When Jim awakens on the morning of January 22, he learns that after dinner the night before, Mr. Shimerda committed suicide in the barn, putting the barrel of his gun into his mouth and pulling the trigger with his big toe. Ambrosch brought the news to the Burdens in the middle of the night and now is asleep on a bench behind the stove; when he wakes, he sits nervously, fingers his rosary, and prays incessantly.
After breakfast, Grandfather, Grandmother, Jake, and Ambrosch leave for the Shimerdas’ while Otto heads for town to bring back the priest and coroner. Alone in the house, Jim thinks about what he’s learned of Mr. Shimerda’s origins. He wonders if Mr. Shimerda’s soul is resting here in the Burden home, feeling warm and secure, before beginning its long journey home to Bohemia. Returning later, Otto reports that Ambrosch is obsessed with worry, fearing that his father’s soul is in torment. Jim doesn’t believe it possible—“Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish: he had only been so unhappy that he could not live any longer.”
At noon the next day, Otto returns from Black Hawk with Anton Jelinek, a young Bohemian farmer who has come to help his fellow countrymen. The coroner will arrive later that afternoon, Otto says, but the priest is at the other end of his parish. Jelinek explains how difficult the suicide and the lack of absolution are to the Shimerda family.
Otto begins to build a coffin, and neighbors begin to stop by to pay their respects. Neither the Catholics nor the Norwegians will allow Mr. Shimerda to be interred in their cemeteries. Mrs. Shimerda insists that her husband be buried at the corner of their land, where future roads will eventually cross. Grandfather asks Anton Jelinek if there is an Old Country superstition that a suicide must be buried at a crossroads; the young Bohemian thinks there once may have been such a custom, but he isn’t sure. Grandfather declares that Mrs. Shimerda is mistaken if she thinks she will live to see the people of this country “ride over that old man’s head.”
Mr. Shimerda is buried on the fifth day after his death. Because of the severe cold weather, Ambrosch and Jelinek have to chop into the frozen earth with axes. Before the coffin lid is nailed down, the Shimerdas, in turn, make the sign of the cross on Mr. Shimerda’s bandaged head—all except for Yulka, who cries hysterically, afraid to touch the bandage. At the gravesite, the men use ropes to lower the coffin into the hole. Grandfather Burden says a prayer, Otto starts a hymn, and all the neighbors join in singing.
Years later, Grandfather’s prediction is proven true; the grave becomes a little island, the roads curving around it. Jim loves the quiet grave because of the spirit of superstition and conciliation that put it there and the spirit of kindness that would not permit anyone in the future to drive over it.
