From the Top by Michael Perry

it. I guess you could have called it injured cereal. But compared to a vat of oatmeal, that injured cereal was pretty good stuff. I remember one time my brother and I were watching TV at my grandma’s and that Total cereal ad came on, the one where they stack up twelve bowls of Froot Loops next to one bowl of Total and the announcer says, “You’d have to eat twelve bowls of Froot Loops to equal the nutrition in one bowl of Total.” My brother looked at me and said, “I’ll take the twelve bowls of Froot Loops.”
    Anyways. I have no complaints about the deli tray, although I do have to say that seeing this is Wisconsin, next time would it kill ’em to throw in a little lefse? I’m gonna have my people talk to their people.
    * Yep, I know: “somewheres.” Was gonna change it for the book, but that’s how we say it where I’m from. Especially when we’re feeling comfortable. See also: “Youse guys” and “Anyways …”
A WORLD AWAY
    When I was a little boy, maybe four or five years old, Grandma got us a tent. We pitched it in the front yard, and I still carry a vivid memory of the separate world that tent created. A world that smelled of tromped grass and stale sunlight. A world that made my little liver quiver as I imagined myself an explorer lost somewhere in the land of Tarzan even though Mom and pancakes were just forty feet away. Maybe that was the best part about a tent: it created a world away.
    I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian sect. I like to say that because it makes people pull up short—they think I was raised inside a walled compound where we hoarded diesel fuel and fertilizer. (We actually did hoard diesel fuel and fertilizer, but we used them to raise corn.) Part of being in this church was that we didn’t actually have churches; we met for Sunday morning meeting in regular houses except for the time once a year when we met for what we called convention. For convention we came from all over the state and convened on a farm, where we parked our cars in the hayfield and held services in an old barn. Our hymns rose through the rafters of the haymow. When it was time to eat we’d head across the grounds to a big old army surplus tent. We gathered outside the flap and waited. When everyone was ready, the dinner bell rang and someone pulled back the flap. We filed in quietly and found our place in long rows of tables and benches. The silverware was wrapped in a napkin and all of the cups and dishes were upside down, Isuppose for sanitary reasons. We sat in silence. Part of the reason we were quiet is because we were churchly, but there is also something in the nature of a tent that is conducive to quietness and reflection—it’s the scent of the earth and the grass but it’s also the enveloping canvas that shelters you and dampens and tempers any noise that does arise. So we’d sit there quietly and then a sister minister would lead us in singing grace. When we hit the final note there was a grand clatter of cutlery and porcelain and coffee mugs being flipped over and the tent would soon fill with the aroma of what we called convention stew, which was your basic hearty beef-and-vegetable stew made in a tureen the size of a washing machine.
    Not all of my tent memories are so heart-warming. When I was still a tot, Mom took me to the circus. About halfway through the production a clown began soliciting audience volunteers for his act. I scrunched down next to Mom but he homed right in on me. Plucking me out of the crowd, he stood me in the center ring. I could feel the heat of the lights as he spoke into his microphone.
    â€œWhat’s your name, little boy?”
    â€œMike,” I whispered.
    â€œOh, you’re going to have to talk louder than that,” said the clown. “What’s your name?”
    â€œMike,” I squeaked. All this time the clown was keeping the microphone to