Page 22 - Ferry Tales

Milton

“None of your impertinence—stay in your place!”
“Gladly.” I had a pole longer than ten feet, I but didn’t want to
touch her, either. It does make an excellent spoon when I sup with
His Satanic Majesty.
“I don’t have time to be dead. I’ll have you know I’m on the
boards of six Fortune 500 companies.”
“Not any more. You are on board the Styx misfortune ferry, and
I’m your company. You’re headed for Hell, Milton.”
She wasn’t ready for that. “Says who? If I’m dead, I’m not dead
enough to let others push me around. Hell, you say? That implies
punishment for sins, right? That’s ridiculous: just a scary fairy tale to
frighten the weak and generate revenue for religion. People are just
animals, no more or less. The strong and the crafty rise to the top: if
nature has laws, that’s number one. It keeps the population trim and
fit. Or it would, if we’d stop holding back the winners to give the
losers false hope and more opportunities to dilute the gene pool.”
Same self-congratulatory misreading of that guy with the
explanation of evolution; I’ve heard it ad nauseum from people who
want to believe their positions of power result either from their deity
electing them to rule or that they deserve their exalted positions by
dint of their own superior qualities and nose-to-the-grindstone work
ethic. Frieda Milton was one among that multitude, and I don’t let
any of them get very far on their voyage to Perdition without being
taken down a peg or two.
“Let me see if I understand you,” I say, as if I am struggling
heroically to grasp the profundity of her position. “Whatever might
qualify an individual for damnation is not found in animals; human
beings are animals; therefore, Hell, if it exists, is empty. Do I have
that right?”
She ponders the pithy brilliance of my restatement of her implicit
syllogism. “Sure do. I don’t know where you are pushing this barge,
but it will be somewhere I can reassert my dominance and run it
according to best practices of corporate governance.”
“Wait a minute, Milton. You made a logical leap or two. People
may be animals, but animals are not people. Only humans have the
brain functions permitting knowledge of the future; that is, an idea of
21