The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time by Steven Sherrill Page B

breath slows, eases into peace. The Minotaur breathes his own breath. The Minotaur and the man sit together, apart, and breathe long into the night. They share a rancorous kinship. The worn-out scapegoat of an ancient tale and this modern-day myth. The hero-soldier left to rot after his duty is done. The furnace stones bear these manifest burdens stoically.
    At some point the Minotaur looks up. The moon is making its rocky and yellow sally across the black circle of night sky. The Minotaur hopes the man is looking up.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    IT IS DAWN WHEN THE MINOTAUR comes back down Business 220. His woolen pants and jacket—those telltale signs of his status as a living-history reinterpreter—are dew damp. Cold and scratchy. The other soldier, the damaged man, may have left Joy Furnace earlier. Or he may still be there. It’s not the Minotaur’s place to question. To pass judgment. To grant salvation. It is not the Minotaur’s place. It is not the Minotaur.
    He walks the quiet roadway. The mountain comes to life slowly above him, shouldering up the sun, tucking in and rolling out the shadows. He is in no hurry. It is only Tuesday, and the rest of his murky existence lies ahead. Just beyond a bend in the road the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge comes into view. Its pitched metal roof, painted a leafy green, beckons. Come home.
    The Minotaur will slip into Room #3, will close the curtain, the blinds, will strip out of his damp uniform, will make whatever contortions necessary to fit into the cramped tub. It is only Tuesday. He will soak for as long as it takes. The Minotaur focuses. He will not be distracted. He will not look across the macadam. He will not look over the Chili Willie’s parking lot at Pygmalia-Blades, at Danny Tanneyhill’s pickup truck and the gargantuan tree trunk (so much larger than the last) that seems to have toppled from the truck bed and cants precariously, looming overtop the wooden bestiary. He will not look.
    “Hey.”
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says, not in answer. Rather as a deflection. He will not hear.
    “Hey.”
    Slightly louder. No matter. The Minotaur will not hear. He stoops to pick up some litter from the mouth of the Judy-Lou’s drive. The blackest crow in existence takes wing from a hemlock bough high on Scald Mountain, hurtles down the slope, pulling the rest of the sun up over the ridge line. The crow lights on the peak of the Pygmalia-Blades tent. Caws its nasty caw. The Minotaur has no choice.
    “Unngh,” he says, and crosses the road.
    The Minotaur approaches the truck with caution.
    “Hey,” the voice says, “can you help a brother out?”
    It’s Danny Tanneyhill. He’s pinned between the massive log and the truck’s tailgate.
    The Minotaur can be decisive when necessary. He decided to leave behind what he left behind back in Joy Furnace. Here in the Chili Willie’s parking lot, the suffering is more acute. It is not in the Minotaur’s nature to overthink. He decides, for the moment, not to leave the man trapped beneath the tree. In the night the chainsaw artist had returned with an oak too big for his own good. He had grappled with its girth and lost. The tree is limbless. The fresh cuts where the branches were removed glare like pale little suns frozen in orbit around the trunk. Everything stinks of sawdust and motor oil. Smells, too, like trespass. Like ill-gotten gain. This pinning may very well be an act of revenge. But there is no visible blood.
    “Yo,” Danny Tanneyhill says, “there’s a pry bar over behind my G. I. Joe.”
    It takes the Minotaur a minute to understand, but he finds the thick iron rod easily enough. The carved army man offers no resistance.
    The rudiments of physics come easily to the Minotaur, and his strength is what it is. He eyes the situation, drags a low stump into place to serve as fulcrum, wedges the pry bar between the stump and the fat oak trunk at just the right spot, and heaves.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
    The oak rises, enough.