Big Miracle

by Tom Rose

  General Schaeffer walked with the colonel to the copy machine across the hall. Carroll glanced at the document the general was about to copy, which contained Schaeffer’s handwritten call sheet with the names and numbers of everyone involved in the rescue. The colonel was prepared to find the names of some of Alaska’s most prominent citizens: Senator Stevens, Governor Cowper, Bill Allen, and Ben Odom. But he was taken aback by the name on top of the list: Cindy Lowry.

  “Isn’t she the Greenpeace gal with the bullhorn?” he asked the general.

  “Yup. She sure is,” Schaeffer responded. “And, like it or not, you’ll have to work with her. She’s the one who started this whole thing in the first place. We’re on her side in this one, Tom.”

  Colonel Carroll had nothing against Cindy. He didn’t know her personally. But he wondered how someone so well known for her rabble-rousing against the United States Armed Forces in Alaska could be so suddenly interested in participating in a top down military operation.

  Tom Carroll tried to call Cindy Lowry, but he couldn’t get through because she was on the phone to Geoff and Craig, who had just gotten back from a day on the ice with the whales. They were discussing strategy for that night’s critical Barrow whaling captains meeting. They confirmed what she had been watching all morning on her television. The whales were fast becoming a local phenomenon, a tourist attraction, and a national news event all in one.

  By Saturday afternoon, October 15, a week and a day after they were first discovered, the whales now had almost round-the-clock company. Some Eskimo hunters and the few media crews already in town joined Geoff and Craig to spend the entire day with the animals. The whales would never again go unattended during daylight hours. Geoff and Craig told Cindy that as they were about to leave, they discovered the youngest whale had trouble breathing. The baby whale wheezed, coughed up lots of water, and looked exhausted. Until that moment, Geoff and Craig were ordered to observe the whales, not to interfere. The whales needed more room to breathe. The hole they depended on for survival was once sixty feet by thirty feet. In the eight days since the whales were first discovered, it had shrunk by two-thirds. The hole would soon completely freeze over.

  The two biologists wanted to help. If they could just slightly expand the hole, the whales could breathe easier and buy some precious time. They shouted their ideas for expanding the holes over the deafening whine of their ski machine as it raced across the bleak Arctic landscape on the long, cold ride back to Barrow. Before ending the conversation to clear her line, Cindy asked Geoff and Craig if they had heard anything yet from Ron Morris.

  “Who is Ron Morris?” they asked.

  “Ron Morris, from NOAA Fisheries. He’s the project coordinator,” Cindy answered. Morris was due in on the 3:30 P.M. flight. She didn’t know if anyone had arranged lodging for him. There weren’t many hotel rooms left. This wasn’t Morris’s problem alone; Cindy would find herself in the same spot before she knew it. The next call came from Campbell Plowden in Washington. He told her to get up to Barrow on the next available flight.

  “Don’t worry about packing,” he instructed. “Just throw some things in an overnight bag. You won’t be up there but a day or so.”

  It was too late for the last flight to Barrow, which left Anchorage at 3:40. The next flight was not until tomorrow, Sunday morning. About the same time Cindy got her marching orders, Ron Morris’s plane began its descent. He was about to enter a world that after many previous visits still remained a mystery. Just five years short of becoming a naturalized sourdough, the fifty-four-year-old Morris could never quite figure out how a town like Barrow ever got started. Morris couldn’t imagine a more depressing place.

  When the pilot turned on the NO SMOKING sign signaling the final approach into Barrow’s Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport, Morris leaned back to finish his Bloody Mary mix. Morris popped a couple of Tic-Tacs and was ready to face the world. He wanted to make a good first impression. He stroked his beard as the plane taxied. He took good care to nourish his rakish nautical air. With his thinning silver hair, someone commented that Morris looked like one of those little wooden carvings of Maine lobstermen sold in souvenir shops across the country. All he lacked was the bright yellow slicker.

