Thomas tells the old people he has learned to hold his breath for long periods of time. “Oh, just like your grandfather. Maybe that is why you lived.”

“No, that wasn’t all of it.” But he can’t remember. He is still salty. When he licks his lips even those days later there is still salt. And he doesn’t know he is still cold.

Argentine tends to Thomas. Later she says, “How come Marco didn’t wash up?”

“He had other places to go. But I always look out there, watching for him anyway.”

After the silence and the healing and the tending, the people want to know everything about his life at Witka’s for the last year or so. “How did you sleep during that time?” Feather asks him.

Though Thomas is healing, the water has swollen his hands and they will remain swollen. He opens and closes them. “Mostly by day.” The dreams at night he didn’t want to tell about.

“I see. And you practiced holding your breath at night.”

“Yes.” He sees it now, the world beneath, the particles in the beam of his light, the starfish holding to the rocks and pilings. He doesn’t know that Ruth was ever there, watching him.

“And where did you stay?”

“Usually close to the pier.”

“No. In Witka’s house, I mean.”

“Mostly in the corner of the house.”

“Like a spider in its web, I think. With its silk. Out of your own self you made a new man.”

They speak until all the words leave English and they exist then in their own language.

He is tired. Yes, he has shed a skin. He has worn it for years and he’s had a weeping inside that only Ruth could hear when she was around it. It walked about with him like another person. Now there is silence, even peace, no more haunting. He is red in the eyes. They watch him sleep, coughing now and then. They think, Yes, he is equal to it.

Then one woman says, “He doesn’t look like much more than a boy now. He’s good-looking.”

When he wakes he says, “Spring is coming. I smell it in the air. Dawn, too.”

On the other side are answers. A few men have grown tired of their leader, Dwight, and walked straight as they could from near the fisheries, the marina, and went to the police. They walked up the single rotting wood step into a modular building. It was as if no one saw them at first. Because the police receptionist and the two busy men and one woman don’t want to hear about the Indian problem. “We have another tribal ‘thing,’” as the receptionist says, almost to herself, as she blows her red nose, cursing the weather that has spread a recent virus. She throws the tissue into a trash can near her desk.

But then the men show them the bullet casings and, standing there, tell their story. “A man was killed. A good man. And it was Dwight who did it. Dwight…he killed Thomas Just.” The officers’ ears opened to the mention of the hermit war hero. Thomas Just was missing for so many years and is now lost at sea.