Noble took Jodie and Hoagland for a sleigh ride on the afternoon of the funeral. When Kate told Jodie that Father had gone to Heaven he had wept, terrified and bewildered. And now the laughter that followed his crying was too vivid, too violent.
The two little boys were covered up to their chins with the bearskin robe, their breath puffed out in clouds.
"I'm smoking a cigar! Puff puff puff! See the smoke? Look, Jodie. Look, Noble. Noble. Noble. Noble. Look! See the smoke?"
"So am I too smoking a cigar! Look, Hoagland! Look, Noble!"
High over their heads a bird tilted and swooped in the wind that cut their faces and filled their eyes with tears.
"What kind of bird is that, Noble?"
"Looks like it was a sea gull. Purty far inland for it."
The wind sounded like the waves of the sea in the pine trees behind the haunted house. Noble stopped the horse so they could listen to it, rushing, dying away. Except for the ringing of sleigh bells as Clara shook herself, there was no other sound in a world silent with snow. Rushing—dying away.
"Puts me in mind o' the days I was a sailor. Giddap, Clara."
"Aw gee! you weren't ever a sailor!"
