The Minotaur: Takes a Cigarette Break

by Steven Sherrill

  “Did you …?” Kelly starts to ask.

  The Minotaur concentrates on getting the glasses into the right racks.

  “Did you do that?” she asks.

  “Hnnh?” He turns to where he can see her, holds to the edges of the bus pan for stability.

  “That bird.” She points to the apple swan on the tray. The dark red peel has begun to brown around the edges and curl inward, but the bird still looks pretty. “Did you do that?”

  The Minotaur nods his head.

  “That’s really sweet,” Kelly says, and puts her hand on top of his. And puts her hand on top of his. And puts her hand on top of his.

  The architecture of the Minotaur’s heart is ancient. Rough hewn and many chambered, his heart is a plodding laborious thing, built for churning through the millennia. But the blood it pumps—the blood it has pumped for five thousand years, the blood it will pump for the rest of his life—is nearly human blood. It carries with it, through his monster’s veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur’s world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it.

  At home in bed the Minotaur doesn’t remember what he said to Kelly, if anything. She put her hand on top of his. He tosses and turns throughout the night, maybe sleeps, maybe not.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Minotaur dreams of the past as if it were tomorrow. Dreams the lament of the sheet-metal worker. Lament. Lament. Lament for the thick-hide gauntlets that singe against the heat, that stiffen and split with age, as if they were still flesh. For the scratch awl and punch. The need for calibration. For the blueprint. For the malleable heart. For the brittle heart. For the shear and the press and everything sharp, tongued out on the lathe. For the give and take of the ball-peen hammer. For the arc, struck and sustained. The sliver of fire that finds and claims for its own a piece of my flesh. For everything that is not soft, and in my life. For the meadow near Cnossus, where the hyacinth petals turn and turn out like so many palms refusing applause. Think of me, Pasiphae, in your moment of cramped ecstasy.

  CHAPTER 11

  Anyone walking or driving past Sweeny’s the next morning a little after sunrise, anyone seeing the open toolbox in the grass, the lean legs and small feet clad in heavy black shoes protruding from beneath the rear end of the old Chevrolet Belair, anyone not knowing better wouldn’t assume the mechanic has horns. The car straddles a wide shallow ditch. The ditch leads into a cement culvert that runs under Sweeny’s gravel drive and opens on to a similar ditch on the other side. It’s where the Minotaur always works when he needs access to the underside of a vehicle, needs to be able to crawl beneath it, tools in hand, and work without constantly bumping his snout against the grimy undercarriage or snagging his horns in the exhaust pipes.

  Sweeny was right—the Belair’s universal joint is bad, loose and sloppy in its movement. The Minotaur lies beneath the car thinking about the day open before him. Lucky-U is quiet but for Hank at the bench press, his rhythmic grunting punctuated by the solid clang of the barbell dropping into its rack, and Josie rattling the breakfast dishes at the sink.

  The Minotaur makes sure his tools are just so in the box before closing the lid and securing the latch. As he carries the toolbox back to the Vega, Hank rounds the corner of his trailer. Of all the residents in the trailer park the Minotaur is most uncomfortable with Hank. It’s not that Hank is unfriendly, just decidedly wary. When a greeting is unavoidable Hank makes do with a curt and very manly nod of the head. This morning is no exception, and despite the effort necessary to move his cumbersome head with any degree of subtlety, the Minotaur returns the nod.

  Hank wasn’t always so reserved. For the first week after he and his family moved in Hank came pretty close to smiling whenever he greeted the Minotaur. But that changed the day the Minotaur gave Josie a jump-start.

  The Minotaur remembers the day clearly. He was sitting at his kitchen window stirring sugar into his coffee. He had watched Hank leave earlier in his van, an old empty shell of a work truck with Scooter’s Plumbing still visible on the sides despite someone’s attempt to sandpaper it away. Hank, Josie, the two boys and all their possessions came together in the van. Within a week they bought an ocher-colored bean-shaped AMC Pacer from Sweeny. Hank drove away every morning in the van and usually came back just after lunch, dirtier than when he left. Josie stayed home with the kids.

