“Giving With One Hand; Taking With The Other”

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“God made everything out of the void, but the void shines through.” —Paul Valery

“Anyone who isn’t confused doesn’t really understand the situation.” —Edward R. Murrow

Clemson, SC—(Weekly Hubris)—7/12/10—Miksa, an only child whose name means “the one between,” was reared by parents who forbade sweets and rewarded him with Eskimo Pies. In the winter, he ate blubber by the light of a beeswax candle; in the summer, he ate honey by the light of a whale-oil lantern.

His father, Pukiq, the tribe’s over-achieving undertaker, brought a refrigerator home one day, explaining that it would keep the milk from freezing. Farther south, he said, the haunted boxes were used to keep the milk from becoming cheese. “The machine’s like your breath—it thaws your frozen fingers even as it cools your soup.”

When Miksa’s parents went seal hunting, the lad stayed with one of his grandmothers. One told him, “What will be will be.”

The other said, “Life is what you make of it.”

Miksa often returned home with a headache, which his father said was a form of freezer burn. “Same difference,” he said.

When Miksa turned 16, Pukiq cornered him in the igloo and said, “You’re free to do as you must, son. It’s time for you to get untracked.” So they went outside where the father showed him how to build a toasty shelter from packed snow. “Now for the hundredth time, I’m not going to repeat myself, so pay attention. You may think we are riding the bipolar express around here, but sometimes you have to plan to be spontaneous. You know, think outside the box while coloring within the lines. Take this dome,” he said, “the more snow I pile on it, the stronger it becomes. Snow is like salt—it can kill or preserve. I trust you know that the icebergs in Norton Bay are fresh, but the water they’re floating in can kill you. You must learn the difference. Life’s a puzzle, Miksa—when one of the dogs dies in the traces, it falls down; when a seal dies, it ‘falls’ up. Animals know how to live and die instinctively. If humans don’t want to learn, nothing can stop them.”

Miksa, therefore, made up his mind to discover why things not worth mentioning were discussed at considerable length. After flying from Koyuk to Fairbanks, he thumbed a ride to Seattle with a compassionate conservative named Dark Starr who told his passenger, “The more the merrier, but three’s a crowd.” Starr was on his way south because he was “head over heels in love” with a girl from Portland. “When I came to Dead Horse to make my fortune in the oil fields,” said Starr with a smile, “I figured ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ but ‘absence made my heart grow fonder.’”

A few hours down the Alcan Highway, a Mountie pulled alongside Starr and motioned him to the side of the road. “Young man,” he said, “I clocked you doing close to a hundred on that last hill.”

“I could care less,” said Starr, “but tell me, how can I break the law of Canada while obeying the laws of physics?”

“Son, you have a right to do anything on this road that I cannot see,” said the officer with a black belt in Yoga as he wrote the ticket.

After Starr calmed down, Miksa asked his Republican friend why he’d left home in the first place. “My parents!” said Starr. “Like the Marines, they were never at peace unless they were fighting. One Saturday night, Dad came home drunk and battered my Mom. They X-rayed her head and found nothing, but she was never the same. Although she’d been drinking with her slam-dancing boyfriend, the judge gave Dad 20 years. When he was paroled two years later, all he ever said was, ‘Why did your mother leave me to raise you?’ The dissonance was deafening, so I split. The last thing Dad told me was, ‘The furthest way out is the nearest way home.’ I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.” But Miksa understood.

At daybreak, Starr dropped his passenger at a Seattle hotel and headed south. As the car drove off, the Inuit lad noticed Starr’s bumper sticker for the first time, “Honk if you love peace and quiet.” The sign on the hotel’s revolving door also boded well: “Members and Non-members Only.” A poster in the lobby touted an upcoming concert—Percy Sledge and the Love Tractor.

After checking in, Miksa walked up the down escalator to his room. He slept for a few hours and headed for the dining room, where the cook’s specialty was “chicken soup for the vegetarian soul.” Miksa sensed a kindred spirit. His name was Kaya, and he hailed from Barrow. As Miksa ate, he asked this fellow emigrant about job opportunities. “You appear to know nothing,” said the cook, “and could care less. I’d say China Mart is your best bet.”

“Well, here goes nothing,” said Miksa, pushing himself back from the table.

The first sign he saw in the cavernous store said, “Buy one at twice the price, and get the second free.” Miksa immediately felt at home and was hired to sell appliances because he understood the psychic sumo of refrigerators. Minutes later, the new sales associate confided to a customer that a China Mart vacuum cleaner would “cut his work in half.”

“Good,” said the customer, “I’ll take two.”

The store manager, who’d overheard this transaction, thought, “At last, a hire who can lead by walking behind. Management material!” But, a week later, our hero was fired in Beijing’s effort to spare no expense in cutting costs. Before he left, he was instructed to train his replacement.

Though Miksa understood that we’re all in this together by ourselves, he eventually returned to Koyuk, where he’d learned to smell the roses while staying off the grass. Pukiq greeted him saying, “Son, you are the exception that proves the rule. Welcome home!”

Expecting a surprise, our poor prodigal realized there was none, which didn’t surprise him.