All that morning, the boy waited with Jenny and Stephen in the kitchen while his mother read alone in the sitting room and listened to Caruso records on the electric Victrola. The boy watched the October sun climbing through the windows. He made a paper man and watched him move. When he dragged him like a kite through the yellow columns of light, his legs would march. He called to him to hurry. The house stretched slowly with the warming air from the furnace and the boy smelled coal dust from the ducts. Stephen had lit the fire for winter.

"Hush now," Jenny said. "He’ll be here by and by. He wouldn’t miss a roast." Sitting, she held her hands on her stomach and rubbed them in circles across the flatness of her apron. "And not on your birthday, for sure!"

Then the mother came in, hurrying. She had put on another record, a different singer and the singing drifted more loudly through the open door: "Let me call you sweetheart..." Her hat looked like a helmet and she tugged at it, pushing her hair underneath. She stopped and looked at Jenny. Then she looked at the boy, but only briefly. "Oh, I don’t know what it is about ducks," she said. "I really don’t. If it didn’t cost Mr. Howard more to drive to work than he got paid he could do something besides hunting on a Tuesday, a Howard, after all ... But that’s the Stutz for you: it’s probably stalled - if he didn’t crash it again. I warned them it would be like this." She paused and looked back at the boy again. Through the open door, the smooth sound of the new man singing continued: "... I’m in love with you..."

"Well it serves them right, anyway," the mother continued, "Let them crank for an hour. Next time they’ll hear -- Demi, you don’t want to mope about. He’ll be home. Now out from underfoot. Jenny take him out to play!"

"You can climb the Indian tree, Demi," Jenny said, "Or you can make a house of leaves -- Stephen raked them." She looked closely at him. "You’re a big boy now. You’re five years old." She turned to the mother. "It’s the 29’th, Madame. It’s his birthday."

"Yes, I know," the mother said. "I already told him happy birthday." She walked towards the door to the dining room, removing her hat. Briefly, the slit in her pink dress showed her freckled calf. "I’ve changed my mind, Stephen," she said. "I don’t think I will go out. God knows where they’ve broken down." Turning her head over her shoulder, she gave Stephen one last order. "If the pool man arrives, tell him Mr. Howard’s been delayed."

"Mr. Howard’s broker’s been calling, Madame," Stephen said, tugging his black lapels to straighten them. "He says it's urgent. A big to-do in the market, or something. What should I tell him?"

"Well he can wait too," she said. "Ducks come first in this house."

When the mother had left, Jenny sat down again, beside the boy, before the fire and rested her feet on the edge of the coal bucket. She moved the back of her hand gently to the boy ‘s cheek. Her hand was cold and smelled of onions. The chair creaked as she leaned.

"Can I go outside now and look?" the boy asked.

"Oh Demi, it’s so warm in here!" Jenny leaned back and rubbed her arms with her hands. Her hair fell across the back of the chair in soft, red coils. "Its too cold out. It’s almost winter -- He’ll be along soon enough, he will." She looked at Stephen. "Someday I’ll just sit back when I like."

"Madame won’t like that," Stephen said.

"Madame won’t have to!" she answered. Then she turned to the boy. "Stephen comes from France, Demi. He thinks a uniform makes him look gastronomical."

"Hmmm!" Stephen laughed. "Stephen thinks a uniform makes him look employed."

"I will sit back when I please," Jenny said, holding her splayed fingers against her stomach . "And see if it isn’t soon!"

"Miss Jenny comes from Ireland," Stephen said. "Nobody from Ireland works for anybody else, even the ones who wear aprons."

"And I’d be shooting too," she said.

Stephen laughed, "A young slip of a lass like you? I didn’t know you were of a sort!"

"It’s nothing I couldn’t do, living off me dividends with nary a care in the world --and hunting and what not when I please. I come from the same place they did."

"But Madame’s family left before the potatoes did ..." Stephen smiled as he polished the last glass and started in on the candelabra, the linen draped across his shoulders, like Reverend Mayhew’s robe, "... and a hundred years on top of it, I’ll wager."