  If he wasn’t convinced already, Morris needed no further reminders of where the 737 landed once he stepped off the plane. It was nearly fifty degrees colder in Barrow than it was in Anchorage. Barrow and Anchorage seemed like two different worlds. In many ways they were. Anchorage was closer to Seattle than to Barrow. Separating them were more than a thousand miles of wilderness. Man and his ability to fly over it were all that connected the two vastly different realms.

  No one was waiting for Ron Morris at the airport. Like everyone else who arrived in Barrow for this during the surreal days, he had no idea where to go or what to do. After grabbing his frozen nylon bag from the rickety stainless-steel luggage chute, Morris looked out the smoke-stained terminal window into a Barrow street scene shrouded in the steam emanating from the buildings and passing cars around him. He made out an AIRPORT INN sign across the street. As he pushed open the light lacquer pine door, Morris noticed no trace of his breath condensing on the window just inches from his face.

  Must be Arctic plastic, he thought. Ordinary glass would have shattered in the bone-chilling temperatures. The first blast of Arctic air hit him, as it does every visitor, square in the face. Grimacing, he sarcastically mumbled, “Not a bad day.” Remembering earlier visits when things were really bad, he regained his perspective. At least they haven’t lost the light.

  Ed Benson still had a couple of empty rooms at the Airport Inn. But by the time Morris showed up, Benson could ask and get $225 a night for a warm bed and a shower. Born and raised in New York City, Morris knew when he was being conned. But he also knew when he had no choice. He dropped his American Express card on the shelf atop the half-open Dutch door to the service counter.

  While Morris unpacked his overnight bag, Ed Benson shouted to him from the bottom of the stairs. Tom Albert from the Department of Wildlife Management was calling to tell him about the whaling captains’ meeting that night at Barrow High School. Before hanging up, Ron asked Albert where he could get a bite to eat before the meeting. Morris wanted to find out more about the whole harvesting issue. He saw reports of it on the news and on his desk back in Anchorage. If a competent Eskimo could convince him there was no hope of saving the whales, and Geoff and Craig would agree, then Morris would not stand in the way.

  Tom Albert, the director of wildlife management for the North Slope, arranged for the newly assembled rescue team to get together at Pepe’s before going to the high school for the whaling captains’ meeting at 7:30. Over dinner, Ron Morris could debrief Geoff and Craig. If the whalers voted to spare the three California grays, Ron wanted to make sure everyone knew that he would be in charge. NOAA appointed him coordinator of a rescue, should it be approved by the whalers.

  Geoff and Craig looked exhausted as they pulled up their chairs in the crowded restaurant. Five days on the frozen surface of the Chukchi Sea at thirty-five degrees below zero had started to take its toll. The human body needs at least seven thousand calories a day to stay warm outside in the Arctic. Morris watched in wonder as the two men devoured more of the world’s most overpriced Mexican food in a single sitting than he could afford in a week. Between the two of them, their bill came to almost one hundred dollars. A couple fresh reporters spotted the biologists. Now that they were off duty, they couldn’t refuse to answer a question or two, could they? Whenever asked, Geoff and Craig always answered that the fate of the whales lay not in their hands or any state officers’ hands, but in the hands of the whaling captains. No one could help the animals if the Barrow elders decided to kill them.

  “But what if they decide not to kill them?” NBC’s Don Oliver asked in a gravelly voice. “Could anything be done to save them?”

  Before either Geoff and Craig had a chance to answer, Ron Morris faced
directly into the blinding glare of the NBC crew’s lights and calmly but confidently introduced himself.

  “My name’s Ron Morris,” said the man from NOAA. “I was appointed earlier today as the coordinator of Operation Breakout. As you know, the whaling captains meet in just about an hour to figure out what they are going to do. The meeting is open and you’re invited to attend. Once it’s over, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have, if I can.”

  Finally, someone had arrived on the scene who could handle Oliver and his constant questions. They were impressed with the way Morris invited him to the whaling captains’ meeting. Morris seemed a natural.

