Silent Thunder (5 page)

Clem said the master told him to “tie the knot with one of the fine women right here on this plantation. I'll bless any marriage that's between two of my own slaves.”

But Clem didn't want one of Parnell's slaves. He wanted Marietta. Back then, Clem was strong-willed, and when something didn't sit right with him, he spoke his mind about it. But rather than go at the master in his haughty way, people say he got real humble, and he begged the master to buy Marietta so's they could
marry. He told Parnell about all the things Marietta could bring to his plantation—how she would make Missy Claire's flower beds the envy of everybody in Hobbs Hollow. And how she could harvest some of the healthiest vegetables anywhere.

Clem's persistence didn't pay off. The master said no, and he meant it.

That same night, Clem and Marietta ran off. It was the second full moon in August, to be exact. I remember, 'cause Thea still spoke on it long after it happened, said all kinds of hexes happened under a full moon, that a second full moon in the same month made any hexes double, and that Clem and Marietta should have waited till the moon was new before they fled.

I sure wish Clem had told me he was plannin' to run. I could have slowed up Marlon, the master's horse, by overfeeding him. And I could have mixed some bad meat into the food barrel of Parnell's search dogs, so's they'd be too sick to hunt.

Master Gideon didn't waste no time calling on the bounty-fetchers to find Clem, 'cause Clem was valuable to him. He was the slave who knew how to best tend horses, pigs, and dogs.

Marietta and Clem were caught just beyond the back woods of Parnell's property, at Holly Glen, not too far north of Hobbs Hollow. Master Gideon's dogs sniffed them out in no time.

Marietta, she was sold off to cotton country, to the
deep south of Mississippi, where the slave masters were meaner than the devil himself. Clem, he was brought back here and whipped somethin' awful. But it wasn't Master Gideon who whipped him. I never saw that man lift a whip. He never carried out whippings. He
couldn't.
Whipping wasn't in him.

Even though Parnell said he believed runnin' off was grounds for a whippin', I didn't think he fully believed it. Seems he wanted to show his town council buddies that he was up to punishing nigras. So whenever the situation called for it, Gideon made Rance, his overseer, do the dirty work.
“Carry it out,”
was what he said when they brought Clem back. And after he gave the order, he disappeared—never stood by to watch his slaves get beat.

I seen a few real bad whippings, but I will never forget the day Rance Smalley put the whip to my friend Clem. Thea says it was hell come to earth.

Sometimes when I closed my eyes at night, I could still see that whippin', like it happened yesterday. Remembering it was as bad as ten demon dreams rolled into one. (And it often led to a night of haints stealing my sleep.)

Even when I thought on that whippin' when I was wide awake, I saw it clear as day. Clem bleeding, all 'cross his shoulders and down his back. Rance's bull-whip hurling forward, snapping in the air, like a wild, dancing snake, then landing on Clem's flesh with a loud, stinging slap.

I remembered the grimace on Clem's face, too. His teeth gritted, his jaw tight. But more than anything, I remember that when Ranee was flinging his whip, Clem was stone-silent. He didn't holler, or cry out, or nothin'. And after the whippin' was done—after Ranee had gone and left Clem hanging, and Thea and Mama had untied Clem's wrists from the branches of Parnell's old hickory tree—Clem still didn't utter a single sound. Not a cry, or a whimper even.

Weeks later, when Clem had healed some (it took days and nights of Thea and Mama dressing Clem's wounds with root salves), Clem was different. Strange-different. It was like he'd lost the will to speak. He'd gone silent, with just a little bit of talking here and there.

Still, since Clem and me were friends, I could get him to speaking more than other folks could. He talked to me more than he talked to anybody. We were still at the blacksmith shack when I floated my question past him again, hoping maybe he'd give me more of an answer this time. “You know anything 'bout coloreds fighting in the war?”

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.”

September 14, 1862

H
OT 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 something 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.