The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (12 page)

Jarvis dropped his bloody sack in front of the boy’s kitten. Ferocious, agile, it pounced on the sodden sack and broke it open. Even the boy’s father stepped back as the thick-pulp innards slipped out. The smell of blood summoned the other cats, and in seconds even Oliver Orange had his own fresh tripe. The boy scuffled back from the amassing crowd of cats and began to cry. Samuel flinched.

“Stand up!” said the father, and the boy stumbled at once to his feet. His father assessed him, and the boy almost managed to stop crying. His mother tried to cup his chin.

The man moved in upon his son. Samuel was horrified, and ashamed at his inability to give words to what he felt. A dark blaze descended the boy’s pants.

His mother’s face reddened, and she lowered her eyes. His father continued to stand in front of him, and in his back one could see that he’d grown angrier, his spine straighter, his shoulders tautening. No one spoke. He turned and paid Jarvis, and motioned for his family to follow him back to the car.

“You want a towel for the ride home?” yelled Jarvis. His voice hung over the yard. He hiccuped, and only after the car drove away did Samuel recognize his laughter. He watched Jarvis count the money, muttering to himself, and was relieved to see the barn door glint open. Silhouetted, Ray trod out to meet them.

Ray gestured at Samuel. “Well, look at the professor.”

Samuel admitted he was deep in thought, aware that something like a sadness had been accomplished inside him. His stomach felt bloated, and the quietest sounds in the landscape began to disturb him. He was conscious of an out-of-body feeling, as though he were merely a sightseer in another man’s flesh. For the first time, he assessed the blood on his hands.

Jarvis said, “It’s so dark Sam’s almost missing. Though I reckon we’d see more of him if he actually made a go of talking.”

“Sam and I are leaving.” Ray’s voice was resolute. “You get the profits tallied, and I’ll call tomorrow to see how Granger’s making out. And I
will
call early, so you better organize yourself for then.” Ray motioned to Samuel, and in a stupor, Samuel followed. As he passed Jarvis, the caretaker gave him an exaggerated bow.

“Good night,
Sir
Tyne,” he said, and hiccuped.

Ray scrutinized Jarvis. “Tomorrow morning.”

Samuel followed Ray out to the truck. It was full dark by now, and moonlight sat like water on the foliage. The wind teased a dry sound from the wheat field, and with the cats’ cries everything felt haunted. Ray paused on the gravel path to pull Oliver Orange, wheezing, from the weeds. He muttered to him, ripping burrs from his fur.

“You know, Samuel,” he said, “I’m awfully sorry. If I’d known how sick all this would make you, I would’ve never asked you out here. But you’ve got to admit, though, it’s a surprise; as a man coming from where you’re from, this stuff should be a bit less traumatic, right?”

“It is a thing I should never get used to.” Samuel looked at the blood on his hands. Certainly in his country they killed to eat, as everywhere. But there was something less barbaric in those old childhood slaughters (the ones he’d witnessed, anyway), and he recalled that it likely had something to do with ritual. He had seen nothing today but ridicule and cruelty.

Ray smiled. “Got to get used to it.”

They clambered into the cab, and to Samuel’s dismay, Ray brought Oliver Orange with them. He cocked the truck, and in a minute they’d found the main road.

Samuel felt sick when Oliver Orange began to lick himself. The raw, fetid smell of calf’s blood rose from the cat’s fur.

“Seen Porter lately?” said Ray. His left hand governed the wheel while the right one rested on the sullen cat. “I meant to ask you, in regards to what I was saying before, about the wheat. You probably don’t know the crop story.”

But Samuel was preoccupied. Due to the sudden cutting of his grass, he’d taken it upon himself to research Jacob’s property lines. He’d spent a fruitless few days in Aster’s library and archives, only to discover something just when he’d resolved to give up. In annals as recent as last year’s, the Tyne property occupied not two, but
twelve
acres. Barring that Jacob had actually sold or bequeathed Porter land, which seemed unlikely, Porter had taken advantage of Samuel’s ignorance to help himself.

