Silent Thunder Read online

  Just as I see them swelling, turning to hooves, I hear Mama calling me, soft and low.

  “Rosco! Rosco, child, wake up! You’re dreaming haints again.” Mama was holding me to her. Soon as I felt her hands cupping both my cheeks, I knew the ride was over—over for now, at least. These evil dreams haunted my sleep on too many nights. And each time, Mama was there to deliver me from them. “I’m here,” she said. “Easy, now.”

  “It was night terrors again, Mama,” I explained, sitting up, trying to shake myself free of the dream.

  “Them dreams is just demons,” Mama said. “Don’t let ’em get the best of you, child.”

  I shifted on my pallet. As much as I liked the feel-good warmth of Mama’s hug, I tried to gently twist free of her hold. Sissies let their mamas hug them in the night. I was thirteen, almost a man. Too old for letting demon dreams scare me.

  Still, I listened close to Mama as she told me what to do when haints came to my sleep. “Darkness has a way of making demons seem real,” she said. “When them haints come creepin’, petition the Almighty with one word—any word at all—to soothe your soul in that very moment. Say it over and over, till peace comes.”

  I sure as heck didn’t know how a word could turn back demons, but I nodded when Mama spoke. I nodded like I understood. To my way of thinking, it was Mama herself—Mama’s strong arms holding me, that sure way Mama had of talkin’—that drove them demons away from my dreams.

  “Best way to feel safe in darkness is to speak words that comfort you,” Mama said.

  That morning I went to town to help my friend Clem, Master Gideon’s tack slave, load horse-shoeing iron onto the flatbed of the master’s wagon. It was then that I spotted me a page from something called Harper’s Weekly, rustling past my ankles on the dirt. My eyes caught the words free and slave.

  You never saw me snatch a scrap of trash off the ground so fast. (I’m good at quick swipes—been swiping Lowell’s tablet paper and books out from Master Gideon’s study ever since I was little). Clem was too busy sizing up his shoeing iron to notice me crumpling the Harper’s Weekly into the seat of my drawers, but I could feel that sharp-cornered ball of paper pressing into the skin on my backside all the way home. Felt like a burr pricking at me, only bigger.

  Later, I stole off to the cypress tree that marks the edge of Parnell’s land, so’s I could get quiet and be alone. I read every one of that paper’s words. I even read words I ain’t never seen the likes of before that day. Words like rebellion and authorized. There was one sentence, though, that I read without a hitch. It said that henceforth, all slaves admitted into military service are declared free, along with their wives and children.

  It also said that colored men could fight to help turn back slavery, and that President Abraham Lincoln was under something called coercion to free all black people to destroy the Confederacy, and win the war.

  Boy, did that paper get my head to spinning. Me, a solider—fighting to be free. It was a high-headed notion that had crossed my mind a time or two. But seeing it spelled out, all clear and official, put a whirl of excitement in my belly.

  To go off to fight would have meant that I’d have to leave Mama and Summer. But it also meant I could get out from under Master Gideon’s rule, and that I wouldn’t have to take care of young Master Lowell anymore.

  I had promised Summer I’d teach her to read, and goodness knows, she’d have had a hissy fit if I just up and went off and didn’t keep my word. And Mama, she thought any kind of fighting was not the Christian way, even though I’d tried telling her that this war was what could make all of us free. When I said that, Mama just shook her head. I swear, sometimes I thought my very own mother liked busting her backbone for white people.

  Mama didn’t know about me wanting to fight. Neither did Summer. Thea knew, though. She knew everything, without even having to ask. She had what Mama called “the power of intuition.” But to me it was more than that. Thea could see inside people’s thoughts. That’s why we called her a seer. Sometimes she told me what I was thinking before I knew I was thinking it myself. Like on that very afternoon, after I had tucked the scrap from Harper’s Weekly back in my britches and was coming up to Master Lowell’s quarters, thinking on enlisting. Thea met me on the road. She took a solid look at me. “You got the war drum beatin’ in you, don’t you, child?” was what she said. All’s I could do was nod.

