The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  The bells of the Catholic churches in Waterford began to ring at midnight, and they took up the chorus of joy and good tidings and salutation when David’s music murmured away into silence. Edward heard them and they were voices behind him in exile, in an ecstasy he could no longer share, and he did not know why he could not share.

  When the shop opened after Christmas, Billy was not there. But a letter for Edward lay on the counter. Billy had written:

  “Maybe I should have told you, Eddie, that I can’t come back. It’s been on my mind for a long time and it’s got nothing to do with you, or anything. My folks won’t miss me. I’m going down to New Orleans. They’ve got little bands and things down there and maybe I’ll get myself a job playing the harmonica. And I can dance and sing, too. I can send my folks more money. There’s no future for me in Waterford. Eddie, I hope you miss me a little. I’m going to keep your pen all my life, and use it, too, and maybe we’ll see each other again, sometime. That’ll be bully. I got tired of the North and all that damn snow and the people not liking me for nothing that’s my fault, anyways. New Orleans is a dandy city. I got a second cousin down there and he’s been asking me to come down all the time. He plays a trumpet in a restaurant or something on Bourbon Street, that’s what they call it, and he makes a lot of money. I’m going to make myself some, too. When you’re a rich man, come down and look me up. I’m going to fix myself a real good fancy name and get a little band of my own and maybe I’ll get rich like you, one of these days. I’m your real friend, Eddie, and I’m not going to forget you, honest, and think of me like I’ll think of you. You can keep my books, and you study them, and get more out of the public library. I read a French book called Les Miserables, and it sure made me cry. There’s an archbishop in it, and a thief who stole his candles, and then the archbishop told the police he gave the thief his candles, and I don’t know why, but I cried all over the pages about it. You’re just like the archbishop, honest. You read that book. Your friend, B. Russell.”

  There was a postscript. “P.S. Now, don’t you go thinking that anything you did or said made me make up my mind. It didn’t. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “An ungrateful boy,” said Heinrich. “And it was you, my son, who insisted I raise his wages and give him meals without payment. Eddie, why do you weep? Billy was only a colored boy and he showed you no gratitude. Ah, that is the way’ of friends! Dry your eyes, my son. There are two customers entering. I do not know why you are so affected, and you must forget.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “It is well, now,” said George Enreich. “I have taught you all I know these four years. We shall proceed to establish the fine shop of which you spoke.”

  “I have already chosen the place,” said Edward. “A large store. It hasn’t been doing well since the panic last year, and the man and his wife are old, and their sons are indifferent. They won’t work; they think nine hours a day is enough, and only half a day Saturday. When did a man ever succeed if he watched the clock? Clocks are for lazy people. I can buy the store at a bargain, and the stock, too. I’ve talked with the owners, and they haven’t any choice but to sell to me or go into bankruptcy. Do you know what they asked me to do, Mr. Enreich? Lend them the money to get back on their feet, as they say! The banks won’t lend them a cent.”

  “Ah,” said George thoughtfully, looking at his cigar. “That would not be the Goeltzes, would it?”

  “Yes,” said Edward, his features hardening. “It would.” He watched George warily.

  “They did well until a year or so ago. I remember them. What did you offer for the shop and the stock, my Eddie?”

  Edward hesitated. “They bought the shop, and the flat above, in 1895. They paid four thousand dollars for the whole thing. I offered them five thousand dollars for the building and all the stock. They refused, of course. They said they had put three thousand dollars extra into the shop and the flat, plumbing, new flooring, counters, storeroom, a heating plant, not including the stock.”

  “So,” said George, his small green eyes still on his cigar. “I should guess that they want at least nine thousand dollars, pleading that prices are going up and that their location is centered in the best shopping streets.”

  “Ten thousand,” replied Edward. He shifted his big and muscular body in his chair, and there was an edge to his voice. “I told them that they could take my five thousand dollars or leave it. If they don’t sell to me, and there aren’t any other prospects, they’ll lose it all, anyway. I know that. And they know it, too.”

