Silent Thunder Read online

  Clem was slow to speak, but I could tell by the way his eyes shifted that he was quickly mulling over his thoughts. He positioned a stick of hot iron onto his anvil and began to pound it into a horseshoe. “Why you keep askin’?” His eyes stayed on his work.

  I lowered my voice. “I hear the Union army has let in colored fighters.”

  Clem cooled his smoldering horseshoe in the water barrel next to his anvil.

  “I’m thinking of enlisting,” I whispered, “but I don’t know how.”

  Clem’s face went tight, but he was looking right at me when he said, “I know how.”

  7

  Summer

  September 14, 1862

  HOT DAYS MADE ME squirrely. Made me want to run and jump and play. And these had been some of the hottest days ever on the Parnell plantation. Come lately, all I could think about was two things: cooling my toes in the stream over by the meadow, and learning my letters.

  I had a hard time keeping the chitty-chat quiet in my head—my thoughts flipped round like a trapped crab—while I helped Thea beat the parlor rugs. We were preparing the house for Missy Claire’s social, which she held each month. Mama was making tea cakes for the occasion. I could smell their sweetness rising from the cookhouse oven.

  Missy Claire’s monthly gathering of women from the Hobbs Hollow Arts and Letters Society was something I dreaded. When it came to having visitors, Missy Claire got to be nitpicky ’bout every little thing. And since Mama ran things in the Parnell cookhouse, she got the worst of Missy’s persnickety ways. This morning she was lording over Mama. I could hear her voice flying up between Mama’s humming.

  “Kit, don’t forget to arrange the cakes as I prefer— stacked like a petticoat.”

  “Kit, you got the china ready?”

  “Make sure I can see my reflection in the silver, Kit.”

  Thea huffed a short breath, the kind that chases away a fly. “This rug’s got it easier than your mama,” she whispered, picking at a natty tuft of lint that had clustered at the rug’s edge.

  Every time Missy Claire had her society meeting, she swore it was “fresh water for the flowers of the soul.” But from what I had seen, the meeting wasn’t nothing more than Missy Claire, Penelope Bates, the doctor’s wife, and Amelia Tucker, mistress of the Tucker-Wilkes plantation, talking proper, and finishing off Mama’s tea cakes.

  And now that I knew me two letters—two letters of the alphabet—I also knew I had never seen or heard the ladies from the Hobbs Hollow Arts and Letters Society talk nothing ’bout no letters—at least not the way Rosco talked about them.

  I wasn’t sure what arts was. Maybe arts was eating tea cakes, and maybe filling your belly with them made learning letters easier.

  Thea once told me that Missy Claires socials had little to do with watering any kind of flowers—for the soul or otherwise. She said them meetings were more for keeping Missy Claire’s mind off Lowell’s bad lungs.

  Along with being a seer, Thea was the one who birthed babies. She birthed me and Rosco, and she even birthed young Master Lowell. I once heard her telling Mama that Missy Claire had it hard when Lowell was pushing his way into this world. “She was screaming all out her head, and cursin’ her own womanhood,” Thea said.

  Lowell’s coming was hard on Missy Claire. Thea says that when Lowell was born, she was the one who had to tell Master Gideon that Missy Claire wouldn’t be able to have no more babies. But when she told the master he had himself a son, he didn’t care a hoot about more young’uns. Thea says he just kept saying, “Lowell Farnsworth Parnell, the pride of the Parnell legacy.”

  But as soon as Master Gideon found out his “Parnell legacy” had clouded lungs—Thea says she knew the boy was sickly right when he let out his first cry—Parnell shunned both little baby Lowell and Missy Claire. Thea once said, “He acts like the two of them have wronged him unforgivably.”

  I tried to be mindful of Missy Claire’s hardship. I tried to look upon her with eyes of kindness, like Mama told me to. But it was hard sometimes, especially on days like this when Missy Claire’s parlor rug—the biggest in the Parnell home—was spread out before me like an unpicked cotton field.

  Thea and me, we had our own way of cleaning Missy Claire’s rug. We’d come up with what Thea liked to say was “a way of beatin’ the beast.”

