Sixteen years have passed since Steven Sherrill first introduced us to “M,” the selfsame Minotaur from Greek mythology, transplanted to the modern American South, in the critically acclaimed The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break . M has moved north now, from a life of kitchens and trailer parks, to that of Civil War re-enactor at a run-down living history park in the dying blue-collar rustbelt of central Pennsylvania. Though he dies now, in uniform, on a regular basis, M's world, his daily struggles, remain unchanged. Isolation. Loneliness. Other-ness. Shepherded, cared for by the Guptas (the immigrant family who runs the motel where he lives, outsiders in their own right) and tolerated by his neighbors, by most of his coworkers at Old Scald Village, but tormented by a few, M wants only to find love and understanding. The serendipitous arrival of Holly and her damaged brother, halted on their own journey of loss, stirs hope in the Minotaur’s life. As their paths overlap we find ourselves rooting for the old bull as he stumbles toward a real live human relationship. Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction, he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break , was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch “Neil Gaiman Presents” for Audible.com. A prolific painter and nascent musician, Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona. "Sherrill gives his Minotaur a ­forlorn Buster Keaton dignity. M has a silent film’s starring role in the midst of a ­country-and-western talkie. Precisely by limiting the beast to deeds, not speech, the writer eventually creates―against all odds―a living hybridized contradiction. M, if stuck in the quicksand of our ­ticky-tack present, somehow still participates in the silent scale of myth." — The New York Times Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction, he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch “Neil Gaiman Presents” for Audible.com. A prolific painter and nascent musician, Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona. The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time By Steven Sherrill John F. Blair Copyright © 2016 Steven Sherrill All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-89587-673-7 CHAPTER 1 THE MINOTAUR FALLS DEAD in the Pennsylvania mud. Belly up. Bang. It is April. Mud season. Dying season. The mud is black. The sky is blue. The Minotaur is dead. The black mud pulls hard. So, too, the blue sky. The Minotaur succumbs. The Minotaur falls dead belly up. Maybe one thick horn tip gouges the earth. Maybe it doesn't. Either way the Minotaur falls dead. Belly up. As planned. A gut full of grapeshot. Or maybe a musket ball. Doesn't matter. It is dying season. Mud season. Late April, maybe. The Minotaur's calendar is imprecise. Doesn't matter. The Minotaur falls dead, as planned. "Pour it into 'em, boys!" "For God and country, boys!" "This war will be over by Christmas, boys!" Cannon fodder. The Minotaur takes the hit, snorts through his bullish nostrils, and goes down in black muck. The black muck splatters across his gray wool jacket. The regiment clanks and rattles through the field, toward noon. Lunch break. The Minotaur is among the first to die. Doesn't matter to him. The battlefield looks better with bodies. Always. He waits for the first volley of rifle shots — insipid, arrhythmic little bursts of smoke from the opposing side. From the Union. Then he dies. Like a good Confederate. A good Rebel. He dies. The rest of the regiment bumbles ahead — the hardcore, the starry-eyed dilettantes, history piddlers, triflers, all stumble toward their own deaths. Or victories. Doesn't matter. "Rally round the flag, boys!" "Give 'em hell!" The Minotaur falls dead, belly up. Welcomes death. The sweet release. The absence of unending life. Bang. The end. Gravity's unrelenting grip on his snout, his horns, finally, once and for all, conquering. Falls dead, the Minotaur, belly up. Willing and able to let it all go. The wars, and the humans who make them, will rage on with or without him. Clamor and clang. The battlefield looks better with bodies. They all do. Always. The Minotaur falls dead on this battlefield, belly up. Belly up, because he wants to see. Wants, in death, to watch. The Minotaur grunts when he falls. "Unngh," he says, falls dead. CHAPTER 2 THAT VERY MORNING, NOT DEAD YET but getting ready to die, the Minotaur, in his motel room, dressed with care. He put on the rough trousers, the