The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (5 page)

And just as the woods deepened, they began to clear, the backlit leaves parting with a slow sort of awe. The streets now became strips of hard, unpaved ground, with pale wood sidewalks on which men in worn clothing strolled, pinching the smokes from their mouths.

“We tore through some hole in time right back into the thirties,” said Maud, giving Samuel a look, for if her sense of direction was keen (as it was sure to be), they’d now driven to the heart of Aster proper. She led them through a few more streets, some filled with catcalling men, others with decaying handmade storefronts, none of which changed her opinion of the place. She directed them past all this to another grove, into which the car pitched with a dark gurgle. Samuel motored it from the rut, and the car stumbled over holes and stumps, greenery that breathed its bitter stench. Chloe leaned across Yvette and closed her window. And even through the closed pane, even through the anguished rattle of the car, a high-pitched whine rang out like the coarsest voice in a choir.

“What’s that?” said Chloe, putting fingers in her ears. “Sounds like a whole field of dying cats.”

It was not the first time the sound of the weathervane had been mistaken for something else. Driving up they made out its shape against the sky.

The house distinguished itself in the distance. The carload was speechless. But what could be said of such a house? Brown and ivory, it sat fat and pacified among the overgrown foliage. Thick, thorned vines veined its face. It had the white front stoop so classic of Aster culture, but flanked by colonial pillars, as if built by a Confederate. It was beautiful in a brooding sort of way. The railings, gnawed loose from the porch, drifted in towards each other like saloon doors. Every nook looked green with mildew and weeds. Nearby shrubbery shuddered with the panic of small animals. The ground shifted when the car drove over it.

Samuel parked on the house’s east side, and with trembling hands leafed through the papers in his wallet to find the tiny envelope with the key the neighbour had given him. They all climbed from the car, Maud with a meaningful slam of her door, and strode over the shifting, rank land towards their new home.

Had Samuel been asked, he might have admitted that his uncle’s death, though large in itself, was outdone by the death it had brought to the order of the house. Bramble roamed the vacant halls on some unfelt draft. The dust-grey sills had collected the fat, petrified bodies of insects, scattered like droppings. In the front room, sheets, probably blown from the covered couches, sank in hog-ties around the furniture’s ankles. There was a heavy odour in the air, an amber, nagging smell like that of towels left damp for too long. Samuel imagined the other rooms were in even worse mourning. Behind him, he heard Maud breathe. Even before she had spoken, his shoulders lowered in shame. Silence pervaded the house. And all this before the true decay would make itself known to them: sidewalks eaten by constant frosts, sinks piebald with rust, pipes choked on years of parings and hair, cracked windows, ceilings swaybacked with water, shot bulbs, wood softened by insects’ eggs, and the chimney’s fitful grey breaths that set them all to coughing no matter where they sat in the house.

Embarrassed for Mr. Tyne, Ama thought to say something to lighten the mood. But under the twins’ heavy stare she managed only the grieved look that confirmed for Samuel his fault in this new unhappiness. He concealed his awkwardness as if confronted with a woman who’d lost her beauty; he decided to treat the rooms as if they wore the luminosity of their earlier days, and stepped from his shoes to admire the rest of the house.

Mrs. Tyne squinted, then turned a kind face to the children. “Get a good look around.” She walked in the direction Samuel had taken. “Don’t, however, get comfortable.”

Ama felt grateful. The finality in Mrs. Tyne’s words would easily end their stay before it began. Chloe and Yvette had begun their sly glances again, and uncomfortable, Ama looked away. She ran her eyes along the scraped ivory walls, the furniture that bore the burden of age despite rare and fussy use, and marvelled that a house only recently left to its own upkeep could have rotted out so quickly. The twins made their way to another room, and not wanting to be left alone, Ama followed. It was then that the girls, grudgingly lurking together, discovered the house’s strangest flaw. What had looked so monstrous from outside was as cloistered as a catacomb. The hallways were narrow and shadowed, and broke off into occasional rooms of the sort Ama imagined a monastery might have. This warmed her to them. One room well in back of the house, with sliding bay windows, opened onto a chin-high sea of grass. She watched it roil in the wind, until a voice behind her, whistling with disuse, asked, “Coming or not?”

It was the first she’d heard from the twins all day, and she was glad of the offering. She followed them to the front room, biting the tail of her braid as they all sat at the cold mouth of the fireplace. The drafts brought in bits of the Tynes’ argument, and Ama could just make out Mrs. Tyne saying something about
duty
. After some bustle in the hallway Mrs. Tyne emerged, her husband nervous behind her.

