Silent Thunder (9 page)

“Missy Claire has sent for her brother, Thomas Farnsworth, who owns a plantation down in Louisiana, to come oversee things here. He'll be comin' sometime round Christmas.”

There was still a question on my face. To me, this wasn't no juicy hearsay; it was just information. “So” was all I said.

Clem shook his head. “Louisiana's cotton country, Ros—the
deep
Southland, the place they sent my Marietta.” Clem's words were heavy. This time he flinched when a bang of thunder escaped from the sky. “The meanest slave masters walking this earth come from Louisiana,” he said quietly. “Talk at the quarters says the Missy's brother makes Lucifer look like a lamb. That he's Secesh to the core.”

Another thunderclap. Clem's face went hard. His eyes darted. “I've had enough hell living here under Gideon Parnell's thumb, and it's even worse now that your mama's got me washin' and shavin' him.” Clem was
talking like he'd come to a decision. He said, “I didn't think so at first, but now, far as I can see, Parnell's falling sick is good luck. I'm going North to enlist in the Union army.”

I shrugged, letting Clem's conviction settle for a moment. Clem waited for me to say something. More thunder came. It was a slow, rolling bellow this time.

Clem extended his hand, ready for the next ax blade. With his waiting palm stretched out full, he asked, “You comin' with me?”

If Clem had asked me about enlisting way back, when I'd first read about the Union taking in colored soldiers, I would have jumped fast as a jackrabbit.

But something in me was holding that jackrabbit back. With all that had come to pass—Parnell's heart-shock, the promise of Lincoln's proclamation, Mama taking plantation matters into her own hands— I wasn't so quick to jump.

Clem could see I was slow to answer him. He didn't badger me, but there was an impatient look coming to his eyes. All he said was, “Hand me a new blade, will you?”

November 10, 1862

I
'D HAVE GIVEN JUST ABOUT
anything, even Walnut, to have my book back. But when Mama put her foot down, she meant it, and there was no use in trying to cross her. Thanks to Rosco's teaching, I knew me all the alphabet. Plus, I knew six whole words. I came to know every bit of this without my
Clarkston Reader.

I learned letters by finding letter look-alikes, regular things that look just like the letters in my book.

The slants of morning sunlight coming into the quarters—them light slants looked just like the letter
W.

The wisp of hair that fell on the back of Missy Claire's neck—that was an
S.

The trunk of the cypress tree, standing tall and proud so's even the strongest wind or the harshest words couldn't bend it—for certain, that was the letter
L
.

And them sweet, buttery peaks that formed in Mama's mixing bowl when she was whippin' tea cake batter—they were a whole mess of
M
's, one coming up in the bowl after the other.

I'd been stringing letters together, side by side, like the pearls Missy Claire wore round her neck for the Hobbs Hollow Christmas cotillion. I'd been making my own necklace. A necklace of
P
's and
D'
s and
U
's and
Q
's. Now, letters were more than curls on paper. Letters
meant
something.

I'd learned four words from Rosco:
run, man, be
, and, the longest and best word, my name,
Summer.

Then, by accident, I learned another word by myself. Two Mondays ago, I was in the parlor where Missy Claire had been spending her days. Missy was working on her embroidery sampler, stretched in its hoop, for what seemed like the longest time. I was sitting cross-legged at Missy's feet, untangling her embroidery threads, using all the patience I could summon to stay with a tricky knot of the prettiest blue thread I've ever seen.

My eyes were starting to sting from the concentration. I took a long, slow blink, then let my gaze rest on Missy's sampler. There, plain as the day's sky, was my name,
Summer
, stitched in pink across the sampler's top arc. Further down, under the
Summer
, was a longer word. I knew all its letters. I made myself curl the sounds of them letters round my tongue. After three
tries of sounding the word silently, I blurted it out. Thankfully, my blurt was quiet, like a whisper—
“Flower.”

