The Canvasser

A sweaty college girl in a downtown Atlanta neighborhood, pamphlets and clipboard in hand, takes a seat on a park bench. It’s a July afternoon and it’s damn hot. She’s been walking since lunch. Her head’s a bit fuzzy from the heat, and images of blurry mansions cycle through her head, their long brick stairways always slithering upwards in fear of the street. She slaps a mosquito on her forehead, a little blood and irritation.

Finishing her bottled water, she gets up re-energized, ready to do some serious climbing. I still have 2 hours of daylight, she thinks, looking at her watch.

After a long climb, she recites some pre-scripted introductory remarks about saving the state park to a middle-aged man standing at the gate of his hilltop fortress. He writes a check for $50, half for the environment, the other half for the solicitor. Her first big score of the day.

He was surprisingly nice, she decides, as she follows a convenient path to the next house to avoid the long descent to the street. Knock, knock. No answer. A lone drop of rain smacks her forehead as she hurries on to the next mansion, again taking the high road. She hadn’t noticed the approaching clouds. This is gonna suck. She rings a bell and again, no response. Not home from your bullshit corporate job yet, huh, asshole?, she denounces the imaginary white guy.

Oh shit, she mumbles as a downpour hammers the sidewalk and she scurries to the next porch. A trio of brown-skinned workers below has made it to their Japanese pickup and packed themselves in tightly. An old woman looks out her window across the street. The canvasser clings to her clipboard, impatiently watching the rain assault an unusually bright green lawn, wondering if her boss will be pissed about her pathetic day’s work, her third bad day in a row.  This is a nice friggin’ porch. I wonder how much…wow… The dirty brown water, growing to a torrent, follows the winding steps to the street.