When she arrives in her father’s world she sees the striking beauty of green land. Not as green as home, but green. And black rocks. Dark mountains in the distance, mist around them. She looks at the map and drives all the way past the reservation, past the old houses on the hill, looking at the pier and marina. Mobile homes sit down on the lower road with cars parked beside them, a fence made of buoys and other plastic parts, a canoe planted with flowers. Some of the trailers and houses have flowers planted around them. She doesn’t recognize whalebones. Most of the places are dark and worn. Some trailers have bleached plywood nailed along the bottoms to keep the heat in. At the waterfront is a gray warehouse. There is the long skeleton of a pier, just the pilings exposed, this one unused, left over from some past, but not far from it is a dock, a marina, although only a few boats are in good condition. She stops at a pull-off. She watches the horizon, her eyes moving from one side to the other. A mist is over the bay, a cloud. A blue fishing boat moves across water, leaving a path behind it. Then the water closes, as if nothing had passed. On one side of the land a forest is cleared. Elsewhere, it is moist and rich. There is a river in the distance. The green banks of the river flow into the sea. She likes the water running seaward and the sounds of the seabirds. Behind her, to the east, is a forest of great trees, a ray of late afternoon sun.

Lin realizes she is nervous. She turns left, driving along the damp road close to the ocean. She stops at a large square building. Inside, it looks like a hardware store, but disorderly. In a case are knives, ammunition, but also wood carvings of faces, painted masks, some with hair. The man who stands before her in overalls smells like fish. He sees her looking at a mask. “That one’s whalebone. It’s very old. You don’t see them much down here, at least not these days,” he tells her, as if she is a potential buyer.

She looks up and smiles and asks where Thomas lives. She realizes when she looks down at the address that his last name is worn away by humidity and her own hands. She gives the number and the street by memory. She remembers it by heart. “Thomas Just,” she says. She doesn’t know the name was given by an Indian agent who signed the people up for registration on the rolls. Some were given the name “Only,” some named “Little.” She doesn’t know it was to demean the people, the namers of the Indians. She thinks “Just” means he is the balance of a scale of what is right, that America was built on fairness and justice. She doesn’t know it shares the same history as hers. The people in this place were once massacred, infants bayoneted on these beaches and mounds. The land is full of the blood of their ancestors. She has read of this country, America, but she has read another history.