Outside, Ruth can hear her crying, too. When she goes in, the first thing she does is unload the rifle and put it under the bed. All the while the woman packs her suitcase. “It’s okay. It will all be okay. I’ll help you out,” she tells the girl. “Here, let me help you,” Ruth says, being kind to the woman she hadn’t really acknowledged enough. “What can I pack for you?”

“They arrested him.”

The woman named Angela wraps her arms around Ruth and sobs. “And I’m going to have a baby.”

Ruth sits on the unmade bed.

Then Angela remembers where Dwight keeps his money. He always thought it was secret, but Angela has a keen eye, and while Ruth folds her things, she goes to the freezer to find the key to the safe-deposit box, the freezer out in the back room with the guns, It is in the freezer where he keeps meat he has hunted. She finds the box there and when she opens the box, she says, “Jesus!” Then she remembers Ruth and closes the box. She thinks she better go to the bank with Dwight’s key, too. It is for the baby, she tells herself.

Ruth has already seen the cash in the box, but Angela doesn’t know it.

“Could you drive me to the bank?” Angela asks the older woman. “I need to get what’s left out of our account.”

In the meantime, Ruth decides to talk Angela into staying in town until she has the baby, at least. There are the dogs to think about. “We could help you out. With the baby and all. You can fix up the place any way you like. The birth will be free here.” There are a dozen reasons. And while Angela is in the bank, Ruth goes to the pay phone and makes a call to the police about the money.

Angela has money in her eyes. At the bank they know already she lives with him and she is showing. They guess she’s his wife. Anyway, they don’t care. She opens the box to find cash. Bills and bills of cash. Rolls. Stacks.

Charges are pressed against the war veteran Dwight, and he is not released because of his record. They were not minor offenses. One of the cops built a case against him with a tribal police officer and they thought they had him for sure and the feds were involved. Then, after the arrest, they saw him walking along the road just a few days later. It took the officer all he had in him not to swerve and run over the man named Dwight. But this crime, the newer one, isn’t just a parole violation.

The other men from the canoe the day Thomas was shot hear what has happened. They are satisfied that justice is done, but they worry about whether they are accomplices or witnesses, men who will have to testify against the man who always gets off and can bring them down because they were part of it. But this time they believe something better. Because men can split and lie to themselves, one part to another, a part of them believes they are returning to better ways. Still, Dwight had promised them money from the next whale and the money would come from Japan, the eaters across the sea, and he still owes them from before and now they won’t see that money, either, and hell, they’d made plans for it already, and the two with credit cards ran up large bills, but damn if it wasn’t just like always.