The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Read Free

a switch plate. The Minotaur sets about assembling the shelves.
    The Minotaur has never met Bavishya. Becky. What did they mean, Ramneek and Rambabu, when they said, “You will like her,” when they said, “She will like you as well”? What does she do, this Becky, this young mother of Devmani? What does she study at the community college? Where does she hope that study will take her? These are the questions that swarm the Minotaur’s mind as he works. And he should be paying more attention. He should not touch that bare wire while swapping out the light fixture. What did they mean, the Guptas? The Minotaur is not one to get his hopes up. Nor, however, has he ever been able to fully let go of hope. And it is hope’s slippery little tail that the Minotaur is trying to grab hold of when his screwdriver touches the wire.
    The jolt knocks him back to Becky’s bed. The whole of the Judy-Lou Motor Lodge goes black.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
    “Unngh,” he says again, more embarrassed than in danger.
    It takes a full hour to get all the fuses replaced and the Judy-Lou’s Vacancy sign flashing again. By the time the Guptas return, their plastic shopping bags stuffed full, the Minotaur is pretending to be asleep in Room #3. He peeks through the parted curtains to watch Rambabu carry his sleeping granddaughter from the car.

CHAPTER THREE
    SATURDAY. THE DEAD, THEY RISE, always, to join the march toward Old Scald Village. The village welcomes all the conscripts home with equal fanfare. Zero. Everybody—the bloodied and the bloodless, the valiant and the cowardly, the victorious, the defeated, too—meanders down the hundred yards of gravel road, past the wooden ticket booth that’s used only in high season, toward the parking lot. Old Scald Village promises living history. Promises to “bring the past to the present.” The Minotaur slogs along almost hopefully. He likes best the moments of silence, when nobody talks, when the gravel crunching beneath the shuffling brogans and ankle boots is all the song they need.
    “Pretty good one today, huh, M?” Biddle says.
    The Minotaur would be hard pressed to tell the difference between any of the battles. Any of the days.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
    Biddle is the cooper. When he’s not cannon fodder, Biddle makes barrels two doors down from the Tin Punch Cottage. Biddle is pink and sweaty. Too fat for the gray wool uniform he wears. But he wears it with gusto. Biddle offers the Minotaur a drink from a wooden canteen. The Minotaur shakes his big head no.
    They’re halfway to the Welcome Center. A gaggle of battlefield nurses walks ahead, their satchels full of wound-dressing supplies, laughing loudly about something. Behind them, the drummer keeps an uneven rhythm with the trumpeter’s human beat-box routine.
    Biddle looks nervously up and down the line of returning soldiers. He fishes in the leather cartridge box on his belt, takes out a cell phone, and taps at the screen. High above, the turnpike traverses Scald Mountain. Few heed the Falling Rock signs.
    “Look at this one,” Biddle says, handing the phone to the Minotaur.
    The Minotaur holds the phone up to one eye, then the other, turns it this way and that, but in the midday sun, and with his ocular challenges, it’s hard to tell exactly what he’s looking at. Biddle snaps and unsnaps the cartridge box. Snaps and unsnaps. Sweat trickles down both temples.
    The Minotaur can make out the breasts—incredibly large breasts—but not much else.
    “That one’s so sweet she probably poops Milk Duds,” Biddle says, sucking air between his teeth.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says. What else can he say?
    Old Scald Village promises to preserve the past. Promises battles and craft exhibitions, Christmas festivals and murder-mystery evenings and more. And more. The Minotaur likes Biddle, flawed as he is. The Minotaur sees in Biddle kinship. The Minotaur respects the fat man’s willingness to be fully himself.