Alaska Dispatches
# 24  —  11 August 2001

Tragedy

	In an earlier essay, I related that in the history of Piniq no one had ever shot another person, not even by accident. This is no longer true.
	Last Monday a friend of ours’ stepson shot and killed his stepsister. The news spread through town like wildfire. State troopers arrived to investigate. The girl’s body was flown to Anchorage for several days of preparation for an open casket funeral. It is awful and surreal.
	George is a former student of Leisy’s. He married a woman named Charlene who had two children from previous relationships. George and Charlene are raising the kids here, and they had two girls of their own. The eldest of the children, Charlene’s 12-year-old son, shot Carrie, the older of George and Charlene’s two girls. The entire family was getting ready for a hunting trip, and so George had his .410 shotgun in the house. He remembers checking to make sure that the gun was unloaded; so does the boy. However when the boy accidentally pulled the trigger, he shot his 2-year-old stepsister in the eye. Carrie died in the living room; her entire family was there.
	The pre-funeral feasts and round-the-clock mourning sessions are being held at George’s mother’s house. The setting is all too familiar, as George’s maternal grandmother passed away a few months ago, and we were there several times to observe the same rituals in the same spaces.
While on the surface the rituals seem to be identical, emotionally, there are stark differences, at least for me. George’s grandmother had lived a long, full life. The period of mourning was suffused with grief, but also with a sense of the cycle of life and of nature taking its course. George’s daughter was two, and there is only grief.
We have been making food and bringing it to the house where Carrie’s tiny body is on display in a disturbingly small coffin. Leisy has spent several hours there each evening singing with the church choir. It is always difficult to know what to say; under these circumstances finding words is agonizing.
George and Charlene remained in a room in the back of the house. When I went back to visit with them the boy who had pulled the trigger was there as well. I realize that it must be awful to be in his shoes, and I try to muster compassion for him. What must he be feeling now? This is something that will be with him forever. At the same time, I feel anger. What was he thinking at the time? Why have a shotgun pointed at the face of your sister, even by accident? He is twelve, not four, and has grown up around guns. He is old enough to know better.
Charlene, dazed, conveyed to me how awful it all was and how sweet their little girl was. She was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her mother, en route from her home village way up north. Charlene recalled seeing Leisy, Jules and I at the same house after the girl’s great-grandmother had died. She remembered me interacting with Carrie. Charlene then told me the details of the tragedy, and I experienced the strongest déjà vu in my life. I knew exactly what she was about to say. I felt like an observer looking down upon the scene of my own experience. Perhaps the déjà vu was a defense mechanism to help me deal with the crushing emotions. I had to fight the urge to run away and never look back.
	On the day of the accident, I had been helping to raise a house in our section of the village. A half dozen of us were working together, using hydraulic jacks, a variety of crowbars and large wood blocks to raise and re-seat the entire house. As per usual, I had no clear idea of the strategy behind our endeavors or even what exactly we were trying to do from one moment to the next. I simply was around to haul and move and lend a hand as directed. People stopped by as we worked, sometimes pitching in for a few moments or a few hours. At mealtime, we ducked inside for a quick bite and a cup of tea before returning to our labors.
I was under the house and heard someone arrive and speak with Peter. When I came out Peter related the news: there had been an accident, one of George’s girls had been shot and killed. I don’t remember how he said it, but I do remember that he told me in such a way that it all remained fuzzy. Yup’ik culture ordains that you should not speak with certainty about something you haven’t experienced first-hand. Perhaps this had something to do with my being left with a nagging sense of uncertainty. Had there indeed been an accident? A child had been killed? Was it really George’s little girl? We continued to work on the house in silence.
Time passed in a haze. I wanted to know exactly what had happened. Throughout the day I saw people leaving by boat, traveling upriver to their camps to get things in order for berry picking season that will be here soon. Many people here Yuk, following a cultural more that dictates one doesn’t leave town while there is a body here. I stepped on a rusty nail, and called about getting a Tetanus shot, but was told simply that the clinic was closed. Men stopped by and conversed with the others. And then Junior came out and told us that he had just seen the story on the 6:00 news, broadcast from Anchorage. Shortly thereafter I saw all 4 Piniq public safety officers and two state troopers carrying a sagging yellow body bag up the stairs and into the Traditional Council building, and then I knew for certain that it was true.
	The days following the accident are strange. The event is clearly on everyone’s mind, but life goes on. This is the kind of thing that you read about in the paper, but that always seems to happen far away. It usually seems so random and other, so distant and thus not real. With all the guns here, I have frequently entertained the possibility of an accident. Even though the event has happened here, the body is here right now, and the comforting distance is gone, life goes on. But then again, what else is life supposed to do?
	Earlier this year a school project was undertaken to make and post signs bearing public safety messages all over town. In every public space -- the post office, the school, the council building -- posters advise us not to travel with loaded guns, not to drink, not to sniff gas. I have asked several young parents about loaded guns on their porches and in their houses. They chuckle and say yeah, I should do something about that.
I wonder if this event will change anything here. Past tragedies seem to have galvanized the town into action. About a dozen years ago one of George’s older brothers drowned in the river, just outside of town. He had taken his boat out while drunk and never come back. No one in Piniq knew how to dredge a river, so advisors had to be brought in from a neighboring village. George’s father, incoherent with shock, stood on the bank of the river babbling about the location of the boat. He had to be escorted home so that the search could be continued and the body eventually recovered. The catastrophe was the catalyst for the local option law banning the possession of alcohol and the establishment of the search house at the airstrip to enforce the new policy.
On the other hand, religious devotion seems to somehow negate responsibility for the accident. The funeral itself was void of any mention of the shooting or the accident. The theme was that the child was so wonderful and special that God had called her to be with him. Her work on earth was finished. She had been so remarkable because she had been able to accomplish so much in such little time.
I understand the need to try to rationalize what is impossible to rationalize, and the vital role of faith at a time such incredible spiritual need and unfathomable sorrow. However it irks me that Carrie’s death is treated as any other. Accidents happen, but this one could certainly have been avoided. Perhaps the funeral is not the place to instruct, but it seemed like a missed opportunity, and somehow an injustice to the lost life of Carrie, to pass on the chance to elucidate the human factor in what had happened.
I hope that, at the very least, this will ultimately be a wake-up call for George and Charlene, who have been struggling with their own demons this entire year. 

©2001, Michael Thornton Wyman