SITTING QUIETLY REVEALS CROCODILE'S TRICKS

The rice was in. The men brought presents from Firestone for their wives, some extra money and stories of new things in the world. They told of the road soldiers were building beyond Kakata, of the stores and the things one could now buy even in Salala, of the strange ways of the white man at Firestone, and of the war between white men now in progress beyond the great water.

Saki brought with him cloth for the whole family, as well as a rifle for himself. Flumo did not like the rifle, but let Saki keep it. He is a married man now, Flumo thought. Flumo himself was finished with guns, but his young brother could keep it if he used it well.

Kona and Zena did not understand the activity around them. Every day the men worked long hours at the edge of' the high forest near town. The boys wanted to see this work, just as they had seen and even helped in the work their fathers regularly did. But this time they had to stay in town.

They did not complain, however, because they had been brought up not to complain. Once Flumo had told Kona not to follow him to the forest. He had run after Flumo to beg him. His father had picked him up, hit him once hard, and sent him crying back to Yanga.

So this time they waited back at home with the women while their fathers worked. And, even when the work seemed to be finished in the forest, the town was still excited. Flumo told the boys their time had now come. In four days they would have to fight the Forest Thing. But until then everyone would celebrate their coming entrance into the forest the Poro Bush School.

Flumo worried that the twins were too young to enter the forest. They had lived for eight rainy seasons now. The other boys who now danced in the town were older, some them even ready to marry and have children, if it had not been for the four years they must spend learning the ways of their people. But Kona and Zena were twins, were special. And so no one thought it strange that their father wanted them to join the society so early. Besides they were grow strong and straight, and seemed as ready as some of the ol boys.

The boys made small wooden spears to fight the Forest Thing. All their relatives crowded around them to encourage them to make fine spears. The boys, however, didn't believe they could defeat the Forest Thing. They had often heard him singing in town when they ran to their house, closed all doors and listened in frightened silence. He sounded fearfully strong and powerful, but the unearthly beauty of the singing of his wife chilled their blood. How could they, small boys, even smaller than most who entered the bush, fight so terrible a being?

Their grandmother, Flumo's mother, encouraged them. She said it would be easy for such fine strong young men, her young husbands, to kill the dread figure. They must smooth, the edge of the spear and sharpen it carefully, and then go in and strike off the head of their enemy. She especially asked them to pull out his teeth so she could use them for snuff bottles. She said that the teeth of the Forest Thing would make the snuff taste finer, and she was sure that her strong husbands, Kona and Zena, could do the job well. Saki echoed her words, and said that he wanted the skull of the Forest Thing to drink his palm wine, as warriors in the past had drunk from the skulls of those they had slain in battle,

The boys shivered as they heard these words. How could they be so manly, so powerful, so strong? How could they kill the thing that was to bring them the new life of adulthood? But they promised their grandmother and Saki they would try.

During those four days of dancing, all the boys who would enter the forest slept in one house. Kona and Zena were frightened and wondered why they were together again after living in different houses. The older ones tried to show their courage by making light of what would happen, but the younger boys, including Kona and Zena, did not really believe them. They dared not say so, but they almost knew that the big boys were quite frightened, too.

The boys never had stayed indoors like this, away from their parents. After each day of dancing, they went back to the house to listen. They knew the sound - it was the Forest Thing. Usually he came late at night when they were supposed to be asleep, but now it was still early. The Forest Thing came every night for their four days of isolation.

Zena felt his spear to be a source of security when he heard the singing outside the door. But the second night he could not find it. He called to Kona to give it to him, in case the dread person should enter the house to find them. It was dark and the boys in the house could scarcely see their hands in front of them.

Zena asked Kona to pick up the thing and give it to him. "What thing?", Kona asked. "The thing in front of you." "The things are many." "The stick" - Zena's voice had a tremble in it of fear and anger. Kona picked up a piece of firewood which he could barely make out in the dark. Zena half rose as if to hit him, but sat back. "No, the small stick." Kona then realized that Zena wanted the spear he had made, which lay on the ground in front of Kona. He asked Zena why he had not said what he wanted. Zena did not reply - Kona should have known what he needed.

Then the voices began again. Kona and Zena listened carefully, from the dark and quiet of the house. The voices seemed everywhere in town. The older boys said that the Forest Thing and his wife Could fly through the air, could in many places at the same time. The boys believed it. They heard the cries, the strange slurred singing, and the terrible beauty of the voices, now at the edge of town, now in the forest, then next door, then across by Flumo's blacksmith kitchen. Time moved with fearful slowness.

