20
PARTISAN REVIEW
Through the red and orange flames which licked up and down
and held the children back he saw them pressed together. They
pushed backward against those behind them, their necks and
faces strained away from the fire. Their bodies could not move
because there were innumerable other bodies clear up the stairs
and in the upper hall pressing forward. Some of the children
had their hands raised as if a teacher had asked a question and
they were anxious to answer.
Dubie could not make out Clissy's face or her voice for the
flames hissed and the wood crashed and he could not see any
face clearly, and when the wood crashed no particular voice
split through the gasping sound of the fire.
One of the children at the end of the line took Dubie's
hand and dragged at it, trying to urge him along with the line.
Hugging the wall with his body he pulled his hand away, and
a~
the last line went beyond him he left the wall and turning
toward the stairs called out "Clissy
I"
Flames came from the
side wall on the stairs and met those which were eating up the
steps. Dubie saw the faces through the fire, he saw the flames
eat up the faces as they had eaten up the stairs. The stairs
crashed down taking the faces with them into the red mouth of
the fire.
A rough arm snatched Dubie around the waist and holding
him up and away from the fire carried him into the air. They
did not find Clissy or the hundred or so other children and
teachers who had been on the second floor.
At night in the three-room house in which he and his mother
lived Dubie woke up two, sometimes three times. He would
be waked by a sound of hissing
Ol\
gasping, or it would be a
single very sharp cry. When he waked in the dark everything
would be quiet and still, but he must get up and slip into the
kitchen where his mother had made a fire in the cook-stove
that morning. He must reach out his finger and touch the stove
to be sure it was really cold.
In the day, in the churches where school was being held
because the school house was burned to the ground, Dubie sat
far back away from the large stove. One Friday morning the
teacher said, "Dubie and Rand must make the fires next week."
On Monday Dubie started to school with his books. He did
not turn up the street toward the church, but walked slowly to
the edge of town and out into the country. He could not have