Ray failed to sense his distraction. “It was the late thirties,” he continued, “one of those really dry years when fires start of themselves. Only a couple houses stood where you’re living now, and yours and Porter’s were the best of them. Because there were so few homes, people had huge lots, acres and acres. Some grew wheat, but mostly, as you know, it’s not so good for wheat as it is for roots. So one year—oh, it was awful—the worst plague you ever saw came to us. So it was said—I was still back east at the time, but this story’s carried well through the years. The worst grasshopper plague they’d had in years. Thousands, no, millions of grasshoppers covered everything for a distance of miles. They say it was like black snow. It’d happened a few years before, too, so people were a little bit more prepared then, but not much. Supposedly, as my cousin tells it anyhow, you were supposed to know it was coming because all the dogs in town got weirdly quiet, the badgers and snakes came out of their holes, and there was a ‘brown sort of tension in the air,’ whatever that means. So Porter was one of the town’s founders, you know, he’s lived through everything this town had to see, and he could sense what was going on, and supposedly took measures.”

Samuel listened only vaguely.

“He was said to have prepped something, and to this day nobody knows what. Some say it was some witchcraft concoction, others say it was nothing more than plain baking soda and vinegar, but it hissed something awful and sent a horrible smell into the air. He had a good audience, and he kept it up for hours, putting posts of this burning muck at all corners of his field. He grows mostly roots, but he did have some other things, too. So—”

“Medicine posts?” Samuel asked.

“Posts of hissing sulphur.”

“Posts of hissing sulphur …” Samuel frowned. Oliver Orange let out a rude smell in his sleep.

“Just hear me out. So, within hours the stuff has burnt itself out, and the grasshoppers come. And it’s no lie when I say it took less than four hours for those pests to eat everything down to scrub.
Four hours
. Nothing was left, dry as the Badlands. If a tree still had a leaf on it, they would have pinned it with a ribbon. It was a wonder the livestock still had any flesh. Absolutely everything was gone, and in the middle of it, not harmed, was Porter’s crop. Can you buy that? Not one blade of grass, not one leaf, not one piece of dirt had been messed with. Got him the nickname of Warlock Porter in these parts, and some still living here will call him a witch if you ask. I myself say it was less a miracle and more something to do with his crops. Truth be told, I think he’s got some kind of super crop. It wouldn’t surprise me, really, the way he sits in his house all day doing nothing, only coming out sometimes to sell things he’s made. There’s no other explanation for it, but he’s not talking about it. Can you buy it?”

Samuel grunted in assent. The story was not new. Ray had described Jacob’s remedy for the Tyne plantation, and here Porter, too, had used it. “Where’s he from?”

Ray scoffed. “Anywhere but here. Whenever I see him, he goes on and on about how he hates Alberta—makes me wish he would just move. But he was one of Aster’s founders, which, I guess, would make him from Oklahoma, I think. Oklahoma, by way of the South.” Ray smiled. “A little history for you.”

Oliver Orange sprawled on his back. Samuel inched away from him, pensive again.

“Sam, I’ve been thinking. I brought this cat with us for a reason, and I didn’t know what that was till now.” He patted the cat’s stomach. “Why don’t you take Oliver Orange home for your girls? They’d like him.”

Samuel protested. “He’s filthy.”

Ray laughed. “Both man and beast were made for cleaning. He’s all right. He’s not sick and he’s calm as a log most of the time. A cat’s an acceptable family pet. It’s clean, well behaved, it’s even said to be good for your health. They’re kept as pets be—”

“We have cats back home,” Samuel said.

“No doubt you do.” The familiar roads they approached were abbreviated by oily puddles, and as the truck cut through, water rose in great waves against the window. “Eudora said your girls aren’t very social—maybe they’re just in need of a friend. Just wash Oliver Orange up and he’s what I’d call a family pet. But, whatever, I’ve learned my lesson not to force anything on you. It’s just a gift.” He lit a cigarette, contemplating his face in the rear-view mirror. “Do me one thing, though. When you see Porter, and you will, you tell him I’m looking for him. And I respect his privacy, I do, but I might get it in mind to make a visit one of these days. Tell him, will you?”

Samuel nodded. The uncertain roads made him nervous, but the instinct to giggle had left him. He considered Porter’s absence, his business with the will, this blatant mischief over property lines, and felt almost remorseful, for he knew this era, when Porter was simply another ghost in a dim list, was coming to a close.

“What sort of man is he?” said Samuel.

Ray slowed the car to idle in front of Samuel’s house. “He’s older than water, but he’s really very clever.” He both frowned and smiled at Samuel. “Now, listen, will you take this cat? I know those twins will love it.” And in the cab, filled with a darkness that tricked the eye, Samuel and Ray argued over the fate of a worm-bowelled cat. Ray made several cases for the cat as a New World family pet, and Samuel began to suspect that perhaps Ray thought he’d eaten them back in Gold Coast. It was a heated debate, one undercut by a lot of forced laughter, and twenty minutes later Samuel found himself alone on his property, clutching the sleazy cat in his arms. Perhaps Ray had been right in some sense, that the twins and Ama would love a cat of their own.

