A great argument ensued. Nevertheless, the men on the council decided and the whale kill was to commence that fall when the whales passed through the waters by Dark River on their annual migration.

Three days later in San Francisco, Thomas Just saw the newspaper article at the office of the cable company where he worked: “Whale Hunt to Return for the A’atsika People.” That night he took the paper home to his room and read how his people wanted to return to tradition. All night he was sleepless. We are going to return, he thought. We are going to be a people again. He was suddenly full of need and pride. He sat up smoking all night. Occasionally the sight of Ruth on their wedding day passed by his inner sight. Or their orange crate. Or his own grandfather. By morning he had convinced himself that, being the grandson of Witka, it was his duty to go home. By tradition he had to hunt. He had to be one who returned. He tried not to think of Ruth and the child he’d been told by Dwight was not his own. He was busy thinking, I am the grandson of the greatest whaler. Perhaps Thomas thought that he, too, could communicate with the whales.

It was time to go home, as if killing the whale, as if being like Witka, would excuse his lies and actions, as if he could, in one act, save himself from one history and return to another, slide into it with the ease he’d been lacking.

“All along we knew this day would come,” said the old people who lived in the white houses, many of the front panels of their homes still whalebone, in a land with markers of bone, for they truly were still whale people. “They haven’t praised the whales since they were children, if then. They haven’t cleansed themselves. Some of them have been to war and not yet purified themselves. They have not fasted. They have not scrubbed themselves with cedar. They have not put themselves in the right mind. Nothing good will come of this. No one has spoken to the whales since Witka. Not even us. And we remember. Most of us remember those days.”

“Marco will head the boat,” said one old man. “He will be the captain. He is the only one who knows.”

“Yes, I know.” Ruth felt more sorrow, this time not for just the whales, who truly were still smaller in number. She watched them pass. But she and her son would, by tradition alone, be on different sides. He was the one to head the crew, to decide if a whale would be killed. Marco of the old ones had to abide by tradition. She looked at him, how he’d grown, and wished he were a child she could carry away in her arms. He knew it, too. He watched his mother’s face and saw her feelings. He was a man now, tall, with black hair, with a face surprisingly like his father’s. He was calm and sure in his movements. Marco would have to go on the hunt. Ruth knew that. He sat with old Hoist, scratching the aged dog’s belly.