The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  A puzzled murmur rose from the crowd, and many looked at each other uncertainly. The young man lifted both his hands, and there was a simple but stark majesty about him, and the crowd fell into silence.

  “But the Fourth of July should have something of a holy feeling about it. For on that day our nation was born, conceived in liberty, planned in reverence, and signed with the sacred honor and blood of noble men. This is a day for, prayer and remembrance, and the renewal of vows that this nation shall never forget the men who died and fought for it, and bought it not only with all their fortunes but with their lives and prayers. This is a day for the churches to be open and filled with all of you, a day of quiet respect and soberness and bravery and hope and dedication.”

  Edward drew even nearer, and he was trembling with excitement. But the people, though respectful and pitying, did not understand. They pursed up their lips to show their polite attention, but their eyes were sheepish.

  “You have been given a nation, a history, a tradition, a republic,” the young man went on. “You have been given a Constitution which could have come only from God, for it’s so perfect and so good and so heroic. For the first time in the world a document asserted that men were created equal before the face of God and law, that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to live in freedom and to die in freedom, the right to worship God in their own way, the right to seek redress of wrongs on the part of evil men, the right to pursue happiness, the right to property, the right to be secure in their persons and not to be’ oppressed by the military and despots and ambitious men who might want to enslave them in the future, as the old tyrants once enslaved them. How could mere men, even the men who brought about the American Revolution, have conceived of such documents without the help and the voice of God? And how can we keep our republic without God’s help, without remembering what He has done for us, without praying that we must not forget?”

  The people stirred and stood up straighter, and now their faces were living and strong and moved.

  “We are at peace,” the veteran continued, and his young voice broke for a moment. “But how long shall we be at peace? Is there any group of men anywhere believing that we must die as a free nation, and that the mass of mankind is unworthy of liberty, and that liberty is the province of only the powerful and those who would oppress us? Be sure that there are such men. There always have been in all the history of the world. If you do not recognize them when they appear in government, then we shall all surely die, and our Constitution with us, and there will be no remembrance of it and no remembrance of Him who gave us a nation and gave us our freedom. They are not new in the world. They are as old as death and sin.”

  The wind blew up again, more vehement this time as the sun sloped to the west, and the flags suddenly lifted in renewed grandeur and sailed against the sky. Edward saw them, and his young heart trembled and was filled with love and devotion.

  The veteran’s voice dropped as if he were alone and praying to himself, and he looked at the flags. “Dear banners,” he said. “My dear country, my very dear country! God bless you and keep you forever, keep you vigorous in peace and valor and justice, unstained by the lust for power, untainted by the hands of ambitious and treacherous men, free from liars and thieves and murderers, who always lie in wait for the liberty-loving and the good and the peaceful, so that they can destroy them. God keep you strong in your virtue; do not war except to protect yourself. Do not search for what is not yours but other men’s.

  “God keep you, God bless you, God help your people to remember what you have done for them. My dear country.”

  My dear country, young Edward said in himself for the first time in his life. Why, I’d die for you! I love you to death, honest I do.

  The people did not applaud. They were too filled with emotion and fervor. The band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner” again, and everyone sang, deep-throated, their voices shaking with tears and passion, their eyes glowing. And the young veteran looked down at them, smiling and listening, his hand at his forehead in salute.

  Edward heard a man’s voice at his ear. Or was it inside his head? A man’s voice tired but steadfast. “So that is how I came to love my country,” the voice said. “I never really remembered, I never really knew!”

  The man’s voice died away. Heinrich was shaking young Edward’s arm with some petulance. “The mother is busy with the basket and the children,” he said. “You stand here with open mouth and do not help. Come.”

  “Did you hear what that soldier said?” cried Edward. “Did you listen to him, Pa? Did you ever hear anything like it? Why, it makes you love America—like anything!”

  “I have no time to listen to soldiers,” said Heinrich, tugging at his arm. “Besides, it is all chauvinism, and that is a bad thing. It is patriotism, and men make wars when they are patriotic. There are not just nations. There are only men in the world. One day we will learn that, through Socialism.”