  “They owe the banks two thousand dollars,” said George. “A mortgage. This they borrowed when the panic began.”

  Edward had ceased to be surprised at the extent of George’s vast knowledge of the city and its inhabitants and history. His uneasiness arose from another source. “Yes,” he said flatly. “That would leave them three thousand dollars. The old folks are in their late sixties or early seventies. Their sons can get jobs somewhere else. In fact, the younger one, Walter, could have a job with me, though he’d have to learn how to work, and he’s in his early forties, I think.” He rolled a cigarette for himself from a pack of Bull Durham and a sheaf of rice papers, and George watched his large hands do this with delicacy and neatness. George himself took out his gold match case and struck a light for the young man, who accepted the courtesy with a curt “Thanks.” His mind was still pursuing the Goeltzes.

  “With that three thousand dollars, old Goeltz could open a smaller delicatessen somewhere else,” suggested George. “Perhaps nearby. After all, they have friends in the neighborhood.”

  Edward squinted through the smoke of his cigarette. “I took care of that, too. I said I wouldn’t buy if they did not sign an ironclad agreement that neither they nor their sons would open a delicatessen within five miles of this one, and not even that for two years.”

  “So,” said George again. “No doubt you have visited the bank and discovered that the mortgage falls due in three months.”

  Edward’s broad dark cheeks colored slightly; then he smiled and shrugged. “Yes, of course.”

  “And you have offered to buy the premises from the bank at a slightly smaller figure in the event it is seized by them for the mortgage?”

  “Yes,” said Edward with no inflection in his voice. “That’s business.”

  Once on a time, thought George, you would not have considered that “business,” my Eddie. You have gone a long way and I am not certain as to where you have gone. In my direction? It is possible. But I did not tutor you in these things, these expedient things. Were they latent in you all the years of your youth, or has life corrupted you as it corrupted me? I look at your face and if it is harder and too old for your nineteen years, and if your eyes are cold, there is no hypocrisy there, no cruelty for the sake of cruelty, no meanness or ugliness. You are driven, and only the great God can know what drives you.

  George, who unconsciously relapsed into German whenever he was disturbed, said, “Father Jahle often speaks to me of your enormous generosity to him, Eddie. Ah, you are blushing like a girl. Do not blush for good acts, though I suspect you do not blush for exigent acts. You repaired his house, and I know it came from no large allowance you permit yourself, for you have no such an allowance. You thought, of course, that I would lend you the five thousand dollars, and you have reason to expect that. You have no five thousand dollars of your own. Will you tell me what you have?”

  “Five hundred,” said Edward, curtly, and again that stain of color appeared on his wide cheekbones. “After all, the kids are growing up and the fund has to grow accordingly. Will you lend me the money for the Goeltz property? If I have it in my hand, how can those old people resist, in spite of their sons?”

  George meditated, his red eyebrows drawn together. Four years had increased his girth but had not lessened his thatch of coarse red hair or added more than a few lines to his ruddy face. Then he slapped his hand on the counter. “You have a partner, Eddie. I will lend, as a partn
er. Five thousand dollars is my investment.”

  “I don’t want a partner, Mr. Enreich.” Edward’s voice was colder than before.

  “A partner you have, or you have nothing.” George’s voice became rough with brutality. “And do not think, my Eddie, that you can go to the bank for a loan. On your merits, yes, you could get a loan of five thousand dollars from any bank here, and on your statements. But, my Eddie, I would forestall that. That would be my business.”

  Edward was both amazed and aghast. “You can say that to me, Herr Enreich, after all these years of your teaching?”

  “My Eddie, you are still young and do not as yet know men. When George Enreich goes into any business, George Enreich makes a profit and not a small one. Yes, I taught you, but that, too, was my investment.” George suppressed a smile at Edward’s expression.

