The Sound of Thunder

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I’m not a man to call another a fool. But the wages must come down to the national base; at least a third of the employees must go. Or we go into bankruptcy and thank the saints there’s no debtors’ prisons any longer.”

  Edward, in his office, answered him with rage, “And if we let a third go, what’ll they do in this depression?”

  William shrugged. “I swear, and you should be in Washington, helping the President with his dreamer lads! And did I not tell you, laddie, they are swarming there, with their little hands red with revolution and their little black hearts full of Communism? And their little evil souls full of hate? No matter. We’ll face them in the future, and may the good God give us ropes and guns in time.

  “And what’ll our employees do when we give them the sack? You’ve got a plan that gives them two months’ pay; they’ve tucked away the cash well in all these years, not having to fork out for the doctor chaps and hospital and insurance, which was at your expense. Out of your own pocket. The thrifty souls have the quid in the banks; let them live on it or find another job. Not easy. But by all that’s holy, what is? And are you the anointed who must roil yourself into a stroke over them? Did they bleed for you, in their blasted strikes, when you were paying them far above what their brothers and sisters were getting in other shops? They did not. You’re not an Atlas,” and William bent his shoulders ruggedly, panted, and lifted shaking arms over his head. “You’re only a man, though a bit of an ass, and I don’t apologize, and is it the world you’ll be saving, boyo?”

  He pointed at Edward. “Look at you! Old before your time, white hair and you only forty-four. Lines in your face like erosions. Why, damn it, you can’t even drink to keep yourself from going mad! Look at your blinking color; lead with a gray shine on it. Did you bring on this depression? Did you drag America into that accursed war in chains? Did you smash Europe from end to end? No. But you would wear the hair shirt, or give it away to a chap who wore silk shirts when you wore cotton shirts, and you the master.

  “A mortgage on the house, and the poor wife with the white face and the loving heart, signing away with you what you worked for. What is that bloody phrase of yours? All the days of your life. I’ve said enough. America blew a big wind into Europe; now the whirlwind’s on her. Listened to the liars and the murderers, that she did. Jumped in with both big feet. If she hadn’t done that, England and Germany would have signed a cozy negotiated peace, and little bits of real estate would have changed hands, and there’d have been a drop or two between friends, and back to work racing each other for profits, and everything forgotten, and love and kisses. But America must be the referee, only a referee with boxing gloves loaded with nuggets of iron, and slugging away at the enemy that’d been chosen for her back in 1905. And knocking friends out, too, in the wild way. Now the beggars are on their backs, thanks to America, and America’s plopped down beside them. It’ll not please you, lad with the shattered face, but your country’s been a blunderbuss to the world, and it’s not the end that’s in sight yet. If she’d kept her bally nose out of Europe, listening to George Washington instead of her bleeding Socialist traitors, there’d be no Hitler and Stalin now, and God knows where they’ll lead us to. War, no doubt. It’s making a grimace you are. But I’ve warned you.”

  His small stature had diminished even more. His foxlike face was still alert and vigorous, the hazel eyes still brilliant and quick, but his sandy hair had blanched and his freckles stood out on parched skin like old paper. “I’m not a frolicsome lad any longer; I’m approaching sixty. Am I to stand by and see you die of your folly? Like an undertaker waiting for the corpse, and it’s a corpse you’ll be before long, I’m thinking.”

  “I’ve paid back most of the one hundred thousand dollars you lent me, damn you,” said Edward, savagely, but the old power of his voice had weakened.

  “And am I asking for the rest of the twenty thousand? I am not. I took no interest. I wanted to give you the blasted money. ‘Take it,’ I said, ‘and forget you ever took it.’ It’s there for you still. Pay off your mortgage with it; count it as a gift.

  “And now that we’re at it, boot your family out of your house, all the leeches battening on you. Ah, no, and you’d not be doing that, like a sensible man instead of a Hamlet. That would lower your self-esteem; it’s a castle you have, and serfs—fat serfs who live better than the joyless baron.”

