Wisdom Keeper

by Ilarion Merculieff

  “Affirmative, Scott, I am on my way.”

  “Jeff,” Scott continued. “I plan to get their attention with flash grenades and hopefully give me a chance to use the vehicle loudspeaker to talk them down! And we gotta split them up, so when we do, you take one group!”

  “Roger that,” Jeff replied.

  Scott arrived on an incredible scene along with Jeff, who was in another vehicle. Jeff and Scott are brothers and both trained police officers. Local men were fighting with about twenty commercial fishermen who had come ashore on leave that night. Many of the men, on both sides, had knives, wooden clubs, and metal pipes. Some had large rocks in their hands.

  Scott jumped out of his vehicle and ignited the flash grenade that went off with a dramatic, loud bang and a bright flash. The rioting men stopped in their tracks. Scott quickly grabbed his shotgun and announced over his vehicle’s PA system, with a trained and strong voice of authority, “This is the Saint Paul Police Department! I want all of you to drop your weapons and hit the ground immediately or face the consequences!” All but two dropped whatever they had in their hands and fell to the ground. Jeff then drove his vehicle between the men to split the groups in half. One guy kept ahold of his knife, and Scott walked to within ten feet of him.

  “Mister, if you don’t drop your weapon right now and get on the ground face down, I am going to assume you are intending to use it!” Scott stated, holding up his shotgun. The man let go of his knife and dropped to the ground. As Scott handcuffed the fisherman, he said, “You are being charged with inciting a riot and use of a deadly weapon with intent to do bodily harm!” While locking the handcuffs, Scott turned to the other man still standing. “If you don’t want to join your friend in our small jail with riot and weapons charges, lose your job, and find your own way off this island, you better drop your weapon now!” Scott commanded. The second man quickly complied and backed off.

  “I want all the non-locals out of here now and back to your boats! You are not welcome in this town anymore, and I will make sure your captain knows that!” Scott stated on the PA system. Some local citizens, watching the drama from on the hill, cheered.

  Twenty commercial fishermen made their way to the dock as Jeff in his vehicle and Scott on foot, shotgun in hand, followed behind. Scott then ordered all the locals to disband and go home. Scott also ordered the only bar, owned by the tribal government and selling only beer, closed. The local tribal president agreed that it was a good idea. Later I found out that the riot had been incited by some lewd remarks from an off-island commercial fisherman made to a local married woman in the bar that brought quick reaction from the local men.

  And so it went that first year as city manager in a small, remote village in the middle of the Bering Sea. At first it was surreal—as if out of some B-grade movie script in which a new sheriff comes to clean up a wild west town. But life in the community became more peaceful, and the Elders were walking the streets again, relaxed.

  Chapter 26

  As the Island Turns, Part II

  After working at cleaning up the town, I set my sights on an environmental issue on the island. The people took pride in the island and were active in protecting it. I recall how at least a dozen households had called to tell me that processing boat workers, on leave, were scaring the fur seals off the beach next to the village. Mike Zacharof and I mobilized a group of men to go down there and got them to stop. I then told Scott to tell the processors to recall the men on leave and tell them they would not be welcome on the island should this happen again. They had no choice but to comply. We never had problems with the process workers again.

  Another issue at hand were seven vessels that had run aground on Saint Paul. The abandoned vessels were strewn next to fur seal rookeries and bird cliffs. When one of them, the 370-foot Ruyuyu Maru, ran aground next to the bird cliffs across from the village, the U.S. Coast Guard at the LORAN station on the island didn’t know what to do or how to rescue the men because there were no roads to access the vessel. The storm-driven waves made it impossible for the men to disembark to walk to safety. The local men knew what to do, however. They made a pulley system on a tripod on top of the two-hundred-foot cliff and pulled the shipwrecked seamen to the top. It worked, but the vessel was then left to rust next to the bird cliffs. I recall how sad I felt that the birds would suffer the consequences. So, remembering this and how I felt about all the other vessels that had run aground on the island during storms, I thought we could and should do something.

  We first contacted the owner of one of the vessels to ask about any plans to remove the remains of the rusting ship. We were told the vessel had been abandoned and to go see the owner’s insurance agent. We contacted the insurance agent, who said the asset had already been written off and that there were no injuries, so no liability. We then contacted the National Marine Fisheries Service because several of the vessels had run aground next to a fur seal rookery. The response was, “We can’t do anything, why don’t you try the Fish and Wildlife Service?” We received a similar reply and a suggestion that we contact the U.S. Coast Guard, who told us that they had no jurisdiction over such matters because the United States was not party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Basically, all parties denied responsibility, so we decided to sue all of them at once. Authorized by all the organizations on the island, we called and notified the parties of our intent to sue. That broke the ice. We were able to secure the funds necessary to dismantle all the boats and get rid of them.

  Unfortunately, the village corporation that got the contract to clean up the mess decided to bury the hunks of metal in a ditch on the island. I was outraged. I decided to approach the school kids who used to use the video arcade in the community hall. I requested a school meeting to explain the situation: “We were able to get those responsible to pay for removal of the vessels that have run aground on the island, and this is a good first step. The village corporation (now under new leadership) got the contract to remove ships, but they are planning to bury the metal on our land. Do you think this is good?” I asked.

