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

the field. It rose from the ground like shadow.
    “Y’all have to be such babies!” Thomas said. “You be up here by six-thirty and you come quiet!”
    What Tom-Tom hadn’t told them, but what Levi knew, was that they dare not wake their own parents on Saturday. They mustn’t let them know about the snake race. Levi was certain that his mom, especially, wouldn’t take kindly to pails and sacks of snakes hanging in the trees.
    “He’ll do it every time,” he said to himself about Tom-Tom. Hope nothing goes wrong.
    Drumming, Thomas told them: “You have all day tomorrow to find some of them plastic pails.
    Don’t anybody come in here on Friday without one or a good drawsack.”
    “We got this yellow big pail with a handle at home,” Dorian said. “Only, it’s about halfway full of peanut butter.”
    The boys laughed at him.
    “Empty,” Thomas said. “Halfway empty of peanut butter.” He beat one drum absently.
    “Yeah,” Dorian said, “I can scoop up the peanut butter and make it in a ball with two hands. And … and hide it in the freezer!”
    “Don’t fool around!” Thomas told him, with the boys snickering.
    “I’m not fooling,” Dorian said.
    Why is he acting stupid? Justice wondered.
    “Dorian,” Thomas said, “you do something dumb, like hiding peanut-butter balls, and your mom or dad’ll find out what we’re doing for sure.”
    “Oh. Well,” Dorian said, “I’ll eat it all up tonight.”
    “Man—Dorian, you just come on Friday. I’ll have a pail for you.” Thomas gave a glance to Levi to see if this would be all right.
    Levi didn’t make a move that Justice could see. But with his eyes he gave agreement to Thomas. She knew that if one of her brothers was to fix up a pail for Dorian, it wouldn’t be Thomas. Thomas never fixed up anything, or took care of anything, except his drums. Levi even made Thomas’ bed and cleaned up their room. And that made Justice mad. There wasn’t a soul to help her out with keeping her room straight.
    Expect me to pick up everything myself, she thought. And make the bed … hang up all my clothes …
    Not many months ago, her mom had made her bed each morning, and picked up the mess of her room. Justice had had clean, ironed clothes every day. Now all had changed. She suspected that nothing would ever be the same.
    I don’t like it here, she thought. Why don’t I go around to sit awhile with Mom and Dad?
    She knew why. She never could pull herself away when the boys were gathered. She could not help herself, for, like a moth, she was captured by their light.
    A POM sounded on one kettledrum and a Pom again on the other, a third tone higher than the first. The beat swelled in drumrolls huge and deep. So massive a sound surrounded them that Justice believed it must have lifted Levi to his feet, as it had some of the other boys. It was a sound of such strength it had to have brought the twilight. While she could see Levi, the features of his face seemed to have run together. Just as if a cloth had wiped away his eyes, nose and mouth. Glad she was that sunlight had vanished. Tomorrow would come that much sooner, and so, on to Friday.
    Justice looked around the field at the boys, who were also featureless. She saw again the great cottonwood tree on the east boundary.
    Cottonwoman, so silent.
    She’d caught hold of the darkening and was arranging it around her.
    Thomas was a shadow hunched over two dark pools. Sound rolled and resounded from the kettles. It floated the boys by twos down the field, through a wispy film of mist. The boys drifted away.
    Wait!
    They had no bodies.
    How do you race the snakes?
    Justice could pick out heads of boys like bobbing balloons. But she couldn’t tell which head was which.
    The field emptied, except for the three of them. Musky odor of perspiration mixed with the scent of grass on the heat of night. Wordlessly, her brothers prepared to leave. They pulled a dolly from beneath an osage. The low truck was homemade,