The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (11 page)

Maud felt a mixture of pride and dread. “I don’t know what to say.” She glanced at Chloe.

“How about ‘yes’?” laughed Tara Chodzicki.

Eudora took hold of Maud’s wrist. With an artificial smile, she said, to Tara, “We got to get going.”

Tara held up a slender pink finger. “Ah, one minute, Eudora.”

“We’re leaving,” said Eudora. Her face flushed. “Chloe’s too busy with housework and prepping for school next fall to have lessons.”

“Eudora,” admonished Maud. She felt appalled at having someone answer for her.

“Well,” said Tara Chodzicki, clasping her heavily jewelled hands. “At least do me the honour of having dinner with me? I live on the outskirts, near Athabasca.”

“No,” said Eudora. And gripping the bewildered Maud by the arm she tapped the children awake and led them away from Tara and into the crowd.

Maud was furious. “That’s too much! That’s just too much! I have never felt so rude in my life. What on earth is wrong with you?”

Eudora muttered something, but in the throng of people Maud couldn’t hear her. “What on earth are you saying?”

Eudora craned her head back. “An untouchable. Chod-sikey’s off bounds. When she was married, she slept around with Eric Davids,
also
married. His wife had cancer, for God’s sake, and even died. Her own husband died not much later, a
suicide!
No, Maud, don’t bother with her.”

Maud grew thoughtful. These were serious charges. She couldn’t condone adultery, especially under such circumstances, and suicide was a sin. But the woman had shown her such kindness that it was difficult to wholly condemn her. And yet, the Tynes hadn’t found their footing in Aster society, so Maud had to concede she’d been saved from a most unfortunate friendship.

Outside a thin moon softened the darkness, casting a sensitive glow on the foliage. The crisp air was a relief after the teeming crowds, and Maud breathed deeply. She shuffled the girls together and put her arms around them.

“You cold?” she asked, and they replied by nuzzling against her. She was pleasantly shocked at the comfort they took in her, and pulled them closer. Something occurred to her. “Hey, have you seen Porter’s wife?” She looked around her.

“Over there,” said Eudora, nodding towards the doors where the tall woman stood, her face now fully in the shade of her headdress.

Maud began to disentangle herself from the children. “Will you take them? I’m just going to go over and speak to her.”

“Isn’t one narrow escape enough? Oh, here’s Ray.”

The red truck squealed to a stop before them, and Ray yelled out the window, “Last one in’s a rotten fish.”

Eudora laughed. “He’s so good with children, isn’t he?” Something painful entered her expression. “He would have made a brilliant father.”

Maud wasn’t listening. Across the field the last stragglers were getting into their cars. Porter’s wife was nowhere to be seen. Frowning, Maud climbed after Eudora into the cab.

It was full dark when they reached home. Samuel had parked in the street, and in the veiled glow of lamps Maud observed just how shoddy their old Volvo looked. Ray and Eudora kissed the children goodbye and stayed in the road until they’d all entered the house.

Samuel sat at the kitchen table, dolefully picking lint from a handful of change.

“Is this business?” said Maud. “Is this why you didn’t come?”

Samuel sucked his teeth, but didn’t say anything.

After rushing the children up to bed, Maud went to the living room to relax in front of the fireplace. Though a fire was never set, she loved the wistful sound of wind in the chimney; it reminded her of the neem trees of Gold Coast. Settling into a creaking chair, Maud looked out the window, lamenting the fact that it already needed to be cleaned again. Drawing in a sudden breath, she got to her feet and pulled open the bay window.

The lawn had been cropped. Once so tall, Maud had feared losing the children in it, it now ran so smoothly into Porter’s property that the most skilled eye would have trouble assessing where one property ended and the other began. The grass looked blue under the porch light. Staring at it gave Maud the impression that time had stopped, for without its usual movement, she felt like she was staring at stone, like she herself would freeze to stone by looking at it.

Maud returned to the kitchen, where, finished counting his change, Samuel had abandoned himself to daydreaming. Having peeled off his socks, he’d put his feet on the table and sat with a faraway look on his face. Seeing Maud in the doorway, he quickly lowered his heels.

Maud smiled. “You had me so fooled.” Seeing Samuel hesitate, Maud laughed and kissed him on the head. “The yard looks wonderful, thank you.”

When Samuel persisted in looking confused, Maud played along by pretending to be exasperated. “What, do you want me to kiss your feet?”

“Why should you do that?”

“Exactly—why
should
I do that?”

Samuel sucked his teeth again. “Maud, I am in no mood for tomfoolery.”

Pursing her lips, Maud remained silent. At the sink she began to clean her nails with the dishrag.

