O well for the sailor lad.

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

Lenny, in full uniform, was tugging at the U.S. flag, donated jointly by the Elks and the Suffolk County Police League. It clung to one corner of the casket. Good. They could not bury the flag, so they could not bury him. Tonight would be freezing again.

Lenny jerked at the flag and jiggled; he was the clumsiest man on earth. It should have been you, you son of a bitch. You're here and he's gone. She wanted to tear the flag from his hand, replace it, smooth it down. She had always made Sean's bed; he claimed he slept better when she did, and she had pretended to believe him and never once rebelled.

Mike stepped forward to help him, and the flag came away. The ferry blasted one more time, rounding the buoy Sean had died to free.

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill

But O for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still!

"Dust to dust," McCloud reminded them, “was not written of the soul."

She took a long, shuddering breath. The casket sank from view. She felt herself breaking down, squeezed Tiffany's hand, looked into her eyes, and spun on her heel.

"Ellen?" Lenny called. "I got to give you the flag!"

"Give it to Mike," she managed to say.

She could hear a buzz of questions behind her. The ridiculous ritual was not over; Sean was not properly bedded in his grave. But now she was at her Plymouth, parked by Mike at the head of the line of cars, behind the hearse.

Mike was suddenly beside her. "Mom, I'm coming with you. Wherever you want to go."

She could only shake her head. "Alone," she gulped. "Please, Michael?"

He stepped back as she pulled from the curb in a squeal of rubber. The windshield wipers began their screeching waltz; she could not stand the noise and turned them off.

She drove to the beach, where the first of the sharks had taken the first of his victims. For a long while she sat parked, sensing a malevolence she could not name in the gray, remorseless waves.

An awful anger burned within her. She opened the trunk and groped into the bundle of the things from Sean's locker at the station.

She drew his revolver—their revolver, his father's and his from its holster and loaded it with bullets from the ancient leather belt. She kicked off her shoes in the sand.

Face twisted, head high, she marched through the drizzle into the surf. The frigid water groped for her, and she felt it not at all. Far away, she heard the bell buoy gong. The Amity foghorn answered. Across Amity Sound she could see the loom of the Cape North Light, winking in a measure she had known for half her life.