Summary

The father is aware of the police carrying him into the ambulance. He is still unable to move or speak, and he is frustrated by the pain and the inability to communicate. He feels like a “slab of meat” (107). At the hospital, the nurses inject him with morphine and leave him strapped to a bed naked for eight hours.

After the father dies, he is sent to a funeral home, where the narrator waits with him all night. The narrator looks inside the coffin to see his father, and he waits to see some movement that proves he is still alive. But the father does not move. Looking through his father’s items, the narrator finds a photograph of his father and the president. The narrator admires his father’s uniform and air of importance. He recognizes his own smile in his father...