Across the road the office door opens. Devmani laughs her little-girl laugh. Her grandfather makes silly faces and nonsense sounds. Devmani laughs even louder.
Danny Tanneyhill sticks all four pie irons into the fire pit. “Prepare yourselves,” he says, “for the shock and awe.”
“Whatever you say,” Holly answers.
Tookus pokes the wooden backside of a giant carved rooster and repeats the word chickenshit over and over.
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. The pies, as they sizzle and steam in their cast-iron prisons, don’t smell as bad as he expected.
“Tooky, ’” Holly says, “it’s time to eat. Come sit by me.”
The boy sits, if you can call it sitting, on a twin-trunked stump with a plank bench. The boy (or young man) moves unceasingly (arms and head in motion, legs treadling nonstop), so it is hard to get a read on his age. Then there is the scar, the deep gouge in his forehead.
Danny Tanneyhill taps the golden brown pies one at a time onto paper plates.
“Goat. Ga-ga-ga-goat fuckerrrrrrr,” Tookus says, and makes a face at the woodcarver.
“Shhh,” Holly says.
“Shhhhhhh,” Tookus says.
“The Honda’s fucked, isn’t it?” she asks, looking right at the Minotaur.
“No,” the Minotaur says. “Not so—”
“Here you go,” the woodcarver says, thrusting plates and pies between the Minotaur and Holly. “Might be the best thing you ever put in your mouth,” he says to the redhead.
“Not likely,” Holly says with both sass and defiance.
Tookus bites first, and rakes the roof of his mouth with his tongue. “Hot hot hooooot,” he says, much of the crumbly pie spilling to the pavement.
Holly dabs at his chin with a napkin. “Blow on it first,” she says. Takes her own first bite slowly.
“What did I tell you?” Danny Tanneyhill says. “Better than sex, right?”
The Minotaur can see it clearly. Holly is grateful for the food. Just enough.
“Best thing I ever put in my mouth,” she says.
The Minotaur watches her lick tomato sauce from her lips.
“So what do you think?” Holly asks again, looking at the Minotaur.
He wants to tell her what he knows about gravity. He wants to agree with her about the mountain pies. What he does, though, is struggle through the description of what happened to the Odyssey’s right rear wheel, and what it will take to fix it.
“Goddamn it,” Holly mumbles, and gives Tookus a swig from her beer.
“Don’t worry,” Danny says. “We’ll get you fixed up in no time. You can stay here for as long as you want. We’ll take good care of you.” The chainsaw artist means most of what he says.
“No,” Holly says. “I can’t . . . we can’t stay. We can’t . . .”
She doesn’t finish. It’s like the statement is too big. For the moment. For her mouth. For their lives. Neither Danny Tanneyhill nor the Minotaur presses.
The Minotaur does, however, rise from his stump and head through the lot toward the motel.
“Hey,” Holly says. “Where’re you going?”
“B-b-b-back in a minute,” the Minotaur says.
He knows that they’re watching him walk into the Judy-Lou office, and they’re looking even closer when he returns with two Tupperware containers. The Minotaur sets them on the table by the empty pie makers. Holly and Danny step up to see. Tookus goes to the outer ring of the statuary and begins to thump the nose of an Indian chief.
The Minotaur opens the lid of one container. “Saag paneer,” he says. And the words fit so well in his mouth, slip so easily off his thick tongue, he says them again. “Saag paneer. Spinach with cheese curd.”
“Hmmm,” Danny says.
“Oh, my,” Holly says.
The Minotaur opens the second container. “Aloo gobi. Aloo gobi.” He wishes he’d brought some naan, sure that the buttery flatbread would make fine pies.
Danny Tanneyhill bristles. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he says, throwing down his modest culinary gauntlet.
Wonder Bread notwithstanding, the Minotaur makes his version of mountain pies, and the redhead verily swoons with the first bite.
“Tookus,” she says, “come get some of this.”
