Snowbound

Jason studied his boots.

"He got murdered."

He began repacking his carving in bubble wrap.

"How?"

"He was stabbed."

It was pulling teeth. We were both embarrassed. The first lesson in Savoonga: Expose nothing.

"Did they catch the murderer?"

"It was his wife that did it."

A long silence.

"They were under the influence of alcohol."

AT THE SMALL AIRPORT IN NOME, we had seen posters warning that it is a serious crime to be caught smuggling alcoholic beverages of any kind to St. Lawrence Island, which is home to Savoonga and Gambell, its sister village 40 miles away. The island is dry and has been for some time, part of a desperate effort to control a problem that has gotten painfully out of hand.

Savoongans are only a few generations removed from a near-Stone Age existence. Details from the distant past are murky, but in the late 1870s much of the population of the island was wiped out in a holocaust of complex origins thought to involve illness, climate changes and behavioral factors. What is indisputable is that the commercial whalers of that era brought some modern ways to the island, along with disease and alcohol. Genetically, in both cases, the natives had no defenses.