The Tent by Gary Paulsen Page A

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."
    "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