Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“We’re here,” Robert says, and switches off the engine.

He turns around to look at us.

“You should tell them where here is,” Amber whispers.

“Oh yes, Englewood. It’s a borderline area, mixed incomes, so I want everyone to go in p-pairs tonight.”

Everyone nods.

Amber whispers something to him.

“Oh, yes, of course, we all have to g-get pumped up, don’t we?” Robert asks, almost rhetorically.

“Yes, we do,” Abe says.

“Ok, then. Um, Abe, are you ready to go?” Robert asks with fake enthusiasm.

“Yes, I am,” Abe says.

“I c-can’t hear you,” Robert says.

“Yes, I am,” Abe says, louder.

“I still c-can’t hear you,” Robert says.

Abe yells that he’s ready to go. Robert does the same routine with everyone in the van. It’s cringe making. When he gets to me, he says:

“Alexander, are you r-ready to go?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” I shout, USMC fashion.

And then something a little odd happens. Robert laughs. Strange noise, like a small animal drowning. Really, it wasn’t that funny. In fact, it wasn’t funny at all, but Robert’s cracking up about something. Snot comes out of his nostrils and he takes out a tissue, wipes his eyes, blows his nose. No peeler worth his salt makes snap judgments à la Columbo, but suddenly I don’t see Robert as the murdering type.

“Oh my God, that reminds me, r-really reminds me. You know, I got thrown out of the ROTC after one week? I would have made the worst s-soldier in the world,” Robert says to Amber, forgetting, I think, that the rest of us are here.

“I thought they’d banned ROTC at Harvard?” Amber asks.

“At school. At B-Bright. They said the only one worse was Charles and they didn’t throw him out because he was l-lacrosse captain. Oh, you should have seen me, it was—”

“Robert, the business at hand,” Amber interrupts, and gives him a look that none of the rest of us can see but which freezes him.

“Oh, yes, sorry folks, f-forgot what I was doing there. Um, who’s next?” Robert asks in a still-cheerful mood.

We go through the rest of the van and everyone claims that they are ready and enthused about going out tonight.

“Does everyone have their m-maps?”

We all nod and say yes.

“Does anyone not know how to read their map?” Robert asks.

One shy girl with curly brown hair puts her hand up.

“Ok, I’ll go with you,” Robert says.

We pile out of the van. It’s another warm night. Englewood looks like everywhere we’ve been going. Another white ’burb. By fluke or luck or foul design, Amber and I are the only two left without a pair, but it’s ok, I’m still new enough to need training by the top people.

“Looks like you’re with me, marine,” Amber says, twisting her hair behind her into a tight ponytail.

“Looks like,” I agree, somehow managing to get the words out.

We gather our clipboards and materials and walk out into Englewood. I stare at her ass all the way to the first house and my internal monologue is: Bloody calm down, Alex, she’s just a woman.

The first house we go to: a chubby lass, twenty years old, black hair, glasses, pretty, holding a wineglass. She opens the door, looks at us.

“Let me guess, you’re a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock and roll,” she says.

I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I look at Amber, baffled.

“She thinks we’re Mormons,” Amber says.

“What?” I say, still confused.

“We’re not Mormons, uh, we’re from the Campaign for—” Amber attempts.

“Let me tell you something,” the girl says, taking a large sip of wine, “I do not believe that the Angel Gabriel appeared in upstate New York and said go take dozens of wives. It makes no sense. Ok? No sense.”

“We’re not Mormons,” Amber persists.

“Damn right you’re not,” the girl says, “and I’m not going to be one either. And then he went to Utah? Jesus is no cowboy, I mean, come on, you people are seriously misguided.”

“Does the issue of deforestation concern you at all?” I ask.

“No, but converting dead people does, that’s a disgrace,” she says.

She closes the screen door and then the front door, leaving us outside feeling very foolish.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Amber says briskly.

“She must have been drunk,” I suggest.

We turn and walk down the path.

“I just don’t get the ‘you’re a little bit country’ thing,” I say.

“It’s from a TV show you would never have seen, a song they used to sing, from the Donny and Marie show. You know, the Osmonds.”

“Oh, who are Mormons, oh, I see, that was a good line, then.”

“Yes,” Amber says.

“Aren’t their missionaries always men, though?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Amber says, a bit snootily. “I don’t know anything about the Mormons.”

The encounter has embarrassed her, she doesn’t think it’s funny at all, whereas I think it’s hilarious, it’ll amuse Pat and John when I tell them.

“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.