The Sound of Thunder (43 page)

I am going to lose him. He is my son, even if Sean sired him.

But he is my son, and unless I prevent it Sean is going to take that away from me also.

Unless I prevent it. He lifted the flask to his lips once more and found with surprise that it was empty. He screwed the stopper down and returned the flask to his pocket.

Around him the gunfire and the shouting began. From the log beside him he picked up the shotgun and loaded it. He stood up and cocked the hammers.

Sean saw him, coming slowly, limping a little, crouching, making no attempt to fend off the branches that dragged across his face.

“Don’t bunch up, Garry. Stay in your position, you’re leaving a gap in the line.

Then he noticed Garry’s expression. It seemed that the skin had been stretched tight across the cheek, bones and the nose, so the rims of his nostrils were white. His jaws were chewing nervously and there was a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead. He looked sick or deadly afraid.

“Garry, are you all right?” Alarmed, Sean started towards him, then stopped suddenly. Garry had lifted the shotgun.

“I’m sorry, Sean. But I can’t let you have him,” he said. The blank double eyes of the muzzles were all Sean saw of the gun, and below them, Garry’s knuckles white with pressure, as he gripped the stock. One finger was hooked forward around the triggers.

Sean was afraid then. He stood without moving for his legs were heavy and numb under him.

“I’ve got to.” Garrys voice was a croak. “I have to do it otherwise you’ll take him. You’ll destroy him also.

With fear making his legs clumsy and slow, Sean turned deliberately away from him and walked back to his station. The muscles of his back were stiff with anticipation, knotted so tightly that they ached.

The beaters were close now, he could hear them shouting and thrashing the bush just ahead. He lifted the whistle to his lips and blew three shrill blasts. The shouting died away, and in the comparative silence Sean heard a sound behind him, a sound half, way between a sob and a cry of pain.

Slowly, inchingly, Sean turned his head to look back. Garry was gone.

Beneath him Sean’s legs began to tremble, and a muscle in his thigh twitched spasmodically. He sank down and sat on the carpet of soft damp leaves. When he lit a cheroot he used both hands to steady the fluttering flame of the match.

“Dad! Dad!” Dirk came pelting out into the tiny clearing,

“Dad, how many did you get?”

“TWo,” said Sean.

“Only two? ” And Dirk’s voice went flat with disappointment and shame. “Even Reverend Smiley beat you hollow. He got four!

Ruth returned to Pietermaritzburg the afternoon following the hunt. Sean insisted on accompanying her home. Ada, Dirk and a dozen of the friends Ruth had made during the week were at the station to see them leave. Sean was trying to detach Ruth from the earnest discussion into which all women seemed to fall on the eve of a major parting. His repeated,

“You’d better get aboard, my dear,” and

“The flag’s up, Ruth,” were studiously ignored by all of them, until he found it necessary to take Ruth’s arm and bundle her up into the coach. Her head reappeared instantly at the window to take up the discussion at the exact point where Sean had interrupted it. Sean was about to follow her when he saw Dirk. With a stab of guilt Sean realized how, blatantly he had neglected Dirk during the week.

“Cheerio, Dirkie,” Sean called gruilly and the boy flew at him and wound his arms tightly around Sean’s neck.

“Come on, Dirk. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

“I want to go with you.”

“You have school tomorrow.” Sean tried to loosen Dirk’s hold. The women were watching in silence now, and Sean felt himself flushing With embarrassment. God, he’s not a baby anymore, he’s nearly fifteen. He tried to keep his irritation from showing in his voice as he whispered: “Stop that now. What will people think of you?”

“Take me with you, Dad. Please take me,” and Dirk quivered against him. The whistle blew and with voluble relief the women turned away and began talking all at once.

“Do you think I’m proud of you when you act like this? Sean hissed at him. “Now, behave yourself and shake hands properly. ” Dirk clutched his hand, with the tears filling his eyes.

“Stop it this instant! ” Sean turned abruptly and swung himself up into the coach as the train jerked forward and started sliding out of the platform.

Dirk took a few indeterminate paces after it and then stopped with his shoulders shaking uncontrollably, his eyes still fastened on Sean’s face as it protruded from the window.

