Virginia Hamilton by Justice, Her Brothers: The Justice Cycle (Book One) Read Free Book Online Page B

the sports arena for the neighborhood. It was the football field on one day and the soccer field or gymnasium on the next. Although Thomas and Levi rarely played sports these days, they were quick to supervise and referee all manner of games. This early evening into night, the field would become the gathering place for the Pickle and Cream Gang. The name was a secret of Justice’s. She was Pickle. Levi and Thomas were the cream of the crop, better than other boys.
    The field looked vast and empty in the growing shade as the three of them faced it, their backs toward the fence.
    Thomas squinted down the field at backyards, some with low hedges, whose houses fronted on the wide Dayton Street. He clutched four felt-tipped kettledrum sticks, two in each hand. Momentarily, his face seemed trapped behind the sticks as he turned his purple toque hat this way and that. He peered at Levi, his mirror, searching for the proper angle for the hat. When he had the slant at which the tall feather caught the best of any moving air, he lowered his hands. And struck the calfskin drumheads with the sticks in a low, trembling sound.
    The tone was so deep and sudden it startled Justice. She moved closer to Levi. But he, in turn, stepped aside and somewhat away from both Thomas and Justice. She was left alone, glancing anxiously from one brother to the other. Thomas’ kettledrums were the “instruments of torture” for her, more so than his regular set of snares and bass drum. They were like witches’ boiling cauldrons from which powerful sound bubbled and overflowed.
    In just a few minutes, Justice would be the only girl and the only eleven-year-old in the entire field. Thomas wouldn’t allow other girls around—not to say that they were much interested. And he tolerated Justice because his folks made him.
    Sound from one kettledrum began to build into a bass roar that rolled down the field and on through the hedges to hit houses. He could almost see that sound bounce away and sail over front lawns to escape into Dayton Street. He kept up the unholy racket until Mr. Buford Jefferson came out of his back door to see what was the commotion. Mr. Jefferson must have been on his way out, in any case. For he carried his black lunchbox and wore his green-and-orange baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Jefferson was night watchman at the GE plant about eighteen miles up the highway. He was also one of the Little League coaches with an awful sour disposition. Maybe because his son, Dorian, refused to play baseball. Right now was about time for Mr. Jefferson’s team practice before he went off to work.
    “Hey, Lee,” Thomas yelled across to Levi. The overwhelming drumroll he made would keep anyone down the field from hearing him clearly. Levi couldn’t hear him, either. “He didn’t have to come out the back like that,” Thomas yelled.
    “What?” Levi shouted back.
    “Jefferson!” Thomas hollered. “He could’ve gone out the front to his car—I said, HE DIDN’T HAVE TO COME OUT THE BACK.”
    “Oh,” Levi said. He didn’t feel up to yelling above the kettledrumming. Since the beginning of the summer when Tom-Tom borrowed the drums, he had grown gradually accustomed to their powerful strength of sound. But if they went on too long, he would feel light-headed and forget what he was doing.
    “Jefferson wants to let me know he’d like to kill me!” Thomas yelled.
    “Maybe he’s just curious,” Levi was forced to yell back. The drums rolling and vibrating on air were deafening.
    “Yeah, sure!” Thomas yelled.
    Justice realized that shouting at the top of his lungs was something Thomas did with little effort. And Levi was just starting to feel dizzy when Thomas changed the drumming to a foreboding pom-pom on one kettle, to a pom-pom-uh on the other, pitched to a fifth tone of the first. He alternated this pounding on the drumheads; he swayed from side to side. The ostrich feather jumped and leaped as though charged with