  The store was closed, for it was after ten, and the two clerks and Heinrich had gone home, and Edward and George were alone in the shining expanse of counters, polished nickel, gleaming linoleum and glass. Enger’s had grown these past four years: one other shop had been added at the left. But beyond this expansion and the necessary two clerks, Enger’s had remained what it was, a fine delicatessen, extremely prosperous even during the panic of ’07, the year before. It had, indeed, as Edward would say, “spruced up the whole neighborhood,” and property values had increased. There was no better delicatessen this side of New York, and it did a good business as far as Albany, to which many packages and cartons were sent as a consequence of Edward’s skillful and luring advertisements in the Albany papers. It also did an excellent business with Syracuse and even Elmira, and there were special German delicacies imported by Edward in great demand in Buffalo, where Edward also advertised in the Buffalo Evening News and The Express, and in the local German-language paper. He had just recently imported a most unusual item—Polish ham—and the growing Polish population of Buffalo, learning of it in their own newspaper, sent in very satisfactory orders.

  The Engers, according to the standards of Waterford, were rich. But greedy, envious competitors would say, sourly, “Look at them! They live in that old shack on School Street, and they don’t even have a carriage, and Ed Enger rides all over town on a bicycle his dad gave him years ago. Save all their money; dress like working people; never go anywhere. That’s the German! Save every penny, even if it comes out of their own hides!”

  Edward, for some reason, was not popular except among customers, and even they now preferred the kindly and timid Heinrich, who still had an eye for children and kept a large box filled with lollipops for them at Christmas. But few poor people came any longer to Enger’s. The prices were too high, even for staples. Carriages lined the street all day long. Heinrich, walking home in his old coat or in his shirtsleeves in hot weather, could always spare the time for a gentle conversation with a long acquaintance who lived in the neighborhood. But Edward had forgotten that art, or had decided that those who did not spend money in the shop were not worth the spending of his time in acknowledging them. The smiling and generous boy of over four years ago had been replaced by an alert, quick-eyed, stern-lipped young man, with a fast frown and an authoritative voice for delivery men and clerks and an occasional shabby stranger who wandered into the shop. It was not that he was “mean,” as the neighborhood said, and he was just to employees for all his demands on them, and he had forced his father to pay them unbelievably high wages, and no money was ever deducted from their wages when they were ill or late. He had also insisted upon granting them two weeks’ vacation with pay every summer—and this had occasioned a furious battle with his parents who had been aghast at the very suggestion—and a small bonus at Christmas in accordance with their sales for the year. He was, at this very time in March, 1908, plotting to set aside a regular fund for the two clerks and the janitor in case of their deaths, in order that their families would have enough for a decent funeral and a little over. Edward thought these wild innovations secret from everyone except his father, but George Enreich, who knew everything that happened in Waterford, knew of this also, though he did not speak of it to his protégé. There were times when George thought of these things, these silent, hidden generosities of Edward’s, and they consoled him mysteriously.

  It was unfortunate that the employees were firmly convinced that Heinrich himself was responsible for their high wages, their bonus, their vacations, and their steady income during illness. Heinrich never disillusioned them, not because he wished them to believe these things of him, but simply because it had not occurred to him that they believed them. He accepted their humble thanks in the name of Enger’s, graciously and with kindness. He was not aware that his employees gave him all the credit in the neighborhood. He was not aware that his old acquaintances pitied him and had affection for him, and hated his son Edward for his brusque ways, his impatience, his silence as he rode home on his bicycle, his air of ignoring those who once supported the shop with their small purchases. No one, of course, was perceptive enough to understand that Edward had his hard material dreams and ambitions for his family and himself, and was preoccupied with them with a kind of unshaking ferocity. No one knew of his bouts of pain and weary bitterness, of lonely nights and exhausting days. No one knew but George Enreich, and George spoke of it to no one.

