Dwight had many strong arguments for the kill. He and Dimitri Smith in his gray shirt and work pants, his brown leather shoes cracked from the salt water, did not have the image of businessmen. They had been through a war together, Dwight told the reporters. Nevertheless, Dwight harbored within himself a great and monetary and maybe even a violent need and so he had helped convince most of the men that they wanted to kill a whale in order to fill their hearts and souls with the wealth of something they wrongly believed had been lost and wanted back. Tradition, they called it.

“Whale-hunting,” Dimitri said, his shirttail out, “will bring us back to ourselves.” A part of him truly believed this. As close as he was to Dwight, he did not yet understand the negotiations to sell the meat to another country, or that it would stop an international moratorium on whale-killing, that it would open a whale market so Norway could sell their vats of stored oil, and that money had been been paid to the council for this. It was an intrigue too large even for Dwight to figure out, too complex. All he saw was the money on the table for meat in another country. “It’s our traditional food. We need it. We are starved for it.”

Ruth stood at full height in front of one of the male reporters. “I want you to know and write that their plans are not even near the original meaning of a whale hunt, that they’ve made a deal to sell the meat and that their meetings took place in seclusion and were secret. This is not the voice of our community. They do not represent us or our elders.” She said, also, “And I want you to write that there aren’t many whales remaining. I fish out there. I watch them.” It was her joy to watch them spray and surface, roll and descend, come eye to eye with her. She recognized some who lived there permanently, in the safety of their bays. She had names for them. Black Mouth. Rock Beak.

“Their numbers are coming back,” Dwight said to a reporter. “When one is killed, its spirit is born again into another whale. This is our belief. It is our way.” He was bringing in the old beliefs, trying to sound like a traditionalist. In truth, Dwight wanted desperately to believe the old ways, to be a part of them, but he had become a soldier and a businessman and he had not retained the old way of being in the world.

“Then how do you account for the lower numbers?” Ruth tilted her long neck. Anyway, beliefs were only beliefs, not necessarily truth or fact or knowledge.

“The counting is off. Our count is higher than that of the scientists.”

“Deathless,” said Ruth. “Is that what you are saying?” To the reporter: “They are saying the world is deathless. But we have seen it differently in our lives. There are fewer whales. I fish out there. I know the whales. And the old people are against this. Only these few men stand to gain.”