The Tent (2 page)

His father thought for half a minute, then shook his head. "Not enough. It needs more meat to it.
That's a good start, but it needs to be filled out. We need something about specific sins—sex, killing. Like that."

Steven looked out the window again and spoke absently, without thinking—he was still reeling from what his father was planning to do. "Talk about somebody who lies about sex."

His father frowned, then nodded. "Yes. I like that. I'll work on that angle." He turned back to the Bible. "Now, how do you find all that in here? Is there some kind of index, you know, in back where they have subjects? L for
lying
, S for
sex ...
"

Steven stood and went to the sink for a drink of water while his father flipped through the Bible. All the while Steven was trying to think of a way out of going, but nothing came and he knew he was locked into helping. He sighed. Might as well act interested. "Where are we going?"

His father looked up. "What?"

"The first town—where are we going to start all this?"

"I don't know. I thought I'd kind of wing it. Not too far, though—we don't have much money for gas and the truck is definitely terminal." He drew a finger in a circle on the map around the trailer park. "Somewhere in here—inside a hundred-mile circle."

Steven moved back to the table, studied the map, pointed. "There—let's go there."

"Where? Oh ... out there. Castle, Texas. Why there?"

"Just the name—Castle—seems like a good place to start."

"All right—that's it. We'll go day after tomorrow."

And,
Steven thought, looking at the location of the town,
it might be Jar enough that I will never see anybody who lives there again.

IT WASN'T
—quite—a disaster.

Castle was a small town that could be described mostly by the words
flat
and
hot.
They drove through miles of feedlots full of cattle to get there—the stink of manure so thick Steven had trouble breathing—and when they came to Castle they had almost driven through it before they realized it was the town.

"I don't know," his father said. "There aren't many people here."

Perfect,
Steven thought. "They live around the town—on ranches and things. It will do fine."

On the west side of town there was a small park
with an open area next to it, and they pulled the old truck in and unloaded the tent.

It weighed close to two hundred pounds and Steven doubted that they would be able to get it raised and set—and was looking forward to failing and returning home—but two men in cowboy hats showed up.

"What are you doing?" One of them, sipping a Dr Pepper, scratched and spit. "A flea market?"

Steven's father turned from wrestling the tent out of the back of the truck. "We are here," he said, lowering his voice and somehow raising it at the same time, "to preach the Word of God."

Both men nodded, and the second one smiled. "Been close to two weeks since we've had a tent preacher here. What faith are you?"

"Faith?"

"Yeah. Baptist or Evangelical Missionary or rollers or what?"

"We are of God," Steven's father said. "We do
not believe in different faiths—we are all one children."

Steven couldn't help staring. It didn't even sound like his father.

"Now," his father continued, "if you would kindly help us set up this ... traveling chapel ... we'd appreciate it."

With all four working, the tent went up in forty minutes and they stood back to view it.

"Kind of ... ventilated ... ain't it?" one of the cowboys said.

To Steven it looked a lot like a large piece of ratty canvas swiss cheese, but his father nodded.

"For air movement," he said. "Keeps it cool when all the people pack in."

They had eight benches, four for each side, made of boards and square boxes to hold them off the ground, and Steven set the benches up while his father arranged the plywood pulpit in the front. In a moment of artistic fervor he had cut a cross—it
looked crooked to Steven—from thick wood and painted it red and put it on the front of the pulpit, and the red cross glared out at them.

"There," he said, when it was done. "Now we have to spread the word."

They finished in an hour, covering the town with the small posters they had made on a copier at the library for ten cents a copy. There seemed to be one on every pole, fence, and wall Steven could see.

"There." His father rubbed his hands together. "Now we wait."

The afternoon dragged slowly by. Steven, who thought he had never been so mortally embarrassed, had gone into a kind of shock. He sat on the shady side of the tent—the Texas sun was almost flash hot—and tried not to think, but it was impossible. All along he had operated on the premise that it would never happen; something or somebody would intervene and stop it before it actually came to pass.

But the tent was up, the posters were in place, and as slowly as the time passed, it
did
pass.

And for the first time in his life Steven prayed.

"Please, God, don't let anybody come to this tonight."

IT WAS A SCENE,
Steven thought, that looked like it was shot on a cheap home video for a very bad movie.

The tent, even with the ends opened, was viciously, unbelievably hot. His father had put on the dark sports jacket and slacks—both originally purchased at Goodwill for two dollars—and had used a piece of white cardboard to make a minister's collar. But the coat was a thick one, made for winter, and Steven estimated the temperature in the tent to be at least 120 degrees. He could hardly breathe, and his father was completely soaked in perspiration, standing at the front of the tent in the gloomy light coming from the evening sun (there
was no power outlet for the string of lights) with his hands clasped piously in front, waiting for wor-shipers to start coming.

They had put 7:00
P.M.
as the time to start, and as the deadline came closer, Steven began to hope his prayer had been answered. Even the two cowboys who had been there this afternoon failed to come.

But at precisely seven there was a horrendous clatter and two ancient pickups arrived filled with people—or so it seemed. There were six adults. Two men somewhere close to forty, both wearing bib overalls and clean denim work shirts, both sunburned beet red in the face with a line on their foreheads where their caps stopped the sun. They could have been brothers. With them were four women, two of them wives and two who appeared to be grandmothers. The women were also sunburned, wearing clean but tired print dresses, and the backs of both trucks were filled with what seemed to be a herd of children. They were all dressed in tattered
but clean clothes, all seemed to be scrubbed with rough brushes, and they never stopped moving. There were either eight of them or ten of them or—Steven closed one eye—maybe twelve.

They all filed into the tent and sat on the rough plank benches.

