Ordinary Grace

The Drums bury Ariel, with her funeral service scheduled for later that day. We learn more details about Karl’s death:

He’d been out in his beloved Triumph, driving back roads…[h]e’d been going way too fast, had missed a turn, and had run into a big cottonwood tree. The impact had thrown him through the windshield and he’d died instantly. He’d been drinking from a bottle of his father’s scotch and there was no sign he’d tried to make the turn in the road where the cottonwood stood. Whether the tragedy occurred because of the drink or the dark design of his own confused thinking no one could say(263).

From their porch, Frank watches people gather for Ariel’s funeral:

I was pretty sure I knew what they were talking about—Ariel, Karl, the whole mess. I figured it would be a story people in New Bremen would tell for a hundred years, in the same way they told about the Great Sioux Uprising, and they would use words like skag and faggot and bastard child and they wouldn’t remember at all the truth of who these people were (264).

The service passes with Frank effectively disassociating, and thinking about the events of the summer: