The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  The music was loud, gay, clamoring, full of frolic and rhythm and pleasure. It gamboled and ran up and down the keys in a dance of release and merriment. It strutted and stamped and whirled, sometimes with a bass like drums, sometimes with the lilting tinkle of the high octaves. In spite of himself and his own anger and outrage, Edward found his feet moving and his knees swaying. He came to himself when he heard Billy’s harmonica joining in the frenzied and abandoned melody that underlay the twinkles and the drummings. He caught Billy’s arm and stopped him. Billy stared at him and his eyes were very bright and fixed in the light of the street lamp.

  “Boy,” said Billy, in a hushed voice. “He sure can make that piano roll!”

  “You make me sick,” said Edward with disgust, and he ran up the stairs and flung open the door. Billy looked after him and hesitated. Then he forgot he was a Negro and that he had never been in this house before, and he followed his friend. Something had impelled him to do so, something instinctive and urgent. He stood in the doorway of the small hot parlor with its ugly, crowding furniture and with the piano between the two little windows. And he saw David. David’s dark and narrow face was alight with a kind of ecstasy and abandon, his eyes sparkling, his body swaying, his slender hands racing up and down the keys in a blur of dancing movement. “Boy, that’s music,” whispered Billy, and his hand went to his pocket and pulled out the harmonica. “Real happy music.”

  David was unaware as yet of the entrance of his brother and Billy, for his back was to them. His elegant shoulders leaped up and down as his arms moved rapidly. The whole house was alive with unseen dancers.

  “Shut up!” shouted Edward, and advanced into the room.

  David’s hands stopped on the keys with a loud, discordant sound. He swung about on the stool and looked at his brother, and his distinguished features tightened.

  Edward still advanced upon him, as if to strike him. “After all the goddamn money I’ve spent on that piano!” he said. “After all the lessons I’ve paid for, working like a dog in that goddamn store, and never going anywhere, and putting money in the fund for you! After all your genius, when you can play like a real concert pianist! And you’ve got to fool away your time, and my money, playing that trash!”

  David sat on the stool, long and slim and graceful, and his black eyes flashed on his brother like dark fire. There was a sudden violence in the air, a sudden enraged silence. In spite of his natural diffidence, Billy came into the room, and David’s eye fell on him. He knew Billy slightly, and his mouth, open as if to snarl, closed.

  “Look,” said Billy to the outraged Edward. He took Edward by the elbow. “There’s all kinds of music. It don’t mean that this isn’t music, too. There’s all kinds, and this is good.” He smiled at David gently. “Man, you sure can make that piano talk! Make a wooden Indian dance.”

  Edward tore his elbow out of Billy’s grasp. He turned on the boy with an almost brutal gesture. But Billy was putting his harmonica to his lips, and to David’s amazement, and to Edward’s dazed fury, he began to play the melody which David himself had composed and which he had been playing. The harmonica sang out lightly and rapidly, romping, fairy notes of youthful dancing, and Billy rolled with its excitement, stamping his food on the red Brussels carpet to keep time, his shoulders twitching.

  David laughed out, swung on his stool, and his hands fell on the keys in perfect harmony. The two played together, the harmonica soaring like a tiny violin in accompaniment, the keys of the piano rising and falling in a movement almost too fast to be seen. To Edward it was repulsive, discordant, and incredibly vulgar, for his rage was making a shrill humming in his ears. It was a repudiation of all his years of work, of all the loss of his youth. It was a disdainful rejection of his grief over Betsy, and the insults he had taken in silence, and of the denial of his own importance. Mixed with it all was a wild dismay, and a challenge to him, a challenge he would not acknowledge or permit.

  He flung Billy’s newspaper-wrapped gift, the New Testament, on a nearby table, and he cried out to his friend, “Get out of here! Go on, get out of here!” And he struck Billy on the shoulder with his clenched fist.

  The music stopped abruptly. David rose slowly from his stool and confronted his brother, and Billy stepped back, wincing with pain, his eyes somberly staring at Edward. “I said, get out,” repeated Edward, and his friend did not know his face.

  “Now, see here,” said David.

