Nearly twenty years.
Thor could still remember the rigorous oral lessons at the school for the Deaf and Dumb in North Carolina and how much he’d hated them. More potent a memory was the day that he’d sat at the end of a hallway there, his hands covered with thick mitts and his wrists tied with string. He’d kicked the wall a few times in anger, but since the hour-long detention was staff ordered and not unheard of amid forward-thinking Deaf schools, few spared him a second glance.
It was just two months after Alexander Graham Bell had visited the school, offering a lecture to the faculty about Oralism and an unhearing child’s capability to learn to read lips and speak. Sign Language and fingerspelling were unrefined, Bell declared. Communicating by gestures—coarse and uncultured. How was a person to enter into proper society by such a crude and uncommon form of communication? According to Bell, Sign Language only encouraged deaf-mutes to marry deaf-mutes, thereby continuing a defective variety of the race.
There was a better way, or so the lectures declared. One that kept a child’s hands at his or her sides like a young lady or gentleman. And so there, at the school for the Deaf, Sign was outlawed. In its place came arduous lessons on how to shape sounds with the mouth. For hours teachers pressed on the jaws and cheeks of their students, even applying gentle pressure to the windpipe to try and guide the Deaf in the formation of distinct vibrations that were the sounds of vowels and consonants. Every student went through the same lessons. Thor had followed along, and though the teachers patiently guided him, his attempts at speech stabilized at a garbled mess.
So it was in the garden during free time that he’d signed to a friend. Though he knew it was against the rules, he hadn’t communicated properly with a single soul in days. He’d been caught by a stern professor and, with it being his third offense, taken inside. There he was placed in the corner where those awful mitts were put over his hands, his wrists tied together with string.
As the detention wore on, Thor decided to do everything he could to get out of the binding. If Da believed that Viking blood lived in their veins, then he meant to test its potency. Maybe it was stubbornness or sheer defiance, but he’d upended the stool and was crying tears of rage by the time a teacher rushed over and snipped the thick strings. His wrists were string-cut, so fiercely he’d been tugging.
This teacher, a Deaf woman like most of the faculty, had bandaged him up and told the other staff that this method of manual confinement was abominable. She declared it all in Sign—turning the entire hallway into a frenzy as she used her beautiful, fluid hands to insist upon a stern letter to Bell. While some of the staff supported her, others reinforced the new method of Oralism, cautioning that her job would be at risk should she proceed in defiance of the new system.
Thor saw her give a letter to the postman the following day.
He never knew what happened to that gentle soul, or if a response from Bell ever came, for it was a few days later that Thor had climbed up into the tree. The day Da had come and everything had changed. Bringing Thor back to the ground where they both sought the end of a different sorrow at the bottom of a bottle.
Thor strode on, thinking that he’d like to meet Bell again someday. Explain a few notions and maybe even make peace with a man he’d been so angry at. If there was one thing he now understood, it was that Alexander Graham Bell had only meant to help, and help he had. Many students had taken to his teachings well, learning to speak.
How freeing that would be.
A victory Thor had always yearned for. If only he could master a few words, maybe even speak Aven’s name. The thought emboldened him and terrified him all at the same time. Perhaps Ida or Jorgan would help him.
The air grew cooler as he passed through a stand of tall maples, their rich green leaves feathered with the ambers and reds of early autumn. A flock of ravens soared across the early-morning sky. Their feathers glinted like black silk in the sunshine.
Thor caught sight of the Sorrels’ farmyard just beyond. A Confederate flag, tattered and sun-bleached, hung on the side of the barn. Something moved in his side vision, and he spotted Peter jogging through the yard. A little girl with white-blonde braids clung to his back. Thor could see the child’s laughter even from a distance.
Peter slowed when he saw that they had company. He gripped the girl by the hands, then lowered her down. With a few words and a brotherly pat on the back of her head, he urged her to run off. The girl obeyed.
Thor headed toward Peter, his presence convenient as the lanky youth was just the man he wanted to see. Thor had seen something in Peter’s display at church the other day. It wasn’t animosity toward Haakon that had motivated Peter’s behavior. It was an effort to impress the other Sorrel men around him. Which told Thor something about Peter Sorrel. A risk he was about to take on the young man and a gamble he sure hoped he was right about.
This near, he saw that Peter had bruises running beneath his eyes. His lip was split but trying to heal. Red scrapes across his left cheekbone said he’d had a rough time of something. Though introductions were foreign between their families, Thor offered a hand all the same.
After hesitating, Peter shook it. The young man glanced over his shoulder, and Thor followed his line of sight to see that the door to the house had opened. A pair of men ambled out. One spoke, and Peter’s response was to motion Thor toward the run-down mansion.
Though unease stretched within him, Thor followed the young man up the battered steps and into a dim foyer. A curving staircase wound to the second floor. A few steps had holes in them, and the ornate banister was patched with rough boards.
Thor followed Peter past a kitchen, where the yeasty smell of baking bread saturated the air. Half a dozen women bustled about within—some kneading mounds of dough, others bearing trays from the oven. A waiflike blonde looked up when Thor passed, as did several others. Though their ages spanned several decades, they were all pretty in gentle measure. Sorrel men never sought anything but that which brought them pleasure. Judging by the thin bands on their fingers, the women were wives, mostly. Little children played under the table with rag dolls, and a baby slumbered in a basket on a chair.
In the center of the kitchen, Mrs. Sorrel flipped a mound of dough over on itself. She gave Thor a cordial nod.
He returned the greeting, then followed the men deeper through the house and to a back room that might have been called a parlor if it weren’t for the missing windowpanes, the smell of stale tobacco, and the stuffed game mounted on the wall. The furniture, while worn, would have been grand in its day. A sofa rested at the opposite end of the room, and that’s when he saw the patriarch of them all. Jed Sorrel.
The aged man looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading. Three fingers were missing from his left hand, and a leather patch lay strapped over his eye on the same side. From a cannon blast, some had said. Though battered, the general had walked away from the War between the States better than most.
Boots squared wide, the head of the Sorrel family shook the paper closed. His gray hair was skewed in the back, and he looked at Thor coolly as if having long expected this moment. The man stood with the ease of one much younger and with the dignity of one who had once owned over thirty slaves. Though Jed was not tall, his sheer will to survive three years of battle was intimidating enough. Flanked by his male kin, some veterans themselves, added to the surety of his place as leader.