Free Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce

Flynn says.
    The shirt is yellow cotton with a white rugby collar and the Grasshopper patch sewn over the heart. It hangs loose on Ryan’s small, pale body.
    Flynn pulls up in front of the director’s cabin, and a man in a green T-shirt much too tight for his potbelly comes out with a clipboard. He wants their names. He wants their district number. He’s got the pen top in his mouth, a small red ink stain on his bottom lip. What was that last name again? The man’s sweat drips down onto the pages. How do you spell that last name? He’s shuffling through the pages. That was with a
C
? No, he doesn’t seethat one on here. Wait, here it is, on the back. There’s a problem. Ryan hasn’t met all the requirements for camp. He still needs eighteen beads. That’s three levels up from where Ryan is now, which is nowhere, according to the information on the clipboard. Can Flynn show documentation that Ryan has earned even one bead? Flynn can’t, of course, but he explains that he’s cleared this with Ryan’s Head Guide, Bill Tierney, who can sort all this out for them. Special arrangements have been made for Ryan.
    The man puffs out his upper lip with his tongue, sniffing at his blond mustache hairs. All right, he says, wait over there. The walkie-talkie, crackling all along, comes off his belt, and he asks for someone named Bryant. Father and son sit together on a bench outside the cabin, slapping mosquitoes off their legs and arms and necks. Flynn didn’t bring any bug spray.
    Tierney arrives on a golf cart. He’s wearing a linen shirt with pink stripes and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He doesn’t smile or wave.
    â€œWhat can I do you for?” Tierney asks the man with the clipboard.
    â€œThis gentleman says you told him he could bring his kid, even though he doesn’t have his beads.”
    Tierney lean-sits on the front of the golf cart, his arms crossed. “Right,” he says. “I’m sorry. I meant to call the district office about that. This going to be a problem?”
    â€œMaybe,” the man says. “The rules are pretty clear.”
    The two men are talking low now, their lips quiet and slow like butterfly wings. Flynn can’t hear what they’re saying. Tierney laughs a little and pats the man on the back. The man nods and motions to the lake. Tierney nods then. Maybe Flynn should goover and join them. He can help make this okay. He stands too late. The conference that will determine his son’s fate has ended. Bill Tierney strides over to the bench.
    â€œHere’s the deal,” he says to Flynn. “Ryan can stay. Only he won’t be able to do some of the activities since he doesn’t have his beads. Like the canoe trip to the island on the lake. That’s for kids who’ve got their Swimming Skill Bead and their CPR Bead of Mercy. You understand, right, why we can’t let him go on that trip?”
    Flynn says he understands, of course. He gives his son’s shoulder a squeeze.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    The tent is old and once belonged to Flynn’s father. The canvas is military green; the paraffin wax that kept its corners sealed from the rain has long since lost its shine. Father and son tie the canvas strips to the metal poles they’ve erected in the wide-open field with all the other tents. In all directions are tents: red, yellow, orange, and green nylon rain-flies spilling out around the domes like fruit candies melting in the afternoon sun. Beside every tent is a parked car. The field buzzes with bugs and the sound of a dozen car-powered air pumps blowing up mattresses, palatial beds two and three feet thick. Flynn has brought a number of thin foam pads and stacks them under their sleeping bags.
    â€œDo you want the left or right?”
    The boy picks the left.
    â€œWhere’s your pillow?”
    He forgot his pillow, but here’s Mookie the blue bear,