The Tent by Gary Paulsen Page B

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