The Tent (3 page)

They arrived early in the morning, having slept in the back of the truck, and set the tent up while it was still cool.

"I'll finish around here," Corey said, rubbing his hands together, "and you put up the posters."

Steven set off with the photocopies and tape. He had done four walls and three poles when a woman stopped him. She was perhaps fifty, although she looked ancient to Steven, and she wore a straight up-and-down dress like a suit of armor.

"What faith are you?" she demanded in a voice that was so brittle it seemed to crack.

"Pardon?"

"Of which faith be you?"

"Well, Christian, I guess, if it's all right that is."

"I
know
that. But are you of the rock in the mount or the fish?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask my dad."

"Of the fish?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."
And neither,
he thought,
will Dad.
Then a stroke of what he thought to be genius hit him. "Why don't you come to the sermon tonight and find out?"

"Oh, we will, boy," she said, walking away. "We will."

We,
Steven thought, watching her walk.
Who is
we?

By the time he finished putting up posters and returned to the tent, his father had set up the pulpit and benches and hidden the truck in back of some trees at the edge of the park they were using for the meeting.

Corey sat on a large rock on the shady side of the tent, writing in a notebook. Steven handed him a Coke he'd brought back from a small market and squatted next to him in the shade. "What are you doing?"

Corey took a long pull at the Coke, swallowed, and sighed. "We learned from the first one, right?"

Steven shrugged. "I'm not sure what, but yes, I guess we learned."

"We learned we have to have a sermon written down—that's one thing we learned."

"We also have to sing a hymn," Steven added. "And we have to sing it loud."

"I don't know a hymn, but while you were sticking up the posters I got a little tape recorder and a tape of a woman singing 'Amazing Grace.' You just play it at the right places," Corey said. "We'll memorize the 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, and he raised his hands over his head.

"No!" Corey's voice was loud, filled the tent, and seemed to make the canvas flap at the sides. It was so sudden, it stopped the heckler. "I do
not
believe in hate, I do not
believe
in hate—God is a God of love. He loves all, all who come to Him. His love is in me, in you, in this holy tent." He took a breath, held it half a beat, and then, more softly, said, "I believe in love, the God of love who loves all things, all people, loves all...."

And it worked. Steven stared at his father as he slid back into his rehearsed sermon. He was the same and yet somehow completely different. The tent was quiet, the people listening carefully to everything he said, and Steven watched, waiting for his cue to start the music for the offering hymn, and his father stayed in control the whole time.

Steven began the hymn and passed the basket
and was surprised to see all the people put bills in, even the one who had attacked Corey. As he played the final hymn, he glanced in the basket and saw several twenties and tens.

The people filed out, shaking hands with Corey at the tent opening, and Steven gathered the basket and counted the money. One hundred and fifty dollars and some change. He had moved out of the tent, and Corey came out. He was smiling strangely.

"Did you see that?"

"Dad—we made a lot of money. A hundred and fifty—"

"No—did you
see
that? My God, I owned them. They were in the palm of my hand. I think I could have taken them into a fire."

"But Dad—we made more—"

"Did you see it?" Corey wasn't listening. "Did you? Did you see it?"

And he walked away, smiling oddly, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

IT SEEMED THEN
that all things changed and nothing changed. What happened was so slow and subtle that Steven didn't often know it was happening until after it happened.

It came in stages, almost like scenes from a play or movie that Steven could only see after they happened and only understand after that, like when they went to Calypso.

Calypso, Texas, was small and dusty and flat, like much of Texas. They came into town well after dark and delayed setting up the tent until the next morning. Instead of sleeping in the truck, they took a room at a motel and had no sooner checked in then the phone rang.

"Hello?" Steven answered.

"I wish to speak to the minister. Is he there?"

"Yes?" Corey answered.

Then only short words.

"Yes. I agree. Yes. Please do. Fine. We'll expect you." And he hung up the phone.

"Some men are coming to talk to us," he said to Steven, "about how we can do better."

"Do better? We've only been doing this two weeks, and we're already making better than a hundred dollars a day. How can we do better?"

