"The Small Ones" The narrator continues his story of his father, who was a cop. One day, the narrator's dad gets into an argument with a soldier and hits him. The narrator thinks that this is a cop's way of disciplining his son, but he doesn't think it was a punishment for insulting soldiers returning from war. He thinks it's a cowardly thing to do, especially when you're an adult. He wonders if his dad is forcing his son to commit a crime. He also wonders if the crack in the military-intelligence relationship has grown into a chasm between the two agencies. The intelligence community is different from the military, he says, because they don't want to get caught up in the "one-sided story" about them.