  Edward’s ghastly face swelled with turgid color. “I’m not asking your advice,” he said, and he struck the desk with the flat of his hand.

  William sighed. “No, but I’ve given it. The advice of a friend. I’ll not be leaving until you tell me you’re to be sensible. And if it’s not sensible, I’ll be leaving you forever. That’s my ultimatum. Wait a bit. Do you know of who you remind me? President Roosevelt, desperately looking for panaceas, trying every ruddy thing to get the country out of the depression. Trying to shield a nation from its crimes. But there’s retribution. You can be certain of that. A fine braw country once, a country of Washington and Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, a country with muscle and sinew and common sense and a hard head. But a country that fell into the hands of the murderers like a plum that was itching to be peeled and eaten. Better a nation that is wicked, and prudent, than a nation that is good and a bloody damn fool. There’s more men in hell led there by their own excellent intentions than by sin.”

  Edward’s face became obdurate and settled into grim gray lines. “The President will find a way,” he said. “He’s not a Communist; he isn’t even a liberal. That’s what the Daily Worker says.”

  “And who says he is a Communist, or a liberal, or a rainbow-brow? But what can he do? Who brought the murderers in droves to Washington? Was it he? But they’d gotten the signal; now is the time. The country’s up to her groin in misery and despair; it was planned that way, long years ago. They’d gotten the signal from Moscow. And it’ll kill the poor chap, mark my words. It’ll take the heart out of him. A few months in office and he’s aged twenty years. It’s too much for him; he hasn’t found that out yet. But he will! And he’ll die of it. Like a man dies when his house swarms with cobras,” and William made a sinuous motion with his arms and opened his mouth as if to strike.

  He stood up. He leaned his hands and arms, stiff and straight on Edward’s desk. “And will you be taking my advice or seeing the last dust of me?”

  Edward tried to smile, and the attempt was agonizing. “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll be off to a small cozy island somewhere, with my cash, and I’ll buy palm trees and live on the fat of the land, with only the sea to watch and the lassies dancing, and a thatched roof over my head. Mark my words. There’ll be thousands like me, wishing they’d done it, in the years to come.”

  “You can’t withdraw from the world—don’t be an idiot.”

  “That I can. A man’s a right to a little peace in his old age, and there’s still enough life in me to cavort and eat the breadfruit that falls into my hand. Do I want to live in a world that’s spewed up a Hitler and a Stalin—with the fine braw help of America—when I can pull up my braces and run for it? I do not. Only one thing will keep me: you being sensible.”

  Edward lighted a cigarette; his hand trembled violently.

  William said, “And there’s another thing, though I’m not a man that asks for gratitude. The traitor laddies were out for your blood, with your Committee, and your German name, and your support of the newspapers against war—though what else could you have done and been a man and an American? It should be a consolation to you that you fought for your country in your own way. And it was only the mercy of God that kept you alive. Look what they did to poor Hans Bohn and others like him. Broke his office windows; called out his men, who left him with the sound of trumpets. Shut up his papers; crashed him down with boycotts. And he died of it, and others died of it with him. But you had better friends. You had Georgie Enreich; you had me; you had a dozen others. We kept the wolves from your throat.”

  Edwa
rd stared at him blankly. The cigarette dropped limply from his fingers. William nodded dolorously. “Did you lose money? Were you hung in effigy? No. Was that a miracle? Only the miracle of having friends.”

  “George Enreich?” Edward’s voice was hoarse and muffled; he coughed to get his breath.

  “Sure, and it’s a Little Boy Blue you are. It cost him half a million dollars to drag you out of the teeth of the dragons. But a dragon likes cash. All the buggers like cash. They’d even become solid citizens, if they got their price, and would forget about the brave new world of Communism and Russia. Excepting the rich laddies rolling in it, who want power. You’ll not be telling Georgie. It’s his secret, among others.”