  I sure wished Thea could put thoughts in people’s heads instead of just take them out. That way, she could have stricken Mama with a clear notion that slavery was as far off from any kind of Christian way that there was, that freedom was what the Almighty had in his mind when he created this world.

  3

  Summer

  August 27, 1862

  THE BOOK ROSCO GAVE ME sure smelled funny. Smelled like a horse saddle and sawdust, all rolled into one. That thick odor filled my nose all night long while I tried to sleep. I tossed on my pallet, thinking about learning letters from Rosco, thinking about how someday I’d be able to make sense of all them black squiggles Mama said don’t look like nothing but chicken scratch.

  I woke at twilight, before I heard Chief, the cock, crowing. The sun hadn’t even opened its eyes yet, but, oh, I was wide awake.

  But this morning, as soon as I saw even the smallest crack of light entering the sky, I slid Rosco’s book—well, Lowell’s book that Rosco swiped—out from under my head and turned it open. Them black squiggles were truly beautiful, all lined up one after the other, marching like tiny, fancy dancers across the pages. I slowly ran my finger over that parade of squiggles. “Letters,” I whispered.

  Inside the book’s hard front cover there was a swirl of letters, too. Them letters were even fancier still. They were curly, and looked as though they’d been drawn with a quill like the one I saw the master use in his study. Looked like swells of water that slosh and dip in Mama’s washbasin, like I could dive right into them and let their eddies take me for a ride.

  Soon as I heard Chief’s call, I slid my birthday present back under my pallet and closed my eyes, like I was fast sleeping, like I’d never woke. Not long after, Mama came and shook me. “Summer—Summer, child, wake up!”

  I didn’t like lying to Mama, but today I didn’t feel like waking. I wanted to enjoy the dreamy thoughts I was having about the letters in my book. So I faked sleep real good. To my way of thinking, I wasn’t really lying (lying’s done with words); I was just fooling Mama.

  “Why does morning always come on so quick?” I asked, burying my face.

  “’Cause that’s the way God made things,” Mama said simply.

  I kept my face hidden, and couldn’t help but smile to myself. Mama really thought I was ’sleep!

  Later, it was hard for me to keep my book hid all day while I was pounding bread dough ’longside Mama in the cookhouse. I kept wanting to go back to the quarters, kept wishing I could pull my book out from under my pallet and look at it—at those curly dancers.

  But by late afternoon my mind was far gone from thinking ’bout my book. Missy Claire came fluttering into the cookhouse like she’d been bit by a bumblebee. “Kit, Kit, bring a steam pot,” she squawked. “Bring it quick!”

  Kit’s my mama, and whenever Missy Claire spoke Mama’s name, she dragged it out real slow, made it sound like a long word rather than a short one. Keep-at—that’s how she said it.

  When Missy Claire called Mama, a frown took over Mama’s face, same look as when I showed her the book Rosco gave me. A knowing, worried look.

  See, whenever Missy Claire hollered for Mama to fetch a steam pot, it was ’cause young Master Lowell’s lungs had gone tight, and he was struggling to breathe. Mama boiled the water in a stew pot and took it to Lowell’s room.

  Even though Rosco was Lowell’s body servant, it was Mama who knew best how to stop Lowell’s wheezing spells. Today, like always, she poured the steaming water into the basin next to Lowell’s bed, draped Lowell’s head in a muslin hood, and spoke real soft to L
owell, like she was coaxing a frightened lamb.

  Missy Claire always stood back and let Mama do the soothing. Mama spoke gently. “Pull your breath in through your nose, child, then let it out slow from your mouth.”

  Missy Claire stayed behind Mama, looking scared. Lowell was coughing and gasping and whimpering, seemed like all at the same time. Finally, he was breathing regular again. Mama led his head back from the steam and rested it on the pillows she had propped behind him.

  Lowell’s face glistened from the steam water and from his own sweat. Mama’s face was shiny, too. They’d both been working hard.

  Missy Claire dabbed Lowell’s face with the muslin. “I’ll tend to him, now, Kit,” she said to Mama. But it was Mama who had freed Lowell’s lungs, not Missy Claire. Missy’s tendin’ to her son was mostly just sitting by his side, shaking her head, pressing her palm to her cheek.