  But Billy, still staring at Edward as at a stranger, walked backward to the door. He opened it behind his back, stepped out, and closed the door. To the last, Edward could see his eyes, questioning, mournful, and compassionate, shining with still golden lights.

  “That was a hell of a thing to do,” said David slowly, and there was no sneer in his voice. “Hitting him like that. Who do you think you are? Simon Legree?”

  Edward turned from him and ran to the door and flung it open. But Billy was gone. There was not even a shadow of him on the street. A great pain pierced Edward’s chest. I’ll make it up to him, he thought confusedly. I shouldn’t have done that. He’s my friend. He’s all the friend I have. He called out, “Billy! Billy!”

  His shout came back to him, with emptiness and desolation.

  He slammed the door and turned to his brother with a dark face. “It was all your fault,” he said in a low tone full of passionate anger.

  David shrugged. He was eying Edward queerly. “Was it?” he asked.

  Edward was almost blind with that anger. “Wasting your time,” he said thickly. “Wasting my time. Wasting—all the days of my life. That’s what you’re doing. Since I was ten. I was willing to work because Pa says you’re a genius. And I’ve heard you play lots of times and I know he’s right. But you can’t go on wasting my life and my money and the work, all the goddamn work, I do! You hear me?”

  David regarded him as if seeing him for the first time and as if what he saw frightened him. He felt Edward’s powerful strength, his iron determination, and it was as if the bars of a prison closed about him and there were the clang of a steel door. Edward, he saw, was no longer the despised and toiling numbskull of a brother, but someone to be feared, to be placated, to be restored to acceptance, for the things he could do, the nameless, implacable things he could do, the destroying things he could do. Edward’s gray eyes were distended and inexorable, glittering almost with malignance.

  “Hey,” said David quietly. “What’s the matter with you, anyway? I know how you work. But you’ve got brains.” He paused. “Yes, you’ve got brains. You work because that’s what you want to do. You think it’s because—”

  “Shut up!” cried Edward. “I do it all because you’re a genius, a concert pianist, a composer! I do it all for all of you! And you’re not going to waste your time or I’ll—I’ll do—something! You hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you,” said David. He bent his head and looked at his feet, brooding, and his thin face was closed and abstracted.

  “I smell of pickles, do I?” said Edward, his wrath rising. “I smell of garlic, do I? I haven’t any intelligence, have I? That’s what you’re always saying, you and your sneers. I’m just fit only for work. That’s what you say. Maybe you’re right. But I’m smelling and working for you, and you’re not going to waste my life. None of you.”

  David did not answer. Neither boy was aware that the back door to the parlor had opened and that the family was crowding on the threshold and listening with mute amazement and disbelief.

  “You’re all going to develop yourselves, like Pa says.” Edward’s voice was the voice of a ruthless man now and not a youth. “I didn’t choose what Pa calls your futures. You did, all of you. You aren’t going to throw over his ambitions for you; I’ll take care of that!”

  “Yes,” said David thoughtfully, still gazing at his feet. “I guess you will.” He raised his head and gave Edward another odd stare.

  Maria Enger thought this the proper time to interfere. She came into the room, majestic for all h
er shapeless bulk, impelling in her authority, like a great Viking figurehead, her pale hair drooping under the wide black felt hat with its dilapidated blue plume. She spoke in German, and sternly. “What is this quarrel on Christmas Eve? What is the stupidity, and ugly conversation? Was it for this occasion, David, that you decided to remain home at the very last moment and practice, as you said?”

  Edward swung to her, and Heinrich, blinking distressedly in the doorway, surrounded by his children, was struck again by the extraordinary resemblance between his second son and Maria, for all their physical differences. Edward said wrathfully, “I returned home, Mother, with the day’s receipts, and discovered David playing that ragtime—that clashing ragtime!—on the piano again. You did not know that when he is alone he plays nothing but that?”

  Maria paused. In any quarrel between Edward and her other children she invariably decided in favor of the “gifted ones,” for they had “temperaments.” But this was serious. She turned formidably to her oldest son. “Is it so, David, the thing your brother says?”

  It was usual for David to answer angrily and impatiently, when pressed, even by his mother. But now he only continued to gaze at Edward as he said without emotion, “Not always. There are some times when I must have relief from the classic music. It is unfortunate that Eddie has heard me then.”

