The Presence (7 page)

The borders of this new construction were established by three untouchable bastions of white Raleigh—the oldest women's college in the state, the capitol, and the governor's mansion. Because TJ's house was two blocks over on the safe side of the governor's mansion, it was spared from destruction, but the neighborhood was gone forever. Land prices shot up a hundredfold, apartment complexes filled every free square inch, and the old houses that remained were purchased for astronomical figures and remodeled with no regard whatsoever for cost. The street was now lined with stained-glass front doors, lead-pane windows, split-oak sunrooms with polarized glass, and heated swimming pools. Compared to its neighbors, TJ's place looked positively country.

Usually Jeremy would pace around the front yard as if he were marking off footage for apartments, shade his eyes, squint around, and say something like, Maybe we oughtta keep one of the trees and pen it in a cutsey little courtyard. Call it Oak Hills Estate. How's that sound? Today he just started unloading the car.

“You'll come in for a while, won't you?” Catherine asked.

Jeremy hefted the larger cases. “Yeah, I feel like an old hound dog that's gotta worry this bone a little longer.”

When the car was unpacked and Jeremy was slumped into a chair on the back porch, Catherine brought him a tall glass of lemonade. A few minutes later TJ came walking out with an unfolded letter fluttering from his hand.

“What've you got, honey?”

He adjusted his spectacles, lifted the letter, and read, “Dear Mr. Case: Your office informed me that you were on vacation and could not be reached. I have taken the liberty of writing to your private address, as this is a matter of utmost urgency. Please call me the moment you return, as I would like to discuss a very important opening here in Washington, a position which I am sure will interest you greatly. However, there are a number of other candidates being considered, and it is therefore absolutely necessary that I discuss this with you as soon as possible.” He looked up. “Sincerely yours, John Silverwood, U.S. House of Representatives.”

There was a moment's silence before Jeremy said, “You sound so calm. Doesn't that scare you even the littlest bit?”

“Of course I'm scared,” TJ answered. He pulled up a chair, sat down, and pointed at Jeremy's glass with his spectacles. “Honey, do you think I could have one of those?”

Catherine didn't move. “You look about the most unscared of any man I've ever seen.”

“My fears all seem a little puny in the face of this,” he responded, holding up the letter. “The Lord has called me, and I'm going to do what He tells me to do. It's as simple as that. Yes, I'm scared. But how I feel about it doesn't change things one bit.” He reached out his free hand. “Let me have some of that, Jem.”

“You know what's the strangest thing of all?” Jeremy paused for a sip before handing the glass over. “Here we are, sittin' ‘round here, takin' our ease, talkin' like we would over the weather. If somebody'd asked you a week ago what you'd do if the Lord called your name, you'd have said, Dance down the aisles singin' praises.”

“I'm too worried to dance,” Catherine said quietly, her hands clenched in her lap. “I feel as if my life is about to go flying off in some cross-eyed direction and I don't have anything to say about it.”

“You've got the right to say anything you want about this or anything else,” TJ responded gently.

Catherine sighed. “No, I don't.” She clasped the arms of her rocker and pulled herself erect. “I'm too tired to talk about it anymore. Good night.” Without looking at either man, she walked into the house.

“I oughtta be goin',” Jeremy said, sliding forward in his chair.

But TJ waved him back. “Stay a while longer, will you? I need a little company right now.”

“What about Catherine?”

“I learned long ago never to broach a difficult subject with Catherine when she's tired.” TJ hesitated, then said, “I've got to do this, Jem.”

Jeremy looked into the distance, blind to the brilliant sunset painting the sky. He nodded his head slowly a few times. “It's still hard as the dickens for me to accept.”

“In a way it is for me too.” TJ lifted the letter again. “It sure makes me feel better to have this.”

“Makes it more real, you mean?”

“No, I've never questioned that. It's hard to describe, but the moment was so real it's made the rest of my life seem a little unreal. Like watching shadows. No, that's not right.” TJ shook his head. “I don't know how to explain it.”

“Sort of a change of perspective?”

“Yes. I suppose that's as close as you can come to the feeling in words. A rearranging of all my priorities. Like everything in my life has suddenly become a lot less important than I thought it was.”

“I can't say as I've ever experienced anything like what you've just told me about.”

“Neither have I,” TJ returned quietly.

“Still, I've felt His guiding hand in my life so many times,” Jeremy said, his eyes on some unseen point beyond the porch railing. “Not some explosion like what's happened here, but I've never doubted it was His voice.”