Samuel rose from his seat and went into the living room. Maud heard the bay window slide on its oiled track, heard Samuel’s exclamation—“Eih!”—and listened to it close again.

He entered the kitchen, fiddling with the bandages on his hands. “Did you cut the grass?”

The demanding way he said this fuelled her annoyance. “Use your head. And here I thought you’d finally done something for your family, finally thought of us for once.”

“So it was not you who cut it?” said Samuel.

Maud narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing her husband. He was a greater fool than even she could conceive of. Worse, he was a fool who let other men do the work for him.

“Samuel,” she said, “sometimes I just don’t know.”

And the sadness in her voice, that note of reproach and utter disappointment, made him look away. She waited as he scraped the change from the table, and let out a deep breath when he left the room.

chapter
ELEVEN

T
he drive to the Frank farm was uncomfortable. Clouds had brought on an early dusk and a blunt rain brought up worms to die on the pavement. The front stoops of Aster, usually so dusty and crowded by drifters, looked white as gravestones away from the road. A sulphurous smell pervaded everything. Rocks popped under the truck’s tires, and drenched shrubs made it slide all over the place. Only at the main road, where gutters coaxed the rain away, did the wheels grow steady. Samuel was glad of this, for every time the car slid he let out an effeminate giggle that mortified both men. Ray had grown morose, smoking unceasingly and gasping up phlegm into a red rag kept tucked in his breast pocket. He smelled of dust and onions, and frowned every time Samuel laughed. Samuel’s attempts to break the mood met only reproachful looks and terse answers. Samuel felt like a fool; this was not the Ray Frank he had known for a month. And yet his hurt seemed so absurd that, again, he laughed nervously.

Ray scowled. Then, as if regretting it, he said, “God, Samuel, I’m sorry. I’m in a … funk, that’s all. Lot on my mind. You know what that’s like.” His blue eyes looked weary.

“I do,” said Samuel, his voice barely audible against the rain.

Ray chuckled. “You’re priceless. You do know that, don’t you? I guess you’re not used to this rain.”

Samuel laughed. “Well, where I’m from, we do get the monsoon. And I did live four years in England.”

Ray nodded, but said nothing.

A half-hour passed in silence before Ray announced they had arrived. The rain had abated, but everything was trod raw and muddy. Ray pulled into a damp thicket, the only upshoot of green on his lot. He cut the engine and then reached over Samuel’s legs to pull his sunglasses from the glovebox, slipping them into his rag pocket. Samuel heard his boots in the mud as he jumped from the cab. He descended after him.

They walked along an uneven arm of gravel in silence. It was a warm evening, despite the rain, the air peppered with horseflies. Dandelions rose three feet from the weakly coloured grass, and the men trod them flat. Their shoes slipped over the rocks. Samuel knew they’d met the edge of the property without even seeing it, for the very air changed its texture, and the smell of rot wafted from the distance.

“What is that smell?” said Samuel.

Ray took his time answering. “Stock.”

“This is an animal farm or it is a wheat acreage?”

Ray was weary. “Both. You coming?”

As they neared, the smell became unbearable. In his boyhood, Samuel had never been able to stomach those impoverished local farms in which hang-bone goats and chickens ran around in a useless attempt to thwart death. It sickened him. The smell of blood hung over everything. Samuel held his breath.

Ray suddenly softened. He put a hand on Samuel’s shoulder. “Sam, it’s all the same to me if you want to wait in the car. I just thought you might like to see something local. Farming, and
harvesting
, for that matter, are as old as Canada.”

Samuel ambled out from under Ray’s hand, a move he hoped didn’t look thankless. “All is fine. We have farms of this type in Gold Coast.” He smiled and waved a vague hand in front of his face. “But the smell.”

“You get used to it. Come on.”

Suddenly they confronted an enormous orange cat, whose vulgar, senile eyes were moist with age. Ray grabbed the creature by the nape and swung it onto his shoulder. “This here’s Oliver Orange come to greet us,” he said, patting it. “Father to almost all the cats out here, the bugger.”

Samuel laughed politely. He made a gesture to pet the cat, only grazing the tips of its matted, lice-ravaged fur. If Ray noticed him recoil, he chose to ignore it. Before them rose a weatherworn barn hung with a frayed Union Jack and a Canadian flag. It had been renovated as living quarters; a yellow flower box hung under the single window (obviously Eudora’s doing). A man sat out front, studying something in his hands. A pen of sheep bleated, the sound haunting. In the distance wheat teemed all over the earth. Heavy machinery slept in the fields. It wasn’t long before Samuel realized that the “stock” part of the Frank farm had the magnitude of a hobby. The pens and hutches of plaintive animals were isolated to a very small slate of land, more than half a mile back from the wheat.