Jenny helped the boy onto the first branch and told him to be careful. The leaves were gone from the tree, lying wetly on the grass below. The sun came through the open branches and warmed the boy’s face. "Its not cold at all," he called to Jenny. The air smelled of burning leaves, like Daddy by the fire. The father would sit in the study with Dr. Farnham and the two would smoke till the mother made them close the door. Dr. Farnham was the boy’s friend too. He and the boy’s father would talk about ducks. The ducks ate wild celery in the marshes on the Chesapeake. After a long drive south, the boy’s father and Dr. Farnham would row out and shoot them in the fall. Sometimes the boy’s father let him into the study so he could sit on his lap. His eyes would sting with the smell of cigars and tobacco. In the evening, his father and Dr. Farnham would have cocktails and clean the guns. The room would fill with smoke and the sweet odors of whiskey and cleaning fluid, until the mother complained and had them air out the study and come for dinner.

The valley wind pushed the smoke against the boy’s cheeks. On the far side of the river, where the light fell, it was red.

Jenny lifted the boy down and he ran. The lambs scattered at his haste. Their black hooves thudded gently in the leaves, tiny black thumping hearts, like the Indian children Jenny said lay by the river. Already the car was past the poplars. Its dry dust filtered across the field. The mother had Stephen discard the coal ashes on the lane. Whenever a car came it made a great mess.

The boy watched Dr. Farnham get out of the passenger compartment. He waited for the ash dust to settle and looked at the front door. But the navy captain got out from the father’s side. The navy captain’s name was Sidney. The boy hadn’t seen him since the end of summer, in Nova Scotia, when Stephen rowed him out to meet them. He remembered Sidney laughing with the others in the stern, holding his thin arms high, waving at the sky as he talked, while his father glided slowly, alone on the angling bow, high above the water, his white linen jacket flapping in the wind, waiting for the mooring.

Dr. Farnham and the Navy captain looked at one another and then Dr. Farnham said, "I’ll tell her."

When the boy finally got all the way to the car and looked in, only to find it empty, he asked them where his Daddy was.

"He’ll be along, Demi -- He’s in another car. He wants you to wait in the kitchen for him."

The boy opened the black, iron fire door on the stove and held his hands to the coals. They were red and yellow. He waited for the sound of another car on the lane, but all he could hear were muffled, distant voices from the study. Then they grew quiet. His father would soon come home. After hunting, after the long drive up from the Chesapeake, he would hang the ducks in the shed beside the Stutz, tying them to the rafters with twine that smelled like tar from the boat. He would let him pluck the green feathers from around the necks. He would have whiskey and play pig with him, sprawling on the carpet from China. He would carve the roast and give him the outside, and the best of the top fat. After dinner he would send him to the humidor and he would retrieve a large brown Cuban cigar wrapped in cedar wood.

The boy was surprised that it wasn’t his father who came to the kitchen to get him; it was Stephen, and he did not look at the boy’s eyes.

"Come along now," Stephen said. "Madame wants you in the study."

Stephen held his hand and walked him out of the pantry. He was confused when he saw Jenny in his father’s chair, at the head of the dining room table. She held her arms silently wrapped about her waist and she was doubled over, sitting in the chair with her back to them and her head buried in her knees. Beyond her, standing in the sitting room, looking out the windows, were Dr. Farnham and the navy captain. Stephen let the boy go at the entrance to the study and picked up his broom and went to the living room where he began to sweep the hearth. The mother sat on the wooden fire stool and motioned the boy to come close. She put her arms stiffly on his shoulders and looked silently into his eyes.

"There’s been an accident," the mother said.

"Did Daddy break the Stutz?"

"No..." she said, pausing for a long time, "... not that kind of accident. It was a gun accident."

"Did he shoot the Stutz?"

"He dropped the gun passing it to the boy." For a long time she said nothing. She smoothed the crushed pink of her dress with her freckled hands. She and the boy both stared into the empty fireplace. The wind had blown cold ashes onto the decoys left on the hearth. "He shot himself, Demi. It was an accident."

"Does he hurt, Mommy."

"No, Demi, he doesn’t hurt. He’s in heaven. It doesn’t hurt in heaven."

