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

Minotaur watches Danny Tanneyhill help the man load both Bigfoot and the Ten Commandments into its bed. The trio of bungee cords, stretched obscenely tight across the weighty pair like rogue overworked ligaments, seems inadequate for the task of keeping it all from toppling to the road, but the Minotaur isn’t willing to go out and say so. Not wanting to witness the almost certain catastrophe, he turns from the window as the truck drives away, spitting and churning the gravel.
    The day wanes. The sun has already dropped over Homer’s Gap and will not return from there no matter how hard the shadows pull. The coming evening drags with it the sulfuric stink of the paper mill. It is familiar—comforting, even. Danny Tanneyhill has droplights strung around the Pygmalia-Blades tent. He works into the night, sawing and cursing by turns. The Minotaur pushes his bed against the far wall. Puts a pillow over his aching head. Makes no difference. Doors slam all night long. All night long the chainsaw whines. No. Succumbs. It is the hatchet, biting all night long into wood. And the cursing. All night long. The Minotaur’s stomach turns. And turns. And turns.

CHAPTER NINE
    NIGHT. THAT NIGGLER EXTRAORDINAIRE .
    Night comes nonetheless, an apparition in slinky black. The Minotaur is on the run. Run.
    The Minotaur traces and retraces his steps. Looking for what? Butterscotch?
    The Minotaur is at Bull Run. The Minotaur is at Manassas, at Appomattox, at Antietam, at Shiloh. The Minotaur at square one, and at the pearly gates. The Minotaur strikes up the band, pays the piper. The Minotaur keeps his nose to the grindstone. The Minotaur lets sleeping dogs lie. At the eleventh hour the Minotaur burns the midnight oil. The Minotaur has an ace in the hole but cries over spilt milk. The Minotaur beats around the bush, beats a dead horse. The Minotaur knuckles down.
    North, south, east, west. The topsy-turvy earth. The Minotaur swaps one life for another.
    After the cock-and-bull story the Minotaur hangs up his fiddle. The Minotaur gets down to brass tacks, hits the nail on the head. The Minotaur knows the ropes and knocks on wood. The Minotaur makes no bones about it. In the china shop there is no rule of thumb. The Minotaur bears his cross, leads the blind, has the devil to pay. The Minotaur tastes the salt of the earth but not the laudable pus.
    The Minotaur cuts his eyeteeth, chews the fat, clams up. The Minotaur guards his tongue, is down in the mouth, is long in the tooth. The Minotaur on shank’s mare. The Minotaur and his monkeyshines under siege. The bonnyclabber. The catawampus. The windbag. Nearly fifty-one thousand humans died at Gettysburg alone. Three thousand horses. It’s all Greek to the Minotaur. In the bulrushes. In the breadbasket. The Minotaur gags, retches, and the banjo falls from his gullet. The banjo, spumy, bilious, radiant, cantankerous as hell, rears its scrawny neck and heads for the hills.

CHAPTER TEN
    MORNING HACKS THE CURTAINS WIDE , and the Minotaur opens his eyes. Morning. The Minotaur doesn’t know what to expect. He puts on his best costumed interpreter face and opens the door of Room #3. Is the sun up there where it’s supposed to be, bearing down hard on Scald Mountain and the turnpike? Yes. Are the rhododendrons holding tight to that steep slope, offering their obscene blossoms to any and all? Yes. Does Business 220 still thread Homer’s Gap somewhere down the road? And just up the road does Old Scald Village march drearily in place? And do the Minotaur’s horns barely clear the lintel, his Confederate soldier’s woolen trousers itch incessantly? Yes, and yes, and yes. What, then, is different about this day?
    The Minotaur sees it. The Minotaur is no sleuth. He can’t tell what happened, who went where and when, though clues abound. Danny Tanneyhill’s truck is gone. The tree trunk he’d labored over all day, laid waste. Chopped to splintery bits. Woodchips and sawdust litter the parking lot, clot