Mrs. Tyne leaned against a white loveseat whose far leg levitated with the weight. She looked resolutely at them. “We’ve decided to let you girls choose if you’d like to
live
here.” If she had struggled to keep from sounding severe, she’d failed. Ama knew the choice had already been made for them; the twins had only to confirm what her tone suggested.

There was a long pause before Chloe said, “We want to stay.”

Samuel looked up in confusion.

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Tyne set dark eyes on her daughter.

Stepping forward, Yvette grabbed the bewildered Ama’s hand. “We want to stay,” she said. In the silence the weathervane screeched above the distant rooms.

chapter
FIVE

A
fter a week lost to clutter and dust, Maud committed an act that set the whole house on edge: she began to clean up. Her solemn pleasure in scraping the rust from the hinges proved decidedly that they were staying. Samuel spent his victory in the front yard, ripping weeds from where they’d burst in black veins through the pavement. A full afternoon passed before he remembered that his wife’s anger had always been a solitary thing, and that the worst was still brewing in her. Samuel considered this for a minute and, feeling nothing, knew that the hour of fear had passed. His hands tore out the stubborn roots, roots in this first land he’d managed to own. It was clear to him now, the true nature of Jacob’s silence; his uncle had only meant to make a bigger gift of the house, giving as the last act of his love the unexpected. Samuel was grateful, regretting more than ever not having seen Jacob since his youth. He remembered a man mournfully amused with life, an intuitive leader fully aware of how futile power was, that to have it was to have only the illusion of it. “No man can truly rule another,” he’d often said, especially during the roughest strains of Samuel’s first job. “Not even slavery could do it. Remember that.” And Samuel had. Whenever he’d heard his bosses’ voices, whenever Maud gave him grief over problems she herself had created, the memory returned to him. Such simple wisdom.

The twins were at first so distracted that they wandered the rooms listlessly, as if reeling from bad news. It was as though they had never believed in their power and were disappointed that it had revealed itself in such a flippant decision. Ama suspected Chloe had only done it to sting her mother, who spoke to neither twin the whole day, except through Ama. Maud felt in full her humiliation, but she was not angry with the girls so much as with her own lack of strategy. While coaxing bugs from the rafters, she decided that she’d wanted to stay in the house, that she’d only asked the girls as a way to announce what she couldn’t admit to Samuel. The house had been Maud’s choice all along. Slowly her confidence returned, and when she began to whistle, the startled girls in the next room fell silent.

Ama spent her days trailing the twins, who were so eager to explore that they often forgot to eat. The hallways were lofty, with domed, pitted ceilings, and smelled of mothballs. They broke onto rooms as unique in character as the home’s various owners: the room strewn with cane prayer mats and altars for the dead; a hall closet smelling of aged tobacco; the antiquated study; the kitchen, with its pockmarked cupboards, its fridge haunted by the three generations of fragrant food. The main hall ended in a living room, whose bay window had misted with age, like a huge cataract. Central to this room was the old, coughing fireplace, sensitive to strong winds. The upper floor held three bedrooms, and a moulding bathroom smelling obscenely of urine. No one was brave enough to broach the root cellar. All of it amazed Ama. The entire house radiated not only another era, but another world.

The grounds, too, had a magic quality to them. Out front, mature firs shaded the yard. In the backyard, thrown into clear relief after Maud cleaned the window, a field of chin-high grass rolled in the wind. The nearest house, belonging to Saul Porter, who had apparently witnessed the will, stood a few acres away, only its decaying roof visible from the window.

Ignored by the twins, Ama often sat on the front stoop, watching the occasional person walk by behind the trees. Summer was beginning, with its fragile flowers. Ama ripped petals off their stems. Behind her stood a pair of polyester legs, screened by the storm door. Her heart quickened: Mr. Tyne. She wondered how long he’d been watching her, and drew her knees up to her chest.

Mr. Tyne giggled nervously and opened the door. He smelled of labour. Watching him navigate weeds to settle himself beside her, Ama was so startled that she did not rush away. His lack of balance, his sad wheezing at each step, didn’t rouse her sympathy; they only emphasized the impropriety of his age. Terrified, she gave him a disdainful look, flinching as his eyes ran over her face.

“Sure is a beautiful day,” he said. And with a kind of wonderment, he added, “Yes, yes, it certainly is a beautiful day.” He frowned, as though at a loss to convince himself. He began to pick the lint off his pantlegs, and the gesture was suffused with such sadness that Ama relaxed a little.