  “Noooo,” was the group response.

  “Well then, do you want to do something about it?”

  “Yesss,” came the reply.

  So I let them in on a plan that could possibly work, which was to ask them to make posters and to lobby their parents to have the metal removed off island and to a recycling center. The students eagerly agreed, and before long there were posters around the village that said things like “Don’t Make Our Island A Dump,” “Let’s Keep Our Island Clean,” and “Let’s Recycle.” They lobbied their parents and even made arm bands they wore everywhere to broadcast this student effort to keep the island clean. In the meantime, I told the students to find out what recycling companies were out there. Their research led them to a company in Tacoma, Washington, that accepted large metal scraps, and the students gave this information to the village corporation. The village was then able to negotiate with the company to accept the metals that came from the dismantled vessels. Soon, all the vessels were dismantled and shipped off the island. To this day, I am proud of those students who participated. Without their intervention, we would have a vessel boneyard. And kudos to the village corporation leadership that listened to the students and their parents.

  Having cleaned up the abandoned vessels from the island, I set my sights on other things. A Fish and Wildlife field rep, Art Sowls, asked me if we could do something about rats that came off the fishing vessels when they came to the harbor to offload crab to a private processor. I said, “Yes, we should do something about it. What do we know about these rats?”

  Art replied, “Well, we know that these rats leave fishing vessels, and they are so prolific that if a male and female rat come onto the island, the island will soon be infested with them. We know, from the rats on the Aleutians, that they can decimate seabird nesting colonies. I know of a guy who understands these kinds of rats. He is considered a world rat expert. We should ta
lk with him.”

  I agreed. After talking with the rat expert, we installed the toughest rat ordinances in the United States. Any motor vessel coming into the Saint Paul port would have to be inspected by locally trained people, and any vessel that had indications of rats would be forced to leave the island immediately. Upon leaving the island, crew would have to show proof the vessel had been inspected and found rat free in order to return to Saint Paul. In this effort, we got the students involved once again. They made rat traps and painted them with whatever message they wanted to convey about rats. We placed these rat traps around the docks and at the community dump. Thus far, these measures have worked.

  After demonstrating our success at preventing rats from coming onto the island, the Fish and Wildlife Service focused on destroying the rats in the Aleutian Islands. This took extensive effort, but they have been able to recover one entire island from rat infestation thus far.

  Chapter 27

  An Unangan Love Story

  Perhaps the most poignant of experiences I had as city manager came when a man, ten years younger than me, came into the office seeking help. I had known this man since he was a little boy and I was a teenager. In a village one gets to know the life stories of everyone in the community, and I knew his.

  This man had come from a family troubled by alcohol since the day he was born. In those days, Unangan people made homebrew, or peeva as it was known in Unangan Tunuu, an illegal activity as far as the U.S. government agent was concerned. Peeva was made in large fifty-gallon wooden barrels and included canned fruits, potatoes, raisins, and quite a few other things I will not list. The mixture was allowed to ferment for several weeks in the water-filled barrel. In an effort to limit the quantities that could be made, the agent made sure the government store rationed everything, including items that could be used in homebrew. But somehow, anyone who wanted to make peeva, in whatever quantities they desired, could do so.

  As a child, I hated homebrew for all it did and represented. It was foul-tasting stuff, but potent, and brought nothing but grief, trauma, and drama into every Unangan household. Every weekend, beginning on Fridays, and every holiday was sure to include the adults drinking homebrew to the point of drunken stupor. I had spent a lifetime healing the traumas of these times when most adults could not be trusted. Many of my peers were sexually molested, including my sister and me, when our parents were out “partying.” I will also never forget when someone partying in our home got into a drunken brawl with my uncle. I vividly remember this man’s fist connecting with my uncle’s jaw with a sharp thud that instantly knocked my uncle to the floor unconscious. I was stunned, afraid, and finally astonished that my uncle was snoring loudly, as if he was just sleeping.

  On another occasion, during the Christmas holidays, I was walking on one of the village streets, headed to a friend’s house to play with his new toys. I heard loud shouting coming from a home. There was some kind of terrible fight going on between a man and his wife. The door to the outside of their home flew open, and this man dragged his wife outside with full force by her hair. The woman screamed in terror. As an eight-year-old child, I wanted to help, but I knew it would be useless. The man’s intensely reddened face and neck clearly showed he was in a mad rage. His powerful jerking actions pulled a large part of his wife’s hair off her skull. There was blood everywhere, and the woman fainted. I thought she was dead. The man then seemed to have come to his senses and dropped to his knees, letting out an agonizing wail.

  I was terrified and ran home sobbing uncontrollably. When I arrived, no one was there. I piled into my Army issue bed and pulled my Army issue blanket over my head, as if to block out the world. I just tried to get the image of what I had seen out of my head but went into a deep and nightmare-filled sleep that night.

