Virginia Hamilton

by Justice;Her Brothers: The Justice Cycle (Book One)

  Inside, with heat rolling off him, with no relief from it anywhere in the house. The fans droned. He found his wife in the kitchen, greeted her with a silent kiss between them.

  “I’m in the shower already,” he told her, turning on his heel.

  “Well, you needn’t rush off.”

  “If I don’t, I might gobble the supper before supper, and the cook, too.”

  “You had a pleasant day, I see,” she said.

  “Nice amount of work, though hard in the heat,” he told her. “It’ll last half the winter, too.”

  “Oh, well, then, I get a new coat and Ticey does, too,” she told him.

  “That’s what I meant to tell you,” he said. “I’m so beat, I forgot it walking from the front door to here.”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Ticey,” he said.

  “What about her?” Mrs. Douglass asked.

  “Keep an eye on her is all. Or have Levi to. She’s thinking about running away.”

  “What? But that’s not possible,” Mrs. Douglass said. “Just a while ago, she was saying she wanted to help me … to be with me forever.”

  “Well.” Mr. Douglass cleared his throat. “Something’s got her spooked. I don’t mean to press you …”

  “Don’t, then,” she said.

  “But maybe Ticey’s too young to be left here with the boys all day.”

  “You want me to give up school?” Mrs. Douglass asked.

  “I never said that.”

  “But that’s what you meant.”

  Mr. Douglass sighed. “Just only that maybe we can get some help for us around here. Someone young in the house with Ticey.”

  “You mean paid help?” Mrs. Douglass said.

  “Know another kind?”

  “We can’t afford to pay someone to do what I do in this house,” she said. And began to slowly burn; pots and pans suddenly were loud in her hands.”

  “Well,” he said again. A pause. He started through the door. “Will take that shower now.”And left her standing there with her anger and her guilt.

  No sooner did she feel guilty about leaving Ticey alone all day than she felt frightened. She began to wonder if maybe Ticey was planning something foolish.

  I don’t know what it is, she thought. But she knew something was wrong somewhere in the family. She tended to blame herself when anything upset the home system. She had an inkling of something troubling deep in her mind. Yet she had no real time to think, to put her finger on what it was; else, she didn’t want to.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she wondered out loud. Maybe something’s wrong with this marriage, she thought, and dismissed it at once.

  Working again, cooking now, she saw that her preparations were as thorough and as smooth as ever. She worked steadily, pulling the meal quickly together, spending as little time as possible. Still, it would be a good meal—swiss steak, rice seasoned in beef bouillon. Salad.

  “Why blame me?” she whispered.

  Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the evening, she was quick to take offense at anything her husband jokingly said. And she kept Justice close to home.

  Night came and they went to bed. The house was still, utterly. Mrs. Douglass woke several times and tiptoed to Justice’s room. Every time, she found her child deeply asleep.

  A long interval of dreams and silence surrounding them, after which Mrs. Douglass awoke with a start, her mind at once alert. She lay on hot, damp bedding in her own perspiration.

  And all the windows open, she thought. God, when will this weather break?

  It isn’t weather, she thought. Weather changes.

  She would not let her imagination leap to the incredible thought of rainless years. She lay still, hoping for some breath of a breeze. None came. Glancing at her husband beside her, she found him log-like and deep asleep. Then she lay still, breathing as softly as she could in order to hear the house. She knew it had a life of its own. All good houses did. She could say this to herself, although she wouldn’t say it to anyone else. There were houses that held on to their history of love and laughter. Banged fingers, stomachaches cured with rocking; babies squealing with delight. Grown-up arguments; that faithful formality grown serene between adults who have cared for one another over many years. All of it seeped beneath the floorboards and behind the walls.

  Now the house breathed its own life of calm and quiet. The best time to hear it, to know it, was this time, deep in the night. She listened, alert to human sound, and to the creaking of old wood which never quite died away.

  She heard Levi snoring softly. Sinuses, she thought. I’ll have to have them looked after.

