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

around the bases of the other statuary. And in the blanket of sawdust, footprints. Multiple. Coming and going across Business 220, back and forth between Pygmalia-Blades and the room at the far end of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge, where the guests checked in yesterday. On the sidewalk, by the door, a paper bucket has tipped and spilled its grisly contents. Enough gnawed chicken bones to feed a small army. Beer cans, crushed and not, the cardboard case, crumpled napkins, other unnamable detritus, all form a haphazard shrine to some elusive god, right outside the door. The world of the fully human regularly confounds the Minotaur, but nothing here surprises him.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
    He should clean up the mess before the Guptas stir. It is Monday morning. Ramneek will be sweeping the sidewalks first thing. It is Monday morning. Rambabu will sit with his granddaughter while she watches cartoons. It is Monday morning. The Minotaur’s work in the village will be menial, tedious, soothing. There will be no dying. He looks again at the footprints in the sawdust, at the litter—an aftermath of sorts, the scene of something crimelike—and the Minotaur can’t face it.
    “Sorry,” he says aloud, intending it for the sleeping Guptas.
    He wishes things were different. He wishes Danny Tanneyhill would pack up his trailer and his monsters and drive away. He wishes the skinny woman at the opposite end of the Judy-Lou didn’t have to drag so much around in her Samsonite suitcases. He wishes he’d gone to the secret place last night. He wishes he hadn’t been up the broom maker’s dress, accidentally or otherwise. And he wishes Widow Fisk hadn’t witnessed any of it. He pockets the Bag Balm—used or not, he’ll return it. Slip it unnoticed back in her drawer.
    The Minotaur cannot face the trash at the opposite end of the motor lodge, nor its makers. Hangdog, then, he trudges down the road. At the mouth of Old Scald Village, the giant plaster soldier takes him to task. Clucks his lifeless tongue. Chides. The Minotaur looks for the crow, finds nothing. The Minotaur musters just enough gumption to throw a rock at the plaster head. Misses by a mile. Maybe more. The Minotaur galumphs over the planks of the covered bridge and, as promised in the brochure, steps back in time. But not enough to make a bit of difference. Not nearly.
    He’s not the first. Biddle is there. In the pond. Hip deep.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says. “What?”
    “Goddamn teenagers,” Biddle says. The brim of his leather cap casts a shadow on his face. “Doped-up little shit-pinchers.”
    Biddle’s leather apron, his cooper’s costume, lies in a heap on the bank, a shape-shifter asleep, waiting. Biddle wears rubber waders that barely contain his girth, the straps stretched so taut over his shoulders and rotund gut that the Minotaur can almost hear the threads popping.
    “They threw a picnic table in, and one of the pillories,” Biddle says.
    It happens often enough. On weekends, spring or summer, in the tumult of night, in the torrent of rut, rowdy teens from the KOA campground across the river (or maybe even local kids from Joy township, just through the gap) sneak, giddy and heroic in their vandal boots, into Old Scald Village and toss things in the pond.
    “Ought to shoot the little fuckers,” Biddle says. “Get me some night vision and a thirty-ought-six, do a stakeout in the church tower, pick the fuckers off one at a time.” Biddle, increasingly wet from the hole in the toe of his wader, and hungover as usual, is more envious than outraged. “Give me a hand,” he says.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says, and heads to the small shed behind the Welcome Center. It’s where the lawnmowers and leaf blowers hide. Weedeaters, too. Anything that smacks of the here and now. The Come Again sign guards the front door of the building. He can’t tell if Widow Fisk is inside or not. The Minotaur takes the long way around; the grass lanes and gravel