  Thea hung the rug over the porch railing—it spread the whole length of the rail, and fell all the way to the bushes that marked the entryway to the house—then she and I leaned over the rail and beat the rug from the top.

  My shoulders had begun to ache from swinging my wipplestick, the long-handled paddle we used to pound the rugs free of their dust. Every time I stopped to rub the cramp from my hands, Thea said, “The more you rest, the longer we got ’fore we done.”

  That’s when I came up with my own special way of making the work go quicker. I started in with my play-song, slow at first, then fast: “P~Q~P . . . Q~P~Q . . . P~Q~P.”

  Thea threw me a solid look. “What’s that you singing, child?” She was shading her eyes from the sun, and frowning. There was concern clouding her eyes and a knowing expression coming to her face at the same time.

  I knew right then that I shouldn’t have been singing about them letters I learned from Rosco. “I was just making me up a ditty,” I said, swallowing hard.

  Thea set down her wipplestick. “What ditty?”

  I was beating on the rug real hard now. My eyes avoided Thea’s. I tried to make like I didn’t hear Thea’s asking, but she pressed me with another question that I just couldn’t ignore. She said it more like an answer than a question. Her voice was low as a whisper when she spoke. “You learnin’ letters, aren’t you.”

  I shrugged.

  Thea rested her hand on one hip. She stood there looking at me straight, waiting for me to say something.

  I nodded

  “Rosco,” Thea said simply.

  I nodded again.

  “It’s hard to keep in, ain’t it? Feels good to let out what you know, don’t it?” Thea was still whispering. Whispering with her whole mouth, enough to show off her dark gums and twisted teeth.

  I nodded a third time.

  “I know me plenty, but I can’t go shoutin’ it to the world, Summer,” Thea said softly. “And neither can you.”

  After that I didn’t utter a single Q or a P, or not much else, for that matter. Thea and I just kept on beating Missy Claire’s rug till every speck of dust had risen from its fibers.

  Later, at the quarters, Thea called me off to the cypress tree, the same tree where Rosco and me had our first lesson.

  “Summer”—she was measuring her words—“learning letters is a boon and a bugaboo, all rolled into one. It’s good, and it’s bad, at the same time.”

  Thea wasn’t talking like she was mad, but something in me felt like I was being scolded. I pinched the fabric of my dress and let Thea go on.

  “If folks ever get wind that you or Rosco got even an inkling to read—”

  Thea was telling me what Mama had already said. “Then I’ll be sold off, or worse,” I interrupted.

  Thea peered at me sharply. “You sassin’ me, Summer?”

  I lowered my eyes. “No,” I said softly. “It’s just that even the few letters I know—the P and the Q— and the others I seen in the book Rosco gave me for my birthday, well, they make me feel so good when I look at ’em. They’re like tiny dancers, Thea, bending and stretching, right on the page.” Tears started to tug at my throat. It was as if Thea were snatching my book right out from under me. But I didn’t want to let it go.

  She cupped her palm to my cheek. “Everybody’s got a silent thunder, child, and I can see you’ve found yours.”

  I didn’t know what Thea meant, but I sure wasn’t gonna interrupt her again. So I let her speak on.

  “Silent thunder is desire, longing,” Thea explained. “You can’t hear it, or see it, but you can sure fell it, roaring up in you, calling you ahead. It’s when you want som
ething so bad that even your bones know it.”

  I was nodding fast at Thea’s words. She was describing what I was feeling each time I even thought about learning to read. And now I had the words for it: Silent thunder.

  “Rosco’s got his own silent thunder raging up in him,” Thea said. “I pray it don’t push him to do something foolish, the way it did with Clem.”

  “Rosco’s got a love?” I asked.

  “Yes, Summer, Rosco has himself a deep-down hankering, but it’s not a girl. It’s a different kind of passion that’s driving that boy.”

  “It’s his reading, ain’t it?” I figured.

