22
P&RTISAN REVIEW
toward the steeple which could leap in one flame up to the very
sky. Slowly he turned around from the door and went out into
the town. Without explaining or thinking it out to himself, he
knew that he could not go home. He walked out into the coun–
try and in the late afternoon returned not to his home but to
the business section! of town. He was hungry and his hunger
made him angry, so that wanted to cry. At some place where
there was a restaurant a smell of food cooking came up through
the basement grating. He stood over the grating, but the smell
did not fill his belly. A bakery wagon stood before the restau–
rant. He walked over to inspect it. The doors at the back
were open as the driver had left them when he went inside the
restaurant. At the bottom of the wagon, right at the end there
was a wooden box and in the box were several pies. Very natu–
rally as if the pies had been placed there for him, Dubie reached
in and took one of them.
Someone told the wagon driver and before Dubie was very
far down the street a hand took hold of his shirt at the back.
Very soon there was a policeman on the other side of him. In
a few days he was sent to the Detention Home for truancy and
stealing.
Mister Anderson, a tall white man with brown moustaches
and a revolver in a holster at his waist was Superintendent of
the Detention Home. Dubie had been there a month when
Mister Anderson told him it was his duty to get up at five o'clock
and make the fires. One fire in the stove in Mister Anderson's
cottage; one fire in the stove of the kitchen for the cook; one
fire in the stove of the factory work room where the boys made
baskets and chairs for a firm in the city.
Dubie was afraid of Mister Anderson, who had a great
mouth from which came roars of anger. When he opened his
mouth to roar it was possible to see his red tongue and the pale
falseness of the roof of his mouth and the gums made by a
dentist. His row of white false teeth above showed under his
brown moustache, and below as his lips spread out could be
seen brown teeth, worn down, and a wad of chewing tobacco.
The row of white even teeth above seemed particularly fright–
ening in comparison with the brown teeth below. Another
frightening thing was the strap which Mister Anderson often
used on the backs of the boys in the home.
It was used on Dubie's back when he said to Mister Ander–
son, "I can't make no fires."
