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  The Tent in the Gymnasium

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

  The Tent in the Gymnasium

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Secrets Kept in Sneakers

  Chapter 2 – Sweet Orange Sodas

  Chapter 3 – Mocking Blackbirds

  Chapter 4 – It’s All Just Make-Believe

  Chapter 5 – Pictures in All the Scribble

  Chapter 6 – Songs Both Hopeful and Sad

  Chapter 7 – Confidence Growled

  Chapter 8 – Honor Earned

  Chapter 9 – Monsters Unvanquished

  Chapter 10 – Everything It Was Dreamed to Be

  Help Spread the Story

  About the Writer

  Other Stories

  Chapter 1 - Secrets Kept in Sneakers...

  The dribble of basketballs and the clacking of plastic jump ropes vanished when the performers brought their stories and songs to the middle school’s gymnasium. A canvas tent, made motley for patches representing every color in a deluxe box of crayons, rose from the basketball court’s center circle to announce the festival those performers delivered to students who languished during the cold, dark winter for spring days needed to lengthen their recess hours. Those performers delivered gifts of books and candies in addition to their stories and songs, and so the students came to regard the tent’s arrival as a favorite day to circle upon their classroom calendars.

  That strange quiet that filled the performers’ morning arrival floated from the gymnasium and seeped into every middle school classroom. Boys and girls choked their pencils with white knuckle hands and focused upon their cursive, lest some mistaken curve in their penmanship cost them time otherwise spent in the presence of the performance tent. None giggled should the teacher break another piece of chalk while scratching mathematic word problems across the board. Students made no protest when asked to chant their week’s list of spelling words another time. No one reached across the aisle to punch a friend’s shoulder. No one disrupted a classmate during readings from the primer. For in the middle of the dark winter, when a middle school student had little opportunity to stand outside in the sun, that motley tent rose in the middle of their gymnasium, and no student dared any disturbance that gave teachers a reason to delay the rendezvous scheduled with story and song.

  “Come on, Hudson,” Amy Zerlinger, whom the a seating chart’s whim placed directly behind Hudson Keel, growled at the slumped shoulders seated in front of her. “You heard Mrs. Jordan. The class doesn’t leave for the tent festival until everyone’s finished writing out the sentences from the board. Focus on the sentences.”

  Hudson shook his head and pulled his mind away from the sketch of the tent he scribbled upon that notebook page upon which Mrs. Jordan expected the careful copy of subjects and predicates. Hudson had all week sketched that tent upon one alien landscape after another - upon fields of flaming lava petals Hudson shaded crimson with colored pencil, among ice mountains painted in blue finger-paint, amid dark forests a marker shaded into a verdant green. Hurriedly, he moved his hand to copy another sentence, and in his haste broke his pencil’s point with an awkward flourish. Hudson cringed. He felt the eyes of his classmates peek his direction, heard their choked, frustrated sighs. He dared not call Mrs. Jordan’s attention to him by raising his hand for permission to use the pencil sharpener at the front of the class. He dared not stand from his desk with so much attention placed upon him that might notice the strange steps the secret kept within his left sneaker forced upon his gait.

  “Is everything alright, Hudson?” Mrs. Jordan’s nostrils wavered as she smelled disturbance festering among her desks. “Are there any problems with your sentences? It isn’t going to be long until the tent is ready for us, and we’re not going to the gymnasium until everyone finishes those sentences on the board.”

  Clay Jenner’s composure cracked. “That’s not fair, Mrs. Jordan. Hudson never gets anything done with the rest of us. He didn’t even go in the tent last year. He was so afraid he just ran away. He actually thought the tent was a spaceship. It’s not fair to make us wait because of Hudson.”

  Hudson clutched at his pencil and stared at his desk. He was a third-grader, and he still failed to understand why the others did not simply leave him alone as he desired. Hudson never asked for the attention. Hudson never cried when no one invited him to their playground games. Hudson only wanted to be left to himself and to the markers stored within his desk.

  “Do you think there’s a good reason to exclude Hudson from our rules, Clay?” Mrs. Jordan’s eyes squinted, and the classroom squirmed. “Do you think I shouldn’t hold Hudson to the same standard to which I hold everyone else?”

  Clay shook his head. “None of our other teachers have before.”

  “You should know by now, Clay, that I am none of your other teachers.”

  Hudson’s knee trembled, and the secret he kept in his left sneaker seemed to grow larger in his imagination, pressing his toes more tightly together, pushing against his sole. He held his breath, certain that Mrs. Jordan would call him up to her desk to display the progress of his classwork.

  The intercom mounted in the ceiling cackled as electricity summoned it to life. Mrs. Jordan’s class gasped a short, expectant breath. And then, when the school turned most silent for expectation, a hurdy-gurdy melody dropped into the room. The music said that the tent had been raised. The performers summoned them with their hurdy-gurdy song.

  Hudson peeked at Mrs. Jordan as the hurdy-gurdy song played. He saw Mrs. Jordan momentarily smile before concealing it with a frown.

  “Alphabetical order at the door,” Mrs. Jordan instructed. “Everyone single-file before we enter the hall.”

