The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Yes, Mrs. Enger. I’m glad you haven’t forgotten me,” he said.

  “I never forgot you—Father,” she said, and without knowing why she was glad, almost happy, to see him. He glanced keenly, but with tenderness, at her pretty, anxious face. He thought how young she still appeared, in her light brown suit, her yellow blouse, and with her hair still bright and curling. He thought he had never seen such a pure blue in anyone’s eyes before, the purity of the blue in the Blessed Mother’s robe. “Do come into the living room,” Margaret said. It was ridiculous that she should feel suddenly safe in the presence of a friend, suddenly delivered from her pervading misery. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!” she exclaimed, and was astonished at the ring in her own voice.

  She led him into the dim drawing room; the sky was darkening; there would be a heavy snow. She turned on a light. “Have you had lunch?” she asked.

  Yes, he had had lunch only an hour ago, at the home of the priest who had taken his place. “But you must have some coffee,” she said, and rang for a maid.

  He had been in this house only once or twice, and that, many years before. He saw that Margaret’s influence was responsible for some of the lighter and less ponderous pieces; they were like her, delicate and graceful. There was a twinkle of crystal here and there, the curving line of a fine piece of silver; a glow of ruby or amber glass. Margaret, strangely lighthearted, knelt on the hearth and touched a match to a waiting fire.

  They sat and drank coffee together, and ate a little cake, while a rising wind began to thud at the windows. “I’m so sorry that Ed won’t be back from New York until after dinner,” said Margaret. “Are you staying in town long?”

  He hesitated. “Only until tomorrow morning.” He smiled at her, and all at once—and it was so absurd!—she wanted to sit closer to him and cry. “But I won’t go until I see Eddie.” He hesitated again. His hands, she saw, were so frail that they were almost translucent. “Eddie hasn’t written me for some time.”

  Margaret looked at her cup. “I know,” she said. “Things haven’t been easy for Ed. You know how business is, Father. And then—well, there are—” She stopped. She could not tell him; there was too much to say; it would take days even to begin. She glanced up and saw that he was regarding her gravely, and that in some way he understood. He said, “But I often hear from my old friend, George Enreich.”

  Then he did know. “Mr. Enreich and Ed,” she began. “I mean, they see each other—now. And I call on him a couple of times a month. It’s so sad that he’s bedridden, so strong and vital a man.”

  “And not very patient,” said the priest, and smiled a little. “He’s been writing to me that he won’t return to the Church, and won’t have the Last Sacrament, and won’t leave a penny to the Church or any of her charities unless I hear his confession—which he hasn’t made for over fifty years.”

  They laughed together, thinking affectionately of George Enreich, still virile in mind if not in body.

  “So that is why you are here, to minister to him,” said Margaret.

  Monsignor Jahle did not answer, and Margaret looked at him and saw that he was grave again, and that his pale face had colored slightly. “I’ll see him, of course,” he said. “But what really brought me right now is Eddie.”

  Margaret was very surprised, then touched. “Perhaps,” she said, “Mr. Enreich has been worrying you too much. About Ed.”

  He put down his empty cup and clasped his hands between his knees, and his eyes, suddenly fixed on her, were the eyes of a shy child. “Mrs. Enger, I hope you won’t think me foolish or superstitious. Superstition is forbidden us, you know. But I had to come today about Eddie. You see, I had a dream two nights ago about him, and it was so vivid and compelling that I was—I was—”

  Panic tightened Margaret’s throat, and she put her hand to it. “What do you mean?” she faltered. “A dream? Everybody has dreams—” Her color left her face and even her lips. “What do you mean?” she cried. “What dream?”

  “Please. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he replied, concerned. “It was, after all, only a dream. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I really wanted to know that Eddie was all right, that he wasn’t ill. Human and foolish of me, wasn’t it, to think that he might not be well?”

  Margaret stood up, the panic quickening in her. “Of course he’s well!” she exclaimed. “That is, I don’t think he is any worse than usual. Tired. Worn out. Worried. But who isn’t these days?”

