The woodcarver picks his teeth with a piece of straw. “You’ll never believe what he told me,” Danny Tanneyhill says. “He said you ran that horn of yours up the skirt of one of the girls—the broom girl, I think it was. He said you got fired.”
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, standing unsteadily on his human feet.
Danny, laughing a little too loud, runs into the corn maze and out of sight.
Tookus, guileless above all else, thinks it’s funny and runs after the woodcarver.
The redhead looks torn. Looks confused. Looks confounded by the story and what it implies, and by her brother’s departure.
“What the fuck?” she says to the whole world.
Holly follows her brother yet again into the corn maze.
The Minotaur comes to his senses.
What was he thinking? He ought to know better.
The Minotaur gets to his feet.
The Minotaur does well enough, with his cumbersome head, on flat earth, in a right frame of mind. Not here. Not now. Not on the rocky path of human desire. O labyrinthine moment! Move, old bull! The Minotaur looks around. Gets his bearings. Walks toward home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MOVE, MINOTAUR.
The Minotaur heeds the warning, stomps the life into his (booted and human) feet. The Minotaur knows where he is. Knows the toothy ridge of the mountaintop. Knows the valley just beyond will lead him home. The bullish heart, the chamberous heart, pounds. The quartered heart. Climbs, the Minotaur. There is no other recourse. The Minotaur has stamina. The Minotaur needs nothing from the mountain. The mountain itself is ancient, eroded by time to a rounded and well-treed peak within view. Conquerable. Up. The bull-man leans into the hill.
He knows little. Knows, though, that he doesn’t need these three humans or their nasty bags of human tricks. Knows that he, the old half-bull half-man, will endure with or without them. Knows little but that he is capable of trudging up and over the worn-out mountain.
The crow, however, has a different idea. The bird comes barreling right out of the sun, scorched black and cawing to beat the band. Dives at the Minotaur’s head. The Minotaur swats, but he’s way too slow. The crow lands somewhere behind him and begins to chatter. The Minotaur knows better than to look back. The Minotaur knows it’s best, safest, to keep his eyes straight ahead, looking only where he steps, paying attention to the rising earth, the crow be damned. Looking back means trouble. Looking back, down the slope, from on high, the Minotaur knows he’ll see the whole lay of the land, knows the perspective will be broad and deep. Knows he’ll see the big picture, and knows it’s easy to be deceived by a big picture. Or even that the truth will be unbearable. The crow caws. The Minotaur will not turn. Will not. The crow retches, or maybe it’s a giggle.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says to the crow.
The crow guffaws at the top of its black lungs, then goes on about its black day.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. Stupid crow. Stupid maze. Stupid horns. Stupid summit of a stupid mountain. The Minotaur scrambles down the slope. He will endure.
The Minotaur stays off the roads. He’ll walk the necessary miles through the fields and woods. He knows where he is. He knows where he’s going. More or less. No, he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. Off kilter. Out of balance. The Minotaur stomps his way through Pennsylvania. The Minotaur trudges unfamiliar ground, through the forest. There are no tracks before him. And behind, his steps, his boot prints, could easily be mistaken as human.
The fickle beast of change that is fast on his heels leaves no tracks. But the Minotaur feels it, that hot breath of transmogrification on his neck. He remembers the little unicorn girl from the battlefield, remembers thinking her a harbinger. Remembers the damaged soldier from Joy Furnace, a wheezing portent in his own way. Maybe the Minotaur should go back to Joy Furnace, should stoke the smelter to life and burn everything.
The Minotaur walks and walks, walks into his despair, pitching his arguments to the gibbous moon. Looks up, waits for an answer. But the moon is stoic. Cat’s got its tongue. Then comes fortune. Occasionally fate is kind, even to monsters. The Minotaur recognizes a peak in the distance. Knows he is one wide valley away from familiar turf. Hurry, Minotaur. Or not.
He crosses an unknown road to a bare field. The field leads to a tree line, a copse of evergreens and stark white birches. Beyond the tree line, who knows? He walks. Five thousand years drag behind. No. Five thousand years push at him. Either or. The Minotaur treks across the rutted field. Each step is tenuous. The Minotaur walks and walks. The Minotaur has endurance. He has walked for centuries. No small walk will defeat him.