And then the singing seemed to stop at the boys' house. There was a sudden silence - it seemed to last for many heart beats. Then came a pounding at the door. The voice called out, "Many boys are in there, and I need them. I will eat them in two days." The boys were frightened but knew that this was a time for them to be strong and silent - no crying now.

The voice told the boys they must show their worth, before they could come to the forest. He ordered Kona to crow like a chicken. Kona, in fear and eagerness, managed to gasp out a reasonable imitation. The terrible voice then said that all the boys must swim on the floor. They all fell to the ground and started squirming along the dusty earth. He then said he was sending in peppers to be their palm nuts, and they must eat them all. The door opened and a basket of tiny red peppers was passed in - and the boys without exception took them and chewed them up. Their eyes filled with tears their throats burned and their skin became hot and sweaty. But they had to finish all, lest the Forest Thing catch them.

Their days were full of dancing and celebration. The boys were groggy with an unfilled need for sleep. But they had to keep going, had to submit to the encouragement of their friends and relatives. They knew the time was coming, and they were frightened. But they dared not show it. Kona wanted to cry, but feared that crying would mark him as baby too small to go behind the fence into the bush, to small to be eaten by the Forest Thing. Zena was more sure of himself, but still feared what might be coming

The next night and the night after, they heard the same noises, the same voices, the same commands. The boys knew that four days was the limit, that this must be the night. The end of boyhood had come for them, and they did not know what might be coming. They could not sleep, both for anticipation and for constant harassment from outside the elosed door, where the terrible yet beautiful voices called them, harried them, beckoned them. The tasks they were given were more difficult than ever. They had to fly like birds in the house. They had to drink what the Forest Thing called spirit's milk - and it was terribly bitter. They had to sing like the frogs of the swamp. And just when they felt they would drop with exhaustion, the voice told them to open the door and come out. It was time now to be men, time to enter the forest. And yet to open the door required a courage none of the boys felt he had. It took the biggest of them to make the move that none of the others dared make.

When they opened the door, the Forest Thing had gone, and its voice could be heard already far away on the other side of town. Outside the house they saw no dread thing, no terrible apparition, nothing but their fathers telling them to come, telling them not to worry. The voices now came from far away, first in the forest where their fathers had been working, then on the other side of town near the old medicine lady's house, then at the base of the great cotton tree which was the town's medicine.

The night soon would end. A faint grey behind the cotton tree showed that the deep black left in the sky would soon give way to dawn. At this time usually only the roosters would be awake, urging the people of the town to leave their beds and get to work. This night, however, the whole town seemed to be awake. Perhaps it had never slept.

Boys from every house in town, and happy, apprehensive fathers walked out of town on the path forbidden these past few weeks. A short way from town, at the edge of a clearing, was a fence of a type they had never seen before. Woven from mats with a beautiful cross-hatched design, it seemed almost a part of the forest itself. In the center th boys saw a low opening, and immediately to the left of the opening something that looked like a small thatch house

When the boys reached the fence, they found most of the town there ahead of them. Men were ducking in and out through the opening, while women remained outside, dancing a special dance with rattles on their ankles. The youngest boys, who remained with their mothers, cried from fear, and Flumo's sons found it difficult not to let a few tears stand on their cheeks.

The women sang together before the fence. Their leader sang, "All zoes," and the rest responded, "Zoes, you are zoes." The leader continued, "This is my son you are taking," and the others responded "Take them all, and bring them all back." The leader urged, "Let my son not become a swimmer, let him not climb the palm tree in the sky," and the others repeated the chorus. As they sang, they all danced and their feet raised dust from the ground and echoes froi the surrounding forest.

The boys stood irresolute, with no idea what would happen, while the searing beauty of the voices - now behind the fence, now far in the forest, now in town behind them--both frightened them and drew them nearer. The twins were glad to see Flumo in the crowd, but he did not stand near them.

It was almost fully light by now. The boys could see the designs in the fence more clearly than they really wanted to The low opening pulled their eyes. They could not forget it even if they tried. And when the voice in a terrible roar called for the boys to come to be eaten, they realized that they would have to pass through that opening themselve They understood the command, but nonetheless one of the men explained it to them in a clear voice.

The twins turned to Flumo, but he was no help. H motioned to them to turn back, as if to tell them to be men. They saw tears in their mother's eyes, back in the crowd of women, and to avoid letting the tears catch them also, they turned back to watch in frightened fascination.