Danny Tanneyhill takes a big bite. His face concedes defeat. “Look at you go,” he says to the Minotaur. “Saving the day again.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
They all eat silently for a while, because the pies are that good. Way up Scald Mountain an air horn bellows on the turnpike. Higher still the constellations stage their monotonous dramas in the moonless night. Back on earth conversation meanders around the fire. Danny Tanneyhill tells a joke about a pig farmer. Holly groans, and the Minotaur simply doesn’t get it. Holly tells a dead baby joke. Danny laughs. The Minotaur is outgunned, even by the least of them, at the business of speech. He finds himself preoccupied, searching for beasts and creatures amid the constellations of freckles on the redhead’s pale arms. As for the stars painted on her toenails, they’re too bright for the Minotaur to look at.
The Minotaur makes another round of pies. Tookus eats his on the move, walking from statute to statue, pausing in front of each, human or otherwise. At every stop the boy takes a nibble of pie, crosses himself, says, “Body of Christ, bodddyyy of Christ,” then presses the pie to wooden lips. When the boy completes his round the Minotaur is there, next in line to receive the sacrament. But when Tookus steps up, his pie is gone. The boy has eaten it all. Tookus licks his lips and lowers his head. The wooden beings make the Minotaur anxious. Tookus doesn’t. Even still, the moment has an edge.
Holly seems about to speak. But Tookus acts. Acts. With both hands, two fingers up and slightly crooked, Tookus makes horn shapes at his temples. He moos. Softly.
“Mooooooo,” Tookus says. “Moooooo.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
“Mooooooo,” Tookus says. “Mooooooo.”
The boy reaches out and takes the Minotaur’s horns, pulls their foreheads together.
“Mmmooooooo. Mmmooooooo.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, held tight in that grip.
The boy rocks his scarred head against the bony expanse between the Minotaur’s horns. Finds comfort there. Scald Mountain unfolds into the night sky.
“Mmmnn, good. Gooood. Gooood boy,” Tookus says, laughing the sweetest laugh, releasing the horns, and giving the Minotaur’s snout a playful tap.
The Minotaur makes a sound that almost passes for laughter.
“Hmmm,” Holly says. “Who’da thunk it?”
Danny Tanneyhill clucks his tongue and goes into the trailer and comes out with a small fabric pouch holding a little glass pipe and a baggie of weed.
“Shall we go a bit deeper into this lovely evening?” he asks.
Holly looks at her brother, who has already moved on, and shrugs. The carver is already loading the pipe anyway.
“Why not?” she says.
Danny passes the lit pipe along. The Minotaur scrounges up some more wood for the fire. Tookus is pinching away at the cedar nipples of the only mermaid for miles around.
“Boobies. Booooobieeeees.”
“Took,” Holly says. “Come here.”
The boy settles, sort of, on the stump beside his sister. She takes a deep hit and blows the smoke gently into his face.
“You sure about that?” Danny Tanneyhill asks.
“I’m not sure about much of anything, but I know this won’t hurt him.”
Tookus squeezes his eyes shut tight, then squeezes both of Holly’s breasts.
“Boobies. Sissy boobies.”
“Damn it, Took! Stop it.”
He sulks away, and she loosens the cotton dress from her chest. Offers the pipe to the Minotaur.
“Mmmnn, no,” he says.
“You’ve got yourself a handful,” Danny Tanneyhill says “With the boy, I mean.”
“I guess I do,” H
olly says. She brings her pouting brother back into the circle of light, gets him to sit on the asphalt in front of her. Holly takes a cell phone from a pocket, and some earbuds. She wiggles them into Tookus’s ears and thumbs at the phone until music plays. “My little perseverator.”
“How come . . . ?” Danny starts. “I mean, are you . . . was he always . . . ?” Danny doesn’t know how to finish. Doesn’t need to.
“This guy?” she says. “No. This guy, this dude, this lovable little pervert was the treasurer of the debate team in high school. This guy was a monster on the alto sax. Made all-state band every year since eighth grade. This guy brought home the gold in cross-country track.” Holly kisses her brother on top of his head, then traces one fingertip along his mean scar. “But this guy,” she says, “was in way too big a hurry to get laid.”
The Minotaur sits down, listening, trying not to bump anything with his horns. Danny Tanneyhill toes at the base of his unfinished trunk, waiting.