  No matter how badly some of the younger Eskimos wanted to harvest the three trapped whales, none could ignore the presence of the media descending on Barrow. All three major networks were getting their acts together. By the next night, Sunday, October 16, they would all be in Barrow. Even cash-strapped CNN found a way to send its own crew to cover the stranding. Malik wanted to arrive at the meeting early. He sought to talk some sense into the brash young Eskimos clamoring for a chance to strike the stranded whales. Malik knew that killing the animals could shake subsistence whaling to its very core.

  To the newly arrived press corps, Malik might have been just another Inupiat Eskimo living at the Top of the World, but he was smarter than any Outsider would realize. Walking into the high school on Takpuk Street, Malik wore a warm outer garment called a parkee. It was made from the skins of light brown caribou fawns and the shimmering gray fur of male Arctic squirrels. His traditional lightweight boots, called mukluks, were made of bearded sealskin, or Oogruk.

  When Malik entered the school, several reporters were already there. Most of them had just gotten to town and stopped by the high school. Few thought the meeting worth more than superficial coverage. Almost none had ever seen anyone dressed like Malik. As he walked out into the hall way to pour himself a cup of hot coffee, NBC cameraman Bruce Gray lifted his heavy equipment back onto his shoulders. The powerful lights affixed to his camera nearly blinded a stunned Malik when he came back into the room. Gray focused his lens on Malik’s mukluks, then on his parkee, while at the same time preparing to take pictures of Malik’s archetypal Inuit face.

  Before Barrow’s top whaling crews could make their way into the classroom assigned to them, it was clear they would have to move to accommodate all the people interested in attending the public meeting. There were more than a dozen Outsiders and around fifty Barrowans anxious to see what would happen to the trapped whales. They moved across the hall to a state-of-the-art semicircular audio visual projection auditorium filled with around a hundred padded theater chairs. That room was just big enough to seat everyone.

  A short, powerfully built Eskimo man, wearing wide silver-frame glasses over dark sunken eyes and a rounded robust face, waited patiently to start the meeting. His name was Arnold Brower Jr., and he was one of the most successful whaling captains in Barrow. He was one of the top young “subsistence” whalers. His crew killed five bowhead whales during the spring season alone; an almost unheard of accomplishment, even for his mentor Malik.

  Arnold Brower Jr., was part of one of the world’s largest Inuit families. In fact, many of the hundred or so people in the auditorium were named Brower. It seemed that nearly every Eskimo in Barrow was either named Brower or had close relatives that were.

  The Browers could trace their Eskimo lineage back thousands of years, but their name came from modern times. Their patriarch was a brash young explorer from New York City who came to Barrow in the 1880s in search of adventure. Brower discovered much more than even his burgeoning dreams could fathom. He found an immense fortune and a stunning legacy. The former came from selling coal to new steam-powered commercial whaling ships plying through cold Arctic waters in search of bounty. The latter, legend has it, came from Brower taking prodigious advantage of the Eskimo’s most enticing cultural trait: spouse sharing.

  No one knew for sure how many Inupiats were actually sired by Charlie Brower, but within a generation, there were literally hundreds of them. They were everywhere. Brower had dozens of “family” trading posts stretching all along Alaska’s North Slope. They were all run by people who claimed to be Browers. Soon there were so many Browers in and around Barrow, they built their own section of town and named it, aptly, Browerville.

  What started as a haphazard collection of traditional sod and whalebone huts had become a veritable Barrow suburb by 1988. Browers of all shapes and sizes lived in heated homes with running water. There was even a shuttle bus to take them the four hundred yards to “downtown” Barrow. When they died, Browers were laid to rest in their own family burial ground.

  Like many of Barrow’s subsistence hunters, Arnold Brower Jr. took pay from the North Slope Borough. But unlike many others, Brower actually worked for his living. He was one of Mayor George Ahmaogak’s top aides. Since the mayor was out of town attending an Alaska Federation of Natives meeting, and the deputy mayor, Warren Matumeak, was unavailable, Arnold Jr. was left to run the whaling captains’ meeting. Emergency whaling meetings were rare, but if ever there was an occasion that could be called an emergency, this was it. No Barrowan was threatened with starvation. Nor were there massive fleets of commercial whaling vessels just offshore killing all the whales Barrow used to depend on for survival. This threat was uniquely modern.