The smallest boy was called forward. After him Kona and Zena must go. The boy had the same kind of small carved spear the twins held ready for fighting the Forest Thing. He didn't seem to be afraid, but the boys saw that his lip trembled. The Forest Thing's interpreter led him forward, talking to him quietly.

The voice from behind the fence shouted in a blurred roar, "Bring him," and the interpreter answered, "I bring him." Three times this exchange took place, and then on the fourth the interpreter pushed the boy through the hole in the fence. The great voice rose in triumph, the guttural slurring giving over to a high-pitched shout. The terrible, seductive singing of the Forest Thing's wife was now quiet, and in the silence there came a sharp crack. a cry of pain, and the carved stick, now broken, flew back over the fence. The voice sang that the Forest Thing had eaten the first boy. It said the boy had tried to fight him, but had brought with hirn only a little wooden stick that could do nothing. He called for more boys to come. He wanted to eat them all.

All this was too much for some of the little ones, who would not enter the Bush School for another two or three years. They ran to their mothers and cried without stopping. The mothers tried to push thern back, make them men, but couldn't. After all, the youngest arriong them had seen only five rice harvests. Flurno's sons would have cried if they had not, out of fear and fascination, kept their eyes fixed oil the fence and the opening

Their turn came next. The Forest Thing's interpreter led them to the fence, as they held tight to their carved sticks. A warrn and friendly hand on the shoulder, a brief firmness of the grasp. helped greatly as he pushed them through the hole to the other side. Their spears came flying back over the fence, in the view of the crowd. The twins were gone.

After the last big boy had entered, the wife of the Forest Thing once again took up her song. She and her husband, those dread spirits of the forest, had eaten their fill. She sang, the unearthly beauty of her voice filling the air and filling the ache that was left in the boys' mothers' heart. Now they must return to town to celebrate and adjust then selves to not seeing their sons. No woman could go behind the fence, except for old Noai, who had that privilege as head of the women's Sande Society.

That night the men came back from behind the fence to announce that there had been a successful initiation. They brought green leaves with them, some around their waist and some to put on the roofs of the houses from which boys had gone to the Bush School. The leaves, Yanga knew, were smooth and soft and green, a sign that all had gone well. That night everyone who remained in town danced for joy, dance with satisfaction that their boys would soon be men.

Not for four years would the boys come out. Not for four years would they see their mothers, nor any other woman from the town except old Noai. Behind the woven wall was a world of men, a world where young men and boys grew to be real men, to be members of the Kpelle world, to be full human beings. For four years they would learn and grow, suffer and yet bear the suffering, share each other's pain and promise, and die together to childhood.

Yanga knew that some of the boys who had been eaten by the Forest Thing would never leave his belly. The terrible being who sang so beautifully could kill and perhaps not restore to life. She dreaded the possibility that a broken pot, or even two broken pots, might appear at her door, a brief silent announcement that her sons would not come out again If it happened, she must not cry, she knew that, as she would if one of her boys had been killed by a leopard, or died from witchcraft, or succumbed to fever. She knew that it could not happen for all the boys to return. Some had to satisfy the appetites of the spirits and the ancestors.

Yanga did not know the secrets of the boy's Bush School. She had to be content with what she had learned in the Sande Bush School. But she knew that the boys would learn when to speak and when to be silent. "You cannot say it," they had taught her as a girl, and she had taught it to her sons. She had always told them to look straight ahead at the secret places on the road marked by bunches of grass tied to vines, and not to speak if they saw what they should not see.

Flumo too had tried to bring the boys up right. He had used proverbs in their presence, to accustom them to speaking properly. He had tried to teach them not to ask "Why," even though he had failed to show Kona why that question was wrong. He had let them make their own explanations of the things they had heard. And when they could not explain, for themselves and asked him, he responded simply, "I hear you." This was a response which he also taught them to use when problems arose.

Flumo feared what might happen to Kona behind the fence. Kona always asked the reason for things, always inquired into other people's business. He should have known by this time that silence or indirect observation was the best approach. No, he would always blurt out his ideas and uncertainties. He did not seem to realize that truth is what the old people say it is, not something that any young boy can explain for himself. Truth is truth, Flumo thought, but no young person can know it until he is told. Kona was always too free, moreover, with his news. When he saw something in the bush, he would run and tell everyone in the town, and not keep his news to himself.