Past the trees, through the cedar boughs, is yet another field. Vast. And empty but for corn stubble. Farmland. Agrarian lives. The afternoon sun wanes, a luminous cataract low on the field’s horizon. The Minotaur trudges ahead. And coming to the end of the cultivated patch of earth, the Minotaur finds a river that crooks through the trees. Beyond the water a steep bank rises high. The Minotaur stands at the river’s edge, looks up and down the stretch of water searching for a log, for steppingstones. Clotted here and there with branches and roots and debris, the river isn’t particularly deep, but it is wide. To cross or not are the options.
The Minotaur looks and thinks. Thinks and looks. Both quiet endeavors. Then he hears the noise. It spooks him. The Minotaur is rarely spooked by the natural world, but the sound he hears this day bores into his spine, scuttles along his nerves. There is no wind. There are no birds. Only the noise. It pulses, now softly, now louder. It comes from a throat, a mouth, maybe more than one. It is close. There is nothing but empty field behind the Minotaur.
He scours the bank across the river. There. It is there, on a skinny sand bar, hidden by brambles, rustling those branches. He sees the source of the noise. Hears more clearly the distress in its cry. The sound is more sob than anything else the Minotaur has ever heard. An otherworldly weeping. It is a beast in trouble. This is the Minotaur’s first thought.
He rushes into the river with cautious urgency. Cold water fills his boots. The wool of his uniform wicks at the frigid river. The Minotaur will not be deterred. Cold is nothing more than the absence of heat. But as he approaches the scene the Minotaur slows. Maybe he is misinterpreting. Maybe what is happening at this river’s edge is something private. Not meant to be witnessed. Then the cry again. A struggle, a tussle in the sticks. The Minotaur half-squats at the bank. Creeps. Sneaks. Wants to back away. To run. But the cry beckons him onward. And when he gets close enough to see, the spectacle takes the Minotaur’s breath. There, partly lying, partly crouching, is a half-man half-beast unlike any the Minotaur has seen in a long long time. Horned and booted. Furred and clothed. Hoofed but with human hands. Affinity. Kinship. An undeniable hope. The Minotaur wants to, needs to, help this creature. He moves closer, but slowly. There is wisdom in caution.
Deflation comes suddenly. Disillusionment. The Minotaur has been duped again. Gulled again. Hoodwinked by his own mind, his own kind. What lies weeping in the cold muck and debris is no hybrid, no crossbreed, no mongrel. It is a hunter in camouflage. And it is a full-grown buck. Both. There was a time when these were two creatures. Man and buck. Now they lie as one being. Being.
The Minotaur draws nigh, sees the man on his back, propped against a thicket. Sees the sweeping neck of the buck bent low, and the gory wound. The horn burrowed deep in the man’s belly. Sees, in the gut-shot buck’s gaping flesh, the lung’s struggle. They are both breathing. But it is messy. The Minotaur looks around. Sees hoof prints and boot tracks come together. They are both breathing. Blood pools around them, inches toward the river. The man has one free hand, and with it he pushes feebly against the animal’s forehead. The buck, with its only good hind leg, paws at the ground, trying to run or to drive the horn deeper. And the sounds—moaning, gurgling, belchlike croaks—are almost slapstick in their excess.
The Minotaur could simply leave. He has that option. Nobody would know. Nobody would car
e. He steps closer. The man is trying to speak. Or maybe he is just trying to keep the breath coming and going. The Minotaur kneels. He looks into the man’s face. He recognizes the man. The man has one good eye. The other is covered with a milky caul and rolls willy-nilly in its socket. It is the Walmart security guard from the encounter at the tollbooth. His rifle is trapped between his body and the buck’s. The Minotaur looks at the animal, too. There is recognition in its eyes. The buck’s legs tremble and twitch. The Minotaur has no need to try and figure out what happened. It is enough to know, to see, that it did. There is utterance, bloody utterance, from the lips of both creatures. There is fear in their eyes.
