The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Read Free Page A

Transgressions and all. Out of kindness, he looks again, trying to see what Biddle wants him to see on the cell-phone screen. The breasts, yes. In motion. A fleshy rump. The Minotaur squints, cocks his head. A crow gets caught in the angle delineated by his horn tips. The Minotaur tries to focus. Is focusing. Then he feels the pinch on his backside.
    “Tssss!”
    It’s Smitty.
    First the pinch, then the accompanying hiss, meant to be a sizzle. Meant to be the sound of burning flesh. His flesh. A brand on the Minotaur’s human haunch. A hot stink fills the air.
    “Tssss!”
    The pinch and hiss. The burn. The stench.
    All of the moments that unfold in a life—any life, human, animal, mongrel—almost never arrive ready made with predetermined outcomes. Each moment that wriggles and shrugs down the birth canal of time does so under the burden of every single other moment that’s come before it. And at the instant of unfolding, of awakening, of awareness, that moment—every one—is at the immediate and perfect whim of mindless happenstance. There are always other choices, other possible outcomes. Better or worse is always in the eye of the beholder.
    “Tssss!”
    Smitty, the blacksmith, his callused fingers a make-do branding iron, pinches the Minotaur. As if the Minotaur’s past means nothing. As if.
    The Minotaur throws back his bullish head. Bellows. The roar fierce, the rage so primal it blackens the sun. Shrivels the moon. Lightning sears the sky. The river boils its fishes. Rank and file—the soldiers, the nurses—faint dead away, not wanting to bear witness. The horned beast roars, and the brass buttons of his jacket give way, pop and hiss in the air as they fly. The Minotaur, ravening, thrashes his heavy head. The horns whip the sky into froth. Smitty, beneath the smudges of black ash, weeps. Wets himself. Begs for mercy. None comes. The Minotaur looms over all. Smitty flees. Runs, as if he could actually escape his self-made fate. The Minotaur stomps his booted foot on the graveled earth, and all the pines drop their needles and, sapless, wither where they stand. Smitty runs and runs, weaving among the picnic tables, through the river’s mucky bed, runs up the steep bank, through the black trunks of the dead pines, runs looking backward, runs hoping for escape, runs right into the barbed-wire fence surrounding Old Scald Village, the blacksmith’s tender neck flesh succumbing without protest, a hot wing of blood fluttering to the ground, steaming for the briefest of moments.
    No.
    “Tssss!”
    The pinch and hiss. It could happen just so. It doesn’t.
    When Smitty, the blacksmith, pinches the preoccupied Minotaur and hisses in his ear, the bullish soldier startles and drops the cell phone to the gravel.
    “Don’t look like standard issue to me,” Smitty says, then spits on the road by the phone.
    Smitty is hardcore. Smitty is a stitch counter, in constant pursuit of a past perfected. Smitty is a living historian, and committed to the role. Devoted, even. Every detail of his uniform, his Blacksmith’s Shoppe and the tools there, his behavior—everything about Smitty is perfectly re-created. Accurate. There are a handful of hardcores at Old Scald Village, looking down their period-correct noses at the mere pretenders. The Minotaur finds it all both intimidating and mildly amusing.
    “Tssss!”
    Smitty takes ingots of raw pig iron and transforms them. Smitty makes hinges and horseshoes. Plowshares and bullet molds. Smitty makes trouble for anyone who isn’t period correct. Smitty makes trouble for the Minotaur. But the Minotaur knows this man, this kind of man. Knows what his forge is capable of. The Minotaur has withstood such petty brandings countless times over the long span of his life. Knows he will surely endure more.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says.
    The Minotaur lets the moment pass, releases the potential for rage. Release serves him well. The Minotaur takes his time.
    Biddle scrambles for the