The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time Read Online Free

to their own, would crumple all the Declaration of Independence scrolls, pocket without paying for all the authentic Civil War bullets, dump the wicker basket of handmade doilies, likely even try to eat the cakes of artisan soaps, made three doors away. The peppermint, the honey, the vanilla especially.
    “Ain’t nobody going to pay that much for a bar of soap,” Widow Fisk sometimes says to the Minotaur. “I don’t care how many pretty leaves and colors inside it.”
    She was here in the shop way back when the Minotaur came in looking for work. She didn’t flinch at his horns, his snout. Registered, even, something akin to kindness when she looked at him that first time. Widow Fisk made a joke about her bloomers; they were white and silky and draped across the drying rack in the cramped office. She winked at the Minotaur and pointed to a narrow staircase. Told him to see Mitch in Personnel. Told him to visit again on his way out, all those years ago.
    This Saturday, after the day’s dying is finished, Widow Fisk closes her eyes and sniffs at one of the soaps. She offers it to the Minotaur, holds the fragrant bar close to his snout. Widow Fisk is his touchstone, of sorts. His go-to for gossip and guidance. The Minotaur trusts her.
    Occasionally, the Minotaur sees a fully human face and knows something. He makes judgments accordingly. In Widow Fisk’s soft open eyes, the fine web of wrinkled flesh around them, in the fullness of her bottom lip and the two crooked teeth betrayed by every smile (all of them), the Minotaur sees the whole spectrum of life experience. Sees both want and resignation. This Widow Fisk has known misery and pain. But this Widow Fisk is not afraid of joy.
    She smiles, and the tiny fleck of tomato peel stuck to her bottom tooth glows like a beautiful ruby.
    “Mmmnn,” the Minotaur says.
    In the far corner of the Gift Shoppe, two boys tussle over a coonskin cap and a wooden pistol.
    “It’s mine!”
    “Boys,” Widow Fisk says, and that’s all it takes.
    Widow Fisk. She is the one human in Old Scald Village the Minotaur can imagine himself talking to. Even more than sweet fat Biddle. The Minotaur could tell her things. She is the only person there who he’s told anything about his journey, about his coming to the village. How he left behind kitchens and concessions, a different life, below the Mason-Dixon line. How he found himself in uniform and followed the battles north. Dying and dying again. He didn’t tell her everything. He didn’t have to.
    Widow Fisk. The Minotaur can imagine telling her other things. Telling her what he knows. A clear plastic jar sits by the cash register. It’s half full of souvenir key chains, all of them cast-resin anvils. The Minotaur knows a thing or two about anvils. He could tell Widow Fisk these things. The Minotaur could mark the weight. Nearly four hundred pounds of steel. The Minotaur could name the parts, one by one. The bick. The table. The face. The shoulder. The throat. The hardy hole. The pritchel hole. The hanging end.
    The Minotaur will not tell Widow Fisk everything. He will not tell her that sometimes he imagines her into his darkness. That gingham dress pulled up high. Dreams the Minotaur, Widow Fisk at her most animal.
    “Mmmnn, I did,” he says. “Die good.”
    The Minotaur would get very quiet and almost whisper the anvil’s last part, the horn, and Widow Fisk would understand why. She is the only person the Minotaur makes the effort with.
    “Stay away from the Tavern,” she says.
    “Mmmnn?”
    “That old hussy behind the counter is on a rant,” Widow Fisk says. “She cornered me this morning, talked for ten solid minutes about her diarrhea.”
    The Minotaur grunts something like a chuckle.
    “Grab a piece of horehound on the way out, hon,” Widow Fisk says.
    She’s already plucked a couple pieces of the hard candy from the little tin bucket on the counter and is reaching them toward the Minotaur. When he takes them (and he