Missy Claire shifted her eyes in my direction. “You say something, Summer?”

I blinked and quickly turned my attention back to my knot of thread. “No, ma'am, just a breeze blowin', I guess,” was my answer.

Missy Claire gave a blank smile and kept on with her needlepoint.

Already, I was starting to see what Thea meant about reading being both a blessing and a bugaboo. I was truly thankful that I was starting to see words. Sometimes I thought it was better than seeing the early morning sun crack open the shell of darkness that blanketed the sky each night. But seeing words was also like spending a whole night awake, staring into blackness. The longer I stared, the more I
didn't
see—the more words I learned, the more I came to see there were so many I just didn't know.

Missy Claire was writing carefully with her embroidery needle, crafting the letters of my name, like it was a fine, delicate thing. But what did my name have to do with flowers?

Come the next morning, I was a bushel of talk at my lesson. “Ros, Missy Claire's got my name stitched into her sampler.”

Rosco was still sleepy. He wasn't fully listening.
“Missy ain't really makin' nothing with her needle and thread, Summer. Except for a few lame buds and swirls, her sampler's been bare for weeks.”

I slid Walnut from my pocket and smoothed her burlap dress. “Yeah, I saw them rosebuds and swirls around the sampler's edge. But toward the center was my name. I read it, Ros. It said,
Summer.
And under my name it said,
flower.
I read that too—
flower
,” I repeated.

Rosco yawned. “Missy Claire's probably makin' a sampler for the seasons. To Missy, summer ain't
you
, it's what comes after spring and before fall,” Rosco insisted.

I rested Walnut in my lap, and lifted my lantern to Rosco's face. “I
know
when summer is, Ros. And I know Missy Claire don't give a toe-bone about puttin'
me
in her sampler. But summer
is
my name, and Missy's making it look special, even if summer ain't no more than a season to her.”

Rosco was wincing at the lantern's light.

“I ain't never seen my name stitched into a sampler, all fine and pretty and pink. I just want to know all what Missy's sayin' about summer—and flowers,” I said.

Rosco let go a heavy sigh, like he was still trying to shake off his sleepiness. “Okay, Summer,” he said, “you and me, we'll go to the parlor when Missy's not there— which ain't often these days—and look for ourselves at what she's saying with her sampler.”

The twilight sky was turning from black to gray. The sun's crown lit the horizon. Chief crowed. Our lesson time was almost over. “When, Ros,” I said. “When we goin'?”

“Soon,” Rosco said, looking off toward the fence near the toolshed, the place where Chiefs call was piercing the morning's quiet.

“Folks'll be rising soon. We ain't got no more time for letters today, Summer,” Rosco said.

Using the tip of Walnut's leg as my quill, I'd already written my name on the dirt strip between us. And I'd drawn a flower next to it.

Rosco picked up a sharp twig, and wrote two words after my flower:
promised
land.

I leaned in toward the dirt to get a good look. I sounded out the shorter of the two words.
“Land”

Rosco nodded once. “
Land
,” he repeated.

Then, as he did at the end of every lesson, Rosco smoothed fresh dirt over my writing and his, then tamped the dirt with his palm. And, like always, he threw down a patch of his spit to wet the dirt, and tamped again. “We best be gettin' on, Summer,” he said. “A new day is coming.”

November 18, 1862

I'll meet you in the mornin'
When I reach the promised land;
On the other side of Jordan,
For I's bound for the promised land.

“O
LD
C
HARIOT
,” T
HEA'S HYMN
, the one she leads off singing after evening prayers in the quarters, wouldn't leave me alone. That tired song had been grinding in my thoughts ever since Clem told me he was runnin' North. Today, when I was bringing Marlon back to the stables after a ride in Parnell's meadow, “Old Chariot” wouldn't quit haunting me. I did everything I could to push that hymn away. Even Marlon's ornery gait didn't help. Neither did the pounding of Clem's mallet shooting up from the smithing shack on the other side of the stables, where Clem was shoeing Dash.