The Minotaur is able to step into the thicket, to get close. To squat there on his haunches. To cradle, in his small way, the moment, the man, the buck. He rests one hand on the wounded man’s chest near the heart, makes small delicate circles with his fingertip. The Minotaur gently strokes the buck’s neck with the other. The man weeps softly. The deer chortles softly. The Minotaur lows with them, laments with them. Waiting. The sun rolls on along, without regard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GOOD.
The Minotaur feels he has done some good.
Buoyed as he is by his deed, the Minotaur walks Business 220 with a spring in his step. He’ll go back to the Judy-Lou. He’ll forget all about the redhead and her damaged brother. Put them all behind him. He’ll clean up his musket. He’ll report for duty this coming weekend at Old Scald Village like nothing ever happened. He’ll nod at Smitty, right at him. He’ll die on the battlefield, twice on Saturday, once on Sunday. He’ll wash the uniform and polish the gun. He’ll die well. He’s good at it. The Minotaur knows who he is. Where he is. Business 220 is right beneath his feet.
Business 220. It is dark. The Judy-Lou is just around the bend. The Minotaur is almost home. The hunter is dead. The buck, too. The Minotaur is satisfied enough with his role in their passing. It is dark, and in the dark, down the road, the pale lights in the motel parking lot shine on the Odyssey. The Minotaur prepares himself for the worst. Business 220 is his road; the Minotaur will not be cowed. Hearing his boot heels striking the macadam the Minotaur walks, with a good head on his shoulders, all the way back to Room #3, where he bolts and chains the door.
The woodcarver’s truck is gone. The Odyssey is parked, but that means nothing. The Minotaur sits on the bed with the musket in his lap. He hears laughter. No. It is not laughter. It’s the Guptas talking. Devmani is watching cartoons. The Minotaur sighs, leans his horns into the wall, and lets the sound comfort him. Soothe him. Until the knock comes. The options are limited. The Minotaur is ready. For anything. And though the knock is soft—sheepish, even—the Minotaur readies to fight. He props the musket against the nightstand. No, not fight. He opens the door without looking through the peephole.
“Oh, my God!” Holly says.
It’s Holly. She says, “Oh, my God! What happened? Are you hurt?”
She was prepared to say something else. Something accusatory, maybe. But the blood on his coat threw her off course. It’s Holly. The redhead. She’s alone. The Minotaur looks over her shoulder to be sure. She reaches out to touch his jacket. He remembers the blood. The hunter’s blood. The buck’s blood.
“Blood,” he says.
The redhead’s eyes widen. “I’m calling for help,” she says, and comes inside, reaches for the phone.
The Minotaur lays his finger on the button. “No,” he says.
“You’re bleeding.”
“No,” the Minotaur says. “Not mine. Not my blood.”
“Is everything . . . ?” the redhead begins to ask, begins to reach out and touch the bloody coat. She does neither. She looks at the Minotaur, then looks toward the road and the woodcarver’s domain.
“Yes,” he says.
“I saw your light,” she says.
“I was watching,” she says.
“I was,” she says, “worried.”
Room #3 is a small paneled box, poorly lit. It contains a double bed, the lumpy mattress, loftless pillows, stiff sheets, and a blanket good enough. It contains battered utilitarian furniture. There is a metal trash can beside a low mostly useless desk. The outdated telephone and bulbous lamp take nearly all the space on the nightstand. The Minotaur has no idea what’s in the drawer.
The room contains Holly. Fully. She stands so close to the chrome hanger bars that she has to bend her head. She stands with her hands behind her back. The Minotaur can tell that she’s fidgeting her fingers. She is wearing jeans. They are blue and tight. The Minotaur doesn’t notice. Yes, he does. Notices, too, how the T-shirt clings. The Minotaur pulls out the chair, gestures his offer for her to sit. Holly shakes her head.
The room is cramped. The room smells of bodies, dying and otherwise engaged.
“You left,” she says.
“What happened?” she asks.
The Minotaur wants to tell her about his long walk. The Minotaur wants to tell her about the blood, where it came from, who spilled it. He wants to tell her how he carefully covered the man and the animal with branches, twigs, and leaves. Wants to tell her how he helped. How he held them both in their passing. The Minotaur wants to ask her questions, too. The Minotaur looks out of the motel room door, up and down the sidewalk, then across at Pygmalia-Blades.
