That’s when Ramneek steps up with a small bowl of warm water and a soft cloth. “This . . . ,” Ramneek says, and her gentle touch is accepted.

Accepted by all except the boy in the van. As soon as the Indian woman touches the redhead, dabbing gently at her chin, the van door slams open, and from within a wild animal charges. A beast enraged. Growling. Snapping its teeth. Flailing its arms.

“Tooky,” the redhead says. “No.”

Wild eyed. Like a feral dog just loosed. And bleeding from a deep gouge in his forehead.

“Tooky,” she says, reaching out.

No. Not blood. A scar. The wound is much older. It is a deep purple scar. An off-kilter triangle of ridged flesh. A mislaid third eye on his forehead.

“No, Took.”

But he will not be deterred in coming to the redhead’s defense. Ramneek Gupta looks afraid. Rambabu steps close.

“Fuckedy fuck fucks!” the boy says.

“Sissyyyyyyy,” the boy says.

“Fuckerrrrrrrrrrrs!”

“No, Took,” the redhead says. “It’s okay.”

But the boy’s fury is in full throttle. He runs, arms outstretched, the blaze on his forehead verily pulsing, runs raging straight into Danny Tanneyhill. The boy ricochets, bounces off of the half-naked and sawdust-encrusted man and into the Minotaur, who stands shirtless, his thick snout smeared with meringue and butterscotch pie filling. The boy, thwarted, falls to the macadam, looks up into the strange faces of the Minotaur and the woodcarver as if seeing them finally, fully. The anger in his face gives way to terror.

“Arrahhh!”

The boy cries. The boy tries to get away. The boy crabwalks backward, his utterance unfettered by words, a hymn to fear.

“Tookus!” the redhead says, rushing to comfort. “It’s okay.”

Crabwalks, the boy, right under the Pygmalia-Blades canopy and bumps full force into the biggest totem pole there. A crouching bear holds up the head of a buffalo, atop which is perched a spread-winged eagle with a giant fish in its giant talons. The pole wobbles. The pole rocks. The pole, several hundred pounds of wooden monster, begins its topple, and the boy is beneath, right in the landing zone.

Time stands still. No one moves. No one except the Minotaur.

“Unngh,” he says when the totem pole hits his bullish shoulder, the rough wood digging into gray flesh. Gravity chocked for the moment.

“Unngh,” he says, widening his stance to bear the load.

“Unngh,” he says as the redhead helps her brother move clear.

“Damn,” Danny Tanneyhill says, stepping up. “That was close. You all right?”

He’s asking the redhead.

She sits on the ground with the boy leaning into her. She strokes his head and coos, “Shhh, shhh.”

“Gaarrrrgh,” the boy says. “Fuckerssssss.”

He seems to be calming.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, struggling to manhandle the totem pole safely to the asphalt.

“Hey,” the redhead says to the woodcarver, “help the guy out.”

Danny Tanneyhill does as he is told.

The redhead sits, rubbing at the boy’s temples, cooing into his ear. His scar pulses. She looks at the Minotaur, his scar. No. She sees the odd pattern on his gray flesh, where the bark pressed hard into his shoulder. The oak imposing on the beast.

“Thank you,” the redhead says. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, feeling suddenly very exposed.

“My name’s Holly,” she says.

“This is Tookus,” she says, patting the young man sweetly, as if he were a new puppy. She hums almost inaudibly, the tiniest of sounds.

The Guptas fade into the background. The Minotaur leans in, wanting to hear more. Tookus calms. Tookus looks at the Minotaur. Reaches toward him. The Minotaur thinks the boy wants to touch his scar (they do from time to time, certain people), but no. Tookus plucks something from the furrow of steel gray hairs between the Minotaur’s pectorals. The Minotaur and Holly watch the boy sniff it. Piecrust, or meringue, with a fleck of butterscotch filling. Tookus eats it. The Minotaur suddenly feels the entirety of his semi-naked, part-human, messy self. Holly just chuckles.

“Buuuuttttterrrrr,” the boy says. “Scotch scotch scotch.”

“This is my little brother, Tookus,” she repeats. “And we are very grateful. Though it looks like we caught you in the middle of something.” Holly is grinning, mischief in her eyes, and looking at the Minotaur’s pie-flecked snout.