  Edward leaned back in his chair. He clasped his hands tightly together on his desk, and he looked old and sick and broken. William looked at him compassionately. “Buck up,” he said. “Issue the orders. One third of the yawners out of the shops, poor devils. Give me your word.”

  “All right,” said Edward, and he coughed again, rackingly, and the old familiar anguish squeezed his heart.

  William put his hand on Edward’s shoulder, strongly. “And you’ll boot out the parasites in your house?”

  “No,” said Edward. “It’s their home as well as mine. I built it for them. I’ll—manage to keep up the Clinic; it’s needed now more than ever, with decent people unable to pay regular medical fees. I can’t throw my family out. What would they do?”

  George Enreich, sitting in his gray-green and gloomy garden with his two canes beside him, watched Edward crossing the dank and mossy grass toward him. They had seen each other, and only casually, once or twice during the past years, and then at the homes of mutual friends. George thought now, as he sat almost immobilized in the painful cage of his arthritic prison, My Eddie is a sick, old, and tormented man, and no man can deliver him except God—in Whom I do not believe, naturally—and himself.

  Edward was near him now, and he laboriously held out his swollen left hand, which was the least affected, and said, “My Eddie, I am glad you are visiting me. I have been waiting a long time.” Edward was shocked, in spite of his fixed smile, at the change in his old friend. George had shrunken; his once-red hair was white and thin, though still bristling; his bulk had melted under the onslaught of his devouring disease. Only his greenish eyes, strenuous and alert, remained in their original power and strength.

  Edward said, and was surprised and almost stunned at his own words, “But I’ve never been away.” He sat down near George on a rattan chair. He could smell the damp mustiness of the crowding trees and shrubs, the junglelike effluvia of too much vegetation. Not even insects clamored here; birds made no passage through the darkened air; there was no fragrance of flowers or lightness of blossoms. The intensely blue sky shone in fragments through branches of enveloping trees, like light seen at the bottom of a huge green cave.

  The two old friends had nothing to say to each other, few questions to ask. Everything was known to them, or too little, or too much. George said, and his voice was dulled by long pain, and as if they had met only yesterday, “You will have a drink with me.” His butler came across the green and pallid shadows of the garden with a tray and prepared the whisky and soda. “It is forbidden me,” said George. “And also my cigars. The doctors would take from me the last consolations I have, and what is life without consolations?”

  They drank together in silence, not peering inquisitively at each other but each thinking his own wretched or depressed thoughts. In this way they communicated, asking and answering questions. Do you remember when I was young and had hope? Edward asked George in his mind. And do you see now, what it has come to? But I was young once and had hope, too, George replied silently. And this is the end to which we are all destined. Unless—and I do not know what it is that makes the end less terrible, but surely there is an answer. In which, of course, I do not believe.

  Their eyes met in a quick encounter of mutual commiseration. Edward said, “It’s a hot day, but it’s very cool here. Do you think the dampness is good for you?”

  “Nothing is good for me any longer,” said George, and smiled. “But should I complain? I have had an interesting life, my Eddie. I have money and I have power, and these I have had for a long time. I have eaten and drunk and made love, and there is not a pleasure I have not sampled. There is no spot on earth which I have not visited. I have worn the best and I have seen the best. Where there has been the most glorious music, there I have been. Where there has been the highest laughter, there I have been. There is no luxury that I have not known. And yet it comes to this, in this chair, as if I had known nothing and experienced nothing. And do not tell me that memories are consolations. They are not. They are destroyers.”

  He put a cigar in his mouth, and Edward stood up and lit it for him. The younger man did not immediately sit down again. He stood near his old friend and regarded him with sorrowful sympathy. George smoked, however, in long, serene enjoyment, looking across the garden. He said, “I have seen the photographs in the newspapers of your daughter’s debut. I regret that I could not be present.” He puffed again as Edward remained near him. “It is a maiden like her father, with a proud and resolute face. It is a woman, rather than a maiden.”