The last thing Flumo told Kona and Zena the day before they went behind the fence was, "Sitting quietly reveals crocodile's tricks." They had to watch and wait and grow in order to come out men, with at least the seeds of adult wisdom. Flumo felt he had laid the groundwork for their manhood, but now they must make their own way, so that they could become proper Kpelle, proper members of the Poro Society, proper men.

Flumo also remembered that the most important thing he had learned in the Bush School was "You cannot say it" What he learned there, and how he learned it, he must never tell non-members. He had learned not even to discuss Poro Society matters with members in public. His sons must now learn this lesson, directly and seriously.

Flumo had heard about a Mano boy killed when he revealed secrets to the white doctor. He knew of no such case in Jorkwelle country, but it could always happen. The white doctor had been asking too many questions, and this boy had been willing to answer them. The case had shocked everyone. The Poro Society, Flumo realized, was not just a matter for the Jorkwelle alone, not for the Kpelle alone. It belonged all the people, Mano, Kpelle, Loma, Gola, Vai, Gbandi. A they all knew not to tell the secrets. Likewise, they all suffered when this Mano boy told the white doctor things he could put in a book. Even the boy realized, too late, that had to die.

The years passed. The boys grew. Kona and Zena and the other boys in that small village in the heart of the forest learned to be men. They worked and played, talked and relaxed. They could not see their mothers and sisters and the other women in town, but they learned how men must relate to women. For now, however, the twins were glad not have their older sister, Toang, and her friends to trouble them.

Four times the boys went through the cycle of wet dry, the cycle of planting and harvesting rice. They and their fathers did all their own work, even though the town sent them food from time to time. It was a period of great peace for them, even though they heard faint rumors of war in world outside.

Men from the town went to Firestone in greater numbers, because people beyond the water needed rubber.

Kona and Zena saw their uncle Saki only rarely during those four years, since he spent most of his time at Firestone collecting the rubber for the kwii people. It was reported to the boys that the white men were fighting a terrible, cruel war, more terrible than any the Kpelle had fought. Kpelle people from Guinea had even gone to fight in that war, and many had not returned. Kpelle people in Liberia did not have to fight, and they thanked God for that.

After the fourth rice harvest, the pace of life behind the fence quickened. Those last few boys that tradition requires were brought to the fence and eaten by the Forest Thing. Smaller than the other boys, they had remained in town until the end. Four years earlier, they had run from the fence in tears. But now they were big enough to enter

Kona and Zena understood now that the last boy to enter must kill the Forest Thing. All the others had lost the fight. But that last boy must win, so that the Bush School of the Poro Society could end.

The boys could hear dancing and singing from the town, when they went close to the fence. They could sense the coming happiness. The women danced before the fence and then again in town when the Forest Thing fought the last boys. Among them was Saki's son. Saki came back from Firestone for the occasion, and made sure that his boy went through the old ways of the Kpelle, even though Saki wanted him to be kwii someday. Saki's son, moreover, went behind the fence last, late one night, before the pepper bird had announced the coming of the dawn. Kona and Zena saw him come through the fence, and for once the stick was not broken. Surely that day the Forest Thing would depart.

The last thin crescent of the dying moon shone in the cold, dry-season sky. The boys had been awake most of the night, and now the day of return had arrived. Flumo and the other men who had been in and out of the Bush School to train the boys during those four years, now prepared them to re-enter the outside world. They painted each boy with white clay on his face, his arms, his upper body and his legs, and gave him a short raffia skirt to cover his nakedness.

Outside the fence, the sounds grew and the activity in creased. The paramount chief had come from Gbarnga, and the clan chief was present also. The old town elder was seated before the fence, accompanied by the town chief and his quarter chiefs, Flumo and Yakpalo. The chiefs of the other towns that had had boys in the Bush School also held place of honor.

The boys heard singing outside the fence, and could even imagine that they heard their mother's voice. Kona and Zena could hardly remember what she looked like or sounded like. Some of the boys who had come in to the Bush School during the years after the opening remembered thei mothers better. New rice, freshly harvested, occasionall, dropped over the fence, as the women tossed the hard whit grains from overflowing calabashes.

The boys were all reminded of the need for secrecy as they prepared to leave the forest. They were told that other boys, younger than they, had not yet entered the Bush School. They must not tell them or women or any stranger what they had learned. Yakpalo reminded the boys, "Pangolin showed leopard the way to eat him." They knew the pangolin, that strange animal who could protect himself by curling into a ball, letting his hard scales baffle his attackei But if he opened up and displayed his soft underbelly, he could be eaten easily. If the boys repeated any of what they knew, they would be like the pangolin who unrolls himself and is eaten by leopard.

