Free Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce Page A

smuggled inside a pillowcase.
    â€œI thought we agreed not to bring the bear.”
    His son prepares a throne of T-shirts for the bear at the end of his sleeping bag. Its cold dark eyes are fixed on the two of them.
    â€œJust for the first night,” Flynn says.
    A bell echoes across the lake, and fathers and sons, a hundred of them, begin the boisterous migration to the dining hall. Like a herd of buffalo, Flynn imagines, and they’re part of it. The boys, ages six to fourteen, run circles around the fathers, some as old as sixty.
    One small boy with a round and ruddy face stops to examine an overturned kayak. “Snake,” he announces, and they all gather around him to admire the discovery, their first significant encounter with wildlife for the week. A dark, fat snake is coiled in the sand by the water.
    Water moccasin, one of the fathers determines, and then they’re all moving away at once, the fathers dragging the boys backward by their arms and shirttails. Someone should tell the camp director! Snakes in the lake again! Hadn’t they hired someone to take care of this after last summer? Remember that kid last year who somehow trapped a water moccasin in a shopping bag and hung it from the rafters in the shower house?
    â€œClearly that kid didn’t have any Beads of Mercy,” someone up ahead jokes.
    â€œHe wasn’t allowed back this summer,” yells someone farther back.
    They converge on the flagpole outside the dining hall. The man with the clipboard has traded his paperwork for a megaphone. The boys are organized into single-file lines radiating out from the flagpole like spokes from a hub. Flynn helps Ryan findhis place, the line for his group, Bill Tierney at the head. Two Grasshoppers take the flag down and fold it military-style into careful triangles. Time for the Grasshopper salute. Time for the Grasshopper Pledge.
There’s a way around every wall,
hundreds of shrill voices yell out in near-unison. Time for dinner.
    â€œGo ahead,” Flynn tells Ryan. “Find us a couple of seats.”
    Flynn lingers on the porch, where a handful of men furtively smoke their cigarettes. They huddle near the steps, a conspiracy of tobacco. Flynn asks for a light. The man who gives him one introduces himself as John Price. “You a newbie?” he asks.
    Flynn says he is. John Price sports a chinstrap beard that doesn’t much help disguise his marshmallow chin. He owns a dealership. Toyotas and Hyundais, he adds. Ever need a new car, give him a call. Come on by. That’s how this works. Grasshoppers isn’t just for the kids. The dads stick together, you know? Help each other out.
    Flynn nods his head enthusiastically. He couldn’t agree more. That’s how this should work.
    One father says, “Marty, your kid ever tell you about his Truth Bead?”
    â€œNever,” says Marty.
    â€œMy kid never told me neither,” another man says. “I guess that shouldn’t bother me, but it does.”
    â€œOnly two Beads of Truth,” John Price explains to Flynn, “and the dads never get to know what they mean. The Head Guides decide when the kid is ready. I think it’s just like a single sentence that gets whispered in their ear. But the kids aren’t supposed to repeat it. Ever. I’ve heard that the first one is about the nature of time. My kid’s got that one, but he’s just as tight-lipped as the rest of them. When I press him about it, he smiles at me likeI’m an idiot who wouldn’t understand. Just wait, it’ll drive you crazy when your kid gets his.”
    Bowls of mashed potatoes, platters of chicken fingers, and pitchers of lemonade are on all the tables when they go inside the dining hall, a flurry of hand-waving, lip-smacking, and spilled drinks.
    â€œWouldn’t mind a little vodka in that lemonade,” John Price says with a forced laugh before wandering off to find his son.
    Flynn navigates