  Edward’s worn face brightened with pleasure. “Gertrude isn’t my favorite child, but I love her very much. Everybody says she’s very much like me, not only in looks but in character. I hope not! I’ve messed up my life a lot—”

  “And who has not?” asked George, as if in surprise at Edward’s words. “And shall your children escape?”

  Edward’s sick heart skipped a beat in anxiety. “I’m doing my best. You’ve seen my son, Robert. He has a sunny disposition; nothing bothers him; he accepts everything and likes everything.”

  George nodded slowly. And so, he thought, the boy will go through all his life and see nothing. Is that good or evil? Would I have preferred to live in a blind brightness or to have seen? I am sorry for that boy. He said, “But Gertrude is not like that. And so she will suffer much. She will also know more.”

  Edward again felt that sharp skip of anxiety. “Is it necessary to suffer to know? Robert’s no fool; he isn’t a smiling idiot. He accepts life.”

  And so does a tree or a bird, thought George. But that does not make them men. Acceptance is a passive thing. To struggle is to be vital. Never to accept without a question; never to conform; never to adjust when adjustment would smother. A man is a man, and acceptance is the death of a man.

  Edward sat down again. And again there was a long silence between the two, a long exchange. Finally, in a far voice, without an accent; as if speaking only to himself, Edward said, “What have I accomplished? What is the meaning of my life?”

  George looked at him quickly and with vividness. So, he thought.

  “What is the meaning of anyone’s life?” he asked. “When I was a child, the priest in Prussia told me. I cannot remember. Or it was a foolish telling, which I rejected.”

  “There should be a meaning,” said Edward. And suddenly the old black terror was on him again, a terror without a name. There were memories hovering like clouds on the antipodes of his soul, but he could not see them. His throat tightened and his chest constricted, and he moved in his chair as if preparing for flight. “If I could just remember—something,” he said almost inaudibly.

  “Man will never find any meaning in himself,” said George. He closed his eyes in weariness. “But where else he will find it I do not know, though once I seemed to know. Does a tree or a flower or a dog ask for a meaning to its life? I am not certain that it does not. We are too anthropocentric. But let us talk of less weighty things. How is our friend, Billy Russell, with the bands and the cavorting?”

  Edward frowned. “It’s a funny thing. Even right after the beginning of the depression his bands and he himself were always in constant demand. He never had to worry about engagements. He was the most popular band leader in the country. And then he attended the Re
publican convention in 1932 and spoke for Mr. Hoover. Since then, and it’s probably only a coincidence, his engagements get suddenly canceled or he doesn’t get them at all.”

  “It is not a coincidence,” said George, slowly and emphatically.

  “But this is America! A man’s political beliefs are his own private affair.”

  “Naturally, until the Communists came to power in Washington,” George said. “You will see, my Eddie. You have had no trouble yourself?”

  Edward frowned more darkly. “Yes. But probably only a coincidence, too. The Bureau of Internal Revenue is suddenly and almost exclusively interested in my business. They hound my offices in New York for weeks at a time and send out assessments which are frivolous. We always beat them, but it stops work, and my lawyers are busy, expensively busy. Good God, George! I’m a Democrat myself; I support the Democratic party. I supported Roosevelt—”

  “It is not a matter of politics, Eddie. Your work to preserve America and her Constitution has not escaped the notice of our enemies. The evil days are on us, and when I contemplate them, I am glad that I am old and have only a little longer to live.”

  “Roosevelt sneers at Communists,” said Edward distractedly. “He says that liberals are men whose feet are firmly planted in the air. The Communists attack him—”

  “But he will not be able to prevail over them,” said George, sadly. “No single man can, not even the President of the United States. The wheel has turned, and the despotism of sinister men has made a full turn and is upon us. Do you think that Hitler and Stalin are in opposing camps? No, they serve but one master.”