  He got to his feet, his head bent. “Yes. Yes, of course, Mrs. Enger.” His voice was still hesitating and expressed his contrition. “You see, Eddie is someone special to me. I’ve known him since he was a little boy.”

  “And I have, too,” said Margaret, trying to smile over the pain in her constricted throat. “And, I love him, too. I love him with all my heart. I couldn’t, wouldn’t live if anything happened to him.”

  He glanced at her with gentle sternness. “You mustn’t say that, my child. Who is any of us to challenge, to defy God, to say ‘I will not’ to anything He demands of us?”

  Now Margaret was distracted. She clenched her hands together and leaned toward him. “That’s clerical talk!” she cried. “What do you know of human love? I’ve never had anyone in my life but Ed! Don’t talk to me about my children! Do you think for a moment I wouldn’t sacrifice their lives to save their father’s life? That I wouldn’t agree to their life-long unhappiness if it would give him happiness?”

  She was breathing very fast, for terror had struck her. “What is God to me without my husband? What is anything to me but him?” (What had he dreamt, this unworldly priest with a saint’s serene face? What had he dreamt about Ed? She wanted to know, but dared not know.)

  He put his hand on her arm to quiet her. “Mrs. Enger, it was God who gave you your husband. Eddie is as dear to God as any other soul. Do you think He would injure Eddie? Or you? Please listen to me. I’ve known from the beginning that you and Eddie had a true marriage, that you were indeed of one flesh. God has greatly blessed you, in your husband, and Eddie, in his wife. As for what I’ve said, and I see now I have greatly offended you and perhaps have greatly offended God, it was because of George Enreich. He wrote me last week that Eddie was—well, he seemed very tired and distraught. I brooded on it, while I prayed for Eddie. And so my anxiety induced my dream. I should have just inquired about him or have waited to see him. You see, I called his office this morning, and they said he was away and did not know when he would be back. And so I thought I’d come to see you, for personal reassurance. My selfishness has caused you much concern. Please forgive me.”

  Margaret sat down abruptly and put her hands over her face. Then she began to speak, in short phrases, her breath catching. “Dear God, I don’t know what to do! I’m almost out of my mind. I can’t even pray to God for Ed. I’m too frightened.” Her voice came muffled through her fingers, and sounded like a long and muted groaning. “And now I don’t believe any longer. Ed’s suffered so much; there’ll never be any relief for him. No one can deliver him from his—It’ll go on forever, until he dies of it and I die with him. It isn’t just his business. It’s everything else. It’s his whole life! It’s something terrible I don’t know about, and perhaps he doesn’t know, either. What can I do, what can I do!”

  She dropped her hands and huddled in her chair, her head fallen, her face and eyes as dry as dust with her anguish.

  Monsignor Jahle regarded her with deep sorrow and pain. Many years ago he had asked this pretty and frenzied woman to help her husband, but she had not understood. She still did not understand. But God was merciful. Perhaps He would give her understanding in time to save Edward from himself and his secret and fathomless agonies.

  The priest wanted to say these things to Margaret, but he saw that if he spoke it would only increase her distraction and confusion. She was not ready. So he said, “You can pray, Mrs. Enger. You can, at the very least, try to pray. God hears every word. Believe me
, I know it. Dark and furious though the world is, caught in its own darkness, and baffled though all men are, and terrified, even evil, and lost, they have only to lift up their voices and call, and God will know, and God will help.”

  Margaret shook her head over and over, without sound. He put his hand gently on her arm. “Dear child,” he muttered, “don’t despair. Pray, out of your love. And my prayers will go up to God with yours.”

  She did not look at him. And so he went alone out of the room and out of the house, torn with sympathy, his lips moving in supplication.

  It was a long time before Margaret became aware that he had gone and that she was alone. The fire was bounding in red leaps on the hearth, and she was as cold as death.

  Edward had not gone to New York but to Washington. He had stayed there a full day, and then the next morning he had left.