  Thomas made no steady sounds, although he occasionally laughed or yelled out, dreaming. She listened, but heard nothing from him. Yet, strangely, she imagined she saw him moving about. Silliness, she told herself.

  Mr. Douglass’ warning about Justice running away broke the peace.

  Why didn’t I wake up sooner? How could I have forgotten!

  She was out of bed in an instant and making her way to the hall. Justice’s room was the first on the opposite side from the parents’ bedroom. The boys’ room was a few paces farther away, on the other side of Justice’s room, closer to the parlor.

  What greeted her there in the hall paralyzed her judgment. What she felt was a power of watching coming from Justice’s room into the hall. An enormously tranquil observing, which appeared to blink, as would human eyes.

  The Watcher steadied now on something against the wall. It was Thomas, caught in the light of awareness—Mrs. Douglass imagined she could see him through the dark. The Watcher fixed on his terror-stricken expression and drew him away down the hall. He floated through the darkness and through the doorway of his room.

  Mrs. Douglass felt quite peaceful. She wondered momentarily why she stood in the hall. She had the impression she had checked on Justice and had found her daughter all right. Now she turned and went back to bed.

  She lay with her cheek on the pillow, feeling a mantle of fresh air pass over her shoulders. It cooled the bedding, cooled her bare legs and arms.

  The Watcher brought the coolness and left it a long time in the parents’ room. Until Mrs. Douglass slept soundly, with no feeling of time or dreams.

  11

  THE SUN HAD NOT risen; yet there was a thick, milky paling of the fading night. Air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, which grew in high mounds near the house. The cottonwood tree was full of darkness. Its leaves were blackened, still, and withered from the heat and the prolonged dry spell. Justice could hardly realize that she had a special feeling for it only a couple of days ago.

  “Cottonwoman” sounded faintly somewhere inside her, but her delight was all but gone.

  They had come outside as soon as the east showed the change of dawning. But first they had dressed soundlessly in their rooms. Thomas and Levi had communicated in their minds so as not to chance waking their folks.

  You think Justice got herself up on time? Levi had traced to Thomas.

  She’s up and out by the front already, Thomas traced back.

  You heard her when she went out? Levi had looked alarmed. If Thomas had heard Justice leave, his folks might have, also. A tremor of revulsion passed over him. Even though they had been mind-tracing, he’d forgotten about himself and his brother. For there were times, such as this morning, when he awakened thinking they were ordinary boys. Then he would shudder suddenly, as he had just now, when he remembered he and his brother had their loathsome talent. Thomas could intercept movement, even thought fragments through walls and closed doors. That’s how he knew Justice was outdoors. And Levi was doomed forever to be a partner in his brother’s telepathic crimes.

  Thomas was in one of his moods. Not just foul, but deadly cold. He had awakened, he told Levi, to find himself stiff and aching, half under his bed.

  Did you have something to do with it? Thomas traced to his brother as they left the house.

  I was sleeping, you kno
w I was.

  How can I know that when I was asleep, too? Thomas traced. His mouth was a grim line as he silently opened the front door. Sometime during the night—he figured it was about three or so—he’d got out of bed to take a look at Ticey while she was dead asleep. Maybe to give her a few dreams, the kind he sometimes suggested to the sleeping Levi. And maybe to see if there was anything he could find out about her while her mind was in an unconscious state. Thomas thought he remembered getting out of bed and going down the hall. But after that, everything was a blank. Maybe he’d slept, had nightmares—he didn’t know, and not knowing made him suspicious. He had found himself in the morning on the floor. He had been twisted and cramped, as if he’d been flung there, half under the bed.

  The three of them now stood on the drive in the thick, murky light before dawn. Their dad’s battered Olds and their mom’s rusty red Vega were lumps of the same gray. Justice thought to look behind them far to the west where there was darkness still. She’d never been up so early and she was delighted to see how the night was banished by sunrise.

  “When will the sun come up?” she whispered to Levi.

  “Shhh!” Thomas warned, so furious at her talking he nearly hit her. They had to get away from the house; he walked a few paces away, with them following.

