The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (20 page)

chapter
EIGHTEEN

S
amuel was the kind of scholar who learned best through elusion. School had taught only complicated problems, until lessons of common sense seemed insignificant. What distinguished genius was not only talent, but an ability to strike at the heart of a given thing, to see with the prophet’s eye what has eluded others. In his Gold Coast years, Samuel earned the reputation of a savant. No one who spoke to him outside of class could reconcile this doting, shy boy to the computing genius of the classroom. Some were so skeptical that they made the long walk to the university to watch. On these days, his spiteful teacher couldn’t help but relish his prodigy’s talents, throwing the most difficult equations at Samuel and smirking as though responsible for the boy’s brilliance. No one could keep up with Samuel, and when asked about the roots of his genius, Samuel would reply in a way that made people feel they were being made fun of: “I think of the simplest, most likely way to do something, and I then perform its opposite.” He could solve no problems except those of intense difficulty; the easiest ones eluded him. Only when he was befuddled, almost painfully inundated, would the answer come to him like a slap, and he’d reel at the clarity of it. It was as though once he was humbled by his human limitations, God relented and gave him the answer. And so study abroad, seen as a great blessing since only the most rigorous school could challenge him, was also viewed as treachery, for once again what was best about the nation was being plundered.

Now, his youth over, feeling old, Samuel sat in his shop struggling with an oil meter and was struck by the magnitude of his failure. Sure, he had accomplished more than thought possible for a black man of his class, had even, in terms of his background, lived beyond his supposed potential, but he had always hated social constraints that told men what they could and could not do, and wondered now what had happened to his resolve. He hadn’t worked on his rudimentary computer in days, low on confidence, unable even to look at it. He’d always fancied himself a modern Charles Babbage, the man who would put an autonomous, free-thinking machine in every home. Computers had already proved themselves useful: had the Allies not just won a war through technical accuracy? Computers had cracked codes in enemy communications, decrypting what passed between the Germans and the Japanese. Radar intercepted enemy aircraft. Guns were calibrated more accurately. And all of it made possible through the descendants of the Industrial Revolution.

What had happened to Samuel’s ambitions? His desire to free people from tedious tasks, to leave their minds open for higher pursuits? Samuel suspected he knew what had happened: family. Maud thought so little of his idea, and made such fun of him, that he’d begun to despise it himself. He set the prototype aside and turned his eye to more practical matters: his correspondence course with the National Radio Institute.

So it seemed absurd when the next unit in his course was Computer-Building Basics. Over an agitated two nights, Samuel crafted a prototype of vacuum tubes and binary switches with the slow, methodical logic of a grandfather. For twenty-three hours he wrenched and rewired, singed his cuffs and toiled himself sick building a tiny bouquet of wires. Despite fingertips blistered with unhealed burns and the acrid taste of solder on his tongue, Samuel laboured well into dawn, only rising from the stool to tamp himself with a towel before turning the shop open. Maud complained about his health, that he was again neglecting his girls, but he knew she nagged from habit, and actually relished sleeping alone.

The computer worked. Screenless, an encased maze of wires, it read data through binary lights. He went through several test runs, and each time the accuracy of its readings surprised him. With shaking hands, he put his cracked soldering iron on the workbench. Not since establishing his shop had he been so convinced of the Great Work inside him. Perhaps his early success hadn’t been arbitrary; perhaps this heralded greater things to come. He sat on his stool, staring in disbelief at his singed fingertips.

It took him a few days to raise the idea with Ray Frank, but when Samuel did, on one of their morning walks, Ray seemed surprised.

“You never cease to amaze me,” he said. “A thinking machine. What an accomplishment that would be. But, let’s be realistic, Samuel, you—”

“The machine does not actually do its own thinking. But imagine, if enough …”

“Now, now,” said Ray, waving his hand, a vague smile on his face. “I take your point—eventually we’ll have more machines in our lives, doing this, doing that, making life simpler, helping me, Jarvis and Porter do our supercrop. But the kind of thing you’re talking about …” When Ray shook his head, his glasses slipped to the end of his nose. He walked through the wheat to rest his heavy hands on Samuel’s shoulders. Smiling with all the knowledge of an elder, his eyes listed just above Samuel’s head. Samuel was conscious of the rotting smell of Ray’s mouth, the filth on his palms. “I don’t want to play hard man with you, Sam, because you know I respect you. You’re a smart, smart man—you’ve done so well for yourself it puts lesser men to shame. You’re a real example. But there are limits. I say this as your elder, as your friend.”