  His train was approaching Waterford. He lay back in his chair, his eyes closed, and he looked like a man already dead, his face livid and sunken, his eyelids stony and smooth and purple. The porter passed and repassed him, glancing at him dubiously. That there gentleman sure was sick-looking. Hardly breathing. Once he paused by Edward’s chair and said, “You all right, mister?” And Edward, without stirring or opening his eyes, had replied very quietly, “Yes, I’m all right. Just resting.”

  I won’t think of it until I get home, he said to himself. It won’t do any good, thinking. I can’t hurry the train; I can’t do anything but sit here. And try to breathe. God, this pain!

  He must have slept. At any rate the sun was suddenly shining, and he heard the lively and rollicking strains of a brass band. An old German brass band which he had not heard since—since when was it? There was something about a war. That was funny; he couldn’t remember any war. The sun was hot on his head and on his face and the band was playing some happy Lieder, and people were singing and clapping and laughing. Why, of course, this was a Sunday afternoon in Stromburg Park. He could see the park now, the warm green grass, the dancing and glittering leaves on the scattered trees; he could smell the grass and the pleasant earth. Men and women and children were sitting in groups in the shade, the women in wide straw hats covered with ribbons and flowers, their full white dresses spread out all around them like flattened umbrellas, the men in stiff straw hats and in striped pink and blue shirts, their coats neatly folded across their knees, the boys in knickers, the little girls as gay as flowers in their summer dresses and hair ribbons. The children ran and played sucking on five-cent ice-cream cones and on penny suckers. Some of them played ball. A few little ones cried and pounded to their mothers. The air was full of voices, and the prancing of the brazen music. There was the bandstand at a little distance, the musicians playing away madly, the sun blazing on their instruments, lying like fire on the rim of the big horn, dancing on the flutes and the cymbals.

  And, of course, it was the Fourth of July. Flags were flying around the bandstands. Some of the children waved smaller flags aimlessly as they ran about. Everything was so warm and bright and full of peace, ringing with mirth and childish shouts, the laughter of women, high and careless, the laughter of men, baritone and indulgent. The sky was carved out of single shining blueness, with puffs of illuminated clouds idling in the radiant depths.

  Edward Enger was ten years old, and he was with his parents in the park. David and Gregory, dark and thin and discontented, had wandered away from the family group, to find something more interesting to occupy their young minds. Sylvia, nine, was minding little Ralph, who was four, and busily and fussily wiping his mouth after each suck at a dripping cone. Sylvia, thought Edward, was like a spider, with tight black braids, a sharp white face, and long legs in black stockings, and long arms pallid and full of movements as she crossly ministered to young, rosy Ralph, who had hair like a halo of curled copper about his babyish face. His mouth was a rose, streaked with the white drippings of his ice cream, and he was yelling at his sister.

  And there was Edward’s mother. She seemed very old to him, and too fat and shapeless in her gray cambric dress with its bulging bodice and skirt. Her hair was like silver, puffed up into an immense pompadour over her pale forehead and shadowing her severe eyes. She appeared completely detached from the family group; she listened to the band with a neutral expression. She never glanced at neighbors under the same tree. There, too, was Edward’s father, pink, rotund and smiling simply and happily, rejoicing in the sunshine and in the sound of the band and in his family. His black hair was already thinning; there was a glistening spot on the top of his head. He kept turning that head from side to side, inviting friendliness and affection, and no one noticed that shy smile, that eager shining of eye. He wore a touching bowtie, red with blue polka dots on it, and his blue shirt was stiff with starch. His boots, old and cracked, had been sedulously polished, and he was careful of the dusty grass. His straw hat with the crimson ribbon lay beside him, yellowing.

