Puk-ik Tommy sits in the coffee shop of the Hotel Nul-laq-vik, Which looks out over the icy Sound, And finds reasons why he will not fish each day: Too much chop, he tells the glass, Or that south wind will roll the nets, Or the easterlies bring the sea grass That makes green walls of salmon mesh, Or the prices are too low, Or someone already took his "spot." The truth is that he sold his wife’s permit For several thousand less than market price And cannot tell that he has no license of his own. But I know the size of Tommy’s ego, And I hear things others do not: I know he sold the permit to a white guy Who sold it to a teacher from Selawik, And I know the prices, too. Of course, I won’t tell Because these Inupiaq, who have so little else, Lay great store in their pride, their macho posturing. So I smile to myself when I hear the local whites, Seeking entry to the native circle, Call him "Puk-ik," his Inuit name -- Once a mark of shame, forbidden in school, Which he did not use before he sold his wife’s permit To buy bootleg whiskey at $200.00 a fifth. I know the size of Tommy’s ego Because he fished for me for years And always wanted to know who the highliners were And where they were fishing, Things I could not tell, for custom’s sake, So I always told him that he was my "top fisherman" And praised the quality of his fish So they came to me. And I treated him royally -- with those little extras, Like the ten-minutes’ loan of a pickup Or a cup of hot coffee from my thermos, Or a twenty dollar loan at the bar, Things that are more important than the market rates To bring his fish -- and all his family’s fish -- to my dock. And I never commented when his wife signed receipts. But he was always Tom, not Puk-ik, And his boarding school English Was always white-correct, itself a status mark Within the boarding-school generation. And so I smile now when I hear young whites, Those would-be bush rats trying to prove Themselves against the Arctic, Call him Puk-ik in their pseudo-Inupiaq, And him respond in the local dialect -- In which I am more fluent than he. But I smile inside. Let him be Puk-ik, for there is little else In this crippled neither-white-nor-Eskimo place For that last generation of discultured Boarding school and missionary victims, Cut loose, rootless and mythless, With white values and Inupiaq dreams, And unequipped to live either. Let him be Puk-ik, The great Inupiaq hunter Who presides over coffee in the Nul-laq-vik, Dispensing doubtful wisdom to the missionaries' heirs, And finds pride-saving reasons Why he will not fish each day If that's what it takes to make his strictured life More tolerable in this insanguine place. Let him speak his face-saving lies To the uncaring Arctic sea. It will not give him the lie, Nor will I.