Read Online The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time by Steven Sherrill - Free Book Online

to it. Not to the mannequin outside the cabin, or the two even more battered and bedraggled specimens inside, by a wooden cask of vials with moldering or missing contents, by the tableful of rusting scalpels and horrifying probes, scopes, ligatures, and more—the gorget, the bistoury cache, the cranial drill, the catlin, the Roman director and spoon, the trephine, the bone chisel, the kidney dish. Doc could name each instrument, and fairly swoon while doing so. But the kids don’t care. What the kids like, every time, is the squat barrel full of rubber amputated limbs. Doc uses it to prop the door open, then has to spend much of his time on duty keeping the kids from beating each other with the floppy props.
    The Minotaur likes the kids, their energetic presence. Their goofy bodies and giddy babble. Old Scald Village has much to offer them. And much of it the doing of the broom maker. She runs the Hands-On Program, bringing underprivileged youth in by the busload for the living-history experience. The broom maker does a good job of it. It’s a steady source of income for the village, and the administrators see her worth. They turn a blind eye to her other occasional unsavory proclivities.
    But not Widow Fisk. More than once, in the Minotaur’s presence, Widow Fisk has badmouthed the broom maker.
    “Slut,” she said.
    “Trailer trash,” she said.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says to the boy who jumps up to swat his horn with a plastic femur. Unscathed. The Minotaur wants to escape the village unscathed.
    “Yo, M,” somebody says. It’s a girl. The Minotaur doesn’t know her name. She is in transition at the moment, half foot soldier, half tavern maid. “Destiny’s looking for you.”
    “Mmmnn, who?”
    “She needs help in the Broom Shack.”
    The girl walks away, putting her black hair up in a bun. Her side knife bumps against her behind with each step.
    “Oh,” the Minotaur says. “Okay.”
    The Broom Shack sits tucked between Weinzerl’s Pottery and the Tailor Shoppe, an apt locale (though probably happenstance); the movement from clay to straw to cloth seems right in many ways. The Tailor Shoppe, Sprankle’s, has a full front porch and rocking chairs and a second story, where the smug tailor and his prickly wife are meant to sleep. But there’s nothing up there except two rope-slung beds shoved on either side of the chimney. So the Minotaur has been told. The brochure offered up in the Welcome Center numbers and describes all the buildings of Old Scald Village. Details the “turn-of-the-century” construction: log or stone or frame. The brochure identifies the structures that have been relocated to the site, as well as those re-created on the grounds. The brochure fails to mention that nearly all of the two-story buildings have perilously steep, walled-in staircases that are inaccessible to the handicapped, to the top heavy, to anyone with wide horns. Too, the brochure hasn’t been updated since a more recent century’s turn. The Minotaur tries not to think about it.
    The Minotaur has no small skill with needle and thread. He is well versed in thimble. But those skills he keeps secret at Old Scald Village. He avoids the Tailor Shoppe and its cheerful signage:
             A stitch in time saves nine
             Dyed in the wool
             Sewing mends the Soul
             Make do and mend
    At the moment, there is no tailor in the village. Some say that Sprankle up and died in the parking lot of Adult World, in Joy, PA, two towns over. The Minotaur also heard that Sprankle moved to Joy and opened a lawnmower repair shop. Either way the Minotaur keeps his sewing kit out of sight.
    It’s hot. Unseasonably so. The sun is high and unforgiving. The Gift Shoppe will likely deplete its stock of paper parasols and straw hats. The Minotaur likes the heat.
    He heads to the Broom Shack. The Broom Shack is little more than that. A single story of vertical planks. A cedar shake roof. The