"Is it safe in heaven?"

"Yes."

"Will they fix him in heaven in time for the roast?"

"He won’t be back," she said, "He can’t come back anymore. Demi, he’s dead."

But the boy kept waiting for his father to come. He could still make it all go away: Jenny holding herself and weeping; Mother staring at him; Stephen sweeping in the living room, Dr. Farnham and the navy captain standing in the sitting room, hands in their pockets, waiting.

That night, Jenny stayed in her room. She locked the door and wouldn’t talk to anyone. She used to have chocolate with the boy and let him button her nightie in back, where she couldn’t reach. His fingers would brush against the warm cotton of her underclothes and against her skin. "I’ll have a house someday," she would tell him softly, "a house of my own, with my own fireplace and my own china and I’ll have a horse and a garden and it will be someplace far away." And when she said that about far away, she could see the boy didn’t like it and she would tell him even more softly, "And there’ll be a room for you near mine and you can come stay anytime you please and I will have a husband and a little boy and they will love you too and soon, Demi, I promise." And that would make him happy and he would fall asleep, dreaming of rushing clouds and horses and the soft red coils of Jenny’s hair brushing his face and she would put him in the nursery.

"Jenny," the boy called. "I want to come in!" He could hear her sobbing. He waited quietly.

"Demi, Stephen can make your chocolate. Get Stephen!"

"Stephen makes it lumpy," he said. "I don’t like Stephen’s chocolate."

But Stephen put the boy to bed anyway.

The next day it began to blow and still Jenny didn’t come out. All of the relatives and friends had come to call and the boy’s mother and Stephen and the navy captain were giving them drinks and the navy captain was telling people what he would do if he had money.

It blew so hard that the boy was sure his grandmother and her big, billowing, black dress would fly up into the sky and be whisked away in the clouds had it not been for Stephen clutching her elbow. She had arrived late and Stephen walked her slowly across the lane, the wind whipping cinders past their ears and into their faces. Inside, there was the sound of ice clinking in glasses and people talking in hushed tones and the wind huffing, until the grandmother entered and then there was only the sound of the wind. After awhile she was talking at people. "No, it was an accident ... He wouldn’t have heard the news from Wall Street. Not down there. Not out in the blind."

"Yes," the boy’s mother said. "They tried to get him here all day. It was an accident."

It blew so hard that the grandmother had Stephen move the cars: "I don’t want them by the tree," she said. "All we have to have now is this wind dump the Indian tree on those cars and we’ll never hear the end of those wretched superstitions and I don’t think Madame wants to hear any more of them than I do."

So Stephen put the boy in the kitchen and moved the cars, one by one, down to the barn by the pond, where the ground was still wet and the guests stayed inside by the fire drinking. And the grandmother was saying, "He always liked a fine shot. That’s why. John was a Howard, after all -- a Philadelphia Howard ..." until once more there was only the sound of tinking glasses and muffled voices.

The boy left the kitchen and went up to sit by Jenny’s room, in the servants’ quarters above the kitchen. He could still hear the sounds of the talking through the heating ducts there, but the talking was muffled by the sound of the furnace. The hall was warm with the cooking from the kitchen and away from the wind. It smelled of cabbage and frankfurters. The boy often played there with his cannons. The worn lines on the carpet were forts and mountains. But this time he just sat there, leaning against Jenny’s door, waiting and wondering when his father would come.

"Demi? Demi, is that you? Demi, go downstairs with Stephen!"

"Jenny, I want to be with you."

"Some other time, Demi. Go with Stephen!"

"I want to go to your house, Jenny. I want to play with the horses."

"There is no house, Demi. No horses. Go with Stephen!"

But the boy stayed there all afternoon in the warm hallway above the kitchen, away from the wind and the talking until even his mother noticed he wasn’t about and sent Stephen to get him. "Well I know she’s upset," the mother told Stephen." We’re all upset. But that doesn’t mean she can just leave her duties. It was my husband, after all, not hers."

But Stephen had to tell the mother that Jenny was inconsolable. "She can’t stop crying, Madame. She won’t even come to her door."

"Well, somebody’s got to tend Demi."