“Aren’t we all?” Danny says.
“It’s unclear exactly what the plan was,” Holly says, “but Tookus and his buddy, equally dorkish in every way, tried to steal this huge metal condom machine from the wall of the men’s room of Enlow’s Foot-longs. They had a crowbar and a hammer.”
Tookus can’t hear them. He bobs his head and starts humming loudly.
“Shhh,” Holly says. She reaches for the pipe. “Anyway, the thing fell on his head. Right there.”
She touches the spot. They all look.
“And the rest is history.”
“Damn,” Danny Tanneyhill says.
“Praise Jesus,” Holly answers.
Tookus jumps up and begins doing the peepee dance, pigeon toed, knees together, clutching his crotch. Oddly enough he doesn’t say a word.
“Me, too,” Holly says. She stands and takes her brother’s hand.
“I’ve got keys to Chili Willie’s,” Danny says, jingling his claim.
“Nah. We’ll go back here,” Holly says, rounding the Pygmalia-Blades trailer.
Danny laughs. “Want me to check for spiders?” he asks.
“I want you to sit on your hands and keep your eyes closed.”
Danny Tanneyhill squirms on his stump. The Minotaur picks a bit of dried saag from his brass button. Danny Tanneyhill cocks his ear and sniffs at the wind. The Minotaur hears the hiss of urine, smells the curry in it. Danny Tanneyhill reaches a finger beneath his shirt to tug at the saw-blade necklace. The Minotaur tilts his big head back and nudges an uncut cedar trunk with the tip of one horn.
Neither speaks.
“Fucking bats,” Holly says, hurrying back into sight, laughing, wiggling her underwear up beneath the red dress. She bumps into the big totem pole, nearly knocks it over. “This place is a deathtrap,” Holly says. “One of these days . . .”
“Art’s hard,” Danny says, and it’s unclear whether he’s joking or not. “Art is, ought to be, dangerous.”
Holly laughs, puts her finger on the fat pine tear of a weeping eagle. “Dangerous, huh?” she says. “Tell me, Pygmalion, do you actually sell these things?”
“I get by,” the carver says, and means it. “I don’t lack for much. Though I do get a hankering, from time to time, for a companion that doesn’t give me splinters.”
Tookus pokes around inside the trailer. He’s naming things, but too quietly to be heard.
“Commissions,” Danny whispers, like he’s telling a secret.
“What?” Holly asks.
“Commissions,” Danny says again. “I get by on commissions.”
“What do you mean?” Holly asks.
The Minotaur is intrigued but would rather not show it. He begins gathering up the paper plates and wiping out the pie makers. Danny opens a locked toolbox in the trailer and brings out a photo album. He lays it in Holly’s lap.
“People know my work,” he says. “I get special orders.”
Holly begins to laugh as soon as she opens the album. “It’s a big dick!” she says.
“Eight foot long and nearly six foot around,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “Was a wedding gift.”
Holly flips the page.
“That one was for a motorcycle club, a very particular motorcycle club.”
Holly flips the page. The Minotaur watches her eyes widen each time. He wants to see, too. There is enough man in him. The Minotaur sidles up behind Holly and the chainsaw artist.
“I can’t even figure out how you did that with trees,” Holly says.
Danny laughs. “I was blessed,” he says. He turns the next page for her. “See this one? That’s the man who bought it. That’s his wife. And that’s—”
“No!” Holly says. “No way!”
“Yup,” Danny says.
Tookus knocks over something in the trailer. No harm done.
“How?” Holly asks. “Do you advertise?”
“Word of mouth. One leads to another.”
A pine knot pops in the fire pit. The Minotaur snorts, more heavily than he intends to. Holly’s red hair ruffles. She swats at him playfully.
“Careful, big boy,” she says. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Holly turns to the last page in the photo album, and Danny Tanneyhill tries to close it up.
“What’s this?” she asks. “Is that you?”
“Yep,” he says.
“Whoa, what happened?”