Samuel walked through the low foliage, below the trees that veiled his yard, in the direction of the porch light. He could feel Oliver Orange’s eyes on him all the time, and in a strand of light, he watched them blaze from the bloody face. For such a look the world had no answers. Samuel stalled. He remembered his earlier move to impress his girls, the rebuke in Maud’s eyes over those depraved-looking dolls. And now he’d brought home a vulgar cat too old, even, to be trained to do his business in the appropriate bins. Samuel stooped and flung Oliver Orange into the bushes. At first the decrepit cat sat there, its eyes like crags of amber. But Samuel began to kick at it, to hiss it away, and slowly it obeyed. Arthritic and irritated, it walked to the farthest part of the yard and vanished into the foliage. Samuel wiped his hands on his pantlegs and entered the sleeping house.

chapter
TWELVE

M
aud and Eudora drank iced tea in the Tyne kitchen. The heat seemed to suspend time, the hours endless. When Eudora spoke, Maud found herself staring at the sweat on her hairline. The ceiling fan failed to cool the room.

“God, this heat,” Eudora said, touching a napkin to the hollows behind her ears. She looked flushed, but the blush was oddly contained to her face and hands, throwing her pale arms and neck into greater relief. “I envy you,” she said.

Maud shifted to avoid sticking to her seat. “Why?”

“Being used to this heat. Days like this paralyze me.”

“Honey, no one functions in this kind of heat. Even people in hot countries.”

Eudora said nothing.

“Can you believe that fire?” said Maud. “I pray they catch those jokers before someone gets hurt. What a time to move to Aster. Oh, and I’m so glad you saved me from that Chodzicki woman—who knows what would have come of it?” As if remembering Chloe’s unsettling piano playing, which she still hadn’t mentioned to Samuel, Maud fell quiet.

“Chloe certainly has a gift for the ivories,” said Eudora, evidently sensing Maud’s thoughts. “Did you and Sam teach her, or was that all instinct?”

“Chloe took lessons for years in Calgary.” Maud’s face became impassive. Fixing cold eyes on Eudora, she sipped her tea. “You know, the Porters cut our lawn last week. Just like that, without asking.”

Eudora snorted. “Well, at least you know you got the professional touch. The old fool gets a new John Deere and field after field goes down. I’m surprised your
house
is still standing.”

Maud tapped a listless finger on the oak table. “He never came, he never called, and when Samuel went over there, he didn’t answer the door. You know, they have not even come to complain about the weathervane.”

“What kind of world do we live in that we
want
criticism? Porter’s a bit of a crab, so even when he’s home he’s not home. And she—”

“Oh,
she,”
said Maud, rolling her eyes.

“—she’s a hermit in her own right.” Eudora frowned, her white eyebrows pronounced against her red skin. “What’s it said about Mohammed and the mountain? Let’s go.”

Maud balked. “Without invitation?”

“What a memory you have. How do you suppose
we
met?”

Dragging themselves from their chairs, Maud and Eudora approached Porter’s house from the backyard. Trying to find it from the front had proved useless—it was so overgrown with foliage that it would have been difficult to convince an outsider the house actually existed. The backyard, though, seemed cleared for this purpose. The house was run-down, its weathered paint like some gruesome, human rash. One could almost hear the decay: the roof’s mismatched shingles clicking in the wind, its joints creaking, a phantom sound of glass shattering. An old laundry pipe broke grey wind. Only the stuttering windowpanes betrayed its inner activity. Both women hesitated on the steps, which were so logged with mildew Maud feared their collapse, especially under Eudora’s weight. The whole porch shook.

Eudora knocked on the weathered door. A sudden movement, followed by an implausibly drawn-out pause, made the presence of people obvious to all. Maud and Eudora were willing to be fooled—what kind of people, after all, would take their privacy to such perverse extremes?—but then someone inside dropped a heavy object and ended the game.

Maud glanced uneasily at Eudora, who, seeing Maud’s discomfort, set her lips. The door shuddered off a film of dust as it opened.

A sway-backed child stood before them, no more than seven years old. He wore a pair of cut-off shorts, and through his threadbare T-shirt they could see his skin. His face had a pained, almost claustrophobic look, like a chronic worrier’s, so baffled that his lips moved without sound.

Eudora narrowed her eyes at him. “Get on your best behaviour and go call your mother.”

