The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time (16 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

KNOCK KNOCK.

Knock knock.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur grunts, and knocks the musket over. His big head jerks, hooks the lampshade.

Knock knock.

The clock reads one two three. He’s been asleep. And the goddamn knocking won’t stop. The goddamn knocking has hammered him right out of his Minotaur dream. Busted his thick skull wide. And now pounds away on the door to Room #3.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, and hurries to the door with the scents of butterscotch and smoke in his nostrils. Both. Both. He hurries to the door with stars in his eyes, and hurries to the door with his bullish heart pounding hopefully.

It’s the fat man. His suit is rumpled.

“You got a screwdriver?” he asks. The donkey ears bob and sway gently.

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says, rubbing his eyes.

Up close the man is all jowls. The Minotaur can’t find his eyes.

“You got a pipe wrench?” he asks.

“Mmmnn, no,” the Minotaur says.

The man’s teeth are big. Yellow as the moon.

“You got a . . . ? Oh, never mind,” the fat man says. “What good are ya?”

The fat man waddles back down the sidewalk and closes the door to his room. In other circumstances the Minotaur would have worked harder to help. Endeavored to be of use. Other circumstances.

The clock still reads one two three. The clock is broken. The Minotaur remembers it now. The night sky will unhinge itself soon enough. The Minotaur stands in the doorway clutching his musket by the barrel. He looks out across the road. Danny Tanneyhill’s pickup truck is gone. He looks up and down the span of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge. On the sidewalk, right in front of the redhead’s door, stands a knee-high carving of a man-in-the-moon crescent, his smooth arc and the cuts of his fat lips and wide eyes fresh and glaring. The Minotaur shoulders his gun, takes aim. Thinks to say
Bang
, but it’s not a sound that works well in his mouth.

Holly opens her door. Steps into the line of fire.

“Whoa!” she says.

The Minotaur drops his weapon, searches his brain for an explanation. But immediately it’s clear that Holly is responding to the man in the moon. She walks right into it.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she says, trying for quiet, biting her bottom lip, that mussed hair a red conflagration, holding the bare toes of one slender foot, sort of jumping up and down on the other (slender foot), the pale blue boxer shorts laying loose claim to her behind and her legs (white as apple flesh), leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, reaching for (grappling at, really) the black-frame glasses that hang from the neckline of her T-shirt (a loose, ocher-colored thing with a faded Mighty Mouse printed on the front), that bounce every time she jumps, right between her small (but unencumbered) breasts. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she says, then sits on the stoop.

The Minotaur is sorry Holly got hurt. But he is more grateful still for the sight of her there. The Minotaur tries to nudge his musket out of sight, then goes to help.

“Ouch,” Holly says, poking the glasses into place on the bridge of her nose.

“Hey,” she says, seeing first the kicked moon, then the Minotaur.

“What the hell?” she says about the statue. Or maybe about him. The Minotaur can’t tell. Her eyes are red, puffy, her nose snotty. It’s clear to the Minotaur that Holly was crying long before kicking the man in the moon. She is stunning in her misery.

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says, moving the heavy carving out of the doorway. He offers his hand.

“Thanks,” Holly says, pulling herself up, almost grabbing his horn for balance. Almost. She closes the door gently. “Tooky is still asleep.”

The Minotaur fumbles with the brass buttons on his jacket. He can’t think of anything else to do. No reason to stay there with her. Near her.

Holly steps off the sidewalk, pinches one nostril shut with a fingertip, blows a glob of yellowy mucus onto the asphalt, repeats on the other side, wipes a glistening streak down her forearm, then smiles at the Minotaur.

“Did you ever see such a sexy sight in your life?” Holly asks.

The Minotaur has an answer for the question.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s been a hard night. For years . . .”

The Minotaur notices the thick gauze of morning fog. Everything up the mountain has gone missing. The absence is beautiful. “Look,” he says. Gestures with his horns.

Holly rubs her eyes. She likes what she sees. “Mmm, nice.” she says. “Listen, can we talk about the van?”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“I mean . . . ,” she says, and clearly wants to say more. “Me and Tooky . . . we are . . . I have to . . .”

“Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.

“I’m taking him . . . We only have a few days.”

“Tools,” the Minotaur says, and is surprised when Holly follows him back to Room #3. Follows him all the way inside.

“Please don’t say anything to . . . ,” Holly says, and hooks her thumb in the direction of Pygmalia-Blades.