  Thea nodded. “That’s only a piece of it. The rest ain’t for you to know. I’m only tellin’ you so’s you understand that every soul—a man’s, a woman’s, your very own brother’s—carries some kind of silent thunder. But listen, silent thunder is something we got to keep quiet and private.” Thea let go a slow breath. “That’s the way of slavery, Summer,” she said. “Anything that makes you feel good has gotta stay cooped up, like a toad wriggling inside a croaker sack, else it can be taken away.”

  I let all that Thea was telling me settle still for a moment. Then I asked, “Mama’s got a silent thunder?”

  Thea nodded. “She does.”

  “You got it, too?”

  “Yes, Summer.”

  Now I was thinking hard on what Thea had been saying. “Rosco told you ’bout his thunder?” I asked.

  Thea shook her head “He doesn’t need to speak on it.”

  “Then how do you know, Thea?”

  “That’s what a seer is, child,” she said. “I can see silent thunder happening in people.” Thea sighed. “And just like your learning letters,” she said, “seeing into people is a boon and a bugaboo.”

  8

  Rosco

  September 22, 1862

  “Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

  Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

  Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

  And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end. . . .”

  I WAS POLISHING THE DOORKNOBS just outside Master Gideon’s study, listening to Lowell finishing up his lesson.

  My thoughts were clouded. Clouded with what Clem had told me at the smithing shack. From that day to this, it seemed all’s I could think on was enlisting in the Union army.

  But when I heard Lowell reading aloud for Miss McCracken, my thoughts turned to the beauty of poetry, which Lowell was reading without a single snag. His voice was soft and even, and he put weight to certain words to bring the poem alive— snow, heaven, veils, garden’s end . . .

  When I peeked through the half-open doorway, Miss McCracken was looking on approvingly. “Very good reading, Lowell,” she said as Lowell’s eyes rose from his book. “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Snow-Storm,’ a lovely poem by one of our finest.”

  Lowell coughed from deep down. “Yes—ma’am.” Now he was back to stuttering, like somebody had snatched his voice right out of him.

  “That’ll be enough for today,” Miss McCracken said, settling her hand on Lowell’s bony shoulder. Lowell sat back from his book and nodded.

  Miss McCracken’s eyes met mine as she left the study. There was kindness in her eyes, kindness in her whole face. Miss McCracken never let a lesson pass when she didn’t regard me with some goodly gesture, usually a brief nod of her head and a tiny smile. (And I never let a single lesson pass when I wasn’t close by to receive her courtesy.)

  Rose McCracken’s name fit her rightly, on account of her pink skin. She and I never spoke a word to each other, but whenever she looked at me and gave me her quick, single nod, her eyes seemed to be saying, “Rosco, you’re as good as anybody else, nothing low about you.”

  Of course, I didn’t dare hold Miss McCracken’s gaze long enough to see if she was telling me anything else. It wouldn’t be proper for me to rest my eyes on hers for more than a moment. And today, like all days, I looked to the floorboards as soon as Miss McCracken graced me with her brief bit of politeness.

  I tried to keep my attention to polishing the doorknob, but I couldn’t help but listen to the rustle made by Miss McCracken’s skirts as she walked down the dirt entry road that snaked onto Parnell’s plantation. The gentle swish of her dress carried the same dignity she did. When I couldn’t hear the brush of her steps anymore, I knew she was truly gone for the day, and something in me sunk.

  Lowell went back to reading aloud from his lesson book:

  “Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

  Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields. . . .”

  In the years I been listening in on Lowell’s lessons, I ain’t never heard him read out loud after his lesson was over.

  Right then, he read real smooth—not even a break to his voice.

  “Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

  Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,”

  I stopped my polishing so’s I could listen.

  Forgetting myself, I stood full-well in the doorway to the study, my cleaning rag dangling from my hand, watching Lowell read the poem like he was delivering an announcement to the state.

  After Lowell spoke the final line— “And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end”—he looked right at me. I blinked, but I kept my eyes with his.

  Then, Lowell motioned me to him.

  I hesitated. “Master Lowell?”

  He gestured again. “Come see,” he said softly, tilting his book toward me.

  I could feel the skin moisten above my lip. The backs of my ears went hot. “I best keep with the doorknob,” I said, lowering my eyes.

