The Deception of Action

 

Though they lived a great distance from one another, the young boy and the young girl created a relationship that they both knew would never end. Both embraced the idea of sacrificing anything for the other, seeing a long, beautiful future that would eventually truly begin by joining two radically different family lines together.

Tukkuttok sat in the igloo with his parents, staring through the tiny slit near the top of their home, across the blistering white frozen wasteland. The occasional polar bear would cross a safe distance from their home, looking for his next meal as he lumbered toward the waterline. Tukkuttok could see a few plumes of smoke rising from the encampment to the far east, knowing that one of them belonged to Sugusik and her family.

The final edge of winter was relatively close, and he longed for another opportunity to see his friend and throw snowballs at her. It was still far too cold to go outside, so he slipped away from the slit in the wall and huddled close to the fire with his nose beginning to run from the change in temperature. When he warmed to a comfortable point, he rose to his feet and counted the dashes near the front door, aching for the eightieth dash to appear, as it marked his first opportunity to leave their home.

Day followed day and he found himself arguing and fighting with his older brother, wishing he would stop teasing him about his ‘girlfriend’ Sugusik. Both he and she were far too young to even think about marriage, he knew his own heart and from the sparkle in her eyes, he trusted that she felt the same way. Sugusik’s father was a beast of a man, known for heavy drink and physical abuse, so whenever the temperature was amenable, he and she would escape to the small hills behind his community to work on their project of painting a large-scale image of their communities.

Finally, the eightieth day arrived and Tukkuttok could see the slight impact of a moderate rise in temperature, signaling that he could escape outside. Before braving the certain cold of the open outdoors, he warmed himself almost to the point of sweating, donned all of his outdoor clothing, told his mother his plans, and slipped out the door.

Having no desire to face the bitter cold any longer than necessary, he moved at a slow jog toward the opposite community, slowing his pace as he approached Sugusik’s home, being careful to remain out of view of the slit in their wall, doing everything he could to avoid being seen by her father. The last thing he wanted was to receive a beating from a drunk and verbally abusive grown man. At the same time, he knew that if her father even slightly touched him, his own father would intervene.

He kept a close eye on their slit and saw a small pair of eyes appear and twinkle, which surely meant that he and she would soon embrace and escape to the caves to continue their painting. He paced the small space between two opposing igloos waiting for Sugusik to emerge from her home, hopefully not followed by her father. Waving his arms to keep his circulation moving, he remained relatively obscure and received a subtle gesture as she turned to walk toward their cave.

Adjusting his path into a wide arc, he met up with his ‘girlfriend’ at the edge of her community, seized her hand and the two exchanged words, both thrilled at this chance to see one another again since the beginning of winter nearly three months prior. As they made their way into the cave, Tukkuttok built a small fire and moved the now frozen paint supplies near it. They waited for the heat to impose itself upon the paint and their tools, holding hands they walked the rock face that held their ever-growing artistic rendition of the community.

He could feel himself warming and presumed that she felt the same, so he slipped off his gloves, reached under her bearskin jacket, longing to touch her rather than merely see a tiny sliver of her face around her eyes. As he suspected, she was toasty warm and reciprocated the touch by removing her own gloves. Looking into her eyes and actually feeling her brought a shudder of delight that passed over his entire frame.

They slipped out of their jackets and fully embraced one another, both thrilled at the so long for interaction. This was a moment he had been dreaming throughout the entire winter. He knew he was trembling a bit, and he could feel her tremble as well. He had no idea how long they had stood in this long embrace, and he never wanted it to end but the paint would dry out if left too long in the embrace of the flames.

He gave her what he intended to be a quick kiss, but it continued for a gloriously long period of time until they separated and gathered their tools and paint. This beautiful moment became a regular pattern for the next thirty days and they finally finished their artistic creation. As day thirty came and went, they stood together, in a tight embrace, he holding her from behind and she caressing his arms as they looked upon an incredible work of art. A moment of glory that had taken them three spring and summers to complete.

“Now we can enjoy the beauty of the remaining days of summer,” he said. “I think this painting will remain here for hundreds of years and hopefully communicate the truth of our people to whoever comes along after us.” She turned herself around and embraced him as well, burying her face into his chest. She then pulled him toward the fire to gather their things and step into the comfortable sunshine and gentle breeze.

They left their coats at the opening of the cave and chased one another around the field that lay between the caves and the edge of the ocean. Finally sitting down together to look out across the great water, he wondered how the rest of the summer and the summers to follow would play out, now that their work of art was complete. The sun eventually reached the horizon, and he gathered their coats to take her back to her family.

The next several days were spent working with his father and brother, catching, cleaning, and drying fish for the next several months. He could not resist looking across the open space at Sugusik’s home, wondering if she missed him as much as he missed her. After a full week of work, he approached her home and watched for her twinkling eyes in the slit of their home. Two days, then three days, and finally four days passed, and he still saw no sign of Sugusik. He sat alone, feeling empty and confused, until her mother emerged, approached him and told him that Sugusik had left several days ago to visit their extended family on the far northern end of the land.

Knowing that she was gone did not help his emptiness, but he could only spend each day checking for her return and as summer came to an end, there was still no sign of her. Feeling hollow, he snuck off to their cave to relive happy memories and appreciate the beautiful art they had created. He entered the cave, built a small fire to generate enough light to see their art and realized that the massive, beautiful painting was completely gone, as if someone had miraculously erased it from existence.

The only thing that remained was a swirl of brownish sludge in a puddle at the bottom of the wall. Tukkuttok dropped to his knees, confused, angry, sad, and frustrated, wondering what had taken place. The sound of someone clearing their throat pulled him from his sad introspection. He turned to see Sugusik at the cave entrance with her arms folded.

“I’m sorry Tukkuttok,” she said. “I had no way of communicating with you what has taken place, but the artwork needed to go away. What we had was beautiful for a time, but it needed to end, and I couldn’t leave our creation, for it was all a lie.”

Tukkuttok looked at her with so many memories and feelings and disbelief, wondering what had gone wrong. He suspected it had something to do with her father and possibly the long trip she had taken to ‘extended family’, certain that someone else had stolen her away with promises of bigger and grander things than he could accomplish. He watched her turn and disappear into the sunshine outside, feeling broken and defeated, not knowing what to do next.

Now alone with a bitter feeling in his stomach, he began to once again gather the materials to recreate that which had been destroyed. With only his sole efforts to bring it to fruition, he knew it would take twice as long, five possibly six summers before it could be re-imagined in his own vision and voice.