  Edward gaped at him. “Gee, you talk funny, Pa. You don’t have to look so mad. You didn’t listen to him!” And he was suddenly not only excited but enraged. “He was talking about America, not—not—what did you call it? What does it mean? I guess I don’t know, but it don’t mean America!”

  “And it never will,” said the man’s voice in his ear. “It never will!”

  “My dear country,” said Edward in reply. “I came to love you on that day, though I didn’t remember it.”

  Someone was pumping his arm determinedly. “You best wake up, mister. We’re acoming into Waterford right now.”

  The band died into silence. The veteran’s voice was lost. Edward opened his eyes, dazed and shivering, the pang of pain clawing at his beleaguered heart. He stared at the concerned face of the porter. He mumbled, “But still I don’t remember what the meaning was that I thought I was about to know.”

  “What you say, sir?” asked the porter, his black face shining with gravity.

  “Nothing,” replied Edward, struggling to rouse himself and stand up. “Nothing that I can remember.”

  This time his car, driven by the chauffeur always in demand by others of the family, was waiting for him. He fell onto the seat, and the pain was huge in his chest.

  CHAPTER XII

  Margo sat with her husband, Gregory Enger, in their secluded suite at the far eastern side of the house. She was not smiling; her bold face had something harsh about it, for all its smooth coarseness. She sat at her dressing table and pulled a brush angrily through her straight blonde hair, and watched Gregory in her glass. Her large white arms flashed in and out of her blue velvet dressing gown.

  “We can always get that friend of yours, that psychiatrist, what’s his name? Lorensen. Damn it, Greg, stop running up and down the room and listen to me!” She swung her big round thighs on her chair and twisted around the better to see Gregory.

  “You know what they’re always saying in Washington, that people who disagree with progressive policies are mentally ill, that anyone who thinks the Constitution means anything in these days is insane, and that men like your brother, who hate the progressives, should be confined and treated in mental hospitals. Why, almost all the psychiatrists say that, and you know it! What more do you need?” She slapped her brush down on the glass top of the dressing table. “Damn! I’ve cracked it. Who cares? Well? You’ve talked to Lorensen about Ed, haven’t you? And didn’t he say that Ed must be out of his mind, always talking about this country getting in some war in Europe? Didn’t he say that Ed was crazy and mixed up, about Socialism? He should know Ed personally, and the booby wagon would be at the door before you could blink your eyes.

  “God damn it, Greg! I want money, a lot of money. You can get a dozen psychiatrists to swear that Ed is out of his mind; why, you can buy them! Lawyers do when they’re defending criminals. You can get them to swear that it’s their opinion that a murderer is what he is because he came from a broken home, or something, or his dad spanked him for wet
ting his pants when he was five years old. Or he had a complex because his mother had red or green or bright blue-pink hair. It’s done every day. Get Ed certified and put where he belongs. Then we’ll all have money; we can sell out those damned stores, and divide it up, and we’ll be rich. Rich! My God, rich! A couple of the best cars. Clothes! Diamonds! Stop staring at me like that just because I have some common sense.”

  Gregory stopped near her, his eyes screwed up tightly, his mouth puffing erratically at his cigarette. Margo went on: “Didn’t you say that the psychiatrists are getting up a symposium, or something, to say that reactionaries be given what they call ‘loving and tender care’ until they’re cured and get on the progressive band wagon? Didn’t Lorensen say that George Washington was mentally ill and must have hated his father, and that’s why he disliked the authority of England? Well! If he can publish that stuff, he can do something about Ed.”

  Gregory said in a stifled voice, “Ed’s not crazy, and you know it. He’s just on to people like us, and he knows as well as we do what we want.”

  “All the more reason he should be put in the booby hatch where he won’t be so dangerous. It won’t be long before there’ll be a showdown—remember that Martin Dies and his committee! How’d you like to have to testify before that—Texan, anyway? The White House couldn’t even scare him; he’s got the FBI behind him. Maybe they’ll get their own psychiatrists to say you are crazy. Don’t laugh.” Her loud hoarse voice rose to a brawling tone, and Gregory winced.

