Summary

The narrator starts his story, which he tells in the first person to an unidentified person, with the quote “Mama’s still alive today” (1) as he tells how his brother was murdered. No one remembers his brother, but the man who killed him has gone down in history because he wrote a well-read novel about the murder. Since his brother is gone, the narrator believes it is his responsibility to speak in his brother’s place and give his brother a name. He describes how he learned to read and speak French so that he could understand the murderer’s thought patterns by reading the book he wrote.

The narrator is angry because his brother was given no name in the novel written by the man who murdered him. He argues he could at least have been called 2 pm, the time when he died...