TH~ LAST time I saw my father, he was lying quietly on his

back in his coffin, his eyes closed, an unaccustomed blandness

on his strong features, his thick white hair and heavy eye-

brows neatly brushed. I stood there in the silence of the fu-

neral chapel staring down at him. There was something

wrong. All wrong. After a moment I realized what it was. My

father had never slept on his back. Not once in all the years I

knew him.

Usually my father slept balanced on his side, his barrel

chest and big belly sinking into the mattress, one arm thrown

over his eyes to shield them from the light, a scowl of concen-

tration fierce even in sleep on his face. Now there was nothing

there. Not even the hatred of the morning that would come to

tear him from his private world. Then the lid of the coffin

came down and I never saw him again.

I was flooded with a sense of relief. It was over. I was free.

I tore my eyes away from the burnished copper-and-mahog-

any coffin and looked up.