“Your father will be back tomorrow, Dirkie. ” Ada laid her hand consolingly on Dirk’s shoulder.

“He doesn’t love me,” whispered Dirk. “He never even . .

“Of course he does,” Ada interrupted quickly. , It was just that he was so… But Dirk did not wait for her to finish. He shrugged her hand away, spun round and jumped blindly from the Platform On to the tracks, ducked through the barbed, wire fence beyond and ran out across the fields to intercept the train as it made its first long turn on to the slope of the escarpment.

He ran with his face contorted, and the harsh grass brushing his legs, he ran with his arms pumping the rhythm of his racing feet, and ahead of him the train whistled mournfully and crawled out from behind the Van Essen plantation.

It was crossing his front, still fifty yards away, slowly gathering speed for its assault on the escarpment. He would not reach it, even though Sean’s coach was the last before the guard’s van, he would not reach it.

He stopped, panting, searching wildly for a glimpse of his father, but the window of Scans compartment was blank.

“Pa! ” he shrieked, and his voice was lost in the clatter of the crOssties and the hoarse panting of steam.

“Pa!” He waved both arms wildly above his head. “Pa! It’s, me.

Me, Dirk.”

Sean’s compartment moved slowly across his line of vision For a few brief seconds he looked into the interior.

Sean moved sideways to the window, he was leaning forward with his shoulders hunched and Ruth was in his arms. Her head thrown back, the hat gone from her head and her dark hair in abundant disarray. She was laughing, white teeth and eyes asparkle. Sean leaned forward and covered her open mouth with his own. And then they were past.

Dirk stood like that with his arms raised. Then slowly they sank to his sides. The tension in his lips and around his eyes smoothed away. All expression faded from his eyes and he stood and watched the train puff and twist up the slope until with a last triumphant spurt of steam it disappeared over the skyline.

Dirk crossed the railway line and found the footpath that climbed the hills. Once he lifted his hands and with his thumbs wiped the tears from his cheeks. Then he stopped listlessly to watch a scarab beetle at his feet. The size of a man’s thumb, glossy black and homed like a demon, it struggled with a ball of cow-dung three times its own size. Standing on its back legs, thrusting with its front, it rolled the perfect sphere of dung before it. Oblivious of everything but the need to spawn, to bury the ball in a secret place and deposit its eggs upon it, it laboured in spent dedication.

With the toe of his boot Dirk flicked the ball away into the grass. The beetle stood motionless, deprived of the whole purpose of its existence. Then it began to search. Back and forth, clicking and scraping its shiny body armour across the hard, bare earth of the path.

Watching its frenzied search dispassionately, Dirk’s face was calm and lovely. He lifted his foot and brought his heel down gently on the beetle.

He could feel it wriggling under his foot until with a crunch its carapace collapsed and it spurted brown as tobacco juice.

Dirk stepped over it and walked on up the hill In the night. Dirk sat alone. His arms were clasped around his legs and his forehead rested on his knees. The shafts of moonlight through the canopy of wattle branches had a cold white quality, similar to the emotion that held Dirk’s body rigid. He lifted his head. Moonlight lit his face from above, accentuating the perfection of his features. The smooth, broad depth of his forehead, the flaring dark lines of his brows set off the large but delicately formed plane of his nose. But now his mouth was a line of pain. of cold white pain.

I hate him. ” His mouth did not lose the shape of pain, as he whispered the words, “and I hate her. He doesn’t care about me anymore-all he cares about is that woman. ” The vicious hiss of breath through his lips was the sound of despair.

“I always try to show him … No one else but him, but he doesn’t care. Why doesn’t he understand-Why? Why? Why?

And he shivered feverishly.

“He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t care.”

The shivering ceased, and the shape of his mouth changed from pain to hatred.

” “I’ll show him. If he doesn’t want me-then I’ll show him.

And the next words he spat as though they were filth from his mouth,

“I hate him.” Around him the wattle branches rustled in the wind. He jumped to his feet and ran, following the moonlit road deeper into the plantations of Lion Kop.

A meerkat hunting alone along the road saw him and scampered into the trees like a small grey ferret. But Dirk ran on, faster now as his hatred drove him and his breathing sobbed in rhythm with his feet. He ran with the dry west wind into his &face, he needed the wind. His revenge would ride on the wind.

