Ruth blamed him for this. And she blamed Thomas for returning. Thomas had come for the whale. Only for the whale. It was his way of returning to himself. He was not returning for her and their son. She didn’t know that now he was sorry. That now, without showing it, he knew he, too, had lost.

Ruth returned to where the whale was a mass of red and fat and bone. “Marco’s nowhere.” The rain was now falling on the whale, the men working. Water was rising up the beach from the storm.

Ruth said with finality, “Marco is gone. He is not missing. He is dead.”

Later that night, Aurora, with hope, called everyone she knew. It was useless, but she asked if they’d seen her grandson.

Marco had the coveted role. He was the traditionalist they all wanted to be, and they all could have been if they’d just done it. Tradition had been awaiting their return.

Word spread that Marco was gone. Later, the women came to Aurora’s house to be with Ruth and her mother. They assumed he had drowned in the bloody thrashing of the whale.

Once again, Ruth fell to the same linoleum floor as when the man named Death came to the house with regrets to inform. This time she was not even crying, just silent, a stone that passed down and down through forever. Aurora, after some time, asked for help. She went outside to get the men. Thomas came to help. He and Milton, the slow-wit, lifted and carried Ruth to her girlhood bed, her hand over her mouth, her eyes staring through the ceiling now as if looking for the spirit of Marco, who was following the path of souls along the Milky Way.

Thomas, gentle with her, pulled back the covers, removed her shoes, and placed the blankets over her familiar body in the room he remembered from years before, even childhood. He would have been a liar if he’d said he had no feelings left for Ruth, but then, who was he to want her, to want anything beautiful and right? And yet, he was not without compassion.

Ruth’s mother tried to comfort her. “Marco could be somewhere and we just don’t know yet.”

“You know it’s not that way.” Ruth said the words with tightness. Bitterness was her voice.

Milton, still there, said, “I saw it. I saw them fight.”

“What fight?” She tried to keep her voice calm. Milton could be scared into silence.

“Someone hit him. They wore a big ring. I saw it. He went under. They held him down.”

Ruth would question Milton later. So would the police when they got wind of it. She would ask, “Was there a tattoo? What kind of ring? Could you tell whose fist? Did they hit his head? Did they hold him under water until he died?”

“Yeah, he hit his head.”

But some said Marco had been hit by the tail of the whale or was in the broken canoe, and that in the chaos, no one noticed and each group had thought this promising young man, a new traditional, was in the other boat.