  “Take the bikes through the side yard and down the garden to the gate,” Thomas told them. He spoke right in their faces, so close they could feel his morning breath. “Take them down the field and lay ’em toward Dorian’s until we need them.”

  “When will we need them?” Justice asked him, without thinking.

  In the pale dawning, Thomas’ anger was like a contorted atmosphere covering his features. Justice slapped her hand over her mouth and stared at the ground.

  Hastily, Levi led her over to her bike and lifted the stand with his hand for her, rather than kicking it up. “Start on out,” he whispered. “Be quiet as you can!”

  She started out, with Levi following her, his own bike in hand, and with Thomas bringing up the rear.

  They moved cautiously. Within the fence separating them from the field, the garden was still a night garden. Roses, cornflowers and orange California poppies were drab and colorless. Tomatoes hung like ebony balls from gray plants. Melons were clumps of dead shapes on the ground.

  At the closed gate, Justice grew aware of something gathered on the other side. She heard no sound. But she sensed shadow. It was more of a substance than the darkened garden. It raced for the hedgerow.

  Levi reached around her to open the gate expertly, with little sound. They went through with their bikes and on down the field into rising soft light scented with clover. The light gave grass its green as they walked through it, while, all around, blackened houses, weeds and bushes were still night-full.

  They laid their bikes neatly at the far end of the field, Justice’s on the side next to Levi’s. She stared at the two sleek black bikes and her own less streamlined, slower one. Everything, even the air, held an importance that she could not quite comprehend. She sensed four-leaf clovers everywhere, sensed through them and lost the sense of what they were. Moments came and passed when she knew beyond, and no longer knew, what was the sweet odor that filled her nostrils.

  They turned back and headed up the field. Dawn had risen to the height and quality of shade. The sky to the east was streaked orange with luminous ribbons of cloud. As the streaks grew brighter, the ribbons dissolved before their eyes. Justice saw leaves of the cottonwood catch the light and turn silver. To the west, light rising drove the night far beyond the line of the ancient trees.

  There among the hedgerow’s thousands of leaves she saw heads, a shirtfront, trouser legs. Faces, wary and pale, peeked and watched them make their way toward the row by the fence. They made her gasp in shocked surprise; it was like a scream in the stillness.

  Thomas shoved her violently forward, furious at her noise, nearly knocking her down. Her arms flailed wildly until she regained her balance.

  “If you don’t quit!” Hardly a sound he made on the air.

  Justice took a deep breath and held herself in. Levi had her firmly by the arm now. But she shook him off and scrunched her shoulders high so she wouldn’t do anything else wrong.

  At the edge of the row, they slipped through the young, volunteer trees. There was dampness covering these morning trees. Yet Justice sensed that, over all, the hedgerow was quite dry. It came to her that, high up, leaves were turning brown and yellow, with fall still many weeks away.

  I’ve lost, she thought, as she followed within the row. Hard, horizontal branches were arms of night reaching.

  Her face flushed and she lowered her head to hide the shame, from trees, from boys, of having just one snake.

  Quickly, now, The Great Snake Race began.

  Up and down the row, under the stately arch of trees, boys stood at the ready by their lantern pails of snakes. Every boy held on to the branch above his pail. Each stood still and at full attention. Justice, seeing Levi take his place, took her place near him, with her knapsack hanging from its branch to the right of her head. She could not hold on to a branch as the others did without leaping up and hanging there by one arm. So she stood still where she was, arms to her sides.

  Thomas hung there before them; had swung himself up onto a horizontal branch that rocked up and down from his weight. To Justice, he was a picture of Levi that someone had deliberately bent and creased and then taken a crayon to.

  She noticed Dorian way down the row, looking small and far away. And had a vision in which he and the others were petrified figures of stone with dust filtering down on them from the vaulted height of the row.

  She blinked rapidly. Saw dawn filter through the osage line and there was hardly any dust here within the heavy trees.