  “He’s just dumb,” said little Ralph, who was tall and plump, and whose distended bright black eyes looked on Edward with malice. He pulled off his wool cap and showed a thatch of brilliant auburn hair which curled almost girlishly about his big ears.

  “Not too many brains,” said Gregory, with his knowing wink. He wore a new suit tonight, and he had tried for David’s elegance without success. His broad face, so like Edward’s, wrinkled with amused spite and intelligent malevolence. “He’s always fighting with somebody around here. Why can’t he sleep in the store with the pickles? Jeepers, Christmas Eve, and he’s got to raise a fuss around here!”

  “Children, my children,” murmured Heinrich, full of misery. He peered at Edward and thought again, My son has changed, he has become like iron, he has lost his heart. Heinrich’s woolen scarf, as if reflecting his despondency, uncoiled itself and fell over his belly. He could always appeal to Edward with one eloquent look of pleading and Edward, however stirred or angered, would subside. But tonight Edward did not subside; his anger brightened at that meek and imploring glance. His throat felt thick, turgid with bitter emotion.

  Sylvia followed her father into the room. She was not yet fourteen, and she was dark and thin and spindly and restless, and had no obvious beauty, but she possessed what Edward did not know was chic, a flair, a style. Her stark and bony face had an arresting distinction about it, her thin body moved with assured arrogance, and her gestures, though stiff and sometimes violent, were never awkward. She had made the simple dark-red woolen dress she wore, which outlined her adolescent figure. Not for Sylvia any frivolous berthas, or loops of braid wandering wildly about hems and necks and waists, or conspicuous buttons or mutton-leg sleeves or loose blouses. The dress flowed smoothly and with felicity from a narrow waist to a wide skirt, and the severe collar was fastened with Maria’s pearl and black-enameled pin, borrowed for tonight. She had refused to wear her high button shoes with this dress; she had insisted on her summer patent-leather slippers, narrow and shining, below stockings of mercerized black cotton. She had even made her dark-red woolen hat herself, crocheted deftly, hugging her head, and embellished by only a short, stiff black ornament designed by her from a scrap of black patent leather. Even the worn gray coat had an air, and she removed it with casual grace and placed it carefully on one of the green settees. Her hair, loosened tonight, flowed to her waist like spun black glass.

  She looked at Edward with cool contempt. “I don’t know what’s the matter with him, since last summer,” she said. “He’s been acting dippy, as if he owned everybody around here, and he gives orders, and glares, and thinks he can scare us. You’d have expected, when we came in, that he’d have the decency to say, ‘Merry Christmas!’ and ask how the play was, and everything. But he doesn’t have that much politeness. All he thinks about is that smelly store and making money.”

  Maria lifted one of her big and fleshy hands commandingly.

  “One forgets that Edward is making money for us all, though I should prefer that it not become his obsession. Wait,” she said severely as Edward opened his mouth to speak. “I have not done. Edward has some justice on his side. David should not be wasting his time, for it is blasphemous to waste a gift.”

  “I told you, Ma,” David said, replying to her in obstinate English. “I’ve got to have some relief sometimes. Like stretching your muscles.” But he colored.

  “That is to be expected,” said Heinrich timidly, peeping apologetically at his wife. “It was that way with my flute. I did not always play the classics. I, at times, played for the dancers, at the Gasthaus, and it was relaxing and pleasant.”

  “Genius cannot relax, as you say, Heinrich,” his wife remarked with haughty disdain. “You were not a genius. We were speaking of the gifted. David, I command you to play only what is right for you to play. There must be no more nonsense. No more relaxing. One destroys a gift when one desecrates it with cheapness and folly and what is called modern music. One wonders, David, where you hear this tawdriness.”

  “I can tell you,” said Edward, bitterly. “He hears it in other houses, on the gramophone. He goes to the Witlocks’ and the McCarthys’ and the Bergers’, down the street, with all the kids and their records, and the Witlocks have a piano, and they dance and sing while Dave plays that trash. And then he comes home here saying he stayed after school! And we’re paying two dollars a lesson for him at Miss Taylor’s! He even composes the stuff himself!”