  Huds
on kept his sight planted on the back of the head of the student in front of him as he entered the hallway with his classmates. The march soon carried Hudson through a pair of heavy double doors and into the gymnasium, its confines transformed in light and color. A performer dressed in an old, black suit greeted Hudson’s class, cranking the hurdy-gurdy melody out his strange contraption of a music machine. Paper chains of green and red, of orange and black, of blue and green snaked about the wooden floor and directed students in a counter-clockwise fashion, circling them towards the center of the gymnasium. Spotlights perched atop tall poles oscillated shafts of light that shifted through rainbow colors, the beams turning the gymnasium’s prevalent dust into sparkling pixies floating through the air. The visiting performers, dressed in old vests and older hats, in hoop dresses and lace, twirled and jumped about Hudson’s class. They strummed fiddles like guitars. They juggled bowling pins. They shaped giraffes from twisted balloons. A paper dragon, summoned to life by a team of entertainers shouldering the burden of the beast’s paper-mache body, snaked through the line and forced each student to smile.

  “Everyone behave as you choose your gift,” even Mrs. Jordan’s voice sounded magical. “I’m sure the performers have brought plenty to choose from.”

  The paper chains turned, and Hudson smiled as he came upon the folding tables crowded with thin, paperback books. The performers offered each student a free book on the day their tent came to school. Hudson scanned the titles and reeled at the variety of subjects presented to his class - books about butterflies, books about constellations and stars, books about folding origami, about presidents and aviators, about ghosts, about cars. Hudson selected a book filled with techniques to help illustrate comic book heroes, his imagination swirling as he quickly scanned pages detailing tricks to the drawing of fingers and faces, of costumes and of landscapes

  But even the decorations and the books were minor treasures compared to the massive tent of splattered color that rose in the center of the gymnasium. The tent scraped at the gymnasium’s tall ceiling. Its apron of fabric stretched across the entire floor. A filigree of equations and letters, of stick-people and of runes, circled the tent in wavering bands of silver and gold. Shadows of interior performers flickered in the glowing light pulsing from within the tent’s heart. Its inner space led students to swoon and wonder how a tent so big could fit into their gymnasium which on that day felt so small. Many students reached out a hand to touch the tent’s fabric, and many swore they felt an electrical surge from that magic that must have made that tent so spectacular.

  A gray-bearded man wearing a top hat and a red vest greeted the students at the tent’s entrance. “I know we’ve been gone for too long, but the tent takes us to such wonderful places. All you have to do is step inside and we’ll show you all where we’ve been.”

  Hudson recognized the performer as the man who had last year nearly caught Hudson as he had bolted out of the tent, suddenly afraid that the trip might fail to bring him back home, afraid of monsters he felt lurking in the gymnasium’s high girders. He wondered if that gray-bearded man would remember his cowardice. Hudson had certainly not forgotten how his shame had hurt. But as his uncle had advised him, Hudson reminded himself that the past could not be taken back, that the future would always provide opportunities for a person to show courage.

  “Step right this way and find your seat beneath our canopy,” the man’s eyes sparkled beneath the top hat. “Just leave your shoes in that pile outside our entrance before stepping inside to hear our stories and our songs.”

  Hudson froze. He felt the air seep from his lungs. Had he forgotten from the previous year that the performers demanded everyone to take of their shoes? Or was it a new rule that tripped Hudson’s plans? Hudson’s secret was hidden in his left sneaker, and he knew his chance to enjoy the performers’ splendors would be lost should that secret be discovered.

  “Come on, Hudson,” moaned Amy Zerlinger after Hudson attempted to retreat several steps backwards and only congested the line.

  “What’s wrong, Hudson?

  Mrs. Jordan appeared too quickly at Hudson’s side, and Hudson failed to think of any plan capable of protecting his secret. He was stranded in the middle of the line that pushed him closer to the tent, where Hudson suddenly, cruelly, feared he would find only further hurt instead of joy.

  Clay Jenner laughed from a position ahead of Hudson. “He’s getting frightened again! He’s going to run away like he did last year! He’s starting to cry all over again!”

  The face beneath the top hat smiled at Hudson. “It’s alright son. The past is past. I promise you’ll be safe. You’ll be back before you know it, and your shoes will be waiting for you. None of us mind anything about socks if you’re worried yours might not be white enough.”

  Hudson felt Mrs. Jordan tug at the shoelaces he had knotted that morning to protect his secret. He had hesitated to run, and now, he had no avenue towards which to turn, no way to protect the secret hidden in his left sneaker. Mrs. Jordan tugged, and Hudson was sobbing as she pulled the sneaker from his right foot.

  “It’s fine, Hudson,” Amy Zerlinger rolled her eyes. “You’ll see that the tent doesn’t even go anywhere.”

  “You’re an expert at making knots,” said Mrs. Jordan as she unravelled the lace’s of Hudson’s left shoe. “Try to calm down. You’re going to have a great time.”

  The man at the entrance winked. “I promise not to disappoint. You can sit right next to me if you want.”

  Mr.s Jordan pulled the left sneaker free, and Hudson held his breath as he heard his secret clatter upon the gymnasium floor. He closed his eyes so he would not have to look upon his teacher’s anger, so that he did not have to witness how his classmates snickered. Hudson heard his secret rattle on the floor, and he knew he would not experience the tent’s magic for another year.

  Mrs. Jordan sighed and called Amy Zerlinger forward. “See that everyone follows the performers’ instructions, and write down the names of any of your classmates who make any trouble. Hudson and I need to go straight to the office, and we’re going to miss this year’s show.”

  Mrs. Jordan gripped Hudson’s wrist and pulled his shuffling, shoeless feet away from the tent and out of the gymnasium. Mrs. Jordan’s mercy was spent. What Hudson had carried into school could afford little forgiveness.

  Hudson doubted anyone would understand why he had carried the blade with him so that he could be prepared. He doubted anyone would care to listen to how much that knife meant to him.

  Worse of all, Hudson doubted he would ever get that pocketknife back.

  * * * * *