“Me neither, all I remember about the Mormon missionaries is as a kid in Belfast. Our next-door neighbor would throw a bucket of water around them because he said they were the heralds of the Antichrist or something. He probably thought that because he was so filthy and they were always so clean and neat,” I say.
“That’s right, you grew up in Belfast, didn’t you?” she says, looking at me.
“Aye.”
“That’s quite near a place called Carrickfergus, isn’t it?” she says.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been there,” I tell her.
My résumé is crucially different from Victoria Patawasti’s in that respect. But even so, it’s time to change the subject.
“Yeah, in fact, everything I know about the Mormons comes from that Sherlock Holmes story and that’s hardly complimentary,” I say.
“You read Sherlock Holmes?” she asks excitedly.
“Some of them.”
“I love Conan Doyle, I love mysteries. Mysteries, puzzles, figuring stuff out, I love that stuff. It’s not Charles’s thing,” she says, her face lightening.
“Never Chuck, or Charlie, or Chaz, always Charles, eh?”
She frowns at me and I see that I’ve goofed up. Charles’s name is not a subject for levity.
“Who’s your favorite mystery writer?” I ask.
“Oh, the divine Agatha,” she says, giving me a big smile.
“Are you a Poirot or a Marple?” I ask.
“Oh, a Marple, of course,” she says.
I grin at her. She really is quite captivating and suddenly to think that either she is implicated in a brutal murder or closely related to the murderer seems utterly absurd. Once again I wonder if I’m completely on the wrong track about all of this. Or maybe my dick or the ketch is clouding my judgment.
In the next house an old man gives us a lecture about the low reservoirs, the yearlong drought, the importance of conservation, and refuses to take a leaflet.
In the next house no one’s home. In the next house they don’t want to give. Next house, fat white woman in a print dress, very heavy perfume. I give her the rap.
“You doing the whole street?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“How much they give next door?”
“They weren’t home.”
“I’ll bet they were. Mother’s black, father’s Japanese, Chinese, something like that.”
“Really?”
“A lot of Negro families in the street now,” she says.
“Is that a fact?”
“It is a fact. It is,” she says conspiratorially.
“Well, that’s America,” I say, a little thrown by the first obvious racist I’ve met since coming here.
“Look at that O. J. Simpson. Would you want him next door? All on welfare. They’re not really contributing anything, are they?” she says.
“Who?”
“The Negroes. Who do you think? They don’t do anything. Haven’t done anything.”
I look at Amber for support, but she’s staring at her shoes in shame and humiliation. Honey, you’re going to meet a lot more people like this if you start moving in right-wing activist circles, I’m thinking. And again she looks vulnerable and slightly lost.
I smile at the woman.
“Well, they built the railroads, won the Civil War, were the workhorses of the Industrial Revolution, created an amazing literary culture, and invented four original musical forms in this century alone: jazz, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop. Boring old world without them, huh?” (I say all this with a big friendly smile. The woman looks furious.)
“What is it you want?” she asks.
“We’re trying to promote Wise Use of the forests,” Amber says.
“I don’t think so,” the woman says, and slams the screen door so hard that it rattles on its hinges. I can’t help but laugh and even Amber grins.
Two more doors, we get nothing. As we head south the neighborhood is getting less affluent and the next street on our map is distinctly poorer still. The cars parked outside aren’t as nice and the kids playing in the street are Mexican. I find it quite interesting the way there’s almost an invisible demarcation line and I remark on this to Amber, but she doesn’t reply.
Clapboard houses, most of them run-down looking. Rubbish piled up on the sidewalks in black bags. At the end of the street there’s a big warehouse that looks as if it hasn’t been used for about fifty years. The windows are dirty or smashed, and someone has drawn soccer goals on the walls.
It’s dark now. The wind has whipped up, the sky is clouded over, and the temperature has dropped by thirty degrees. I shiver and we go down the path of the first house. A dog barking in the backyard, snarling at us through a chain-link fence. Slabbers coming out of its chops. I ring the bell and an Asian man answers. Amber does the rap, but it’s impossible to hear over the dog, and anyway, he’s not interested. We cross the yard to the next house and tap on the screen door.
It is answered by a huge man in a dirty white T-shirt and jeans.
“Yeah, what do you want?” he asks, like we’re the millionth person to have called on him that night.
“Hi, we’re from the Campaign for the American Wilderness and we’re—”
“Yeah, I know,” he interrupts. “I know what you are. You guys should do your research better. You guys were around here last week for the same fucking thing.”
Amber’s shivering beside me, a little cold too in her thin sweatshirt.
“The old growth forests are a vital part of—”
“I know they are. Thank you,” he says, and closes the door.
“It’s going to be one of those nights, I can tell,” I say.
She nods glumly.
“Maybe we should take a break, find a coffee shop or something,” I suggest.
She shakes her head.
“No, everyone is going to do their full quota, so should we, it would upset Robert if we snuck off somewhere,” she says, not very enthusiastically.
“Ok, you’re the boss,” I say. I didn’t mind, in the last week I had had a lot of success, ok to strike out tonight, especially with such charming company around.
We cross the street to the next house. A bungalow, straggly garden, wire fence, patched screen door, scuffed paint.
Amber knocks on the screen door.
“Hold on, wait a minute, I’m getting the money,” a boy says.
He opens the door. Fifteen, skinny, pale, curly hair, gormless expression.
“Dude, where’s the pizza?” he asks.
“We’re in your neighborhood tonight, campaigning to promote Wise Use of …” Amber begins and does her whole rap uninterrupted.
The kid looks at her and shakes his head.
“Yeah, but dude, where’s my pizza?” he asks.
“We’re not the pizza people, we’re promoting Wise Use of the forests,” Amber says a little desperately and does the rap a second time. Again, I think that she seems younger than the thirty Abe says she is. Is she so naive that she doesn’t see that the kid is stoned out of his fucking brains?
“What the fuck is keeping you?” another kid yells, appearing in the hall, flipping a cigarette lighter on and off.
“These guys won’t give us our pizza,” the first kid explains.
“Whoa, she’s a babe,” the second kid says.
“Come on,” I say to Amber, “let’s go.”
She hesitates for a minute and lets me take her down the path. The power in the relationship has shifted in that moment. She, who is supposed to be training me, has cracked. She’s wearing flats, is an inch or two smaller than me. But it’s enough. She has to look up to ask me the question.
“What was going on there?” she asks.
“The kids were stoned,” I tell her.
“At their age?” she says, sounding amazed.
“That’s the age you get stoned,” I say.