  “Ever since that child been a baby, I been tellin’ Missy Claire to treat him with cayenne liniment. It won’t cure Lowell, but it would cut down on them attacks,” Mama said when we were back in the cookhouse and she was dumping Lowell’s steam water out the back door. “Missy Claire has always been a woman who’s set on having the final say.” Mama sighed. “She insists that well water, boiled up hot, is enough for Lowell.”

  I sure had better things to think about than Missy Claire’s stubborn ways. I turned my thoughts back to my book, back to them pretty, swirly quill curls.

  4

  Rosco

  September 1, 1862

  THEY SAID IT WAS a white man’s war. But if that was true, how come Master Gideon waxed on about “the condition of slavery” and “preserving the slave way” whenever he got to talking about this war they called “the War between the States?” Seemed to me that anything having to do with slavery would surely include nigras. I had never in my life seen a white man who was a slave. So to say this war was only the white man’s struggle was a bunch of swine-slop.

  Now, don’t get me wrong ’bout Gideon Parnell. He was better than most masters. He had a reputation for being one of the most even-tempered masters this side of Richmond. Sometimes, though, he could be downright opinionated. That’s ’cause Master Gideon Parnell was a true Secesh if I ever did see one. Secesh through and through—lived and breathed for the South.

  If ever the North seemed to have one up on what he called “our beloved Southern soil,” the master’s eyes turned greener than a field of envy.

  At least Gideon’s eyes weren’t filled with the hatred I’d seen peering out from other white men. But the sad thing was this: When it came to Lowell, the master could be as coldhearted as they come. I had never seen a man talk about his own son the way Gideon Parnell talked about Lowell.

  You’d have thought Lowell was the nigra of one of them cotton-country masters, the way Master Gideon put him down, knocked at his pride, and cursed him at every turn. Made me feel nothin’ but pity for Lowell. Made me want to tend to him with as much kindness as I could manage.

  That boy had everything I didn’t—hard-soled shoes, a feather bed, and a teacher lady to show him books. But he didn’t even have what it took to fight for his own breath. That was a soul-sorry shame, if you asked me.

  But for all the talking Parnell did about his son, he didn’t ever talk to him. Really, I had never heard him say a single word to Lowell—not a one! It was as if Lowell was dead. Or like he just wasn’t here in this world.

  Truth is, Master Gideon probably talked to me more than he even talked to his own boy. That was a sad state of things, since the master didn’t hardly pay me no mind, except for once a year on my birthday, when he had Mama bring me to his study for a look-see.

  Like with Lowell, the master was blind to me every other day of the year. I sure hated them birthday look-sees, hated feeling like I was an auction horse on display. Far as I knew, Summer and me were the only ones Master Gideon called on this way. Somethin’ strange about it. That’s why I never spoke ’bout them birthday visits to nobody. Even though the master was civil when we met, looking on him so close—and having him take to looking at me—always put a shudder on my insides.

  But at least on one day out of a whole bunch of planting and harvesting seasons, the master would grant me a word or two. Heck, as uneasy as I felt about them birthday meetings, I knew that even a horse needs talkin’ to from his master, every now and again.

  You’d have thought Lowell would try to get his pa to speak to him by speaking to his pa. Maybe asking his pa some kind of important question so he’d have to answer. But Lowell was as tight-tongued toward Master Gideon as Master Gideon could be toward him. He didn’t hardly say nothin’. Even when he was telling me to do something, it came out all soft and whispery, with no more than a few words at a time.

  And to make it worse, Lowell’s words got all tangled up on his tongue before they came out. Stuttering is what I’d once heard Miss McCracken, Lowell’s teacher, call it. But when Miss McCracken asked Lowell to read out loud during his lessons, he had the most clear way of speaking that I ever did hear from a boy my own age. It was as if his books made him strong, somehow.

  Today I was mucking the hay in Dash’s stall when I heard Master Gideon telling Horace Bates, the county doctor who’d come to check on the master’s gelding, Marlon, that Lowell was nothing but “a lump of coal that’s smeared the Parnell name.” (Doc Bates was an all-purpose medicine man. He tended people, mostly, but knew a good lick about animals, too.)

