Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“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.

“Not where I come from,” she says indignantly.

We get halfway down the path to the next house when the sprinkler system comes on, soaking us.

Amber is furious.

“And that’s illegal too,” she says. “Breaking the water rules.”

When we get to the door, they’re pretending not to be home and we have to brave the sprinklers down the path again. I offer her my jacket, but she says no.

No one’s home in the next house, either. Her hair is damp and clinging to her face. She looks increasingly miserable, increasingly beautiful.

“So where do you come from?” I ask.

“Knoxville,” she says after a pause.

“Where’s that?” I ask, not entirely ignorant.

“It’s in Tennessee,” she says.

“Cool,” I say, “it’s a cool place.”

“What do you, an Irishman, know about Tennessee?” she asks, finally breaking into a little smile.

“A lot,” I say.

“Like?”

“Well, you’ve got Elvis for a start,” I suggest.

“Memphis is totally the other end of the state,” she says. “Although we did go on a hellishly long school trip there, if you can believe it.”

“Did you go to Graceland?”

“Yeah, we did, it was so boring.”

“Did you see the toilet?”

“What toilet?”

“Where Elvis died.”

“Elvis died on the toilet?” she asks.

“See, now I know you’re an imposter, obviously you’re a Communist sleeper agent awaiting the rebirth of the Soviet Union. Every red-blooded American knows that Elvis died on the toilet,” I explain.

“Well, I didn’t,” she says, laughing.

“You should have, your cover’s blown. Every Brit knows that Evelyn Waugh and King George the Second died on the privy, we find that kind of thing funny.”

“I thought you were Irish,” she says.

“It’s complicated. Oh, and speaking of that, another Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, President Jackson, he’s big in Ireland because his parents came from, uh, Ulster.”

I was going to say Carrickfergus again, but realized just in time that this word is far too likely to remind her of Victoria.

“The Hermitage is miles from Knoxville as well,” she says, “and don’t say Nashville, either, because that’s miles away too.”

“What about Dollywood?” I say.

“How do you know about Dollywood?” she laughs, amazed again.

“Are you kidding, she’s huge in Ireland, country and western in general, huge, Patsy Cline is practically a saint.”

“Is that so?” she says, giving me a sideways glance.

“It is.”

We’re at another house. I’m annoyed, we were just beginning to have a great conversation. My next line was going to be to ask why she didn’t have any kind of a southern accent. We ring the bell. A black man answers the door. He’s elderly and is wearing a coat as if he’s on his way out.