The Minotaur has to look. He’s seen bodies enough. Keeps hoping to be surprised. And the photographs of Danny Tanneyhill injured and recovering get close. Two full pages are devoted to the accident. Danny on a bloody stretcher with his chest gaping, the jagged wound reaching from his clavicle down the sternum. Danny on life support in the blue light of the hospital room. Danny’s stitches. And more.
“I was a badass,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “A badass with a chainsaw.”
He begins to finger the scar. “I ran a crew on one of the biggest tree services in the country. Wintertime, we prayed for ice storms, hurricanes and tornadoes the rest of the year. I mean prayed for them. A whole army of orange trucks would hit the road. Disaster meant dollars.”
“Go, capitalism, go,” Holly says.
The Minotaur has seen enough of the pictures, and though the story is tiresome he has nothing else to do but listen. Tookus is playfully grinding against the rough thighs of a life-sized Wonder Woman whose head is missing. No. Not missing. It sits upright, looking out from beneath the trailer’s bumper, rolled or kicked there by the self-proclaimed god of the lot.
“I didn’t care about the people or their houses or cars. I was there to clear the damage, and when there was no damage I had nothing to do.”
The chainsaw carver seems sincere in his reflective moment, but the Minotaur has heard it all before, from one mouth or another. Danny Tanneyhill tells about the last time he was out with his crew, the night of the accident. A tornado, glorious in its rage, had danced out of the dark heavens and laid waste to most of a small mill town in one of the Carolinas. Danny tells the story well, touching his scar the whole time. The Minotaur watches as Holly falls prey to the narrative.
“I died,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “I died. I was dead. I was dead for five solid minutes.”
“Fuck,” Holly whispers.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, not impressed.
“I was cutting like a madman, in the wind and the driving rain. Ripping the limbs from a massive poplar that was blocking the road. And there, in the branches, a little pink Barbie Jeep—you know, kid sized, battery operated. And the girl. Just . . . just there.”
Holly sucks air through her teeth.
“I let go of my saw,” Danny Tanneyhill says, “and the blade kicked back.” He makes a quick jerking gesture, re-creating the cut with his fingertips and a hiss. “And I died. And I was reborn. And here I am.” The overlord of Pygmalia-Blades opens his arms.
“Fuck,” Holly says. Again.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. Again.
There
is probably more to the story. Danny Tanneyhill has most likely rehearsed the denouement. But Tookus upstages the moment when he emerges from the trailer pointing a lit Roman candle.
“Look who found my stash,” Danny Tanneyhill says.
Holly is less than amused. She jumps into action, but not before one fiery red star whistles up over the roof of the Judy-Lou and explodes. The boy squeals, or maybe it’s a scream. Holly yanks the firework from his hands. The second projectile, blue, bounces down Business 220. Whistles. Explodes. She stabs the lit end deep into a thick mound of sawdust at the base of an uncut tree trunk and holds tight until the candle is spent.
Danny Tanneyhill shrugs, baffled by Holly’s reaction.
“Don’t ask,” she says.
The Minotaur sees Tookus, back in the trailer, slip something into his pants.
“Tooky! Come sit with us.”
Her brother resists, but Holly goes after him. Takes the boy by the hand and sings softly as she leads him back to her stump. Sings. Stump. Sings. Doesn’t matter that the Minotaur can’t make out the words. Sings. The song, a tithing of breath on an altar of sound. The throat a chapel. No. Cathedral. The glottis, the folds, the tongue. Hymn book.
Holly sits and turns back in the picture album. “And just how much do you get for these nasty things?” she asks.
Danny may or may not answer. Where did that song go? The momentum has shifted, though.
Holly closes the book. She reaches out and lays a palm on the huge unfinished trunk, Danny’s newest acquisition. “What’s this going to be?”
The Minotaur is standing right there, his horn practically touching one of the outstretched limbs. Shoed feet are taking shape at the base of the trunk, and legs (human enough) rise up its length. Beyond that, beyond the implied waistline, shape and form are nebulous. Undetermined.
“Haven’t decided,” Danny says.
But the way he looks from the tree trunk to the Minotaur and back, no one believes him. The Minotaur is not surprised that the carver doesn’t mention nearly being killed by the very same tree mere hours ago, or that the Minotaur was the one to rescue him.
The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Page 11