  To the reporters dazzled by his strange-looking boots and classic Inuit face, Malik appeared to be a primitive Eskimo whose features would make colorful national news footage. They would soon learn that Malik was much more than a great video sound-bite.

  Malik knew that, for whatever reason, tens of millions of people in the Lower 48 were glued to the saga of the three stranded whales gasping for breath at the top of the world. This was Barrow’s first and probably last chance to make any kind of impression on so many Outsiders. Malik also realized that if the cameras captured the image of a cruel band of Inuit hunters, no matter how small, out to kill a few more beloved whales, it could mean the end of Eskimo whaling, and hence the end of traditional Inuit life. Once the gruesome pictures came down off Aurora I, the damage would be done.

  The only question left to answer would be the severity of the consequences. Malik had to do all he could to make sure it never happened. Just before Arnold Jr. moved to open the meeting, Malik gently but forcefully pushed the startled Brower into a corner. Malik insisted on talking privately with a group of four stubborn young whalers still clamoring to slaughter the trapped animals. Speaking in his native Inupiat, Malik told the young men, his own disciples, that the stakes of their impetuous action were far too high. Shaking his head in stern, somber rebuke, Malik demanded they cancel their request to harvest the whales.

  The young whalers huddled together and quickly reached a consensus. One of them approached Arnold Brower Jr., and whispered something in his ear. Brower sat down in front of the three television microphones hastily taped down on the table. “Is everyone ready?” he asked.

  “The whaling captains of Barrow have decided to use our best efforts to save the three Agvigluaqs,” he said, using the Inupiat word for gray whales. The room broke into a wild cheer. Arnold Brower’s short declaration removed Operation Breakout’s last and biggest obstacle, the local Eskimo whalers. For all of Colonel Carroll’s military expertise, Ron Morris’s camera presence, and Cindy Lowry’s fearless determination to mount a rescue, the critical move belonged to the Eskimos. As an increasingly anxious world would soon see, the Inuits would do far more than approve the rescue. They would carry it out.

  9

  Colonel Carroll’s Impossible Task

  The instant Arnold Brower Jr. made his unexpected announcement, he completely changed the local debate about what to do with the three stranded whales. The media on hand would record the whalers’ 180-degree turn. It was no longer a question of whether to kill the whales but how to save them.

  Roy Ahmaogak, the local hunter who discovered the whales eight days ear
lier, nervously leaned over to speak into the portable public address system. His words were the first spoken after the whalers decided to help free the three leviathans. Speaking in the thick guttural accent characteristic of Inupiat Eskimos, he said, “It seems to me that before we can free the whales, we have to figure out a way to keep them alive until the barge gets here. Does anybody have any ideas?”

  Geoff, Craig, and Ron Morris sat together facing the whalers. Unaccustomed to speaking in front of bright lights and rolling television cameras, Craig George looked around apprehensively before mustering the courage to offer his suggestion.

  “Arnold, what about the saws you used today?” Gaining confidence with the nods of approval from people around him, Craig continued. “Arnold Jr. was out there today and his chain saw opened up the hole real good. I can’t see why they couldn’t go right on doing it for the next couple of days until the barge gets here.”

  Chain saws were among the first tools Barrowans bought with their new oil money back in the early 1970s. They have been one of the most important weapons in the Inuit arsenal ever since. Unlike the lumberjack who viewed the chain saw as a time-saver, the Eskimo saw it as a lifesaver. Ice was more than an inconvenience; it was the constant barrier separating the hunter from the food and furs he needed to survive. The buzz saw not only saved the Eskimo from the arduous chore of manually chopping through thick ocean ice, it saved him much precious energy which allowed him to hunt for longer periods of time.

  On Friday afternoon, Brower had an idea. If he could cut holes in the ice with his chain saw to hunt seals, why not use it to enlarge the whales’ hole? The lone hole was shrinking several feet each day. By Friday, it was only ten feet wide by twelve feet long, barely larger than the head of a single whale. Unless the rescuers did something fast, the hole would completely freeze over.