“Of course we know why.” Ruth reminds him.

Over the last years, the elders had gauged and counted and made certain the waters weren’t overfished. Now the fish have abandoned them, taking along all they have to depend on to survive. The Times sends two newsmen out to look over the situation and they conclude that the conditions are unusual but it is the drought and a dreadful dry heat in their area that has caused a change in the temperature of water. As for the receding waters, they report it as a cyclical event, though everyone at Dark River carries a long memory and knows this is not true.

At night, the drummers and singers sitting near fires on the beach have silences they don’t remember between their songs. No ocean. They listen and hear an emptiness painful to the ears. For the first time, they hear their own heartbeats, the blood pulsing. It scares them not to be hearing the ocean louder than themselves.

For a while Ruth is still able to long-line and fish at the river, still having some amount of luck. Her concerns are less than the others who depend on larger hauls, who have new rigs. Hers, she inherited. She only needs gas, things for maintenance, whatever will support her and help her mother. She has no large bills. But soon, she too catches nothing. The beach begins to widen as the ocean takes itself into the distance, going away from them, turning its back on them. Seabirds arrive in flocks and clouds. They eat the exposed fish. They stand in the wet sand and feast. More arrive and there is much noise, the beating of wings like thunder. The pale ghost crabs try to bury themselves, but everything is vulnerable.

The old woman Wilma says, “I know what it is. It’s a crack in the ocean floor. We are going to have a tsunami like we had before. The hell with what the reporters think. The water is gathering out there. Then it’s going to turn back and come in.”

There are people who still remember the tsunami, or lost loved ones in it, and so, many of the tribe decide to pack up what they can and leave. Even if there isn’t a wave of water, it doesn’t feel right there. They leave for towns inland, moving in with relatives, taking belongings whose worth surprises them. They take a satin pillow with SWEETHEART embroidered on it sent during World War II, a pillow they once thought silly. Or they take a whalebone carving. Who would have thought the faded rug someone’s mother made of old clothing would turn out to be the most valuable thing in the house, better than the recliner, or that the small bearskin passed down from a grandfather would be preferred over a large television? Indian still, they take carved wooden masks, some made by the father of Thomas. Or whale vertebrae, old photographs, even a terrible painting by their young daughter. They take their kittens with them, and flea-bitten dogs. Dimitri’s new young wife takes her goat, and the goose sits in the backseat of the car, looking about, as usual. For a day or two in the terrible new smell of the place of the receding sea, the drying seaweed, there is a caravan of leavers, some honking at others as if the reserve is a large city.