  Thomas raised his arm straight up. Boys stood rigidly, without moving a muscle. Levi’s attention was riveted on his identical. And for Justice, Thomas was the negative to the certain, clear image of her favorite brother. Thomas was light reversed. Shade, never to develop.

  Thomas let his arm swoop down. At once, boys lifted down their containers from the branches.

  Justice did the same.

  Boys faded out from the row with Justice following.

  Outside, it was sun-up with no coolness about it. Even the rising twitter and melody of birds seemed to sizzle. There was the rushing momentum of a few cars far down on Dayton Street.

  Early Saturday, with most folks sleeping late. They would stir about nine. Fathers, robed and slippered, would then head for dens to wait for breakfast. On Saturday morning, few women slept late to be waited on. Mrs. Douglass was one of the few. She need not awaken before ten; her breakfast would be ready around ten-thirty. Sausage and silver-dollar wheatcakes. Juice and coffee. It had been so for as long as Justice could remember. She and her brothers would eat when they had a mind to, with Levi fixing, usually. This on any normal Saturday, which was every Saturday when there wasn’t to be a Great Snake Race.

  Now boys stayed close to the hedgerow for protection against the open field, bright with light. The Dayton Street houses looked back on the field; anyone awakened early would notice the boys and Justice crouching. Because of this, they were self-conscious, Justice particularly, and they scrunched low, backs to trees, to make themselves smaller.

  Thomas motioned them into a circle there at the side of the field. It became a tight circle, with Justice squeezed in with Levi on one side of her and Dorian on the other side. Boys didn’t look at one another or at her. Their line curved away on both sides from Levi and Dorian to Thomas on the opposite side of the circle from Justice. Boys sat on their heels and so did Justice. They had their containers, and Justice, her knapsack, held close in their arms.

  Thomas made a motion—a quick flip of his hand with index finger touching the ground.

  Boys instantly set their containers in front of their knees. Justice set down the knapsack, holding firmly to the drawstrings. Boys settled back, stiff
and straight; Justice had to lean forward somewhat, feeling a need to keep hold of her sack.

  With head lowered, Thomas eyed the circle. “Slick,” he said, in a sudden, soft hiss.

  Slick Peru opened his peanut-butter container and turned it over. Boys leaned into the circle as snakes, stunned, began to writhe frantically in every direction.

  “Sixteen,” Slick said, “I counted ’em when I first put ’em in the bucket.”

  “Really?” Levi said, mildly surprised by the high number. Boys were snatching up snakes as the creatures crawled near them, and dropping them back into Slick’s pail.

  “Sixteen,” agreed Talley Williams.

  “Got it,” said Levi. Justice didn’t see him write it down. But she supposed when you got to be thirteen, you could remember most anything.

  The Great Snake Race continued around the circle. Boys turned over their containers on the ground and called out their numbers of snakes after Thomas called their names: “Fourteen. Twelve. Ten. Fifteen—darn!”

  After all of the boys’ snakes had been collected again and put back in their separate containers, Slick Peru said softly, joyfully, “I win it! I win it! I mean, I think …” His voice trailed off as he became aware, realized—they all did, at about the same time—that Thomas had not called on Justice.

  She had been trying to remember whether Dorian had ten or eleven snakes. She couldn’t keep the numbers and boys straight to save her. And it dawned on her that the circle had grown quiet. Save for Thomas, all of the boys were staring at her.

  The sun beat down, hot as blazes. Up there was a visible yellow-brown color of air-pollution sky. Was it fumes or earth dust from fields? Justice wondered. The top tier of the hedgerow was clearly discolored from dust or a serious lack of rain.

  “Here, let me help you,” Levi said to her, as though perhaps Thomas had told her something that she hadn’t heard.

  Levi loosened the drawstring of her knapsack. Justice felt the heat rise in her face and wished to be gone, anywhere but here. Having only a single snake was a pain, an awful pressure of embarrassment. She stole a look at Dorian. He played with his fingers, but he didn’t seem to be made uncomfortable by her. He was ever keen and curious.