Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

“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.