"I’ll take care of the little fellow," Stephen said. He took the boy to the kitchen and gave him his paper man.

It wasn’t until the next day, the day they brought the boy’s father home in a box, that the mother went upstairs to talk with Jenny. Dr. Farnham and the navy captain and the uncles had taken the boy’s father upstairs to his bedroom, in his box. There was no one to close the front door behind them and the wind was still blowing, so it blew leaves into the living room and made the smoke from the fireplace fill the house and sting the boy’s eyes until they had come back down and left, closing the door behind them. Then it was just quiet, with the mother upstairs and the boy downstairs and Stephen in the kitchen and Jenny in her room and the father in his box.

The boy’s mother forbade him to see his father. "I want him away from the coffin, Stephen," she said. "You’d best keep him with you. And its high time Jenny returned to her duties."

When Jenny still hadn’t come down by lunch, Mother got angry and left the boy and Stephen in the kitchen while she went up the back stairs to Jenny’s room. Stephen gave the boy milk with oatmeal cookies, but the cookies were stale and smelled like the cupboard. The boy ate them slowly. Upstairs, he heard angry voices and his mother yelled at Jenny, "Like Hell he is!" and she came down and her face was red, redder than fire. "Stephen," she snapped, "Get Dr. Farnham!"

"I can’t," he said. "The wind has the line down."

"Well, take the Stutz," she said. "Demi, you go off to the study. I have to talk with Stephen."

When Dr. Farnham came, it rained. The rain was black and had been falling for a long time. Dr. Farnham had a black rubber cape around his shoulders, and muddy boots and this time he had his doctor’s bag with him and he came in through the kitchen door, not the front.

"Shall I tell Madame you’re here?" Stephen said.

"No need, Stephen. Just help with the slicker!" His boots were caked with the wet ashes and cinders from the lane and as he wiped them he said, "And maybe boil some water -- for tea." Then he looked at the boy. "And this little one had best be elsewhere."

Stephen sent the boy upstairs to his mother, but he stayed in the study, where it was dark and the books made the walls seem safe and he listened to Stephen and Dr. Farnham in the kitchen, until Stephen said the water was ready and Dr. Farnham started climbing up the back stairs. The boy went up the front stairs. His mother’s door was closed and the light came through the crack, but he did not want to go there.

He went to the bed room where his father lay in his box, on top of two sawhorses from the basement. He couldn’t see inside the box. Above the mantle piece behind it was the double barreled elephant rifle from India. It looked like his father’s shotgun. On the walls of the bedroom were the heads of mountain sheep and water buffalo that his father had hunted, all in pairs and with brown, hard eyes that didn’t move, but flickered menacingly in the faltering light from the candles on the mantle. The heads cast long shadows along the walls. The boy sat on the floor and waited by his father’s bed, wondering if his mother would get mad at him if he woke his sleeping father. He could hear the sounds of Jenny’s sobbing echoing more loudly now, through the heating ducts. His father’s Princeton chair was backed up against his box, beside the coal bucket, so he climbed up. His father was sleeping in his dinner jacket. In the wavering candlelight, the boy could just see the smoothed scar on his father’s face from the time he’d fallen and the mother had said he’d had too much celebrating. "Celebrating what?" the boy had asked. "Being a Howard," the mother had replied. "Nothing." The mother had broken the shotgun and had rested it beside the father in his box. The boy thought it odd for his father to have a shotgun when he was dressed for a party. He wondered if his father knew he was there. He wondered if the father would wake up and be with him. Through the ducts, he heard Jenny and Dr. Farnham talking angrily now, but their voices were muffled by the sound of the furnace and the noise of the rain on the roof. If he kissed him, maybe he would wake up and make it all go away. He leaned into the box, close beside his father’s face, which nestled in swirls of white silk. There was the smell of gun oil and cloves and shaving soap -- and a medicine smell. He leaned deeply into the box and, expecting a warm kiss, he placed his lips on his father’s. But his father’s lips were ice. His skin was scratchy and hard. The boy slipped and had to grab his father’s shoulder to keep from falling in. The shoulder was rigid and inhuman. The boy stood up from his father’s box and jumped down from the Princeton chair. He began to shiver. Then he heard Jenny begin to scream in pain. "Owwww ..." she moaned. "Please, no!" The rain hissed against the windows and the ducts rattled and the boy backed away through the muffled sounds of Jenny’s screaming. "No!" she kept crying. He tore his arm across his lips to make his father’s kiss go away. But it didn’t go away, no matter how hard he rubbed and he couldn’t turn to run and he couldn’t hide from the motionless, flickering animal eyes. He thrust his arms around his head to make it quiet and closed his eyes, but still there was the screaming. He turned to run and tripped on the carpet, but he was too scared to cry, so he rushed up the creaking stairs to the nursery. He wanted to hide. He found his mother, sitting there, in the dark, in the rocking chair. He wanted her to hold him. He crawled into her lap. Her arms were stiff. She was crying, staring out into the darkness over his head, muttering over and over to herself. "Hell he is!" she said.

