The gift of David’s Ducks

Or How I Spent My Thirtieth Birthday

I woke up along the edge of open water west of Barrow, Alaska the day I turned thirty. I’d been sleeping on a caribou hide on a shelf of ice that extended six miles out from the shore. It was mid May, and in spring’s thaw, the sea ice had begun to split into fissures big enough for bowhead whales to surface and breathe. Big whales, they weighed up to a ton a foot, and the biggest ones could be sixty feet long. They were already migrating through the Bering Straits into the Chukchi Sea and soon they would turn eastward here into the Beaufort Sea. The Eskimo whaling crew I had joined a week earlier was camped at the edge of the first lead of open water. A walrus skin boat perched atop a small block of ice pointed outward, along with a harpoon in the bow, ready for us to push into the water and silently paddle toward our prey when it arrived.

My captain Ralph Aveoganna—a school plumber—sat inside the canvas tent making tea and eating pilot crackers—“Sailor Boys”—and slices of frozen raw caribou dipped in seal oil, while Johnny O sat in the umiak and stared outward. A badger’s paw dangled from his fur face ruff. The rest of the crew slept on caribou skins inside the tent, slept with their bearded seal skin boots on so that when a whale surfaced and the watchman silently tapped their feet, they would be able to quickly steal out of the tent, into the boat, and push off with paddles tapered to minimize the noise.

But it was still early, there were few leads in the pack of ice, and we watched as the open water in front of us turned to slush, then crystallized and gradually turned into solid ice. You could always tell where the open water was because it would reflect upward into an otherwise white sky that normally reflected a mantle of snow and ice. Whenever we saw a long, low black cloud, like smoke trailing from a smokestack, there was the “water sky” where we would try to make our way over pressure ridges and shifting ice to camp by open water. Without a water sky, the whales would not be coming soon. So my crewmates turned their attention instead to birds barreling off the horizon like trains, a dark streak widening as it got closer into thousands of ducks and geese that turned the sky black as they flew overhead and shoreward toward thawing ponds and lakes.

I was thirty, and alone, for a milestone I hadn’t been eager to cross. But I wasn’t about to tell my crewmates, who had less than warm feelings about having a white guy in camp with them. My captain, Ralph, generous and hospitable to strangers in the best tradition of the Inuit, called me Tipook or “White Fish”—“real tasty fish”. But when he wasn’t around, some of the younger guys, in the full spirit of Eskimo Power, which followed in the path of Black Power and Indian Power, called me “White Honkey.” It made me feel in solidarity with “Black Honkies”. Black or white, we Honkies were often unwelcome Outsiders. Here to write what would become my second book, I floated on emotions as shifting as the field of ice.

I was resolved to blow out my imaginary candles and eat my imaginary cake privately. So I never said a word. And kept silent vigil on the ice.

We had a shot gun outside the tent, and if there was no open water and no chance whales would surface nearby, a crewman would grab the gun and try to bag a couple of migrating birds when the flocks flew overhead. Johnny O, the silent star of the crew, calm, self-contained, lanky, with a thin drooping mustache and intense black eyes, stood watch for what seemed to be hours. And when he suddenly went inside the tent, I found myself alone, the sole watch.

That’s when I saw the black streak coming off the horizon, angling toward shore, steadily rising higher into the sky, in a growing wave. Eider ducks. I’d never gone duck hunting before. But as the wave headed directly toward our camp and crested, I grabbed the shotgun, pushed two shells into the barrel, and started running toward a block of ice that served as a blind. I figured if I aimed at the lead bird, followed and fired, I couldn’t go wrong.

“Quack, quack, quackquackquack.” They came in low, dead on, in a din of beating wings. I stood, aimed, followed, and fired. I fired a second time. Nothing happened.

I was amazed. It had been like shooting in a barrel. How could I have missed? I looked at the trail of eiders as they flew inland toward another set of hunters. And then, as I watched, a duck dropped from the sky and tumbled over the ice. Then a second one fell. And a third. And a fourth, fifth, and sixth. Dumbfounded, I yelled at the Eskimo about seventy yards downwind, “Are these yours?” He looked at me like I was an idiot. No, they’re yours you zany white honkey.

Shotgun squeezed under my arm, both hands holding the beautifully colored males and the brown females by their feet, I brought them back to camp, to Ralph and Johnny O, who greeted me as a hunter.

“Lookit, Davit. Duckhhh soup. Duckhhh soup!” they exclaimed. Ralph put the water on to boil on the camp stove. They plucked the birds, threw in salt, some rice, a couple of onions, then the ducks. When it was soup, I got the first bowl. And in honor of my having shot them, I got the prize serving: six duck bills.

I savored the taste. I’d never have them again. But they were my cake and my candles for my secret birthday. They were the gift of David’s ducks.

Postcript: A year and a few days later, Ralph and Johnny and my crew brought in a thirty four foot bowhead, which we butchered on the ice and brought back to Barrow to share with the town. I was thirty one.

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