A woman appeared behind the boy, the woman Maud had seen at town hall, though it was difficult now to recognize her. With her hair in loose tufts, with her skeptical expression, she seemed entirely childlike, and not at all pretty. Gold amulets adorned her neck, and she wore the impoverished clothes of Maud’s early years. But she wore them with crisp dignity. Two tribal incisions stood out on each cheek. She flinched with recognition when she saw Maud.

She spoke admonishingly. “He never said you are Ghanaian.” As though scolded by someone absent, she invited them grudgingly inside.

From what Maud could see, the house looked much the same as her own, except, where the Tyne house looked colossal from outside but felt cloistered within, the Porter house deceived with its armadilline smallness. Inside, its rooms were huge.

Mrs. Porter led them to a kitchen, where a table of ill-clad children chewed stalks of raw sugar cane. They were as surprised at their guests as Maud and Eudora were with their hosts, and eyeing the strangers they lingered in corners, sat on counters, one even busied herself at the stove. Strangely, the kitchen was a precise mirror of Mrs. Porter’s dignified poverty, so that even in a line-up of poor housewives she would have stood out as its owner. The floor had been overlaid with wall-to-wall carpeting that shamelessly displayed its stains. Over the deep freezer hung a print of the Last Supper, Jesus and his black disciples robed in kente cloaks. It stood out amid the squalor, and Maud appreciated that in God’s haste to make neighbours of Tynes and Porters, He’d settled neither beside outright heathens.

The children seemed to multiply before Maud’s eyes, though reason told her she’d counted them twice. All had inherited their mother’s large, wet eyes and her strained look of poverty, which gave them an air of distraction, of stifled desires.

“My God,” Eudora muttered to Maud. “It’s the middle-aged Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.”

The smallest children, their shyness agonizing, fled past the women in the doorway without excusing themselves. Unfazed by their bad manners, Mrs. Porter even seemed proud of their audacity. She nodded her guests to the table.

Hesitating, Maud and Eudora sat in the abandoned seats. And it seemed that no matter how far away they backed from the table they felt winded. Maud tried to smile. With the heat, the rancid scent of cooking oil and incense turned oppressive.

“I grew up just outside Accra,” Maud said. “Which part of Gold Coast were you from?”

“Eih
, what is this Gold Coast business? ‘Which part of Gold Coast?’ she asks. Ahein …” Mrs. Porter sucked her teeth. “Did we not see independence? Must we still go by that name? Are we not ourselves?
Sth
. And what do you mean by ‘were’? I
am
from Winneba. I
am
from Ghana. I am
not
from
Gold Coast
. You sign the paper and like that forget your heritage, isn’t it?”

Maud flinched. Eudora raised an eyebrow.

“Now you are angry, eh? The farther you travel, the softer your skin gets.” Mrs. Porter gave Maud a contemptuous smile. “What is it you want to drink?”

Maud wasn’t angry; on the contrary. She’d saved her children from this life by a hair. Eudora spoke with obvious restraint. “Whatever you have is fine.”

Mrs. Porter nodded sharply to the child at the stove, who stopped stirring a tin pot to grab mugs from the cupboard.

“Your husband has my ladder,” said Mrs. Porter. “Does he intend to be buried with it?”

Maud smirked, as if to condescend. “My husband tried to return that ladder a number of days ago,” she enunciated. “Apparently, no one was home.”

Mrs. Porter looked at Maud as though she’d spoken Greek. “He was schooled abroad, isn’t it? Some fancy-pants school in England?”

Unable to repress her pride, Maud nodded. The frightened girl placed two steaming mugs in front of the company. Much younger looking from a distance, she seemed to age with every nearing step. Her eyes were sunken.

Mrs. Porter lowered her voice. “A man who goes to the gods for fire and keeps it for himself gets burned alive.” She raised her voice. “He should have been more indebted to the country that raised him and taken his knowledge back.”

Mrs. Porter had touched on the very guilt that had troubled Samuel’s early married years. His sister Ajoa had badgered him in a series of whiny letters, stating that only thirty per cent of Ghana was literate, that the dearth of teachers was killing the country, that Ghana had exported its finest non-renewable resource—its sharpest students. Five thousand students that year were educated abroad, and the few who returned no longer shared a common culture with the people. It was a paradox: the necessary modern education was killing off traditional tribal life. Samuel had been torn over whether to return. But he’d been abroad so long, and had such fondness and gratitude for Jacob, who’d settled in nearby Aster, that the choice had made itself. Though some days Maud knew he still wondered about it.