  That morning, as the Minotaur sipped his coffee, inhaling the acidic earthy scent of the dark brew, he watched Josie come out of the trailer with a lit cigarette clamped between two rigid fingers, the other fingers and thumb of that hand wrapped around an open can of SunDrop, and her car keys, sunglasses and green vinyl cigarette case with a thumb clasp and sleeve for the lighter in the other hand—all in all a laborious undertaking. The two boys came behind.

  Issues of fashion have never really concerned the Minotaur, seeming too temporal, or empty, or simply beyond his grasp. But Josie, wearing a knit tube top, blue-jean short shorts and flat-soled shoes of clear crisscrossed plastic, took him by surprise. The Minotaur watched her struggle with the passenger door handle, determined to open it without letting go of anything. She pushed out her bottom lip and blew her bangs away from her face; her hair, eyes, mouth and everything else were more or less the same flecked-wheat color, so that from any distance her features were indiscernible.

  The Minotaur understands these tiny personal battles with balance: conquer and relinquish. Josie’s sons offered no help. The older stood behind her picking his nose intently, while the younger peed on the back tire. Josie gave in with a sigh that the Minotaur heard from his table, dropped the keys, glasses and cigarettes onto the roof of the car and opened the door with her free hand. She folded the seat forward, and the boys climbed into the back and began fighting immediately over who got to sit in the middle. The Minotaur watched Josie circle behind the car, smoking deeply. The driver’s door groaned, a pained sound, when she opened it, and again on closing. The Minotaur watched her adjust her sunglasses and, using her thumbs and forefingers, pull the stretchy fabric of her tube top up and out, twisting her shoulder slightly to situate her breasts within. He watched her find the key that fit the ignition and wiggle it in place. The Minotaur heard the weak four-cylinder engine turn over once, twice and again, losing conviction with each try. There was no fourth cycle. The battery couldn’t muster the necessary energy, and all that came from beneath the hood was a pathetic clicking.

  Josie got out of the car, remarkably calm, and opened the hood. When she bent forward under it the Minotaur watched pale sickles of flesh appear as her buttocks spilled out of her shorts. The Minotaur turned his head away but then looked again. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, but she stayed beneath the hood for a few minutes. Then Josie stood up and, using the same sort of well-rehearsed motion as with her top, slid her index fingers up under the hem of her shorts on either side of her hips and beneath the elastic leg band of her panties; with a wiggle and a roll of her hands she covered the exposed flesh of her bottom with twin swaths of lacy black fabric.

  “Unngh,” the Minotaur said, more or less involuntarily. He had seen too much. He took his cup to the sink and began washing it.

  “Got any cables?”

  Josie stood at the door, her face framed by both hands pressed to the sagging screen. It made him uncomfortable to be watched in that way.

  When the Minotaur didn’t respond right away she asked again. “Jumper cables? I think my battery is dead.”

  At his best the Minotaur is just adequate with language. Most of the time he falls well short. Josie standing at his door, the bits and pieces of her flesh both intentionally and unintentionally exposed, the sad and desperate sound of the dying battery, the intimacy of her question—these things were almost overwhelming to the Minotaur. Rather than try to answer he simply nodded yes, alt
hough he didn’t move away from the sink. Josie continued to stare through the screen into the trailer. Neither of them spoke. After a few minutes of palpable silence the Minotaur went back through the trailer to get his keys out of the glass dish sitting, half full of pennies, on the dresser in the bedroom.

  When he came back out Josie was inside the trailer. She stood with her back to the Minotaur, looking at a framed picture on the wall: Jesus surrounded by a herd of doe-eyed children. The Minotaur knew that Sweeny’s wife had put this picture in every trailer at Lucky-U before she died. Josie seemed to be mumbling something as she looked at it.

  The Minotaur is quiet, surprisingly quiet, when he moves. It occurred to him that there had never been a woman in the trailer with him, not for jumper cables or any other reason. Josie startled, gave a little cry, when she looked over and saw him standing by the door waiting for her. She smiled, embarrassed, and the Minotaur sort of smiled back.