The sound of drums increased outside the fence. The boys knew the women were dancing, dancing for joy. They could hear their feet slapping against the ground, and the could see the dust rise over the fence. The rhythms grew more intense and complicated, as the noise became almost unbearable.

Only a few women held back. A broken pot had appeared before their doors, for some as late as the previous night, telling that the Forest Thing had chosen not to bring their sons back to life. He had swallowed them, and the ancestors had accepted their lives for the others who now returned as adults. These women swallowed their sorrow, and accepted the joy of the community. The joy was theirs only to share with others.

Then a silence settled over the waiting crowd. A space was cleared before the fence, and mats spread on the ground. Mulbah, the oldest and most respected of the medicine men in town, stood before the assembled people. He told them of their traditions. He warned them that the old ways were dying. He saw only trouble ahead. Even this very day there were men at Firestone who should be here rejoicing with their town. He told of Liberian schools, schools run by white men, who took children for many years. These children were eaten by a different thing, which kept them from becoming men. The old man warned the people of the town that the end was coming, and that he personally would die before he would accept these new ways.

But today the people must forget tomorrow's impending darkness, and do what their ancestors had done for as long as any man could remember. He was an eye-witness to this ceremony, and he could remember back many years before the Liberian soldiers had first come. And his own grandfather had been an eye-witness to it years before that. He said, "Sitting quietly reveals crocodile's tricks," and reminded the people that they should only believe what they or their elders have seen.

The old man spoke in words that brought chills of pleasure and fear to the twins. He spoke clearly enough, and yet there was a mystery in his manner, in the very choice of words. They had spent four years mastering that deeper and grander language they had heard in the forest, and had never before understood. Old Mulbah's words raised him up in the eyes and hearts of the people, even if the women did not understand everything he said. They only knew he was calling on them to take back their boys from the Forest Thing and welcome them to town. He said he had taught them as well he could. Not all the boys could return, but those who would now be reborn were new people. They had new names, and once again must learn to be part of the town, this time men.

The boys then heard the town chief step up and call loudly to the Forest Thing. He was answered by a long slurred, guttural cry. The townspeople took up the cry in response. The boys knew the correct response, but their time had not come to give it. The exchange of greetings and affirmations continued until the Forest Thing agreed to return the bush and only return when the next school opened many years later. The women would have three years to prepare and then three years for school. Then the men could use another four years to get ready, before the Forest Thing would once again return to eat the new generation of boys.

But before the Forest Thing agreed to leave, he would have to test the spirits to see if now was the proper time for his departure. The Thing would throw a basket over the fence. If the basket landed face down, he would remain and not release the boys: if face up, he would depart and leave them in peace to re-unite their families.

The whole town stood in silent expectation. They saw the basket rise in a slow arc over the fence, hang for a moment in the empty air, and then fall to the ground. The basket bounced once, and with the help of old Mulbah, landed face up. He showed it to all the people present, and they responded with a loud cry of joy. The women rushed forward Yanga embraced Toang, drums started, and some even took few steps in dance.

But then the crowd fell back again. From the side of t fence, through an opening newly made, there came a long thin line of boys. They were bent double, their eyes on the ground, each one's arms on the hips of the boy in front.

Their newly-daubed white chalk contrasted with the brownof their raffia skirts. The townspeople gave way before them.as the line grew to fill the open space before the fence.

The first four boys sat down on a mat, with old Noai behind them. Her presence reminded everyone that a midwife is needed at a birth and these were new-born boys. They had a small basket for offerings. Yanga saw that one of the four boys was her own son, Zena. Her heart beat hard with gratitude. She had not seen him for four years. He was so big now. She hardly knew him, and yet she knew him. She ran up, and put a white kola nut in the basket. She wanted to touch the boy, to embrace him, but that time had not yet come.

Boys continued to come out, but Yanga did not see her other son Kona, whom she had once called "Good-for-nothing." She knew he would come, but still she feared. Perhaps the Forest Thing had decided at the last minute to keep him, had decided that, in fact, he was good for nothing. Perhaps he was sick and could not walk. Perhaps - but then he came, his head down, his eyes on the ground, his hands on the next boy's hips. He too had grown, even more than his brother. They were twins, but Kona was slightly bigger. Oh, he looked fine and handsome. She looked back at Zena, and her eyes filled with tears. She melted back into the crowd lest anyone see her cry.