  Master Gideon knew I was mucking right near where he was, but that didn’t stop him from speaking his true mind about his son. That’s something I never fully understood about white people—the master, Missy Claire, and the few others I knew. They talked about private things straight-out, like nigras were some kind of mutes who couldn’t hear a word they said.

  I was looking down at my pitchfork and clearing the hay of Dash’s droppings while I listened to Parnell.

  “My boy’s a runt. Nothing but a measly bag of bones and poor lungs. Claire and me, we’ve been cursed, I tell you. Cursed with a sick-bodied child.” Master Gideon sucked on his teeth as he spoke. The way somebody sounded when they were fed up. He seemed to be caught in his own thoughts, just talking out of his head.

  “Every man in the Confederacy who’s got a boy old enough to fight has sent that boy off to uphold the South’s rightness. And you can best believe that anybody who’s got a boy out there fighting is bragging to high heaven about it. Just yesterday I was coming out of the town council meeting, passing by Littleton Square, when I ran into Travis Stokes and Nathan Wilcox. All they could talk about was their sons ‘putting their lives on the line for the flowering South.’”

  Master Gideon let loose a sigh. “And then,” he said, “Stokes had to rub salt on my sore by pulling out a letter his boy, Ben, sent home from the Battle of Shiloh. Stokes, that braggart, was waving that confounded letter around like it was the Confederate flag.!”

  Marlon, the master’s horse, blew out soft breaths against his horse lips while Doc Bates examined him. “Not every boy is meant to be a soldier,” Doc Bates said.

  Master Gideon sniffed. “Horace, we got Union soldiers closing in every day. And every man in this county who’s got a son of war age is talking proud about his boy out there protecting our Southland.”

  Then the master did something I ain’t never heard him do. He spat. “Besides,” he said, “you know I’ve had my eye on a seat in Congress for as long as I can remember. It’s hard enough being the only member of the town council whose boy is not putting in for the war. If someday I’m to represent the state of Virginia’s better interests, I must free myself of anything that’s considered objectionable—of anything that would prevent me from winning the confidence of the majority.”

  Doc Bates didn’t say nothing right away. I could hear Marlon’s hooves crunching the hay beneath them. The doc spoke like he was losing his patience with Parnell. “Your son is not objectionable, Gideon. He’s got an affliction that has little to do w
ith your ability to win people’s confidence,” he said. Marlon let out a quick, tiny neigh. “This horse has got colic,” Doc Bates said plainly.

  It was as if Master Gideon hadn’t heard Doc Bates’s words. He was still deep in his own agitation. He said, “The Union’s got nigras fighting for them, you know—escaped slaves. And now I’m hearing that just this month the War Department authorized General Rufus Saxton, some military governor of the South Carolina Sea Islands, to organize five regiments of black troops on the islands.” Parnell got a desperate sound in his voice. “This letting nigras fight so close to home makes me uneasy,” he said. “I guess I should take comfort in the fact that they’re still slaves, living under Southern law. What a shame it would be to let them South Carolina coloreds think they got a chance at freedom. I hear them nigras up North think being soldiers is going to set them free.”

  Now I was listening close. You never saw me muck a stall so slow, so’s I could hang around and hear all of what Master Gideon was saying. If I’d have been a horse, my ears would have flung forward right then. I even raked Dash’s hay just a bit more quietly. I didn’t want to miss a word.

  Doc Bates spoke next. “Well, Gideon, I’ll say one thing about coloreds. They sure got a way of sticking together. If all the coloreds in Virginia put their minds to it, they could have an army of their own . . .” Doc Bates’s words trailed off into a moment of silence. Then he said, “It ain’t such a far-off notion.”

  Master Gideon sounded a single huff, like he was quickly dismissing Doc Bates’s theory.

  “Don’t worry, Gideon, I was just speculating,” Doc Bates said. “And don’t get yourself all worked up over some crazy Union antics.”

  Both men were silent for what seemed like a long moment. I rustled more hay to give off the sound of hard work.

  “General Grant may be full of wild ideas for his Union troops,” Parnell said, “but the truth is more and more nigras are taking up arms.”