  Josie sat in her car, bare legs outstretched, while the Minotaur pulled the Vega into place. When he stepped out to open his hood he saw that the two boys were asleep in the backseat of the Pacer. Josie was busy scraping grease from the chipped maroon polish on her left hand with the nail of her right index finger; her feet were dirty—which momentarily filled the Minotaur with tenderness toward her—and the toenails, clearly visible in the open spaces of her shoes, had matching polish. Josie sat with her legs parted, enough so that each caught full sun.

  The Minotaur tested her battery terminals and found both connections loose. When he pulled the terminals free he saw that acid residue had built up on the posts, making the connections faulty. The Minotaur asked Josie if she had a Coke. She seemed confused by his request but went inside to get one anyway. She looked over his shoulder as he poured a little of the carbonated beverage onto each battery post and terminal, watched it foam and hiss, leaned closer as he spun the wire-bristle-lined cup on the posts, scratching away any buildup not dissolved by the Coke. Josie watched without speaking, and the boys slept in the backseat.

  Just as he was about to attach the cables—Red on hot, he thought to himself—the toothed clamp open in his fist, Josie asked him a question. “You want a sandwich?”

  The Minotaur didn’t put the clamp in place. Neither did he answer her.

  “I got to eat before my ’poinment anyway them boys ain’t gonna wake up I appreciate your help let me fix you a sandwich you ever stick anybody with one of them horns?”

  Her leaps were dizzying. The Minotaur followed her inside because he didn’t know how else to respond. While Josie made the sandwiches—white bread slathered with mayonnaise, on which she carefully lined up thin slices of overripe banana like mucus-y coins—the Minotaur sat at a table on one of three chairs made from wooden barrels. The red Naugahyde seat let out embarrassing squeaks each time the Minotaur moved.

  Because Josie was so precise with the banana slices it took her awhile to finish the sandwiches. It occurred to him that he had never had a banana sandwich before, and new experiences in a life as long as his were rare. However odd the taste might be, he resolved to keep an open mind. The Minotaur didn’t speak, and Josie sort of mumbled the whole time. He watched her move around the small kitchen. Despite having birthed two children her body remained firm, held shape. A very functional body, in the Minotaur’s view, comfortable in movement. In the white uncompromising light from the florescent tubes overhead, the many scratches and bruises on Josie’s legs were clearly visible, a road map of color. She brought the sandwiches to the table on paper napkins, along with two glasses of tea, and sat opposite the Minotaur.

  “You didn’t answer my question you ever stick anybody with one of them?”

  Josie seemed as if she were about to reach out and touch the horns.

  The Minotaur shook his big head.

  “Hmm,” Josie said, and that was the end of conversation. The close space filled to overflowing with the sticky sound of bananas on white bread with mayonnaise being chewed.

  Hank pulled up just as the Minotaur was closing the Pacer’s hood. The jumper cables hung limply in his hands. Hank seemed tense right away and went into the trailer without acknowledging Josie. The boys stirred in the backseat. Josie thanked the Minotaur, and he went back to his own trailer.

  It happened on a Monday. The Minotaur had the day off from work. He listened to Hank and Josie fight well into the night.

  So now, when he has to do anything at all, Hank merely nods at the Minotaur. This morning is no exception. The Minotaur loads his tools into the back of the Vega. Before leaving for the salvage yard he pulls a few old rags from a bag he keeps under the bathroom sink, folds them and stacks them by the toolbox.

  Bunyan’s Salvage is a destination, meaning that it is impossible to pass it en route to somewhere else; arriving there by accident is difficult. Located at the end of a three-mile stretch of crumbling asphalt (paved and occasionally repaved by Jack Bunyan himself) that cuts through a swampland (known as Bunyan’s Slough) infested with mosquitoes, water moccasins and wild pigs, it is the place to go for used auto parts. Jack Bunyan set the pigs out forty-some years ago when he bought the land, claiming that they kept trespassers away better than dogs and that he could always shoot one for dinner if he had to. The pigs thrived, both in actuality and rumor, amid the cypresses, pines and stagnant water.