“Okay,” the Minotaur says.

Then something catches Holly’s eye. “Whoa, what’s this?”

Holly picks up the musket like she’s handled guns before. Room #3 constricts. The austerity of his present moment squeezes tight. The Minotaur is hemmed in by the past and its mountain of bones and by numbing eternity. The very walls press in on the Minotaur and his unexpected guest.

“Unngh, tools,” he repeats, kneeling to reach under the bed for his toolbox, to change the subject.

His snout burrows into the bedspread, and the smell of industrial-strength detergent chokes him. Holly steps closer, weapon in hand, just as the Minotaur turns his head and coughs. Turns his big cumbersome head and coughs. Turns, and the tip of his horn slips beneath the hem of her shorts, traces in its slow rise the shallow furrow made by her thigh muscle.

“Unngh,” he says. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

He doesn’t mean it, this accidental exposure, this swath of pale flesh, and in trying to right his wrong the Minotaur pulls away. But the half-man half-bull is in too deep. His burrowed horn tugs at the fabric, tugs at the redhead, who topples onto the bed. The gun clatters to the floor.

What next? The Minotaur prepares himself for the worst.

Holly’s laugh is the thing he’s least prepared for.

“I hope that thing’s not loaded,” she says, standing, in no big hurry.

“I’m such a klutz,” she says, wriggling in the blue boxer shorts to make sure enough of her body is contained.

“Are you okay?” she says, picking a piece of blue thread from the horn tip of the kneeling Minotaur.

“Sorry,” he says.

“My fault,” she says, then reaches for his gun again. “Do you collect these things or something?”

“Mmmnn, no,” he says, picking a piece of lint from his horn.

“Are you some kind of time-traveling secret agent, maybe?”

The Minotaur thinks long and hard about this one, wishing he could say yes.

“I mean . . . ,” she says, pinching at the hem of her shorts. “I mean you’re obviously not from around here.”

She looks so beautiful sitting at the edge of his bed in Room #3, the musket on her lap. The Minotaur has to turn away.

“Yes,” he says. “No.”

The Minotaur is not one to get frantic, but his mind races in this moment. There is no easy answer. He opens the drawer of the squat nightstand. There, between the Bhagavad Gita and the yellow pages, is a tattered piece of paper.

“Old Scald Village,” Holly reads. “Oh, I get it. You’re some kind of reenactor, or whatever they’re called.”

“Mmmnn, yes,” the Minotaur says. Whatever they’re called.

“Encampment Weekend,” she says with exaggeration. “Annual Spring Civil War Festival.”

It’s a copy of the first draft of the flier. Widow Fisk, Gwen, was working out some kinks.

“You work here?” Holly asks. “Where is this place?”

“Just down,” the Minotaur says, and points with his thumb.

Holly sniffles and keeps reading. “Battles twice daily. Full cavalry. Union and Confederate camp walk-throughs. You really do this stuff?”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says. He leans his musket in the corner.

“Hey!” Holly says, poking hard at the Minotaur’s brass buttons. “This is perfect!”

Again the old bull wishes he could say yes. Yes, this is perfect.

“You know who would love this?” she asks.

Yes. No.

“Tooky,” she says. “Tookus would really like all this.”

“Unngh,” the Minotaur says again, meaning so much.

The boy, Tookus, her damaged brother, would love Old Scald Village. So would the redhead. The Minotaur imagines the scene. Him leading the way. The bells from the church spire will announce their arrival. They’ll visit the Tin Punch Cottage and the candle maker. Holly will pose in the pillory. The Minotaur will take them to the Old Jail, might even let Tookus close the cell door on him. The Minotaur sees it all in his wandering mind. Sees more than he intends. The Broom Shack and the fat ass of the broom maker spoiling everything. Sees the blacksmith’s forge and Smitty and the branding iron.

“Tssss,” is all the Minotaur can manage.

“Will you take us?” Holly asks. “Can we watch? Can we see you fight?”

The redhead standing in Room #3 of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge sees something in the flier that the Minotaur can’t. It’s as if the crumpled page holds a secret. Or a solution. Or maybe just reprieve. The Minotaur sees none of this. Sees only the woman in her moment of need. Sees the need, and the way her heartbeat pulses through the Mighty Mouse T-shirt, right there on the grinning rodent’s curled bicep, right there by the tiny peak of her nipple.