“It is beautiful,” she said. “The marigolds are already out.”

Her voice seemed to surprise him, as though he’d forgotten she was there. “Marigolds …?” he frowned, followed by a laugh at his own confusion. “Flowers, yes. Little girls do like flowers.” He paused, bringing his rough hands together in his lap. “I myself have always preferred mathematics. Computing machines, such things.”

Ama nodded, nervous. She didn’t understand the mechanics of his conversation, and was on guard in case it took an uncomfortable turn.

A gust of wind shook the trees, and they tossed a few needles near Ama’s and Samuel’s feet. Ama watched the marigolds nod. She said, “I like how they look like fire, their colours.” Ripping off a petal, she pinched it between her forefinger and thumb. Her gesture suddenly made her nervous, and she flicked the petal into the dirt.

Samuel toed it with his loafer. Watching people pass in the distance, he said, “‘The greatest visionary could not achieve world peace, but a single demented zealot could cause dozens of cities to burn.’”

“Sorry?” said Ama, perplexed.

He grimaced, as though pained by his own idiosyncratic behaviour. To Ama, he suddenly seemed nothing worse than a baffled old man, someone who’d had the misfortune to age before his time. She gave him a look of pity. “What were you saying about mathematics?”

Samuel assessed Ama uncertainly, as though making sure he had leave to speak about himself. Touching his bowler the way a beautiful woman reassures herself that every hair is in its place, he began to speak. “Well, I’ve always been a great lover of mathematics. From the first time I laid my eyes on figures—boof!—I was off like that. Numbers have always, always been my first love.” He looked bashfully at Ama, who, knowing there was no suggestiveness in it, nevertheless blushed. Mr. Tyne seemed to take it as condolence. “If I may speak truthfully with you, it is my deepest wish to own an electronics store. Not only to be my own boss, although”—he chuckled—“that would be nice. But because I think I could build something important. A computing—” he broke off, frowning a little, and Ama understood he regretted telling her anything.

“Sounds great,” she said.

“Does it?” he said, preoccupied.

His question was so sincere it touched Ama. It finally struck her that his attraction to her had nothing sexual in it; it had cleaner, sadder roots: estranged from his family, he was a deeply lonely man.

Ama looked compassionately at him. “You should really do it. It might seem impossible now, but my dad always says you won’t succeed if you’re too scared to try.”

Samuel felt a little of the amused condescension adults get when children give them advice. He patted Ama’s hair. “Well, let’s go in to supper.”

Feeling rebuffed, Ama trudged inside after him.

Ama dreaded dinnertime, because it made a show of allegiances. Mr. and Mrs. Tyne, with the usual childishness that plagues cold marriages, used the gathering to rile up support for their polar causes. They were like politicians at the quick of their campaigns. Mrs. Tyne was obviously dissatisfied with Aster, while Mr. Tyne had only praise. Samuel hadn’t told his wife of his plans to set up his own electronics shop. Meanwhile, she continued to berate him at the dinner table while behind her back he sold off or secretly fetched the valuables left in the Calgary house. He lied and said he was trying to find work in Edmonton. He’d also been seeking out a storefront, and had seen a few possibilities. Ama’s encouragement merely confirmed the importance of what he’d already put into action. Still, he knew he’d been a scoundrel. In the tiresome game of marriage, he hadn’t played an honourable hand. But what could he do? His newfound confidence left him confused as to how to use it. He’d already given notice on the Calgary lease, making a clean break of it. Now he’d only to tell his family.

Aster, Mrs. Tyne insisted, was backward; even the outskirts. As she placed the beets and beef on the rickety table, she said,
“Sth
, that beef cuts much cleaner at home. There’s not a decent knife to be found in this whole town, but … never mind. Like I say, it’s only a fool who runs back to the bush when the city is brimming with oil.”

And it was true, in the twenty years following the Leduc discoveries, oil had been spitting from every crack in Alberta. Every crack, that is, but in Aster. People rushed from farms and towns to share in the thirst, and it was a rare soul who left the city for something smaller. Like the Depression, the oil boom threatened to kill off the best towns. One couldn’t look anywhere without seeing fire geysers, steel towers, mud endlessly tumbling into flare pits. The Americans were frantic for it.

Samuel ate his beets, giving the children careful looks. “Are these beets not remarkable?” He turned to his wife. “These beets are quite remarkable.”

