Silent Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page A

huffed. “This is a silly way to learn to read, Ros!”
    â€œKeep looking,” was all Rosco said.
    I stared down at my knee and started to fidget. ThenRosco pointed to the old scar up near my hip. He said, “Learning to read starts with letters. You got your own letter right on you. It’s the sixteenth letter of twenty-six. The letter P .”
    I touched the spot on my thigh where the skin was puckered and raised and dark. “I been having that old scar on me since forever, Ros. That don’t look a thing like what I seen on young Master Lowell’s learning book. Why are you bluffing me so, Ros?” I clicked my tongue.
    â€œYou got that scar from the master himself. I got me one, too.” Rosco yanked down the top of his britches to show me a hip scar that looked just like mine: P .
    Then he yanked up his drawers and folded his arms tight in front of him. “ P is the first letter of the master’s family name— Parnell . It’s a brand that tells people Parnell owns us. I’ve had my brand forever, too, Summer. We both got ours when we was babies, too little to remember the sore.”
    My skirt was still up to my hip. I studied the scar— the brand , the P —on my leg. “Sore?” I asked.
    â€œThe burn sore,” Rosco said. “White people take a red-hot iron and burn the brands right into us, like we’s their animals.”
    â€œMama got a brand—a P —too?” I asked.
    Rosco nodded. “Every slave on this place got a P — Mama, Clem, Thea.”
    My mind was back to racing with all those pretty letters from Lowell’s lesson book. I wanted to be looking at them , not at some old natty scar on my leg. Even if the scar—the brand— was a letter, I sure didn’t see the same beauty in it as I saw when I looked at them curlies in my book. I slid my skirt down over my leg, back to where it belonged. Rosco must have sensed my jumpiness. He took up my book from where it had been resting in the dirt and opened it to the front. I could feel my impatience start to ease. As soon as Rosco turned open my book, I let my eyes dance along the curves of them fancy letters on the book’s inside cover, the ones made with quill ink. “Beautiful,” I whispered. “What’s it say, Ros?”
    â€œSays Lowell Farnsworth Parnell. That’s young Master Lowell’s full name.”
    â€œAll them swirls for Lowell? ”
    â€œSomebody—maybe Lowell himself—wrote it all out in the finest ink,” Rosco explained.
    â€œIt swirls like the pattern on Missy Claire’s china.” I was staring hard at Lowell’s name, taking it in. “Young master sure is lucky to have his name lookin’ so fine,” I said softly.
    Rosco turned to my book’s first page. There stood that pretty row of letters, staring back at us.
    â€œYou see this?” Rosco ran his finger along the bottom of the row.
    â€œIt looks like a parade. A happy parade, all lined up for a march,” I said.
    â€œThis here’s the alphabet. It’s all the letters that make words.”
    Now I was touching the book, but not with just my finger. I was rubbing on it with the whole palm of my hand. “What does all this parade of letters say? ”
    â€œThe alphabet’s not a word, Summer. But you can take it apart—take two or three or four or ten letters from the alphabet, put ’em together in all kinds of different ways, and make a whole mess of words.”
    I turned through the pages of my lesson book, showing Rosco how the letters, and words, and alphabet danced when I fanned the pages real fast. “Let’s put some letters together— now , Ros.” A bunch of lesson time had gone by already, and I still didn’t know one iota ’bout how to read!
    Rosco said, “Words’ll come, Summer.” Then he turned back to the place in my book that held the parade of