Silent Thunder by Andrea Pinkney Page B

sentence again, letting my eyes rest on each word. I had to make sure I was reading them right.
    I got a little hum up inside me; a strange, eager feeling. The same excitement I got whenever I rode Dash at a sprint in the far meadow. It was a feeling I didn’t fully understand, but I sure liked the way it swelled in my belly. I had to will my insides to be still.
    The freedom of all slaves.
    Them words were easy. I didn’t even need to sound them out.
    But the longer words— Emancipation Proclamation— still snagged in my throat. They were the kind of words that set me a challenge. A challenge that wouldn’t let me step away without giving it a good go.
    I sounded them two long-lettered words over and over till I could hear myself pronouncing them outright. When I spoke the words slowly, I could feel my lips and tongue get a hold of them.
    Emancipation Proclamation.
    Soon I was reading them words smooth as butter, reading them like they were a song, almost.
    That’s when I heard Mama calling my name.
    She was hollering full-out, scared and shaky. A holler I ain’t never heard come from Mama. “Rosco!”
    I quickly put the Harper’s Weekly back like I’d found it and hurried to the front entry, where Mama and Clem were hoisting Master Gideon off the drive-seat of his carriage. Summer stood by, holding Walnut close to her chest. Missy Claire and Lowell were still inside the carriage. Missy’s shoulders were curled in around her. Her whole face was buried in both hands. Lowell was carefully lifting pieces of hair away from his mother’s cupped fingers.
    Thea came running from the well at the side of the house, holding a dipper of water. Clem and Mama set Master Gideon out on the grass beside the entry road. He lay flat on his back, his belly sagging. He was bloated and babbling things none of us could understand. His eyelids fluttered when he tried to speak.
    Thea knelt beside him. She lifted his head, parted his lips, and tried to help him take in some water. But it was no use. The master couldn’t drink. The water spilled from the sides of his mouth and dribbled down his front.
    Thea looked from Clem to Mama to me. Worry clenched her face. “Want me to bring some cayenne liniment?” I asked Mama.
    Mama shook her head once. “No, child,” she said, “liniment won’t help this.”

11
Summer
    September 29, 1862
    Y ESTERDAY, WHEN THE PARNELLS came home from church, the master was in an awful way. Somethin’ bad had happened to him. Somethin’ I ain’t never seen or known about. The master’s body was two ways at once: limp as gooseflesh, and stiff as a barn door. I would’ve sworn the master was dead, with the way Mama and Clem had him laid out on the grass.
    But Parnell didn’t look as though he was gonna let anything or anybody take him from this life. Even in his helplessness, he wore a stubborn expression.
    He was talkin’ gibberish. But if I’d had a cent to my name, I’d have bet he was giving an order— “Leave me alone.”
    At Mama’s insistence, Rosco loosened the cravat that had become twisted at the master’s neck. The master’spits and front were soaked with sweat. That’s how I truly knew that he was nowhere near dead. I ain’t never known a dead person to speak or sweat or protest the way Gideon Parnell was doin’ under the high afternoon sun.
    Soon after, Doc Bates rushed up in his wagon. He pressed his fingers to the spot where Master Gideon’s ear meets his neck and, right then, the doctor told us all who were standing there that the master had suffered “an apoplectic stroke.” Doc said he’d only seen a few cases of what he called “apoplexy,” and that we could expert the master to “wither in his limbs” and “lose the abilities of articulation.”
    Them words didn’t mean nothing to me when Doc Bates said them. But I