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

often. Sunday morning, the soldiers come ready to die. Always. To kill. And the bleachers fill with spectators. Usually. The Minotaur crosses the bridge over Mill Run. The water is clear and ready. He cocks a bullish ear, finds only birdsong. He makes his way to the Welcome Center, keeping watch for anything wayward. The pillory is empty.
    “Hey, there, sarge,” Widow Fisk says from her office when the Minotaur comes from the closet with his musket. “Is that thing cocked and loaded?”
    “Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
    Widow Fisk teases. She’s often sassy, though on Sunday morning her sassiness is restrained.
    He steps into the cramped room. Cocked and loaded as he’ll ever be. The Minotaur catches the faint whiff of alcohol. Widow Fisk sits at the desk. Widow Fisk wears her bonnet and apron. The knots are crisp and tidy. Always. Even when she’s hung over. She comes in early. She leaves late. As far as the Minotaur knows she may actually never leave. The Minotaur likes her understated sass. She’s working on the poster for the upcoming reenactment weekend. The Encampment. He leans over her shoulder to read.
    “You going to be here?” she asks.
    “Unngh,” the Minotaur says. “Hope so.”
    Widow Fisk forks something out of a little tin pan beside the computer monitor. A warm buttery scent fills the deep wells of the Minotaur’s nostrils.
    “Mmmnn,” he says.
    Once, a long time ago, Widow Fisk asked the Minotaur how long he thought he’d be staying. The question confounded him. Time being what it is. She asked him if he ever thought about settling down, and where, and with whom. Once, a long time ago, Widow Fisk reached out and touched his jowl.
    “Maybe you’ll get a promotion,” she says from behind her desk, and from behind a faint cloud of whiskey scent. “Maybe they’ll make you general.”
    The thought gives him pause. The Minotaur works up a faint smile. Maybe the coming weekend does hold something for the Minotaur. Maybe the signs, the cut-rate prophesies, the modest omens of the past few days, have pointed there.
    “Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says again.
    General, of course, is out of the question. Any officer’s role, really. But change is in the air, for sure. Possibility, though, is hard for the Minotaur to conceive. He can barely think, with the smells of whatever it is Widow Fisk is eating filling the air. Delicious. Delicious. He’s eyeballing the tin pan. Anybody could see so.
    “Butterscotch pie,” Widow Fisk says, and so deftly pokes a forkful into the Minotaur’s mouth that he can do nothing but let the heavenly dollop dissolve on his fat black tongue. The Minotaur’s knees all but buckle. He remembers. He remembers hunger. It has been a long long time. The butterscotch pie in his mouth might be the best thing the Minotaur has ever tasted. In his life. Widow Fisk. Widow Fisk.
    “I made it last night,” she says. “Made the crust and the meringue, too. You like it?”
    “Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says. “Much.”
    Widow Fisk is facile with piecrust. Widow Fisk in her bonnet and her apron. She knows things. The Minotaur doesn’t mean for his mouth to hang open. But it does. Widow Fisk teases his black lips with another forkful of pie.
    “You want this?” she asks, keeping it just out of reach. “You want this?”
    The Minotaur smells butter and salt and flour on her skin. “Mmmnn,” he says. The Minotaur could take her entire hand into his mouth. He wonders if Widow Fisk knows this.
    “What’ll you give for it?” she asks.
    The Minotaur sees a tiny fleck of dried pudding on her bonnet. The Minotaur hadn’t imagined the bonnet when he thought of her in the kitchen.
    “What do I get out of the trade?” she asks.
    The door to the Gift Shoppe opens, to a prickly digital rendition of “Dixie.” Widow Fisk puts, lays, inserts the fork into the Minotaur’s mouth. He lingers before closing, then senses the barely there resistance at the surface of the peaked meringue, tastes