Impressed, Samuel was nevertheless distracted by the vicious insects, voracious after the rain. Black-and-yellow grasshoppers jumped at his pantlegs, and the shrewd blackflies tirelessly circling his head made him anxious. Without warning, Ray handed him Oliver Orange, a sluggish heartbeat in a bag of fur. Samuel carried the heavy animal like a tray before him and followed Ray to the barn door.

“Jarvis,” said Ray. “How are things keeping?”

Jarvis continued to bite a sliver from his thumb. Ray waited for him to finish. Jarvis spat into the mud and licked a pin of blood from his flesh. He dropped the block of wood to his feet, and two kittens skittered from under his steel stool. He rose to greet Ray as though he’d only now noticed him.

“This is my neighbour, Samuel Tyne,” Ray said. “Sam, this is Clarish Kent the third, also known as the Butcher, Leatherface, Draft Dodger and the American Dream. Oh, and Jarvis.”

“Christ,” said Jarvis, his irritation obviously feigned, the appropriate reaction in their friendly comedy of manners. Jarvis, whose skin was indeed brown and parched, raised a luminous green eye at Samuel. That eye travelled the length of Samuel’s body, paused for a moment on Oliver Orange, who, by now, was made bad-tempered by Samuel’s grip, and finally found something to reckon with in the ragged bandages on Samuel’s hands. He appraised them for a good while, as though the measure of a man’s worth lay in the severity of his wounds. He flicked a strand of black hair from his face and met Samuel’s eyes.

“Tyne,” he said. An unimpressed smile made him look almost handsome. “Tyne. An Englishman?” His laugh sounded like hiccups. “I guess the cold’s no bother to you. Lot of rain in England.”

Even Ray laughed.

Samuel felt a little winded. With the awkward movements of one who knows he’s being watched, he lowered Oliver Orange to the ground. When he stood, he ran his hands down his pantlegs and giggled. They had put him on guard, and he hated it.

“I’m teasing,” said Jarvis, with a derisive smile. He motioned to Ray with his head and led him towards a pen of screeching fowl. Samuel followed grudgingly, a trail of ginger kittens at his heels. From behind, the men were opposites: Ray was tall and fair, and his outfit, though rumpled, was clean, while Jarvis had a puggish body, his posture called down by fat, his clothes roan with the blood of animals. Yet there was something similar about them.

“So, five of the fowl went, and McArthur came for the duck he wanted.” Jarvis leaned on the wire. “Me and the cats cleaned up. Granger and his son are coming for the harvest on Thursday. You know he solved the bunt at the east edge, but you did lose some wheat, not much, though.” Ray bit a hangnail, chewing it pensively as he listened.

Through their conversation, in which they made no attempt to engage him, Samuel learned that
bunt
was some kind of wheat fungus, that the
kudzu
vine guarded against soil erosion and that Ray was making a ludicrously huge capital off national wheat sales to Russia and China.

“I’d buy a goddamn castle with your profits,” said Jarvis.

“You could buy a goddamn castle with what you carry away as caretaker of this place,” Ray said.

Neither mentioned the controversy of the Russian/Chinese agreement, which had most North Americans grumbling that Canada was helping the Reds. They spoke of other business while Samuel watched clusters of kittens dissolve like smoke at some far-off noise. A blue car nosed through foliage and cut its engine.

“It’s that Catholic Johnstone. Looking for cheap veal.” Jarvis waved. “The hell.” He walked over to the car, leaving Samuel and Ray alone.

Ray offered an apologetic look. “So, Sam, what do you think of my lot?” he asked.

Samuel was pleased Ray valued his opinion. “You have done very well for yourself.”

Ray smiled and turned his back to the wind to light a cigarette. He tapped Samuel’s shoulder and chinned towards the barn, where they walked in conscious silence. With his back to the yard, Ray undid his fly and began to urinate against the barn’s weathered base. Samuel felt sickened. He walked a little away, and though Ray did his business soundlessly, Samuel still imagined he could hear it. A man should not piss on his own belongings, he decided, particularly not on his house. Ray, who hadn’t noticed Samuel’s discomfort or had chosen to ignore it, began to speak loudly to him. “Dora and I are quite proud of it, actually. This building here was nothing but a grey box when we first came.” Samuel listened for his zipper before turning around. “Look, Jarvis is at it again.”

To the centre of the yard Jarvis had led a panicked calf with yellow ears; it resisted his attempts to restrain it. A family of three watched the scene as one would watch a clown’s theatrics. A young child threw his hands to his face.