Samuel fidgeted under Ray’s hands. Sure, Ray saw himself as a kind of mentor in Samuel’s life, but this rude take on Samuel’s capabilities was too much. Not that Samuel felt surprised; somewhere inside he had always suspected his role in the friendship was to put up with condescending suggestions while giving Ray good ones. Now he knew even those suggestions had been taken with a grain of salt.

Samuel said, “Is it because I am an average man or because I am an average black man that you give me such advice?”

Ray shook his head. “There’s no need to misread my intentions, Sam. That disappoints me. I only mean to warn you off what seems like an unreal venture. But forget I ever said a thing about it. It’s not for me to interfere in a man’s dreams.”

His emphasis on the last word angered Samuel. They drove back to the town in silence.

Once home, Samuel seized his keys from his study desk and drove straight to the bank. Who was Ray, an unschooled farmer, to tell him what he could and couldn’t do in life? Ray, whose own goals had been reached long ago because they’d been so easy; Ray, who made his living off what had merely been handed to him? A lowly member of a lowlier town council. A man content to loaf if his wife weren’t there to coax him every step of the way. What right had such a man to judge?

Samuel sat, hands gripping the wheel, watching two schoolboys, obviously related, lift the gates of the bank. He brooded without seeing them, but his gaze was so fixed they hesitated under his eyes. Somehow, he couldn’t do it. Not yet. He couldn’t bring himself that morning to stake his small but solid savings on something still intangible. Though he knew, intuitively and without a doubt, that the return would be tenfold, this was no simple risk. Too huge a loss would be catastrophic. His anger passed, and he drove to open his shop for the day.

That night at dinner he tried again to express his plans to his family. It was an uneasy meal, alive with tensions he didn’t intuit until after he’d spoken; as he finished he knew he had chosen the wrong time. But the look on the twins’ faces gave him cause for hope.

“Do you m-mean it, Mr. Tyne?” said Yvette.

He only looked at her, exasperated by her stutter.

“That’s s-so adventurous!” said Chloe.

Samuel frowned. “Talk properly, girls.”

“Our own Henry Ford,” said Yvette.

Maud leaned back in her chair, a wry smile on her face. Samuel licked his lips. “What do you think, Maud? Ama?”

“What do
I
think?” said Maud, her smile widening.

Samuel felt so nervous he giggled. Had he known the state of her day, he would not have indulged his laughter. Indeed, if he were half as sensitive to human moods as to technology, he wouldn’t have spoken at all. Even the children sensed her irritability.

That afternoon, Akosua Porter (more pupil than friend, it was true) had accused Maud of intolerable condescension, which was “without reason, coming from one who allows their house to suffer under the stupidity of its master and the evil of its children.” Akosua had flinched at her own words. Seeing Maud’s fury, she tried to appeal to their shared reverence for honesty:

“Truth,” said Akosua, “is stronger than an iron horse.” But truth is not always the wisest course between those who don’t consider themselves equals. Maud gave her a tongue-lashing so apt it might have been a written speech.

Still smouldering over her rebuke, she had only half heard what Samuel said, but the mention of risking their savings was enough to rile her. “Samuel, of all the stupid things you’ve done over the years, this is the worst tomfoolery you’ve ever dreamed up. God help you if you spend our money on this.”

Samuel glanced around the table, at Ama, who made pathetic attempts to ignore his shame, at the laughing eyes of whatever twin sat just right of her. His girls were becoming harder to tell apart, but he didn’t care one bit. He heaped spinach onto his plantain and, with an obvious lack of appetite, put it in his mouth. Dinner continued quietly for some time, neither adult addressing the other. Asking Yvette to pass the plantain, Samuel did something he regretted to his final days.

If only she hadn’t stuttered. She used a napkin to select the least-burnt pieces, and handing them to him with her left hand, she said, “For the p-prince, Mr. Tyne.”

Samuel looked at the frail arm holding the oily napkin above his plate, and jerked the plate out of the way just as she dropped the food. The girl looked confused, pulling back her arm as though afraid of being blamed for the mishap. She continued to stand, hesitating over her chair, until Chloe pulled her down into her seat.