On the morning of the day they buried his father, the boy awoke with red sunlight on his face. Outside, he watched a squirrel playing in the tree. The squirrel made a shadow on the wall. Inside, the house was silent, except for the rushing of the ducts. Curls of cold crept through the window frame and slipped under the covers. He waited for Jenny. Outside, it became yellow and then bright, but still silent, like snow. Then the mother and the grandmother came in and pulled off his covers and fussed and searched through the drawers for his clothes and pulled them onto him in the frigid light.

He asked where Jenny was.

"She’s gone out," the grandmother said.

The mother found his tie and tightened it around his neck and smoothed down his collar. She licked her thumb and pressed it against the back of his hair and then against the front. Then she tugged again at the tie, making the boy choke. When they squeezed him between the two of them, in the back of the Stutz, his head began to feel stuffy. They all sat covered by the fox fur from Philadelphia. The mother and the grandmother wore Sunday veils and stared out the window, wrapped in their brown mink coats. Stephen drove.

After they lowered the father’s box into the ground and started shoveling dirt on it, they all got back into the Stutz and the boy got hot again, surrounded by the furs. The perfume and the odor of Mennen powder and the heat swirled about. The boy’s temples throbbed. "I don’t feel well," he said. The mother gave him her coiled, gold, snake bracelet to play with. She told him the red eyes were rubies.

"He’d do better with his breakfast," the grandmother said.

"Stephen will get it," the mother said.

Then the mother and the grandmother talked about the October chill until they began to enter the lane and drive along the poplars between the straw-brown fields. Then they talked about improving the gardens.

"Sidney can get us a deal on a pool," the mother said, "if we do the terrace."

"That’s a bit dear, don’t you think, with all this market crash? Shouldn’t you wait till things settle down a bit?"

"Nonsense," the mother said.

"I mean it. John was a Howard, but he hadn’t much of a head for investments. You’d best take measure of what’s left."

"Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. Sidney’s having me sell some bank stock."

"Oh?" said Grandmother. "I thought Sidney was saying that the smart money was investing. Besides, Sidney’s no financier either."

"But, he is well connected. He’s from the British navy, you know, not the American."

"Navy’s navy, as far as I’m concerned."

"Well he says the worst is over and with his connections, he should certainly know."

At home, the boy burst from between them when Stephen opened the door and he raced to the kitchen to find Jenny. But the kitchen was empty. The stove fire was out. He called for her. He ran up the back stairs to her room. He called again. The smells of frankfurters and cabbages lingering in the hallways were cold now. There was no sign of Jenny. Again and again the boy called for her, each time pausing to detect her answering call, but all he heard were the empty echoes of his own voice wandering through the halls. When he got to Jenny’s, room he found her bed stripped. Her dresser drawers were sticking out, empty. Her night coat was gone and her toilet bottles and brushes. He sat on her bed. Stephen creaked up the backstairs after him and stood in the doorway to Jenny’s room, looking at him. The boy began to cry. Stephen sat down beside him on Jenny’s bed and waited, saying nothing, pulling his fingers through the gray curls on his head. When the boy had stopped crying, Stephen took him down to the kitchen and set him before the stove and together they tried to relight the fire.

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