  “Is it true?” Maria asked David.

  The boy colored again. “Well, yes. But I’ve got to have some recreation. It doesn’t hurt—anything. And though you’d never believe it of anybody raised in this house, I happen to like people. That’s funny, isn’t it, to like people? I like to play for the kids I know, and I like to see them dance, and I like to dance, too.” He said the last defiantly, and everyone listened aghast, except Sylvia, whose thin lips smiled in sympathy.

  “Do you call that jumping, dancing?” asked Maria. Her pouched, pale face became frozen. “That American leaping and prancing? That most unelegant clutching of a girl by a man? That stamping and shrilling? You would call that the dance?”

  “It is Christmas Eve,” said Heinrich piteously. “We must remember the occasion.” But no one heard him.

  “It is all vile and common,” Maria continued. “It is not expected of a Von Brunner. It is expected only of the base and the stupid and the vulgar.”

  “That’s not all,” Edward interrupted. No one had ever dared to interrupt Maria before, but Maria did not express any outrage now, much to the astonishment of her family. In fact, she turned majestically to Edward and said, “Speak, my son.”

  Edward pointed at Sylvia. “She made those clothes she’s wearing, wasting her time, when she should have been studying her drama. And we pay three dollars a week for her lessons with Madam Bilinski!”

  Sylvia glared at him. “What’s the difference if you design clothes as well as stage sets, and learn how to make your own hats as well as to direct plays?”

  “I do not object to the thrift which leads one to make one’s clothes,” said Maria. “But I, too, have observed that too much time is spent on this, Sylvia. You are endlessly altering your frocks or changing the style of your hats, when you should be studying. I will allot to you, hereafter, only three hours a week on the clothing.”

  A scarlet stain appeared on Sylvia’s white cheekbones, and she gave Edward a glance charged with hatred.

  “She spends hours looking in store windows at dresses and hats, and I’ve seen her sketching them on her school paper, outside the windows,” said Edward.

  “This will cease,” said Maria, with icy
finality. “Sylvia will return from school by the clock.”

  Edward stood in the center of the hot and crowded room, yet there seemed to be a space about him like the space given a dangerous chieftain. He dominated the room, and his gray eyes were like smoke filled with fire.

  He looked at Gregory and Ralph, who shrank and tried to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. “These other kids,” said Edward, pointing to them mercilessly. “Greg writes what he thinks are funny stories, and you should hear them scream down in the basement, or in the parlor, when you and Pa aren’t around. And he’s supposed to be learning to do serious writing, novels and biographies!”

  Gregory straightened up. It was significant, now, that he spoke to Edward and not his mother. “Gosh darn it, anyway!” he cried. “You got to have some fun sometimes! I’m not an old man, like Pa, and not a dummy like you! You never hear anybody laugh around here; it’s all work and study, and I’m only eleven years old, not even twelve yet, and if I play I’m a murderer or something, I’m wasting my time! What if I do write funny stories for Dave and Sylvia and Ralph? They like to laugh, too. It’s like a funeral around here all the time, and you’re the undertaker, you dummy!”

  Ralph had begun to sniffle, knowing that he was next. Edward, ignoring Gregory’s outburst, fulfilled Ralph’s apprehension. “And here we’ve got the artist, the one who’s going to be the famous artist. Money put out every week for his special art lessons. Money given him for carfare to the museum. And what does he do, every chance he gets? He studies higher mathematics, things I never heard of, though I like math and wanted to be—” Edward paused, and white ridges sprang out about his mouth. “And he draws geometry pictures, and he’s got a slide rule from somewheres. And he only paints real things when he’s afraid someone will know what he’s doing on the sly.”

  “Wait,” said Maria. “Here I must intervene. Sylvia designed the sets for the Sunday-school play, and very excellently, and Ralph was most original in the painting of them, and Gregory’s work brought much appreciation. However,” and she paused formidably again, “this does not expiate the hours wasted on foolishness, about which I have now just learned. There will be no more of it. Gregory will confine himself to serious literature, Ralph will do mathematics only with his school work. Life is too short for frivolities and uselessness.”