  “Do you have to yell like a train caller? Let me think.”

  “All right. Think! I’m not too sure about your brothers, either. You couldn’t pull Ralph in, or Dave. And Ralph and Violette will be here tomorrow. You’ll have to talk to them—Ralph and Violette. Cook up some story. Ed’s emotionally disturbed, and all that stuff. As for me, I’ll swear to anything, and you can, too. I’ll swear he pranced around naked every morning, at dawn, and doused himself regularly in that lousy fountain, even in the winter. Cut up paper dolls, too. Anything for a diamond necklace and a fourteen-carat emeraldcut ring and a big car of our own!”

  Gregory glared at his wife in the mirror. There were patches of gray at his temples, and streaks of gray through his thick black hair. Margo glared back at him. Then, all at once, he was sick. She was a fool, of course, with that talk about certifying Ed. A big, coarse fool of a woman. He had looked for strength in her, for comfort. He remembered the night they had first met; she had been like a sunflower at the edge of a poisonous jungle.… He shook his head dazedly. But I was the one who corrupted her, he thought with sudden starkness. I put that jargon into her mouth, and she believed it and it was all truth to her. Because she loved me, I suppose. Ed liked her; he always did like her. I don’t suppose that he ever thought she was like me. What am I like? What am I, with all those articles for the Party’s papers and periodicals? Did I ever really believe it? Do I believe it now? What am I? What was I ever looking for?

  It was too late now to ask himself these questions. He was committed. He had committed his wife, who had never really known what it was all about, not once in her simple, avaricious, trusting and—yes—her loving life. He had been able to corrupt her because she loved him. Did he love her now that she was corrupt?

  “Look,” he said through his teeth and his sickness, “I’m not a real Communist, Margo. Did, you think I was? I just joined a number of fronts and wrote for them, and for—other magazines and papers. I was on the committees, sub rosa.” He paused, for she was staring at him in amazement, her eyes big and unbelieving.

  “What’re you trying to tell me?” she cried.

  That I didn’t, and don’t, believe a damned word I’ve been writing and saying all these years, he answered her in his wretched mind. That I’m scared to death now. That I was a coward, and hated Ed. That there wasn’t a stinking place in the world to which I belonged, and I had no moral values or morality, because my father had taken them from me with his “abstracts.” Because I’m weak and I needed to have an anchorage and a sense of belonging. Because I knew, deep down, that I was really nothing, only a trifling, vengeful fool. And Ed was handy for hating, for he always could make me despise myself, and because I had him fooled for a long time. Because I didn’t have the fortitude to stand on my own feet. A thousand “becauses.” And now I can look at myself, for I’m frightened to my very bones; they’re coming closer; they may even have my name by now and know everything I’ve done. Does a man have to be frightened to see himself for the first time?

  “Margo,” he said through his sickness. He wanted her strong arms about him, he wanted a renewal of her simplicity, he wanted to be cleansed.… But he had corrupted her; he had given her hatred and lies. It had taken him months to make her believe what she now believed about his brother. Even then, during those years, she had doubted at times. She had laughed with Ed occasionally, and he, Gregory, had seen the wrinkle of doubt between her bold blue eyes. She had come to her husband to be reassured, to be convinced of the rightness of the “crusade.” Each time it had been easier. All that was intrinsically kind and honest in her had been silenced with the clamor of jargon and propaganda. Why had he, Gregory, wanted to corrupt her? What had been the imperative? He had forgotten. He hated himself; he hated those he knew in Washington and New York, the smirking, or the fanatical, or the cruel and zealous, or the benighted fools like himself. The hating, cowardly, snickering fools like himself! He hadn’t even sold himself for the legendary thirty pieces of silver, he thought drearily. He had sold himself only for hatred, when he could have been a man.

  It was never Ed, he said to himself. It was only ourselves, my brothers and my sister—and I. Why do I have to know it now for the first time, without lies? All these years—and for the first time! When I feel I’m cornered, and there’s no one I can go to for help—not even my wife.

