TRIAL BY FIRE
"Why can't you?" Mister Anderson demanded.
"I don't know how," Dubie told him.
23
The strap came down on Dubie's back, which had been
stripped of clothes, thirty times. Mister Anderson counted them
slowly. "One-two ... " At the end of ten he said, "Had
enough? You going to be impudent. You going to make those
fires?"
Dubie, who was eight years old and small for his age, 'vas
crying. He tried to explain as far as he could, as far as he un–
derstood why he could not make fires, but only blubbered.
At the end of the next ten Mister Anderson asked the ques–
tion again, and the same thing happened. At the end of the
third ten Dubie promised to make fires.
The following morning he crept around to all the stoves
putting the sticks in gently because every movement of his arms
made each one of the deep welts on his back, which had bled
the night before on his blanket, feel as if the strap was coming
down on his back again. He shut his eyes when the flame of
the match touched the paper, but it was possible to hear the
flames that roared up from the kindling, and when he heard
them his whole body trembled. He did not look as he put in
the hickory logs. As soon as possible after the fire burned in
each stove he pushed the door shut and ran away.
It was the fourth morning after Dubie began making the
fires that he squatted before Mister Anderson's stove in Mister
Anderson's cottage, in the same position in which he had sat that
day in the country over the ant hill. His back was still sore,
but the welts did not hurt if he moved his hands carefully from
the elbows.
It
was the fourth morning, but instead of becoming
accustomed to the fires, he dreaded them more each day.
The match was in his hand ready to be struck against the
stove and applied to the paper and kindling. From the next
room which was a bed-room he heard a deep snort which was
Mister Anderson snoring. This sound was like a command, as
if Mister Anderson had said, "Hurry up. Light that fire."
Suddenly, while he was holding the match, the thought
came to Dubie that he need not strike it and light the fire. That
he need not have another beating. The Detention Home was in
the country. He could go back to the building, get his coat, say
goodbye,-for some reason he felt it necessary to say goodbye
to the other boys,-and walk out on the road. The thought
made him feel very foolish and happy and he almost laughed out