With Parnell being sick, I now had me two horses to care for. There was Dash, Lowell's spotted mare, and Marlon, the master's own bay gelding. I'd always done the dirty work of tendin' to Marlon—mucking the stalls and such—but it was the master who worked Marlon's gait. Before Gideon got sick, he was the only one who rode Marlon. Now
I
was the only one who rode him.

I'd been tendin' horses since I was old enough to shovel hay, and I hadn't ever seen a cranky cuss of an animal like Marlon. Marlon was as stubborn as they come. And he was a big horse, sixteen hands high. There was a lot of him to put up a struggle.

I stood at the stable gate, yanking on Marlon's rein, trying to return him to his stall. “C'mon, Marlon.” I clucked my tongue, but Marlon wasn't budging.

“Horse,” I said, “stop actin' like a mule!”

Marlon reared his head.

“That's what I said—
mule
.”

Marlon crunched the hay under his hooves. It seemed he was thinking about his next move. This time he inclined his head toward the stall, like he was trying to show me something. Then he sputtered his horse lips, right at me.

“I been in that stall a million times,
mule
,” I said. “All that's in there is hay and the smell of horse pucky. Ain't nothin' new, so git on in.” I gave Marlon's rein another tug. But Marlon stayed put.

I could feel my temper starting to flare. And to make the whole stubborn situation worse, Thea's hymn was back at me again:

When that old chariot comes,
I'm going to leave you,
I'm bound for the promised land,
Friends, I'm going to leave you.

I let up on Marlon's rein, and gave in to “Old Chariot.” I sang the next verse, hoping that by letting the song spill from my lips, I could somehow set it free from my thoughts.

“I'm sorry, friends to leave you,
Farewell! Oh, farewell!
But I'll meet you in the morning,
Farewell! Oh, farewell!”

Marlon nudged my shoulder with his muzzle. He sputtered his horse lips a second time. I couldn't help but giggle. “You like my singing, huh?” (Fact is, most stubborn horses took to singing. 'Least I'd found that to be true.)

I obliged Marlon with the same verse again. Every time I sang
“Farewell! Oh, farewell!”
Marlon's hooves crept toward his stall. I let the final
“farewell”
go for several beats—
farew~e~l~l
—until Marlon had his whole
front inside. There was no need to keep yanking on his rein. All I had to do was keep singing. So I did.

Slowly, Marlon made his way into his stall. But at the fifth
farw~e~l~l
, he stopped again suddenly. The
ping
of Clem's mallet was going at a steady slam. I tried to calm Marlon. “That noise ain't meant for
your
shoes,” I said. “Don't let it fret you, now.”

Marlon inclined his head again. I looked in the stall, thinking maybe he'd seen some kind of jumpy shadow. But it wasn't a dancing black light that halted Marlon. It was young master Lowell, peering through the stable slats from outside. All I could see of him were his eyes and brows, and the bridge of his nose. He
was
darkened in shadow, but he remained very still. It startled me all the same.

He spoke softly. Without blinking, he said, “You sing good, Rosco.”

I eased backward, feeling Marlon's breath at my ear. My insides were thumping faster than moth wings near a flame. “Master Lowell?”

A kindly expression rested in Lowell's eyes. And he was looking at me in the same glad way I seen Mama look at a bud from Missy's garden that has blossomed overnight.

“Master,” I said, “there's a chill out here. What brings you?”

Lowell spoke softer still. “I was looking to get some air, and I heard your singing,” he said. “Can you teach
me? Teach
me
to sing?” Now Lowell looked expectant.

I shrugged, then moved closer to the stable slats to match my eyes with Lowell's. Marlon must have been comforted by our closeness. His rein gave some slack, and I felt his big brown body give a little, too. He stepped fully into his stall where he belonged, right behind me. I could still feel his horse breath next to my ear.