After the boys had circled twice around the open space, they left as quietly as they had come, taking a road newly-cut in the forest. They would now wait in a freshly-cleared area near town until it was time for them to be washed and to return to town. Their family could visit them, and bring them food, while they waited patiently for the right time to enter town, dressed in their finest new clothes.

After a few days in this place, the boys saw the first faint glimmer of the new moon. Mulbah and Noai agreed that the time would be soon. They together would lead the boys to the river to wash the white clay and all evil spells from their bodies. The boys would then put on new clothes and come into town to be welcomed at a great feast.

Flumo had prepared well for the great day. He had harvested the first coffee from the trees he had planted so many years before, and he received a good price for the fragrant beans. Coffee was scarce now that the kwii people were fighting each other over the water, and the Lebanese man in his new store in Salala was glad to get it. There on the new road Flumo saw huge trucks that the kwii people used to carry the coffee down to Monrovia.

With the proceeds, Flumo bought new clothes for everyone. He also bought new lanterns, shoes for the boys and iron for his blacksmith work. When Yanga saw the shoes, she asked, "Why should anyone want to cover up his feet"' But Flumo only laughed and replied, "We want our boys to look their best when they come back to town."

The boys, dressed in the finest clothes they had ever seen, arrived in line in the town. They followed a new path to show that they had left the old life behind, that they were now different persons. To follow the old road would bring bad luck, they realized. The old man who had taught them much was at the head of the line, carrying his sword left over from the days of the great wars before the Liberian soldi( had come.

Yakpalo fired Flumo's old gun to mark the boys' entry into town. Their eyes still on the ground, the boys walked bent double, gowned in new country cloth robes, with long tassled caps on their heads and bells on the tassles, and covered by country cloths and elaborately colored kwii cloths. The boy who had entered the fence first four years earlier led the line. Kona and Zena had followed him into the Bush School, and had to follow him during the whole time their training. Moreover, they knew he would remain a leader throughout all their life, and they were jealous.

Kona and Zena were jealous also of Saki's son, who had been the last to enter the school, just the night before they had left the fence. He too had a special position, as the oneto kill the Forest Thing and drive him back into the deep forest for seven years. However, they realized that the boydid not yet know what they had learned during their yearsbehind the fence. He would have to learn it informally at Poro society meetings.

The time had come to put jealousy aside and rejoice with the people of the town. All of them were together now, as they moved in a long, slow line to the center of town. As they walked they were welcomed by all the women, who danced around the line. The chief's wife danced as she had not danced for years, her every motion exciting the crowd. Her husband dashed to her, wiped her forehead, and helped her back from the line. The boys finally reached the center of town, where they sat down on mats in front of the chief's palaver house. Some of them had not seen the town in four full years, but they dared not look up yet.

The chief walked the whole line of boys, inspected them, and pronounced them well trained and ready to be members of the town. He then went to the heads of the Bush School, seated at the head of the line of boys, and gave them two sheep, two white chickens, white cloth, and white kola nuts, to show his thanks. He sat down, and the other people in town followed him to bring their gifts to the heads of the Bush School. Women tossed clean white rice and rice flour on the boys, and men gave them fresh water in a clay pot. The old man who led them responded, and then sent the boys to the house where they would stay for four days.

Flumo and Yakpalo came to visit their boys in that house. They brought them water to drink, since the house must have no pans with water in them, lest it bring bad luck to the boys. Flumo and Yakpalo saw the twins, and felt their renewed friendship grow. They shared sons now. The president's decision, so long ago, had been wise, and had united them, and with them the whole town.

The boys were no longer Kona and Zena, no longer "Good-for-nothing" and "Dirt." They were now new men with new names. "Dirt" had proved clean and good. He was now named Sumo, because of his stature, slightly shorter than his brother. "Good-for-nothing" had shown his value. He had lived for a year and a half with Yakpalo, his father's one-time enemy, had been through Bush School, and had come out a tall, strong young man. He was now named Koli to show that he had the strength of a leopard.

Sumo and Koli - two boys to carry on Flumo's line and keep his family and ancestors alive. Sumo and Koli two boys to make Yanga's heart happy in her old age, and show that she was indeed a woman. Sumo and Koli - younger brothers for Lorpu and small Toang to be proud of, and big brothers for small Noai to look up to. Sumo and Kol-- marvelous big boys they could all be proud of, especially small Noai, named for the old medicine lady who had hea the boys when they were sick. Sumo and Koli - the town was pleased with them, for they were twins, they were m now, and they would bring good fortune to all.