The Tent Read Online Free

words later so we can sing along." He paused, then sighed. "You know, if anybody comes..."
    Steven suddenly remembered the woman who had stopped him but decided not to tell his father. There had been something about her voice, a hardness, and he wasn't sure he wanted Corey to worry.
    "I'm half-wrecked," Corey said, putting the pencil down. "Why don't you watch things while I catch a quick nap in the truck."
    He left and Steven sat quietly for a time, thinking of all the things he would rather be doing. The truth was there was nothing really to keep an eye
on, and his attention quickly slid away. He flipped some rocks, waved at four people all crammed in the front seat of a pickup—pickups were everywhere, and very few cars—and was fast approaching a flat-line state in his thinking when his eyes closed and he fell asleep. When he opened them Corey was standing over him. It was dark, or nearly so—he must have been more tired than he thought—and Corey had found a power source on a pole at the edge of the park for the lights. "Come on, they're starting to arrive."
    Steven stood and moved to the round tent opening.
    They sat in a row on the bench, the new ones. Steven peered around the edge of the canvas at them. There were four—two men, two women, one the woman he had seen during the day—and they looked boiled, bleached, their eyes alert and somehow mean-looking.
    Look out, Dad,
he thought,
they're not taking prisoners.
    More cars trickled in, and finally there were twenty people who came in and sat on the benches. When Steven went to get his father from the truck, where he was putting his coat on, Corey smiled.
    "How many?"
    "Twenty."
    "Twenty? Man, that's good. We stand to make some change tonight."
    "Dad..." Steven thought about the four sitting on the front bench.
    Corey had started for the tent and stopped. "What?"
    And really there was nothing to tell—four people were sitting in the front row. What was that? "Nothing—good luck."
    "Thanks." And he disappeared into the tent. Steven waited until Corey was at the pulpit, and turned the small tape player on. Scratchy notes from "Amazing Grace" fought to overcome the coughing and whispering sounds, and just as the music was to end, Steven turned the volume down
to nothing in a slow fade. His father waited half a beat and turned to face the congregation.
    "He lives," he said quietly.
    "Amen."
    "He lives for
all
sinners "
    "Amen."
    "Hallelujah!"
    Steven turned away from the tent, or started to. He'd heard it all before when his father had rehearsed it. But halfway to the truck, a new voice stopped him.
    "Be you of the
true
faith?" The voice was loud, challenging.
    Corey stopped in the middle of a well-rehearsed sentence. "There are many faiths, brother," he said, his voice soft.
    Here it comes,
Steven thought, moving back toward the tent.
They'll get him now.
He peeked around the end just in time to see one of the four in front raise a finger and point directly at Corey.
    "Yes—but are
you
of the
true
faith?" And now
the finger waved angrily. "Or do you blaspheme? Do you consort with low dwellers? Do you believe in God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or do you live with perverts and faggots and those consigned to burn for eternity?"
    Steven could not believe the voice. It oozed, dripped hate, and he actually moved backward a step.
    His father was taken aback as well and for a moment was quiet, could not seem to speak.
    "I asked, do you believe?" The man's voice rose, became angrier, on the edge of vicious.
    "I ..."
    "You do not believe!"
    "We..."
    "You do not
believe!
"
    Again Corey hesitated, his mouth open, and Steven felt the fear in him, the discomfort, and started to move to him, to help him, to lead him from the tent and save him.
    But a strange thing happened. Corey moved,
actually took a step back from the pulpit, seemed to retreat from the hate, and then changed, all in a second. His shoulders stiffened, his back straightened,