Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Weak with laughter, Ray reinserted it in his mouth. “Pearson lets the Yanks know Canada won’t stand for the Vietnam War, right? Goes down to Philadelphia, petitions in hand, talking it up in true Canadian indignation style, right? Well, you know how President Johnson responds? You know what he says?” Ray could barely speak for his held-back laughter. Making an imperious face, he said, “He says, Johnson says, ‘Lester, you peed on my carpet.’ Ha. ‘Lester, you … peed on my carpet’! Can you beat it?”

Samuel joined in Ray’s laughter, but in truth, he only vaguely saw the humour in it. He was so apolitical, so cut off from the world, that the war, along with all other global conflict, seemed illusory.

“Hey, what’s all this behind here?” Ray had wandered behind the screen Samuel had put up to privatize his actual workspace. Wires, plugs and circuit boards weighed down the workbench. Set to one side, underneath one of Maud’s embroidered handkerchiefs, sat the project he worked on only when at his most confident.

Samuel hesitated, waving a weak hand. “Come on, that’s my workspace. Get out of there.” He tried to keep things casual by laughing.

Ray pulled the kerchief away. “What’s this?” He stubbed his cigarette on the bench.

Samuel replaced the kerchief, his laugh nervous. “Nothing. Just a prototype I’m working on. Just a computing machine, an attempt, that is all.”

Ray looked dubiously at him. As he shifted his glasses higher on his nose, Samuel was again aware of being just underneath his line of vision. Frowning, Ray began to speak but stopped himself. Instead, he said, “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Only came by to see you were making out all right. Oh, and I wanted to invite you to my farm for some time in the next week or two. I’ve got to go out and see it and thought you might want to tag along.”

Relieved, Samuel said, “I would love to.”

“Great, I’ll stop by.” Ray moved to the door. “Now what’s all this?” At the genuine perplexity in Ray’s voice, Samuel raised his head. Outside, groups of people ran by. Ray leaned out the door, and cupping a hand over his eyes to see what could have attracted the crowd, he swore and then began to run himself.

Agitated, Samuel bumped his hip getting around the counter. He limped to the door to see Glover Street awash with people. The tense excitement in some faces and the dread in others convinced Samuel some catastrophe was happening. Having lost sight of Ray, Samuel ran not so much to find him, or even to know what was going on, as from an inner urgency.

The other shops along the street had been left unattended, some of the doors flung wide. But no one was interested in stealing. Everyone’s attention was directed at the smoke gathering in the sky, a dark patch like a flaw in wood. It was so thick it looked like a solid object. Samuel felt as though everything had stopped, including himself, though he saw with detachment he was still moving. He turned the corner onto Dickson Street.

An enormous crowd stood before Thorpe’s Diner. Urged back by the lay firemen, the crowd continued to surge forward, screaming above the dull roar of the fire. The smell of sulphur, usually so acute on warm afternoons, had given way to that stench only the burning of artificial things can produce. It clotted the nostrils and stuck in the throat, and Samuel found himself gasping. Others were choking, and a few men held the heads of wives who’d leaned over to throw up onto the nearby grass.

The flames became more violent under the water jets, simply shifting out of the way, before they began to sink. Each extinguished flame made a hissing noise and threw out a gale of black smoke that drew relieved sounds from the crowd. Once the fire was contained, Samuel was amazed to see how little of the building had actually burned. Brown water dripped from the singed awning, smoke spiralled off the roof, but the building’s structural integrity was preserved. The fire ended suddenly, and exhausted, the local fire team dropped their hoses almost in unison, gripping their knees and catching their breath. But the crowd continued to stand there, their silence heavy with coughs and groans, staring at the diner as if the fire was still going.

“Fifty-five years,” someone cried. “Fifty-five years.”

“… electrical wiring, and I said that’s no wiring. We know, we …”

A crying woman, her sobs choked with asthma, threw her arms around a red-faced man.

Dazed, Samuel pushed through the crowd. Before he knew it he was standing among the damp people at the front, their pale, astonished faces looking at the smoke overcasting the sky. Studying the entranceway, which dripped with sooty water, Samuel realized he knew this place. Ray had brought him to this diner the day they’d found him the shop. Samuel started at the memory. Everything seemed connected in some dark and meaningful way.

He gave his head a shake. “Once you begin with the superstitions, you can kiss your rationality goodbye,” he muttered.

Ray Frank appeared as from nowhere, and Samuel watched as he rolled up his sleeves to calmly direct the fire team. Beside him stood a fat, fussy-looking little man in a wrinkled black suit, also shouting orders, but in a less self-conscious way. Samuel walked up to them.

“Ray, did you see my wife? My children? I hope they were nowhere around.”

Distracted, Ray barely acknowledged him. “No, no, didn’t see …” He drew a hose towards him. “Oh, that’s right, Eudora said she was having them in today. Should be safe and sound.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.” Samuel realized that the obese little man was staring at him, and hesitating, he nodded. “Oh, hello there,” he said, as if the man’s height might indicate he was actually a child.

The man raised his eyebrows, and seeing his sudden interest in Samuel, Ray dropped everything to introduce them. “The Honourable Don Gould, this is Samuel Tyne. Sam, this here’s the mayor.”

Samuel shook hands, conscious that his were damp. He was dying to leave, to close up shop and see his wife and children, but he instinctively waited for some kind of dismissal. He nodded towards the diner. “I cannot believe this has happened.”

The mayor assessed him with cold eyes. “I don’t have time to stand around chatting about it. There’ll be time enough to talk at next week’s meeting.” And he left to go direct things again.

Ray coloured a little. “Well. I’ll call on you, Samuel.” He turned to follow the mayor.

Samuel felt dazed. Taking off his moist jacket, he slung it over his shoulder and walked back to his shop.

That morning, before the fire began, Mrs. Tyne had badgered the girls into immaculate dresses and marched them over to the Franks’. Eudora came to the door in a tight dress, a white carnation tucked into her top buttonhole.

“Well, you girls certainly aren’t the most polite neighbours I ever had, waiting so long to call on me,” she joked. That jutting tooth made Ama nervous.

The Frank house displayed surprising good taste. Most of the furniture was beige, with the occasional coloured chair, and Eudora hung only paintings, not prints, each chosen with a refined eye. Ama could tell by Mrs. Tyne’s vague smile that it flustered her.

But Eudora’s coarse joking soon gave way to restraint; she ran her hands down her clothes, fiddled with her satin cushions and responded to compliments by slightly lowering her eyelids. She set a kettle on the new gas stove, shoving a plate of cookies in Ama’s hands before herding the girls downstairs to watch television.

In “Ray’s Recreation Room”—“We call it the three Rs,” said Eudora — sat a blond rug, a recliner and a dinner tray holding a small television. “Ta-dah!” said Eudora, gesturing at it with her usual enthusiasm. As if remembering her earlier forbearance, she continued, “You may watch as much television as you please. I know you don’t have one.”