The Tent Read online

  The Tent

  A Parable in One Sitting

  Gary Paulsen

  * * *

  Harcourt, Inc.

  Orlando Austin New York

  San Diego Toronto London

  * * *

  Copyright © 1995 by Gary Paulsen

  Reader's Guide copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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  First Harcourt paperback edition 2006

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Paulsen, Gary.

  The tent: a parable in one sitting/Gary Paulsen,

  p. cm.

  Summary: Although dismayed and embarrassed when his father

  takes him on the road to get rich preaching the word of God,

  fourteen-year-old Steven finds himself caught up in the money

  and the things it can buy.

  [1. Evangelists—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction.

  3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Money—Fiction.] I.Title.

  PZ7.P2843Te 2006

  [Fic]—dc22 2006041186

  ISBN-13: 978-0-15-205833-3 ISBN-10: 0-15-205833-8

  Text set in Perpetua

  Designed by Lisa Peters

  H G F E D C B A

  Printed in the United States of America

  In the eighth century B.C.E. in what is now Israel/Palestine, the birthplace and stipulations of a religious leader were prophesied. He was to be born in the village called Bethlehem, of a virgin.

  In the small town of Nazareth, a pregnant teenage girl was engaged to a carpenter. During this time the Romans called for a census, and because the carpenter was from the house of David, he took his fiancée to the town of Bethlehem to register. All of the inns were full due to the increased number of people in town, but he was able to obtain lodging in a stable, and it was there the baby was born.

  From Bethlehem the family moved to Egypt for a short time and then back to the district of Galilee to Nazareth. This was where the baby grew up as the eldest son of the carpenter.

  He began teaching at the age of thirty, choosing his first followers from the area of Galilee. He taught among the poor and the sick, explaining to people how to love God in truth and not just for appearance, and to love their neighbors as much as themselves.

  His most radical teaching was that man was sinful and in need of salvation (saving) and that just doing good things was not enough to justify man before a holy God.

  The people had expected a different sort of messiah, one who would save them from Roman oppression, and this man didn't fit that description. He spent his time telling stories, not raising an army. Still the leaders were concerned about the large crowds that he attracted and the things he had to say about the religious leaders of the day.

  Within three short years, by the age of thirty-three, the young man had enraged the religious community to the point that the religious leaders had him arrested and brought before the high priest on charges of blasphemy—a crime punishable by death. The chief priests did not have the power to execute the death penalty so they handed him over to the Roman governor, saying the man and his followers were political subversives. The sentence handed down was death, to be carried out by the then normal official mode of execution, death by crucifixion.

  Even though he had predicted his own death, his followers were downhearted and most were in hiding, fearing for their own lives. Then news came that their leader had been laid to rest in the tomb of a friend and that when women went to attend the body it was gone. This strange event prompted still more powerful belief in the teacher, and his followers carried on his teachings. Almost all were killed because of their intense belief in him.

  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  "I figure it this way," his father said one evening. "I'm thirty-four years old and we don't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of to call our own. How do you see it?"

  Steven shrugged. "I don't think it's that bad."

  "We live in a ten-year-old rented trailer in a trailer park," his father, who was named Corey, cut in. "We're driving a nineteen sixty-seven Chevy half-ton with salt rot so bad you can read through it. We don't have any money—and I mean any—your mother has gone off with a ... well ... a friend, and you just got a pair of Salvation Army tennis shoes for your fourteenth birthday, and you don't think it's bad?"

  "You've got a job."

  "At minimum wage. I can't even pay the rent on this trailer without working two full-time basewage jobs."

  Steven stopped. He'd heard some of this before but never as far down as his father sounded now. Not even when his mother had gone. They were close, he and his father—somehow being poor had brought them closer.

  His father had not always been this poor. They had lived in Kansas City, and for as long as Steven could remember—until he was twelve—his father had worked at a factory that made doors. Then the factory had closed down and gone to another country—Steven thought Mexico—and even his father, who had been a foreman of a whole shift, was terminated. That had been two years earlier when Steven was twelve. And for a time his father had been positive. He'd taken schooling, learned a new job—in, of all things, shoe repair—and started a new life. They had moved to Texas and settled in to find work. But there were no good jobs. Nobody was hiring people to repair shoes, and there was no decent work anywhere. None.

  And it had stayed bad until this evening, when he listened to his father go further down than he'd ever heard.

  "I can work," Steven said. "I'll get a job."

  His father nodded. "I figured you'd say that. So I kind of thought you wouldn't mind helping me."

  Steven had been half watching the television with the sound on mute. But there was a new note in his father's voice—something that sounded soft, almost not there. Like he had a secret.

  "What are you talking about?" Steven asked.

  "I'm sick of being poor," his father said. "Aren't you?"

  A new feeling—cold, chill. Steven turned the set off. An old one, so old it was only black-and-white, seven inches diagonally, so old it made a bright spot in the middle when it went off. The set was suddenly very important. He remembered when they got it. Twelve dollars. At a pawn shop.

  "Are you talking about something illegal?" There, he thought—I asked it. It had to be asked. "Like stealing or something...?"

  And his father had smiled. "No. Not illegal at all. We're going to help people."

  "Help them?"

  A nod, very slowly. "Yes. We're going to help them find God."

  "God?" Steven stared at his father. In fourteen years Steven had never heard his father mention God—not counting the time he'd slammed his thumb with a framing hammer. They had never been to church, never studied the Bible, never spoken of anything even remotely religious. Steven didn't know what else to say. Just that, the question— God?