“Yes,” the Minotaur says. Of course he’ll take Tookus and Holly to Old Scald Village to watch him fight and die. He can’t look Holly in the eye. Can’t look any longer at the rise and fall of her breasts. Can look only to the floor, and in passing he sees the tiny drop of blood trickling down her white thigh.

“Oh,” the Minotaur says. “Are you, umm, all right?”

His fingertip is close. He could easily catch the bright red droplet on his nail. In the distance Scald Mountain’s camisole of fog is lifting.

“Hmmm,” Holly says. She turns away, pulls the hem of her shorts high. “Just a scratch,” she says. “I’ll get a Band-Aid later.”

She looks at the smear of blood on her finger. She’s about to do something with it when they both hear the office door slam open. Holly is closer; she looks first. The Minotaur leans out from behind her.

“This is an outrage!”

It’s the fat man with donkey ears.

“I strongly condemn your actions!” he says, his fat finger stabbing the sky.

“And you haven’t seen the last of me!” he says, that same fat finger pointed inside the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge office.

Holly’s finger, the bloody one, points toward the earth. The Minotaur’s horns reach skyward. Nobody is ready for Tookus when he runs from his motel room clutching the carboy full of change. Runs full steam into the angry fat man coming down the sidewalk.

The man and his rage are immovable. “Move, boy!”

Tookus moves. Tookus bounces, unhurt but terrified. The glass jug shatters on the cement, five gallons of tip money scattering hither and yon.

“Goddamn it, Tookus!” Holly says.

It’s not his fault. He cowers anyway.

“Why? Why do you always . . . ? Why does it always . . . ?”

Glass crunches under the fat man’s shoes. He chucks a suitcase into the backseat of his sedan and peels out of the parking lot, back in the direction he came from in the night.

Tookus sits against the wall, shaking his hands, rocking back and forth, crying. “Fatty. Fatty fat fat. Dick titty fat fucker,” he says.

“I can’t do this anymore, Took,” Holly says, arms raised, palms up. “I can’t.”

When Holly starts to cry, too, her brother gets to his knees and begins raking the money into a pile. Scooping the quarters and dimes. The nickels and pennies. And the shards of glass.

“No, no, Tooky! Stop!”

Holly rushes to her brother, but Tookus is too strong. He will not stop. Won’t stop dragging his cupped hands over the rough cement, through the glass and coins. The Minotaur goes to help, but Ramneek Gupta gets there first.

“
So jaa
,” she sings, kneeling in front of the boy. “
So jaa raajkumaari so jaa.
”

Tookus looks up.

“
So jaa
,” she sings. Ramneek takes the boy’s wrists, stills him. “
Main balihaari so jaa, so jaa raajkumaari so jaa.
”

Tookus allows himself to be lifted, standing when Ramneek stands.

“
So jaa, so jaa raajkumaari so jaa.
”

Ramneek does not look at Tookus’s palms. Holly can’t look anywhere else. There is so much blood. The boy stands perfectly still, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Things often appear much worse than they actually are,” Ramneek says. “I will take care of this.” She leads Holly’s brother to the motel office, into its open door, singing all the way. “
So jaa main balihaari. So jaa. So jaa raajkumaari so jaa.
”

Holly sighs deeply, squats against the wall, and starts plucking quarters. One, two, three, four, five, six. Then she stands and hurls them out onto Business 220. They ping and clink softly on the pavement.

“Why?” she says. “It’s not supposed to be this way. I’m not the god-damn mother. I’m not supposed to be his fucking . . .”

The Minotaur stoops with a Judy-Lou Motor Lodge ice bucket and gathers change. He doesn’t speak.

“We have to go,” Holly says. She’s talking to herself, mostly. “I’ve made the arrangements. I’ve . . . we have to go soon.”

Holly looks around. The Minotaur thinks he knows what she means. It doesn’t take long to fill the plastic bucket. The Minotaur gets another, and together, and quietly, they resume the task.

“It’s not my fault,” Holly says.

“Mmmnn.”

“I tried,” she says. “I did the best I could. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Mmmnn.”

The morning opens (always) incrementally. It’s not long before Danny Tanneyhill drives up, his truck not done rumbling and rattling to a stop by the Pygmalia-Blades trailer when he hurries over to the motel.

“Hey,” he says, eyeballing Holly’s bare legs, “you’ll never believe what happened.”