“Well, it’s nothing to call the papers about, but I guess so,” said Maud, not looking up from her plate. Her voice was thin, as if she were pinching the words back. “I read in the
Albertan
the Greeks had a good harvest. This might be from it.”

Samuel smiled. “What an inspiring mix of people this town has, isn’t it? The reports all prize the city’s diversity, but the only diversity you’ll find there is in its punishments.” Again he appealed to the children, who gave him cautious looks.

Maud faced him coldly. “Only an idiot mistakes a mound of gold for manure. See things as they are beyond your nose—men are more forgiving when there’s business happening all around, and more true in their brotherhood when they don’t have the big social camera eye always on them.” She began to eat methodically. “You mark it on the wall—village life in a white man’s country is poison, even if the village used to be a black one. The city—that’s the only going forward.”

Samuel laid down his fork. “You speak as though man has the ability to walk through walls. And it is true, walls do go down—Aster itself has seen it. But until they go down, they are impassable. And if you have so much fog in your eyes that you cannot see it, well, that’s when trouble comes.” He tipped his glass against his lips, bitterly aware that only the thinnest drop of water crossed them. “The Greeks, the Italians, the Dutch, the Portuguese, even these few third-worlders, they have wiped the fog from their eyes. Calgary has left them empty-palmed. Edmonton has left them empty-palmed.”

“Aster’s nothing but a way station for the city-bound.”

The room filled with the sounds of cutlery scraping plates, the lope of the ceiling fan cutting the heat in the room. These moments were familiar to Ama, and she grudgingly began (in fact, she suspected they waited for it) to banter casually with the twins on either side of her. Mostly she told anecdotes of no interest, jokes about nothing, but it had the effect of slackening a rope almost towed to threads. The whole family listened to her misfired wit in distracted agitation, and Ama went doggedly on, because there was nothing else to do.

In the midst of her chatter the doorbell rang. Its voice had dried over the years and now sounded like a dog’s whimper. Samuel rose to answer it.

A couple stood on the porch. Their skin, and indeed their clothes, were so uniformly white they might have climbed from a salt mine. This pallor, along with a well-fed corpulence, made the woman look much younger than she undoubtedly was. She had shrewd, vaguely blue eyes, her mouth filled with crooked teeth. She was so fat that even her smile looked like an immense effort under all that skin.

The man, for all his age, looked athletic. Less muscular than simply well built, his broad, heavily veined forearms ended in pink, delicate wrists. Despite his brawn there was something of the intellectual about him; a low-sitting pair of wire-rimmed glasses obscured his pupils, giving him an almost affected erudition. His speech seemed deliberately unadorned, as though he were used to giving others time to catch up with his ideas.

“Call the
Guinness Book
—we made it here in less than a month,” laughed the man.

His wife glanced at him, then tapped the glass at Samuel’s eye level, so that he was obliged to take a backward step. He opened the storm door.

“Raymond Frank,” said the man, fingering the lid of a silver lighter in his fist. He gestured to his wife. “Eudora and Ray Frank. As second to the mayor on Aster’s town council, I’d like to welcome you to the town. We thought we’d come and get a good look at you.” Laughing, he thrust his substantial hand into Samuel’s, all the while winking at his wife. “So far so good, eh?”

“Don’t badger the poor man,” said Eudora with a straight face, though Samuel sensed an undercurrent of comedy between them. “Will you look at this house?” Eudora glanced past Samuel, then brought her piercing eyes to rest on him. She shoved a foil-covered dish at him.

Eudora was a feminist, though her resulting behaviour was more questionable than when she simply called herself a woman. She agreed with a woman’s right to vote, but believed this the extent to which women should be involved in politics. She maintained that all women should have access to higher education, but if pressed enough she would admit it was unnatural. She believed that a marriage without children was no more than a pact between a rake and a hussy, yet she herself was barren. She was vice-president of Aster’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Women (NAAW), and yet she knew a woman’s true duty was to her home. As a laywoman, she volunteered in homes for the mentally handicapped, helped to found Aster’s first soup kitchen and could be persuaded on occasion to make one of her devastating custards for a good cause. At the helm of NAAW she wrote petitions to the municipalities of Calgary, Edmonton and even Aster to establish a special education course so that the “poor challenged dears” would be prevented from “compromising normal students.” She proved herself a woman before her time by suggesting social awareness programs to crack down on prenatal alcoholism; but her reasons?—to stop filling cradles with “feeble-minded babies.” In her crusader state of mind, the motives differed.