  "Sure. Look, there's people out there by the thousands who are having trouble finding God. I'm just saying we help them."

  "But how ... I mean why ... no, what? Yes, that's it—what are you going to do?"

  "I," his father said, raising his voice, "am going to preach."

&n
bsp; "Preach?"

  "The Word of God." His father's voice rose higher, louder, bounced off the walls of the trailer. "I aim to preach the Word of God—the Word of God, the Word of God!" He stopped suddenly and then smiled, lowered his voice to a conversational tone. "And I want you to help me."

  "Me?" Steven's head was reeling. He was convinced his father was insane. "You want me to help preach?"

  His father laughed. "Not exactly. Look now—I mean listen. When I got out of the army I had a friend named Farnham. He was sick of being poor, and he told me he was going to find an old tent and go around preaching in small towns. He wanted me to go with him, and I came very close—even listened to him talk about how he would do his spiel, bark the Word, as they used to say in the old carny days. I was even packed. But I met your mother and got married and we had you, and I never saw Farnham again."

  "Well, then how—"

  "But I heard from him. About a year later he sent me a picture of himself. He was wearing a powder blue linen suit, standing next to a powder blue new Cadillac. On the back he wrote just one sentence, 'I'm rich!' and that was all I ever heard from him...."

  A million questions roared through Steven's head, but before he could form any of them into words, his father was off again.

  "I've got it all worked out," he said, leaning forward on the table. "That roofer O'Malley owes me three hundred for helping him four weekends. He doesn't have the money but he does have an old army tent he got from a guy for work. It's not huge—thirty by forty—but that's big enough for a start. And it comes with a string of lights to hang on the inside. I'll make a plywood pulpit and a little stand to make me higher—you've got to be higher than your flock to force them to look up—and we're in business."

  "We are?"

  "Yup. I'll get a white collar, and I've got that old dark sports jacket and those pants I never wear. Slick back my hair and grab the Bible—where is the Bible, by the way?"

  "We don't have one."

  "Oh. Well, no matter. We can get one in the first motel we stay at. Every room has one of those Gideon Bibles. We'll take one of those."

  And that was, exactly, how it all started, with a Bible stolen from a cheap motel room.

  Ye cannot serve God and mammon (money).

  IT DID NOT initially go well.

  "Man, there's a lot of stuff in here."

  They were in the kitchen area of the small trailer—a table that was bolted to the wall and folded down when they wanted more room. Steven was sitting, still in a kind of stunned wonder, staring at the table. There was a road map of Texas spread out, a small pad of paper and a pen, and his father had the Bible, which he had opened on top of the map. He was looking at the Bible, frowning.

  "It's packed with things—how is a man supposed to find something to preach about?"

  Steven coughed. "You can't be serious about all this."

  "About what?"

  "Doing this preaching thing. I thought you were kidding."

  "I got the Bible, didn't I?"

  Steven nodded. "Yes..."

  "And I didn't even have to pay for the room. I told them I wanted to check the room out for friends who were coming, and the Bible was lying right there, and we saved nearly thirty dollars because we didn't need to rent the room."

  "Well..."

  "And we got the tent, didn't we?"

  Steven nodded again. They had gotten the tent, although it was somewhat the worse for wear. It had been an army tent used for assembling missiles in some forgotten day and had holes in the top and two round openings, one at either end, for the missile to stick out. "It will leak," Steven pointed out. "Top, sides, and ends. You could throw a basketball through the walls."

  "That doesn't matter," his father said. "We have the tent. We have the Bible. We're serious. We're going to do this thing and get rich."

  The truth was, at that stage, Steven was horrified. He was not good around people, almost shy, knew nothing of religion, and still thought there was a good chance his father had gone completely mad. He'd heard about it on the news. Stress did it. They talked about it all the time. He needed to learn stress management. Maybe, Steven thought, I can get him involved in one of those classes....

  "I think we're going to have to pick one subject and stick to it." His father nodded to himself. "At least until we get a handle on this thing. What's a good subject?"

  "Pardon?"

  "To preach—give me a subject. We need something to talk about."

  Steven stared at him. "How about lying?"

  "Lying..."

  "Or stealing. You know, like where you steal a Bible and lie about being a preacher."

  "Oh. You feel that way about it?"

  Steven looked out the small window of the trailer. In the trailer next to theirs the couple—he never knew their names—who drank cheap beer and fought all the time were drinking cheap beer and fighting. The woman finished a bottle of beer and threw the empty bottle at her husband, who swore and emptied his own and threw it at her. Luckily they were both so drunk they missed. "I don't know how to feel. This is all too new for me to feel anything."

  "Look, I've been watching these guys on television. Do you think they're all sincere?"

  "I've never watched them. Well, once, when the guy cried all the time. I don't know what they think."

  "They do it for the money. But that doesn't mean it's all bad. If we do it for the money but we say good things, what's wrong with that? We get money, they get something. We all come out ahead."

  "But we don't know anything, we don't believe all that stuff, and we've never even been to church." The couple next door opened new beers. They kissed. They were hugging now. "It's all a lie."

  "But a good lie. We're doing it for good reasons, right?"

  Steven didn't say anything, shrugged.

  "Right. We get some money, they get some preaching. Perfect. The thing is, I can't do it all alone. There's too much going on. I need you to help me—so will you?"

  Another long pause. "Well, I guess so...."

  "So give me a subject. A good one, one I can really get my teeth into and preach the hell out of."

  Steven smiled. "So what's wrong with lying and stealing? Like I said?"

  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.

  A man's life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses.

  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.