“If that bull doesn’t stop in one minute, we’re going to have to help.”

Samuel kept his anxiety quiet; he even laughed a few times at the calf’s fussier movements.

“You know what we’re doing, me and Jarvis?” said Ray. He trod out his cigarette and spat. “We’re trying to come up with the perfect blade of wheat. An indestructible one, one that outlasts bunt, outlasts drought, outlasts grasshoppers, outlasts people, even.” He chuckled. “It’s been proved by experimenting that if you grow one plot of just one kind of crop, and you grow another plot with all sorts of different crops, the one with different crops yields a bigger, stronger and healthier harvest. So the idea is to take the best of all wheat and try to grow just those together. After a while you get to know what the strongest kind is, and there’s your formula.”

Samuel frowned. “Genetics.”

Ray looked impressed. “Yeah, good, Samuel. Will you look at that calf go?” He laughed. “So Jarvis wants to start by crossing peas or sugar beets or something—he read it in a book—but I think if it’s wheat we’re after, it’s wheat we’re after. But it’s really his gig, he’s the one with the fancy degree. So, I wanted to ask if you’ve—Chrissakes, he needs help.”

The calf was spastic now, slack-jawed and running at the mouth. Ray walked towards the scene, and Samuel followed unwillingly, never in all his life having dealt with such an animal. The child laughed less now, and his parents had fallen to solemn words. Jarvis was barely coping, and his sweat and exhaustion made him look feverish. “What the hell took you so long?” he yelled. “I’m of a mind to shoot this son of a bitch.” The calf had bullied him into such an awkward position that all he could do was knife it back a few paces before it gained on him and he had to backstep again. The struggle had the air of some bestial tango, a bullfight of small and comic proportions. The child had begun to whimper, to draw the bottom of his coat over his eyes, and in a move to mollify him, Samuel pinched a nearby kitten from the mud and handed it to him. At first, the boy transferred his fear from the calf to Samuel, who at once understood he was perhaps the first black man the child had ever seen. But his fear was overcome by the softness of the offering. He accepted the kitten timidly, and Samuel noted the parents’ quiet reproach. They meant to teach their son something about death, and Samuel had diminished its urgency. These were cruel people, and in a dignified gesture meant more as an act of mockery, he took off his crumpled bowler and bowed theatrically before retreating. They saw no effrontery in the gesture and nodded back, though Samuel noted they let their son keep the cat.

“Samuel, get out here,” called Ray. The strain made his voice barely audible. But Samuel’s persistence to submit to authority still lived, and he went where he was called.

The calf’s pink-and-black nostrils filled with mucous. “Grab this joker by the chin, grab it!” said Ray, scowling at the sight of Samuel hesitating. He knew he seemed rather effete to Ray, but he could barely
look
at the animal. He wanted to object on the grounds of his injured hands, but in Ray’s world that was no excuse at all. When Ray called his name a second time, now with exasperation, Samuel bridged his hands delicately under the calf’s writhing chin.

For a sickening few minutes, Samuel felt every vein and tendon in that neck, the jerking of the jaws drawing open, the raw, blood-filled breath gusting up every time the calf moved. Samuel’s hands trembled. He was desperate to let go, to back away, could barely contain his nausea, but he knew leaving would embarrass Ray. So he held on, even as Jarvis cut into the aorta. Samuel closed his eyes. But the hoarse, preternatural sound of the calf suffering for breath and the child’s startled scream as the torso hit the ground made a grave picture in Samuel’s mind. He opened his eyes to see the calf collapsed, slack and nearly dead, its eyes like two thimbles of milk in its haggard face.

“You want all parts, brains, gizzards, what?” said Jarvis. He would intermittently hit the animal, wiping the blood from his face, tired, humiliated. He negotiated with the family man while Ray retreated to the barn, perhaps to clean himself. Samuel, however, was spellbound. He watched Jarvis drag the dead calf to a shed, the man following behind him. Samuel waited with the wife and child, both of whom ignored him in their own way. The boy placed the kitten on the ground, still looking astonished. Samuel, moved by the boy’s quivering, and by the way he’d stifled his crying, almost told the mother what he thought of her. But he kept quiet and the men returned, the father lifting high a bloodstained package in victory. Jarvis, too, carried a bloody gum of papers in his hands, grimly satisfied.

The man handed the package to his wife, who held it as if it were breakable. He laughed, and squatted to ruffle his son’s hair.
You’ll be a man yet
, his face seemed to say. The boy’s smile was uncertain, as though he understood some rite of passage had taken place, but couldn’t fully comprehend what it was.