The Rocket Man Summary

The narrator's mother asks him help her, not wanting "him" to leave again. The narrator says it won't do any good, then goes to bed but doesn't want to fall asleep.

The boy's father returns home that night in his rocket ship. That morning his father acts as if he's never been gone. That afternoon, the father works in the garden with his family. In the evening, they sit on the porch swing, but the father is drawn to the sky.

On the first night, the father isn't too obsessed with the sky, and family goes to a television carnival. Doug asks his father what space is like, and his father says it's the best thing of all but that Doug wouldn't like it.

When the father is away, his mother does not talk about him, does not sleep...