  It was only during especially crowded periods that Edward now waited upon customers. He left this to his father and the clerks. He had built an office at the rear of the fourth shop added to the other three, and here he made out his orders, kept his books, planned new imports. He was often in the shop to supervise, to watch, to greet a favorite, distinguished customer, to mutter a short and severe admonition to a lagging clerk, to let his rapid eyes run over the shelves, to inspect for absolute cleanliness, to encourage his father, who was complaining more and more of his heart. He had a typewriter on his desk on which to compose enticing advertisements, write letters, and do other needed work. He was the powerful spring that kept the clock of Enger’s ticking constantly and prosperously, and his energy seemed limitless. But there was one place to which he never descended, and that was the basement.

  George Enreich, on this unusually mild March night, thought of all these things as he sat and smoked his cigar and ate the sandwich and drank the coffee Edward had prepared for him. He continued, tranquilly, to enjoy all this, waiting for Edward to recover from his indignation.

  “You didn’t lose anything by your ‘investment,’ Mr. Enreich,” said Edward. He straightened up the full length of his six feet of height, and he squared his broad shoulders. “You get your percentage of our gross profits, and they’re about ten times what you would have received in rents.”

  “Not to mention my free lunches,” said George, placidly chewing. “This Polish ham, my Eddie. It is remarkable. What was I saying? Yes. I would prevail on the banks not to lend you the five thousand dollars to buy that shop. No. I am your partner, or you have nothing, hein?”

  “What’s your proposition, then?” asked Edward, folding his muscular arms over his wide chest. His gray eyes sparkled with anger.

  “Remarkable ham,” George repeated. “Ah, yes, my proposition. But you have not told me what you will do with the Goeltz shop—if I am greatly persuaded into investing.”

  Edward was too vexed to see the twinkle in George’s little eyes or the faint smile on his gross mouth. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go over it again with you. I told you about it years ago, and I’ve been telling you all along. A big shop, elegant, more expensive delicacies and imports, in the best shopping part of town. A shop that’ll send orders all over New York State, and maybe into Pennsylvania and Connecticut, too. We can undersell New York City; we don’t have the overhead they have there, and we’re more central. But I’ve told you all that! There’s one thing I haven’t told you, though. I intend to open an office in New York and call it the Enger Importing Company. Imports, direct. Not through New York dealers. I can use the money myself.”

  George nodded approvingly. �
��That, of course, is what I expected. We shall make the lot of money, is it not? Ja. The father, of course, is not to be part of the new shop. Hein?” He lifted his eyes and guilelessly fixed them on Edward’s face.

  Edward glanced aside. “Hein,” he said bluntly. “A year ago I talked it over with Pa and Ma, and you’d have thought I’d proposed to blow this shop off its foundations. So I knew I had to go it alone. There’s fifteen thousand in the fund for the education of my brothers and sister, and though Dave and the others draw on it all the time, the money is always replaced fast. And my parents have twenty-five thousand dollars in their own name. I have five hundred.” His lips curved in a hard line.

  “I’m going to call the new big shop the Fine Food Market. And then I plan branches of it, in Waterford and in other cities. We’re getting a big middle class in America now; no more of this business of just the very rich and then the working people! We’re becoming more like England, more bourgeois.” He paused. George nodded again.

  “Ah, it is the French we are acquiring, Eddie. That is from the teacher you visit twice a week late at night. The poor old Frenchman from the Waterford School for Girls, who is starving. You did not know I knew? My Eddie, I know many things.” He was amused at Edward’s expression. “I also know that without your very generous payment for the French lessons, and other lessons also, the sad old gentleman would long ago have perished in his garret. What is it that that haughty school pays him? Yes, fifteen dollars a week. It is fifteen more that you pay him, and so he has coal for his little fire, and a cane with a silver knob, and a broadcloth suit for Sundays, and imported wax for his mustaches, and wine for his cooking and his palate. And he has a flourish and is respected, and the school is held in high esteem for acquiring so elegant a teacher, who is now called professor. There is even a young lady or two from Albany, because of the reputation Monsieur Faure has bestowed on the school.”