Who is Narrator from Nine Stories and what is their importance?

The story's narrator is looking back fondly on a specific time in his youth. As a boy, he was a member of the Comanches, a group of boys that spent every day after school playing sports or visiting museums with a young law student they nicknamed The Chief. The narrator was something of a leader among the boys, serving as captain of one of their baseball teams and usually getting a good seat on The Chief's bus in order to better hear the latest installment of the bus driver's oral story, The Laughing Man. In retrospect, he describes a time when he felt the world held unlimited potential and he shared in the sense of adventure and possibility that were embodied in The Chief and the stories he told. The end of the Laughing Man saga profoundly affects the narrator.