“Sam Tyne has done extremely well for himself,” said Eudora, “and for his family, which is more than some have the right to pass judgment on. His success is
model
, and if we had more like him, we’d be better off.”

Mrs. Porter’s face seemed to say,
Is that so?
She and Eudora had taken an honest dislike to each other. The more Maud considered it, the more sense it made: the classic case of a philosophy colliding with itself. Both Eudora and Mrs. Porter seemed women of limitless strength, both believed in the necessity of children and keeping a good home. Both were crusaders of a kind; Eudora within the National Association for the Advancement of Women, and Mrs. Porter within her home. Yet each saw in the other an enemy, as if their common cause was somehow muddied by the competition. Simply put, each thought herself better than the other.

Mrs. Porter hadn’t finished. “Anyone who thinks himself above grieving has something wrong with him. Moving to a new country does not exempt you from a proper burial and the forty days’ libation. Your uncle was a good, good man, deserving of his final rest. Do you think you are not bringing punishment upon yourselves? Do you think we sleep in comfort knowing he has not received his proper rest?”

“Has Samuel been here?” said Maud. How else would this woman know which sensitive spots to hit? Maud looked at Eudora, who was frowning at a silent child sucking a piece of sugar cane.

Mrs. Porter sucked her teeth, shaking her head. She studied Maud dubiously. She began to speak, then thought the better of it, and simply said, “Ahein.” Glancing at Eudora, she turned her ironic smile on Maud again.

Maud’s face grew hot. She understood the judgment: not only did she fail to keep up traditions whose neglect would bring certain ruin, but she kept company with a white woman, which Mrs. Porter seemed to view as immoral. Maud sat in blistering silence, trying to find the right words to berate this woman.

Eudora found them first. “Not only have you shown utter disrespect for the Tynes’ loss, but you’ve done just about everything in the book to make enemies of your families. It’s not whether Jacob got his due that should worry you, the grudge the dead have, all that. It’s the grudge the living have you should be worried about. The mess you’ve made of it with the people who share your space.”

Maud looked at Eudora in surprise. She’d underestimated her, and gratefully squeezed her hand under the table.

Mrs. Porter stood from the table and raised her voice. “Who are you to enter my doors and speak to me this way? You, especially, always playing the big woman, always—”

The sound of someone entering cut her short. Porter stood in the doorway, wearing a straight-cut suit too small for his thick, pugilist’s body. Propped atop his head like an abandoned birdcage was a sagging Panama hat, and he clutched a box of stuffed doves, candles and cheap electrical gear under his arm. The shoes at the door and the rising argument had betrayed the company, and yet he proved himself a man of class by appearing pleasantly surprised. His dark face was thrown into relief by his luminous white beard. His eyes shined like wet stones. An engagement in them, a look of intelligence, like that of the twins, led Maud to think him educated.

Porter put the box on the carpet and offered his hand. “Ah, Mrs. Tyne. We didn’t forget you, just our manners. We been busy as beavers here. Who don’t know but it’s the little things in life that’ll kill civilization, isn’t it? One day we’ll get done dusting and it’ll be the end of the world.”

Maud shared a look with Eudora. Porter seemed elegant and easy, and yet three weeks he’d kept his door closed to Samuel. And not only did his attire seem less than respectable, but as a man he was a bag of mixed maps. His voice had a strange texture, as though every place he’d ever travelled to, no matter how short the trip or how remotely in his past, had left an imprint on his speech.

Despite this, Maud found herself smiling at him. “Pleasure.” Eudora gave her a questioning look, but followed her lead.

“No need for introductions, Mrs. Frank. Three decades have made good neighbours of us.” Porter treated Eudora’s grudging hand with delicacy. Even she seemed to warm with that.

Only later, and as no more than a topic of gossip, did Maud realize that despite his friendliness, despite his wittily chosen words, he never once made direct eye contact. More startlingly, his children stopped fidgeting and followed him with a cautious look. Even Mrs. Porter, for all her self-righteousness and indignation, receded into stiff civility.

Porter sat at the creaking table. “A moment ago you were raising the dead with your voices. What’s the problem?” Maud began to explain, but his eyes rested on his wife’s face. “Akosua, what’s the problem here?”

In his wife’s reaction lay the secret of his eyes. For as soon as he looked her way, she flinched. Her embarrassment grew as she spoke, as if suffering a public humiliation. Porter considered all she said, nodding, then asked her to explain her hand in it.

Mrs. Porter stopped short. Looking disconsolately from the company and the children to her husband, she said, “We were talking. I got upset, distastefully so.”