  The Minotaur always enjoys the drive out to Bunyan’s. They know him well there, Bunyan and the two men who work for him; even through the layers of grease they all look so much alike that the Minotaur assumes the two men to be Jack’s sons. The Minotaur is allowed to wander freely among the junked cars. Scattered throughout the whole of Bunyan’s Salvage and the slough are huge granite boulders—some the size of Cadillacs, others bigger than houses—jutting at odd angles from the ground. They constitute a moraine. Glacial deposits. Pushed before or dragged beneath huge rivers of ice, long since melted, the stones are reminders of a time when the earth itself was more tumultuous. There is an ancient ruined quality to the salvage yard that both comforts and saddens the Minotaur. Jack Bunyan fenced in what he could, using chain-link, planks and boards, corrugated tin, anything to keep the pigs in and unpaying customers out. But the lapses in the fence line are many.

  This morning, as he pulls through the wide-open cattle gate, the Minotaur sees that he isn’t the first customer of the day. Parked in front of the squat cinder-block building with its garage doors open at either end is an old school bus. At least it used to be a school bus. Gone is the dull yellow coat with black lettering. In its place is a paint job with a purpose. Rising up on the sides, as if from beneath the bus itself, are fiery orange flames and an occasional pitchfork and horn. From the top of the bus clouds swirl downward. Around the sides are several scenes of figures acting and reacting. The Minotaur recognizes the scenes as stories from the life of Jesus. The Minotaur is not a Christian. Not then, not now. He recognizes Christ as a recent phenomenon, and separated from the politics and rhetoric, he admires the tenets. But in issues of faith and politics the Minotaur finds it impossible to define himself with the conviction that most people expect. He feels imprisoned by strict categorization.

  Beginning on the wheel well of the driver’s side of the bus, stretching beneath all the windows and wrapping around the rear is a chronological storyboard: the Nativity, the moneychangers, a healing of the blind and lame, the loaves and fishes, Gethsemane. The Crucifixion spills over onto the levered double door. The whole enterprise culminates on the hood with the Resurrection—Jesus in flowing robes and a golden halo, arms open to greet all as the bus makes its way down the road. In blood-red letters on either side: The True Light Baptist Church Chariot of Jesus. Bolted fore and aft on top of the bus are two mercifully mute speakers. The stories painted on the bus are all easily identified by the Minotaur despite the garish colors and the somewhat childish rendering of objects and perspective, recognizable despite the fact that all the figures—the Savior, the disciples, the afflicted, believers and nonbelievers alike,
even animals—have the same face. And that face is remarkably similar to the face of the man standing in the door of Bunyan’s Salvage, the man who is gesticulating grandly at Jack Bunyan himself.

  Not until the Minotaur is standing at the back of the Vega about to lift out the toolbox does he hear the sounds coming from inside the bus. It is a hymn—muted, feeble even, discordant, but definitely a hymn. “Shall we gather at the river/The beautiful, the beautiful river …” Looking through the dusty windows of the Chariot of Jesus the Minotaur can tell that most of its seats are occupied.

  “Deacon Hinky, I’d like to help you out,” Jack Bunyan says. “But I ain’t got a water pump that will fit your bus.”

  Jack gives the Minotaur a wave; the Minotaur tips his horns in acknowledgment and walks back into the acres and acres of damaged automobile carcasses looking for a Chevrolet Belair. The heavy toolbox bumps against his leg with each step.

  Back among the boulders, in the privacy of rusting metal and rotting tires, the Minotaur begins to hum. He hums the song of worship he just heard. The farther he gets from the garage and anyone who might hear him the louder the Minotaur hums. When he is certainly out of earshot he attempts to sing. It’s the Minotaur’s oldest secret, probably the one thing no one has ever known about him. He wishes, sometimes more than anything else, that he could sing. Truly, freely, with rapture, sing. Some nights when he can’t sleep—beginning way back when it was just he and the darkness and stone walls for years on end—the Minotaur mouths the words to a song, imagining himself bellowing melodiously, his huge well of a diaphragm powering each precise note. Occasionally the Minotaur lists in his mind all the things he would willingly sacrifice to be able to do this. The Minotaur knows in his heart, and feels in his mouth, the impossibility of this dream. But in the seclusion of Bunyan’s Salvage he pretends.