  Margo, watching him, jumped to her feet affrightedly. “Greg! What’s the matter? Honey, what’s the matter?” She ran to him and put her arms about him, and her warm breast was against him. “You’re scared, honey. Don’t you be scared! Why should you be afraid of him when we’re right, when he’s our enemy? You’re tired; all that writing you’ve been doing; all those friends of yours called up before the subcommittee. But now it’s going to stop. You don’t have to be afraid any longer. Honey, don’t shake like that!”

  Her arms were warm and strong; her lips were against his cheek; he could smell her robust perfume and feel the sturdiness of her body. Yes, he loved her, even if he had corrupted her. He wanted to say to her, “Margo, I’m a liar. I’ve been a liar all my life.” But Margo was not a liar; she would not understand. She would stand back from him and see him, and that would be the end.

  She was standing back from him now, her hands still on his shoulders, and staring at him in puzzlement and concern and affection. Then the telephone rang, and she muttered an obscene word and reached for the instrument, her eyes still questioningly on her husband. She said sharply into the telephone, “All right, Fran.” She waited, and her face changed, the sockets of her eyes widening. “I have it,” she said at last. “Yes, yes. Yes, Arnold. Washington?” Her voice rose shrilly. “He was in Washington?” She listened again, and her pink cheeks whitened, and her eyes stared at Gregory with hard terror and consternation. Then she put the telephone down.

  “What’s wrong?” cried Gregory. But he knew with all surety.

  Margo looked down at the telephone without moving. “He—he’s been to Washington. To see some—friends. They asked him to come. That’s what Arnold told me. It’s that Senator, that old man, Sheftel. He told Ed—Arnold got it through someone in Sheftel’s office—that if you didn’t stop right away you’d be called before the subcommittee. Sheftel wanted Ed to do something, for Ed’s and the family’s sake.” She shivered and sucked at her lips. “Well,” she went on. “Well. Jesus Christ.”

  Gregory’s lips turned as dry as stone. Margo looked at him now, and she saw his demoralization, his great terro
r. She sat down suddenly. “Well,” she said again. She leaned her cheek on her hand, putting her elbow on the dressing table. She tapped her foot. “Anyway,” she murmured, “they’re not going to do anything yet—not call you or anything. It’s just Ed we have to handle.”

  The sleet and wintry wind pounded at the windows. Margo gnawed a hangnail. She was not afraid for herself. All the powers of her healthy body and her simple mind were gathering forces to protect her husband, who stood there and could not move and who could only stand and look at her desperately. She wanted to run to him again and to hide his face against her shoulder. But she had to think. For him. She swung her leg and pulled absently at a thread in her robe, dangled it, then let it fall to the floor.

  Then she got up and forced a big smile onto her face, and went to Gregory and put her arms about him again. “Hell, honey. He’s your brother, though he’s a real bastard, and for his own sake and the family’s, he won’t let you be hurt. And what can he do to you? Anything he’d do he’d have to explain. And it’d be the worse for him, too. Him and his precious goddamn stores. He’d be more afraid of the newspapers than anything else. He’ll keep it quiet. He’ll even pay—somebody—to keep it quiet. You can buy almost anybody for money. Besides, didn’t that old fleabag of a Senator tell him? Would he have told him if they—they—had it all planned to call you? It was just a warning.”

  “A warning,” repeated Gregory, in a dull and fainting voice. He was very cold; he leaned against the warmth of Margo’s arms.

  “Sure, sure, honey.” She kissed him smackingly. “I’m here, aren’t I? I won’t let him—well, do anything to you. We’ll go away if that’s what he wants. But we won’t go away without money! We’ve got him there, by the short hairs!”

  The sickness was on Gregory again. The necessity for cleansing was on him like a wild fury, and the awful necessity for confession. Margo would heal him; she loved him. It was possible, if he explained in simple words, that she would understand. But even while he tried to form the words there was a knock on the door, and a maid said, “Mrs. Enger? Mr. Enger just got home. He wants to see Mr. Gregory in the library right away.”