TRIAL BY FIRE
21
explained to anyone why he did this any more than he could
have explained why he waked in the night.
Except for the pine trees all the country was brown, but
the day was sunny, a very still winter day. Dubie sat on a rock
and played mumble-peg with his ten-cent store knife. Later he
found an ant hill and watched the insects pulling and straining
to get a dead fly into their hole. One of the ants found the
By
and ran to tell the others. They came back with him, some ef
them, and while half pushed at the fly others pulled. Two who
seemed to be superintending the work ran toward the ant hole
and back, urging the others forward. They even ran over the
fly while the others were moving it. Dubie wondered if his ears
were big enough, if it would be possible for him
to
hear their
voices. At the ant hole other ants were busy coming up or going
down into the dark small place. At times one of them would
meet another outside. Their noses or whatever they had at their
heads would touch as if they were speaking and again they would
hurry on, busy and unconcerned with the great giant who was
the small black boy squatting above them.
When he thought by the position of the sun and by the
feeling of hunger in him that it was time for school to let out
Dubie went home. His mother said, "You're back early," and
looked at him as if she had questions in her mind.
The next day Dubie stayed in town. He wandered through
the business district and then back into the place where he and
his own kind lived. From behind a fence on a little rise in the
ground he looked through the windows of the church. The
children were still there. He could see their heads and shoulders
through the windows. The walking had tired him so he sat
down behind the fence and played mumble-peg again until the
children's voices qme across
to
the little rise and he knew they
were going home.
Later that afternoon when he came in from the store after
getting octagon soap for his mother she said, "Your teacher
was here. She thought you were sick. She says you havn't been
to school."
"White folks children go to school every day," she said, "they
want learnin'. Don't you want learnin'? You think I've got
to whup you?"
She sent him off early the next morning. He stood in the
door of the church. The great stove was at the end of the aisle.
He looked at the church, made of wood, and craned his neck