“Now, we’ll see,” he shouted suddenly as he ran. “You don’t want me-then have this instead!” And the wattle and wind answered him with a sound like many voices far away.

At the second access road he turned right and ran on into the heart of the plantations. He ran for twenty minutes and when he stopped he was panting wildly.

“Damn you-God damn you all. ” His voice came catchy from his dried-out mouth.

“Damn you, then.” And he walked off the road and fought his way into the trees. They were two-year growth not yet thinned, and the branches interlaced to dispute his passage hands trying to hold him, small desperate hands clutching at him, tugging at his clothing like the supplicating hands of a beggar. But he shrugged them away and beat them off until he was deep in amongst them.

“Here!” he said harshly and dropped to his knees in the soft crackling trash of small twist and dry leaves that carpeted the earth.

Hooking his fingers he raked a pyramid of the stuff, and he sobbed as he worked so that his muttering was broken and without coherence.

“Dry, its dry. I’ll show you then-you don’t want-Everything I’ve done you’ve … I hate you … Oh, Pa! Why? Why don’t YOU-what have I done?”

And the matchbox rattled. TWice he struck and twice the match broke in his fingers. The third flared blue, spitting tiny sparks of sulphur, burning acrid, settling down to a small yellow flame that danced in the cup of Ins hands.

“Have this instead!” And he thrust the flame into the pile of kindling. It fluttered, almost died, and then grew again as a wisp of grass caught it.

Consumed instantly, the grass was gone and the flame died, gone-almost, but then a leaf and it jumped brightly, orange points of flame in the twigs. The first tiny popping and it spread sideways, a burning leaf swirled upwards.

Dirk backed away as the flame leapt jubilantly into his face.

He was no longer sobbing.

“Pa, ” he whispered and the flame fastened on to the living leaves of a branch that hung above it. A wiff of wind hit it and sprayed sparks and golden flame against its neighbour.

Pa.” Dirk’s voice was uncertain, he stood up and wiped his hands nervously against his shirt.

“No.” He shook his head in bewilderment, and the sapling bloomed with fire and the fire whispered softly.

“No Dirk’s voice rose. “I didn’t mean. but it was lo eMt in the pistol-shots of flame and the whisper that was now a drumming roar.

“Stop it,” he shouted. “Oh God, I didn’t mean it. No! No!”

And he jumped forward into the heat of it, into the bright orange glare, kicking wildly at the flaming kindling, scattering it so that it fell and caught again in fifty new points of fire.

“No, stop it. Please stop it!” And he clawed at the burning in tree until the heat drove him back. He ran to another sapling and tore a leafy branch from it. He rushed at the fire, beating at it, sobbing again in the smoke and the flame.

Riding joyously on the west wind, roaring red and orange and black, the flames spread out among the trees and left him standing alone in the smoke and the swirling ash.

“Oh Pa! I’m sorry-I didn’t mean it.”

A shutter kept slamming softly in the wind, but this was not the only reason Michael Courtney could not sleep. He felt trapped, chained by loyalties he could not break; he was aware of the dark oppressive bulk of the Theuniskraal homestead around him.

A prison, a place of bitterness and hatred.

He moved restlessly on his bed and the shutter banged and banged, .

He threw off the single sheet and the floorboards creaked as he stood up from the bed.

“Michael! ” The voice from the next room was sharp, suspicious.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Where are you going, darling?”

“There’s a loose shutter. I’m going to close it.

“Put something on, darling. Don’t catch cold.”

Stifling, beginning to sweat now in physical discomfort, Michael knew he must get out of this house into the cool freedom of the wind and the night. He dressed quickly but silently, then carrying his boots he crept down the long passage and out on to the wide front stoep.

He found the shutter and secured it, then he sat upon the front steps and pulled on his boots before standing again and moving out across the lawns. He stood on the bottom terrace of Theuniskraal’s gardens and around him the west wind soughed and shook the trees.

The restlessness of the wind increased his own, so he must get out of the valley-get up on to the high ground of the escarpment. He started to walk, hurrying past the paddocks towards the stables. In the stable yard he stopped abruptly, his tall lean body caught in mid-stride. There was a glow, a soft orange glow on the far hills of the Lion Kop.