Summary

In Chapter 9, just before Miles graduates from Columbia, his mother surprises him with a small key. Miles then takes the reader back in time to describe his life at Columbia and the cramped closet-turned-dorm room that he was assigned to because they assumed no white boys would want to share a regular room with him. He then describes his unpleasant stepfather Wendell. While his mother never technically married him, they refer to him as his stepfather and this is the role that he assumes in the family. Now back to the present, Miles’ mother gives him the key and explains that it opens a locker in an army base “some’ere out in Californ’a” where his father left his wartime journals (65). Miles is nervous to learn the truth about his father after growing up hearing rumors about his discharge.

In Chapter 10, Miles further...