  Edward was bored. In his opinion the band was too noisy. There were too many people. There would be nothing at all when the sun went down, except the gathering up of baskets and children, who would then be crying with weariness. Then there would be the clanging and crowded streetcar, smelling of sweat and cheap perfume and filled with laughter too shrill. There would be the arrival at the house on School Street, the children trailing and whining and Sylvia scolding, and David dragging far behind and scuffing his feet. There would be a hasty cold dinner of ham and sausage and potato salad which had waited all day in the depths of the icebox, and beer for Heinrich. Then bed. It was a useless kind of day. Of course there had been firecrackers in the morning, ever since dawn, and probably there would be Roman candles to watch this evening, and sparklers in the early dark. The streets fumed with the scent of punk and gunpowder and burnt paper, ghosts of earlier celebrations. A useless, pointless day. Edward, seated at a short distance from his family, brooded on it. Why couldn’t days have some meaning? Why couldn’t they promise something, when the sun went down? But there was only tomorrow, and he would have to go to the store in the morning and scrub down the floor and the counters. He could already smell the pickles in the barrels and the pungent scent of ham being cut, and could already hear the constant slap of the screen door. He pulled up a handful of grass and put it to his nose, and all at once, without warning, he had a sense of excitement as the fragrance entered his nostrils, and everything, for a moment, was transformed and illuminated and there was a meaning after all, which he would find someday when he was grown up and not a boy any longer in dusty knickers buckled under his knees.

  He glanced at his mother. And then at his father, his heart warming. Did they know about the meaning, which was still nameless and mysterious? No, they were too old. His father was thirty-one, his mother a little older. Too old. They thought about nothing but the kids and the delicatessen and putting some money in the bank. He had a secret!

  The band struck a particularly loud and warning chord. Oh, here came the speeches, the boring, shouting, gesture-full speeches. The mayor would talk, the councilmen would talk, some young veterans of the Spanish-American War would talk, a judge would talk, and a man hoping for an office in November would talk. They would talk forever.

  Now the band roared into the strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the crowd got reluctantly to its feet. The speech-makers were already standing in the wooden box below the bandstand. Edward could see the creased uniforms of the young veterans. They had very rakish Rough Rider hats, and their faces were boyish and solemn. A late afternoon wind lifted the flags and held them against the sky in all their starry splendor, and then again Edward’s heart rose with excitement.

  A preacher climbed up into the bandstand first, the band behind him. He droned on and on; the people bowed their heads when he prayed, a polite bowing. Edward frowned. He saw the bored and unlistening faces. This was wrong, somehow. But the preacher had a voice like a giant bee, buzzing and never changing inflection. He was done; he had lifted his hands in benediction and was climbing do
wn the stairs to the box again.

  The mayor, waddling and beaming, went up the stairs, and the people clapped gladly and with much noise, suddenly relieved of their crowd anonymity. They clapped harder, even those who had never voted for the mayor and did not know or like him, simply to call attention to themselves and cry out their individual significance as if in protest. Some of the men and boys shouted, and the mayor bowed and waved his straw hat. He began to talk. He was even duller than the preacher. He was followed by the other politicians. Edward yawned; he was suddenly sleepy. The flags had fallen into quiet folds as the wind died.

  Then someone was helping a very young veteran up the stairs, and Edward got to his feet and moved nearer the bandstand the better to see. Why, the young soldier had a wooden leg! He pulled himself up on the stairs painfully. He had a boy’s face, but it was strained and pale and somber. He did not smile; he did not wave his hat at the sympathetic applause of the crowd. He just stood in silence and waited for the demonstration to stop, and his eyes, piercing and too bright, moved over the people searchingly. He lifted his hand, and the shouting and cheers subsided abruptly. The soldier leaned on the white railing of the bandstand and began to speak.

  He had a good voice, not filled with the false ring of the politician’s voice. It was measured and calm, yet charged with passion, and it seemed to reach the farthest tree, the farthest ear.

  “It’s very good to celebrate the Fourth of July with firecrackers and the shooting off of cannon and bonfires and picnics and speeches,” he said. He looked more searchingly at the crowd. “It’s nice to go out in rowboats and canoes on the lake, here in the park, and have a holiday. A holiday. I know you people work very hard, most of you twelve hours a day, six days a week. My dad does, too. You deserve a holiday, and pleasure, and the banging of firecrackers. But it shouldn’t be on the Fourth of July. Independence Day.”