“You sh-should get that sp-spastic arm looked after, Mr. Tyne,” said Chloe.

Rising from his seat, Samuel leaned across the table and struck Yvette across the face.

The blow resounded like a deep silence. Samuel, self-conscious, glared from face to face, enraged. Maud looked shocked, as if to say,
Is that your idea of raising children?
She glanced possessively at Yvette, who was recovering more from disbelief than from pain.

But it was Ama’s look that hurt most; the fear on her face compounded his guilt.

Samuel sat down, fidgeting with his knife and fork. When he spoke he sounded strained. “Do not again dare to give me your left hand—you think I am a vagrant? Don’t play the goat. Never will you
ever
show me, your
elder
, that left palm again. And never will you ever talk like that again.” The hatred on his children’s faces gave him a new kind of anger, this one righteous, smug. “Are you retarded children? No. Have your mother and I not educated you? Have you two not the privilege of good, sound brains? Why are you wasting what God gave you on some foolish retard talk?
Eih?
No child of mine will show himself a retard, or ever give his left hand to an elder again.” At his last words, he looked as if he would cry. No one understood, least of all Samuel himself, that he spoke more to punish himself than to hurt his daughters.

Avoiding eye contact, Samuel left the table. He went to his study, but today it offered no refuge. Instead he went outdoors, where an early dusk had fallen because of a day-long rain. He noticed, from the cold slab of his short patio, that halfway through his property someone had cut down a tree. Its stubbed trunk rose from the ground, and scattered around it were bright wood shavings. The paleness of the shavings on so grey a day made it seem as though the sun was shining over a single, charmed spot. Samuel looked at it, turning his face instinctively to the Porter house. He went back to his study.

That night Ama went to bed ashamed of Samuel. Everyone had their lapses, but it terrified her to think what he was capable of, despite his gentle nature. She slept terribly.

When she woke in the pale hours, the twins, resurrected in spirits, sat on Chloe’s bed playing cards. Their happiness freed Ama from the burden of feeling sorry for them. She smiled. “Why are you two up so early?”

Chloe’s face hardened and she took on a withdrawn look. Yvette didn’t turn around. Neither spoke.

Ama asked them another question; again, silence. Exasperated, she left to take her bath. When she returned, the girls were gone, the collars of their cots so prim they looked artificial. Ama dressed and descended the stairs to find a busy Mrs. Tyne hopping about the kitchen in her walking cast, harassing herself with biblical proverbs under her breath. It was a sight to see, this jaunty, whip-thin woman who’d rolled pantyhose over her cast so that her leg looked hideously edematous. When she saw Ama, her face became girlish, and she beckoned to be helped to a chair. Ama crouched under her bent arm, and after seating her took up the chair across from hers.

“The twins will be thirteen next week,” said Mrs. Tyne. “You’re their age. What do you think they want?” When Ama looked uncertain, Maud realized the girl feared this was a test. “I only ask because I hope to make this a bit of an event, you know, because of Sa—because of yesterday.”

Ama relaxed. Feeling mischievous, she answered, “A compass? It’s cleaner than breadcrumbs for finding your way around this house.”

Maud frowned, as though considering the appropriateness of the joke. A slow smile brightened her face. “I saw a book the other day—
How Not to Dominate Conversation
. How about that?”

Ama laughed. “How about a book of word games and riddles?”

“They
wrote
that one. How about
Letter Writing for Amateurs?”

“How to Start Making Sense in Ten Easy Steps
.”

“Oh, there’s no romance in that,” Maud laughed. “How about—” Something in the hallway caught her eye, and Maud glanced up to see Samuel lingering in the doorway, the ancient bowler pinched in his hands. The tactless hour of the day, the apologetic gestures, his stern, too-determined jaw—all of it did more to convict him than if he’d simply walked in admitting it. Maud simply gave him a vague clouded smile that let him know she understood. Relieved, Samuel avoided Ama’s eyes and continued to his study. Maud looked at the empty doorway a minute longer, then turned her fragile smile on the girl. She didn’t think,
My God, he’s ruined us
, as any other wife might have done; rather, Maud was conscious of the stupidity of her smile, and marvelled that she was more fascinated by it than by her husband’s indiscretion.