"Welcome," Steven's father said softly, "to the house of God."

"What did he say?" one of the grandmothers asked.

The man on her right leaned in close to her ear and bellowed, "H
E SAID WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF THE
L
ORD
!"

"Oh. Good."

The men turned to Steven's father. "You want to get loud on the good parts—ever since Granny was next to the water heater when it blew. Especially when the crowd comes."

"I will."

But as the moments passed and turned into a quarter of an hour—crawling moments while the
small group waited on the benches—it became painfully apparent that there would not be a "crowd." Nobody else came. Worse, as time seemed to stop, the pack of kids became restless and started wrestling and tumbling—they looked like a rolling ball of arms and legs to Steven—until the same man turned and thumped three or four of them.

"You don't start preaching soon," he said, turning to the front, "and I'm going to have to get the rope and tie them to the truck."

Corey nodded but still hesitated, and Steven realized it was because he was nervous. Corey took a breath, held it, let it out, and spread his arms woodenly to the side.

"Friends...," he croaked, his voice breaking. "We are gathered here in His name—"

"Louder!" The old woman bellowed.

"F
RIENDS
!" Steven's father began again. "W
E ARE GATHERED HERE...
"

And so it went. He had written what he called a
sermon, which he had on the plywood lectern, and had rehearsed in the trailer and while driving the truck so many times Steven almost knew it by heart. Corey followed the sermon, hollering each word at the top of his lungs, each word hitting Steven so loudly he winced.

"
...AND WE SHOULD NOT ASK FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, IT TOLLS FOR THEE
!" Corey finished, his voice now a rasp. He had been proud of the last line, which he had "borrowed" from a Hemingway novel, and he waited as though expecting applause.

None came and there was an embarrassed minute while everybody sat silent, seemingly waiting for something. Another minute and then Corey clapped his hands together.

"I almost forgot—the offering." He motioned to Steven to pass the basket.

Now Steven hesitated. The "basket" was a huge wicker affair that they had bought for a quarter at Goodwill. It was the kind of basket used for displaying fruit in grocery stores.
It could hold melons,
Steven thought, as he passed it to the people on the bench. He was so embarrassed, he failed to watch for money but turned away and went back to the side of the tent.

Because the basket was so large, they had to handle it with both hands, and the man who held it last set it on the bench in front of him, and then they all settled back again, waiting.

Steven knew it was finished and he saw his father shoot him a perplexed look. Then he looked back to the small group, back at Steven.

"We like to end with a good song," the man directly in front of Corey said. "Sort of like
dee-zert.
"

"Song?"

"A hymn," the man said, nodding. "Sort of to fortify us to go back out amongst the sinners."

"Oh." Corey looked at Steven again.

Steven shrugged, shook his head. He didn't know any hymns.

Then Corey smiled and nodded at the man. "Why don't you lead us in a hymn?"

"R
OCK OF AGES
!" the old woman screamed suddenly, so loud Steven and Corey jumped.

"All right," Corey started. "That sounds good."

"C
LEFT FOR ME
!" she wailed.

"I said it's all right..."

"L
ET ME HIDE MYSELF IN
T
HEE
!"

And Steven realized then that she was singing the hymn. He didn't know the words, and neither did Corey, but it didn't matter. She took a deep breath, gathered her family around her with a stern look, and they all finished the hymn, not singing so much as screaming, almost but not quite in tune. And when it was done, they all stood at once and filed out.

"Well..." Steven sat on the bench in front of the pulpit. "
Now
will you believe we can't do it?"

His father collapsed and sat on the edge of the plywood platform that held the pulpit. He looked absolutely whipped—the dark coat drenched with
sweat, his shoulders bowed and almost caved in—and he smiled weakly.

"It's just that you don't really know how to do this," Steven added. "I never thought you would get this far. I thought you would give it up by now...." He trailed off because his father had noticed the huge collection basket on the bench. He leaned forward and pulled the basket to his lap, looked inside, and his face broke into a smile.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Steven started again. "You just weren't meant to be a preacher."

"Look at this." Corey reached into the basket and held up a handful of paper money. Mostly ones, but Steven could see some fives and the corner of a ten-dollar bill peeking out.

His father dropped the basket and rifled through the money.

"Look at it!" He fanned the bills. "Ten, fifteen, eighteen, another ten—there's twenty-eight dollars here!"

"There is?" Steven stood, came forward. "Twenty-eight? They didn't look like they had two quarters to rub together."

"You know how many burgers I have to fry in part-time jobs to clear twenty-eight dollars?"

"Well..."

"Or how many feet of cruddy floors I've got to mop?

"No. But still, you didn't do very well at it, you know."

"Well? Boy, we did
great
at it. Praise God."

"Praise God?"

"From whom all blessings flow. Say, I like that. I heard it somewhere, but I think I'll use it in my next sermon. Yeah. Not right up front of course. Just bring it in toward the end, right before we take the collection—no, that's
offering.
I saw one of those television ministers and he always called it an offering."

"You're going to do this again?" Steven asked.

"Boy—we're just starting. We're going to go all the way to the top."

"Oh," Steven said. "Oh, good."

And if someone had told him then that he would come to enjoy it, would come to love it, Steven would have laughed in his face.

THEY WENT
across Texas, angling north, moving from small town to small town, but at first it did not seem to Steven to be getting any easier. Indeed, it seemed to be worse all the time.

The weather grew hotter, the humidity more steamy with each evening, and the air somehow more dusty. On the second stop—only thirty miles from the first town—they seemed to have gone to a different country. Steven thought it had been flat before but now the country became truly
flat,
impossibly so, and with the new flatness, the heat seemed to double in intensity.