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
The room contains silence. So much silence. The Minotaur and Holly stand at opposite ends of the cramped space. The room contains the Minotaur’s horns and dried blood. Contains, too, something of the chisel and rasp and hammer, and all that stone dust. The Minotaur needs to change his clothes. He has another uniform. A chef ’s jacket and checkered pants. From another lifetime.
Holly watches him retrieve these from a box beneath the bed. She doesn’t question. The Minotaur carries it all—the uniform of his past, his impossibly wide horns—into the impossibly small bathroom. He closes the door. He strips down. He begins to wash himself in the sink. He doesn’t know if she will stay.
She does.
The Minotaur puts his soiled Confederate uniform in the tub and turns the spigot on. The Minotaur hears Holly move about his room. Hears her approach the door. Hears her lean against it. Breath and heartbeat.
“Is it true?” she asks through the thin wood panel. “What asshole said? What he heard?”
“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. “Sort of.”
And he bumbles (through the thin wood panel) through something like an explanation. He’s sure, at the end, she’ll just leave. Almost hopes she does. It would make things simpler.
The Minotaur opens the bathroom door. Holly stands right there.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sometimes we all make bad choices.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. He knows.
“You’re misbuttoned,” she says, reaching to fix his coat.
Holly backs away. Moves into the room.
“Took’s getting edgier by the minute,” she says. “It’s like he knows something is about to happen. Something is changing.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. He shrugs and wriggles inside the new coat.
“Just a few more days to kill,” Holly says. “I just have to keep Tooky occupied until Monday. To find some way to pass the time.”
“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says, wishing he had something to offer.
“I just wish I could know for sure,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t make the best . . .”
“Mmmnn,” he says.
“I’m trying not to think about what happens after I drop Tooky off,” she says. “To him or me.”
Release. The Minotaur wishes he could say the word.
Holly tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear and moves another inch or so. The Minotaur moves, too, but he’s not so surefooted. The Minotaur kicks the musket. The musket clatters to the floor, its useless barrel aimed right at Holly, who jumps out of the way, thinking maybe it’s loaded, having no reason to believe otherwise.
Hol
ly sucks her breath and stumbles backward into the doorknob.
Holly grimaces. Her face contorts.
“Owwwww-waa!”
Holly lays a hand on her backside. Room #3 contains Holly and all of her pain.
So much hurt for just a bump against the doorknob, the Minotaur thinks. “Okay?” he asks.
“Listen,” she says. “I need a favor. I think . . . I think I need your help.”
Anything. The Minotaur is ready. His readiness surges through the very marrow of his bones. And when the Minotaur leans close to the cloth-and-wire lampshade, that readiness pops, arcs in a minuscule blue bolt from his fingertip. No. It is just static electricity. The light flickers.
“Mmmnn?”
Holly looks at the Minotaur. Looks like she’s unsure of how to proceed. It is late April, inside and outside Room #3. May is in the wings. In the offing. Just over Scald Mountain, maybe. Primping. Preening. Stropping its beak and whetting its claws. Spring’s wild rumpus has already commenced. The lunatic moon champs at its bit. A car speeds by out on Business 220; all the tiny American flags in the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge’s brick planter flutter on their tiny wooden skewers. Anything, he thinks.
“A splinter,” the redhead says, and commits fully to her confession.
“I think I have a splinter,” she says, unbuttoning those tight blue jeans.
“I think I have a splinter,” she says. “In my . . .”
Holly turns sideways to the Minotaur. She eases the jeans down over one haunch. It hurts her to do so.
“I don’t know how I got it,” she says, cocking her hip.
Holly lays a hand on the television set, steadies herself, hooks a thumb in the waistband of her underwear, reconsiders, slips a finger under the thin strip of lace around the leg hole, pauses.
The Minotaur falls into the abyss. Almost.
“We need some light,” Holly says, then hops the short patch of carpet to the bathroom. Flips the switch. Pulls up the fabric of her underwear ever so slightly, but nothing in the world can be seen in the pale wash of insipid fluorescent light. The Minotaur could have told her as much.
The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Page 19