  I could readily imagine what it must have been like during the childhood of the man who was now before me in my office. At least I had two parents who fed, clothed, and took care of me the best they knew how. This man had never had even partially functional parents. His parents were complete alcoholics who drank almost every day that I could remember. The children of their home were always sleeping in other people’s homes, always hungry, and poorly clothed. The man in my office had been an alcoholic since his teenage years and had experimented with alcohol when he was younger than that. I could see the years of pain and suffering on his bloated face as he walked into my office. His eyes were looking downward, and his body was slumped, as if he were physically carrying a heavy packsack. I welcomed him in.

  “Good to see you, Bucky Boy!” Bucky Boy was the nickname he grew up with. “Sit down and tell me how I can help you.”

  I knew this was something very important because Bucky Boy never had asked for a meeting with any of his employers in his entire life. Bucky Boy had very low self-esteem and so would never take it upon himself to ask for any kind of meeting, let alone do it face-to-face with the “big boss.”

  Bucky Boy fidgeted in his seat as he stared at the floor, never looking me in the eyes.

  “I need your help, Larry,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I want to go to alcohol detox.”

  Because I had known this man for almost my entire life, I knew he meant what he was saying. I knew it took a lot for him to be in my office that day. I also knew what he wanted. There were no detox centers in the village. The nearest one was eight hundred miles away, on the mainland, in Anchorage. It would cost a dollar a mile for an airline ticket. I also knew that there were only three detox centers in Anchorage, and they cost thousands of dollars. This man had earned minimum wage for most of his life, and so I knew he was asking the city to sponsor him. However, the city had nothing in its budget or policies that allowed for such a thing.

  “I believe you, Bucky,” I said. “I will help. Will you be ready to leave as soon as I can set it up?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” Bucky replied.

  “I’m glad you’re doing this, Bucky. Anyone who is willing to stop drinking will always have my support,” I said gently. “You won’t regret it, but it won’t be easy.”

  “I know. Thank you,” he said with obvious tears in his eyes.

  I knew that my commitment to expend thousands of dollars of city funds for something never authorized by the city council would likely spell political trouble with certain members of the city staff and council. But, I also knew enough about alcoholism that moments of opportunity had to be seized upon whenever they occurred. This was such a moment, and I wasn’t going to waste it, regardless of the cost.

  “Larry, you can’t do this. It isn’t authorized!” A city employee protested as she approached me upon hearing what I had instructed the accounting staff to do. “And besides that, it sets a bad precedent. A lot of the city employees have alcohol problems. Are you going to pay for all of them if they ask to be put into a treatment center?” she exclaimed loudly. “And besides, this could cost you your job!”

  I knew Darcy was well-meaning, and that she had a good heart, so I never questioned her motives in telling me what she did. “Darcy, I have made up my mind, and this is going to be done. I can’t value the life of another human being in dollars! If it saves one person’s life, it’s worth it! And that’s my final word on the subject!”

  Bucky Boy followed through with his commitment when I made the arrangements with the treatment center and airline. It was to be a month of detox in which he would not be allowed outside contact. I knew it would be hell for him at first, having seen people go through detox after a three-month daily drinking binge—delirious and babbling incoherently, incontinent and even some in diapers to avoid urinating or defecating themselves. One had to be physically strapped to the bed because he constantly ripped out the tubes bringing vitamins, minerals, and fluids into his badly dehydrated body. It was heart-wrenching to watch adults acting like rabid animals. Yes, Bucky Boy was in for it.

  Two weeks later, I got a surprising pronouncement from my secretary. “Larry, Bucky Boy is on the line and he
wants to talk with you.”

  “Bucky Boy, good to hear you, my friend. How is it that you are able to call me?” I was surprised because I knew that detox clients were simply not allowed to communicate with anyone on the outside until their final day of the one-month program.

  Bucky Boy’s voice was clear and serious. “Larry, I need to tell you something. I got a physical check-up, and they told me I have cancer, and that I have maybe a few months to live,” he said, so matter-of-factly.

  Oh, shit! I thought to myself.

  “I don’t want you to tell my wife. She has enough problems to worry about without worrying about that,” Bucky Boy stated firmly. “I’m going to finish up my detox treatment so I can come home clear and be with her, because I love her. But I wanted you to know since you have stuck with me when I asked for help.”

  “Oh, Bucky, I am so sorry to hear this! My heart goes out to you. Is there anything I can do to make it any easier for you?”

  “No, nothing except would you help my wife if she needs any help?”

  My god, I thought to myself. He just got news that he has a few months to live and his only thought is of his wife and not himself! “Sure, you got it, Bucky. Anything!”

  “Well, that’s all for now. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  “Okay, see you, Bucky. I will keep you in my prayers.” Two days later, Bucky Boy’s wife asked to meet with me. “Hi, Louise, come in, sit down. You want some coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” she replied with the same kind of low voice of her husband.

  As soon as I closed my door for privacy, she began crying. I thought that somehow she must have found out about her husband’s terminal cancer. This woman had known me since I was first born, and I remember many times we had fun together when I was five, six, and seven years old. She was eight years my senior, but as a child I always thought of her as part of my extended family. We had grown apart as we became adults. I knew she came from a similar troubling background as her husband, and somehow they found each other later in their adult lives at a drinking party.