  Lowell let out a tiny cough. He said, “I’ve seen how you listen close when Miss McCracken and I do our lessons.”

  I tried to swallow the dry patch that had settled at the back of my throat. I shrugged.

  Lowell was smoothing his hand over the page of his book as if it were a tiny kitten. Even in the dim room, I could see the page’s creamy softness, cradling its beautiful poem-words. Words that I wanted to see up close, but couldn’t. My mind raced with wondering how I could swipe that book, same way as I’d swiped The Clarkston Reader. I wondered how I could take Emerson’s “Snow-Storm” for a day so’s I could see Lowell’s poem for myself. So’s I could make it my poem. So’s I could put my voice to its pretty words.

  Now I was polishing hard on the doorknob. I was trying to pretend Lowell had never spoken to me. But Lowell wouldn’t give up. He took a weighty breath. Then he began to stutter. “Come on, Rosco Come s-s-s-ee my book,” he repeated.

  I shook my head. “Can’t, Master Lowell—can’t,” I said firmly.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why, all ’a sudden, Lowell was inviting me to see his lesson book. There had to be something more to it, and as badly as I wanted to set my eyes on “all the trumpets of the sky,” I couldn’t take me no chances—not a one. I couldn’t help but wonder, though: Did Lowell know I’d learned me to read?

  I cut my eyes toward Lowell’s to see if I could read his intentions. But all’s I saw on his face was pleading. Lowell truly wanted me to look at the poem along with him, and I, for the living gizzards of me, couldn’t figure out why.

  One thing was for certain, though. It was the thing I knew as sure as I knew my name was Rosco Parnell. That snowstorm Lowell was reading ’bout in that poem would have to fall all over the devil’s hell before he or any white man ever roped me into showing I could read, or ever tried to pry the power of reading from me.

  Finally, seeing that I was set on ignoring him, Lowell gave up. He closed his lesson book and hugged it to his chest. He left me to my doorknob, which was now shiny enough for me to see the reflection of my own troubled frown.

  9

  Summer

  September 28, 1862

  ON SUNDAY MORNING I WOKE again before the sun had even thought of rising. Woke shortly after Mam
a woke. Early.

  Mama always left the quarters before anybody, when the sky was still black, with not even a hint of morning light. She often said, “Gotta fill the house with the smell of breakfast, while the Parnells is still ’sleep. And if it’s Sunday, gotta fill it good. Gideon won’t stand for meeting the dawn without my biscuits and gravy calling his name. And Missy, well, you know how she likes her hair done up pretty for church.”

  Mama put her head to her pallet every night, but I wondered if she ever really slept. Seemed all she ever did was work. That’s why it wasn’t often that I saw Mama dress for the day.

  But today was different.

  Mama had lit her lantern, like always (even when she had the lantern lighted, I was usually ’sleep). She didn’t know I’d woken up. For a moment, I kept my eyes closed to slits, enough to stay like I was ’sleep, but to enjoy the early hours of waking, too.

  Mama rose from her pallet. With her back partly to me—I opened my eyes fully when Mama got to be busy with getting herself ready to go to the Parnells’ kitchen—I watched her slip out of her night frock. That’s when I saw it, plain as the day that would be coming on. Mama’s scar—her brand. The letter P, burned deep into her hip, same way as it was on Rosco and on me. But Mama’s scar was even more puckered. Even more blackened. It was truly ugly.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. There was nothing more for me to see. Still, though, I could feel my eyes dancing under their lids. While I listened to Mama rustle quietly in the dim glow of her lantern, I slid my hand to my own brand. Over and over, I traced my finger around the P’s hump. Soon I could feel my fingers start to tremble. Then a tug closed off my throat. Next thing I knew, I had wet coming to my eyes. And just as my tears started to spill, Mama slid from the quarters, leaving me to weep silently in the dark.

  It was still twilight when Rosco and I met up on the dirt path that lead to the house. Rosco was on his way to tend to Lowell’s morning—helping Lowell rise, having the basin wash-water ready, and making sure his church clothes were set for the day.