The funeral was a blur: Della crying, the boys crying, Reverend Olsen up on his pulpit saying Mandy was a good girl and God in His mercy had already welcomed her into His Kingdom for all eternity (What mercy? Hod remembered thinking. What kind of mercy is this?), then all of them leaving the church, entering the fog-wrapped graveyard, and the pallbearers-Mitch and Adam and Barney Nevers and Les Cummins and Seth Bonner and Mike Carstairs-lowering her coffin into the hole in the ground, clods of earth falling on it, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” and Della on her knees wailing, “My baby, my baby!” and him just standing there because he couldn’t do anything else, couldn’t even cry.
The ride home and the funeral supper was a blur too. All the people telling him how sorry they were, Lillian Hilliard saying, “If you need anything, Hod, you just let me know, your credit’s good with me from now on,” as if he gave a damn about groceries at a time like this, and Della all of a sudden red-faced and smiling, acting like they were having a party, running around with plates of food and saying, “Have something more to eat, won’t you have something more to eat?” He couldn’t stand it after a while, too many people and too much noise, and he went out and walked around, he didn’t even remember where, and then he was back at the trailer and Mitch put a drink in his hand-whiskey and some ice-and he drank it, didn’t taste it, drank it like it was water, and Mitch gave him another one, and he drank that, and pretty soon he knew he was drunk but he didn’t feel drunk. Somebody tried to get him to go back inside, eat something, but he couldn’t make himself do it. Then Adam said, “Let’s go up to my trailer, I got another bottle up there,” and he went. Anything to get away from all those people, all that noise.
Mitch and Seth Bonner went, too. And they sat around and drank more whiskey. And then he cried. It came over him all at once, like something breaking, spilling over inside him. He put his head down on the table and cried and cried for his dead daughter until there weren’t any more tears in him. Then he sat up and wiped his face, and he was all right. For the first time in three days he could feel again. For the first time since they’d walked into Adam’s trailer he could pay attention to what was being said, take part in the conversation.
Mitch poured him another drink. The bottle was almost empty.