Silent Thunder by Andrea Pinkney Read Free Book Online

bones know it.”
    I was nodding fast at Thea’s words. She was describing what I was feeling each time I even thought aboutlearning to read. And now I had the words for it: Silent thunder.
    â€œRosco’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.”
    â€œRosco’s got a love?” I asked.
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œIt’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.”
    â€œYou got it, too?”
    â€œYes, 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.”
    â€œThen how do you know, Thea?”
    â€œThat’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
    â€œ 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 tocertain 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.
    â€œThat’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