Corey smiled. "They told me about healing—using the Word to heal."

"Heal?"

Corey nodded. "They'll be here in a minute—they called from across the street."

And they were. Two men arrived within five minutes and knocked on the door softly. Corey let them in the room. One was short, balding, about forty and walked with a slight limp. The other was thin but not tall and had the start of a beard. Both
men smiled at Steven, and he nodded to them and turned back to watching television, although he used the remote to cut the sound down.

"We like to help the gospelers," the bald man said. "We like to go assisting 'em to spread the Word."

Corey nodded. "So you said on the phone. Something about healing, you said."

The bald man nodded. "It's a true fact that you can do better if you throw in a healing—make twice as much."

"How do you mean?"

"Cripples, the blind, and the like. All you got to do is heal a couple of them, and those believers are going to
throw
money in the basket. It works every time."

Corey nodded. "I've seen healing on television. You just lay hands on them and they get healed, right?"

The bald man stood for a moment and didn't say anything.

"Isn't that the way it works? Their faith does the rest?"

"Well..." The bald man nodded. "You might say that. But they need a little help now and again, to get what you might call a clearer picture of their faith. They need some assistance. Me and Davis here like to think of ourselves as God's helpers. We sit in the congregation and when you call for the lame and halt and 'flicted I gets up and drags my leg—maybe you saw it when I came in here, the limp?—and come up with my hands all raised and crying, and you touch me and heal me and I walk away straight as a new pin."

Corey nodded. "And that gets the ball rolling?"

He shook his head. "One ain't enough, usually. There are them to waver in their faith, but two always does it. That's where Davis comes in. He has a good grating cough. Cough for 'em, Davis."

Davis, who had been silent all this time, nodded and coughed deep from his lungs. Even Steven had to admit it sounded serious, although he
seemed none the worse for wear when he was done.

"That's a good cough," Corey said, nodding.

Jamey nodded. "He's got him a good lung cavity there. He was born with it. You can't just cough normal—anybody can do that. You've got to sound good. Davis here, when he's rolling good, sounds like he's about to heave a lung up. Then you lay hands on him and he breathes deep and that'll do her."

Steven was almost laughing out loud. It all sounded ridiculous and he expected Corey to throw them out any second, but when he looked at his father he was surprised to see interest.

"And you say this will help me increase the take—the flock?"

Jamey nodded. "We worked with a reverend name of Simmons down in the Corpus area, and he almost doubled his collections in a week. They come to see the miracles—they like them miracles more than anything."

"But won't they know you? I mean, you live around here...."

Jamey shook his head. "Naw, we're from over in East Texas. We thought we'd come over here and see what there was to offer for a gimp and a lunger, and we seen you down below day before yesterday and liked the way you worked, so we thought we'd offer our assistance in the making of miracles."

"About that," Corey said. "Your assistance. How much ... assistance ... are we talking about here? How do you figure into the financial end of it?"

Jamey nodded, smiling. "I told Davis you'd get right to business. Well, I tell you, we used to just rely on the compassion of the trade, so to speak. But we found some ministers was more compassionate than others, and a lot of them weren't compassionate at all. So now we have a rate—we take fifteen percent of the collection."

"Fifteen? Isn't that a bit high?"

Jamey shrugged. "Depends on how you look at
it. If we double your collection then fifteen percent ain't so much, is it?"

"A good point."

"Let's do her this way," Jamey said. "You try us for three nights—one might not be enough—until the word gets out ahead that you found the power and you're doing some healing. If there ain't a good increase we part company and that's it. How does that sound?"

Corey nodded. "It sounds worth trying."

Corey and Jamey shook hands, Davis coughed, and the two men went to the door. Jamey stopped with his hand on the knob. "Are you open to some advice?"

Corey nodded. "What is it?"

"Your hair's too flat."

"My hair?"

"Yeah. You'll find them parishioners like a good head of hair on their reverends. You got to get it poofed up so it makes your head look big. It'd be good if it was silver or white, all combed up and
back, but if you don't want to color it at least get it done to make it look bigger. You've got to have big hair to really get 'em into the faith."