“The still small voice that guides your life,” TJ agreed. “The daily miracles we so often take for granted.”

“That's for sure. It shames me to think how I ignore His presence because it's so gentle. Makes it so easy to pretend like I've done it all myself.” Jeremy glanced over at his friend. “But I tell you what. All this takes my breath away.”

“Mine too.” TJ looked down at the paper in his hand. “It's a miracle. And this letter … you know, I think He gave it as a sort of reassurance. A reminder that He's going to be there with me through it all.”

“Sing to the Lord, you saints of his; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”

The passage from Psalm 30 popped into TJ's mind as he passed through the oak doors and entered the Praise Hall of the Church of New Zion the next morning. It was a fitting note, especially after the surprise Catherine had dished up for breakfast.

His prayer time that morning had been spent mostly asking the Lord to turn his wife around. I can't do this without her, Father, he had said time and again. There's nothing on earth that I can say to change her mind if she sets herself against it. And it's not enough to have her grudgingly come along. You know it's not. Whatever you've got in store for me is going to tax me to the limit. I can feel it in my bones. I can't handle such a burden without Catherine beside me. She was awfully upset last night. And worried. I've spent most of the night feeling her anger and tension stretched out there beside me. I've been married to that woman for almost thirty years, and when she's like this, there's not a thing on earth I can say to her. It's up to you, Lord. I'm turning it over to you.

Then in typical fashion, once he had turned it over to God, TJ spent the better part of an hour worrying about possible arguments. Like his grandfather had often said, it was one thing to hand a problem over to the Lord; it was another thing entirely to let Him keep it.

He heard her clattering around in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee, setting the table for breakfast, putting out the frying pan, with none of her usual Sunday-morning humming and singing. His heart started a frantic beat, as though she were already standing in front of him, hand on her hip, head cocked to one side, eyes squinting in that mixture of scorn and disbelief that never failed to send him straight through the roof.

But when she appeared in the doorway, it was a Catherine he had not seen in years, a little shy and a little awkward and more than a little scared. Looking as if she wanted nothing more than to be held by her man. It was a look he had seen a great deal during their courtship days, and it was one of the many things about her that had captured his heart. With the arrival of their first daughter and all the worries and responsibilities of motherhood, those vulnerable moments had slowly slipped away.

TJ set down his coffee cup and rose to hold her, trying to remember the last time he had seen that look. And the moment he had her in his arms, all the worries and arguments fled like smoke on the wind, and all he could say was, “I can't do this without you, Catherine.”

She sighed and snuggled closer, her forehead seeking the familiar crook in his shoulder. Her soft voice floated up from his chest level. “Just tell me once more, are you absolutely, positively sure that it was God who spoke to you?”

“More sure than I've been about anything in my entire life.”

“You realize what this is going to do to our lives, don't you?”

He started to voice some platitude, like, it's going to work out all right, but caught himself in time. Despite a ferocious desire to protect her from what might not ever arrive, he admitted, “It worries me almost as much as thinking you might not be there with me.”

She sighed. “Just when I thought we could settle down, have some time for ourselves again. The kids are out on their own, you've finally gotten away from all that political mess, and what happens?”

Something in her tone said everything was going to be all right. He offered up silent thanks as he stroked her face and said, “I need you, Catherine.”

“You think I don't know that?” Her fingers traced a design down the length of his spine. “It's one thing to sit snug and comfy in church and ask God to speak through you, and something else entirely when it happens.”

“I expected a lot more doubts from you,” TJ confessed. “Things like, how can you be so sure, or why on earth did He choose you? I've been sitting down here for over an hour wondering what in heaven's name I could say to convince you. I think the thing that scared me most was fearing I might start doubting it myself.”

“I saw your face that morning,” Catherine said. “And I felt the love and light pouring out of you the rest of the time we were together on the boat. I heard your voice when you tried to tell me about it. I saw the letter waiting for you when we got home. All night I've been trying to come to grips with what all that means. There's a part of me that wants to call you a fool, honey. I feel the power inside me to destroy what you're trying to do, and I've been wrestling with it all night. You can't imagine what it feels like, knowing I've got the chance to hold on to all this and knowing I can't.”

“I didn't know you felt that way about the politics,” TJ said.

“It wasn't the politics.” She sounded a little impatient now. “It was everything. The pressure you were under, having to stand there and watch what the world was doing to you, knowing there was nothing I could do but be there. You can't begin to imagine how helpless that made me feel.” She pulled away far enough to look up at him. “And just when I thought it was finished, you're telling me it's going to start all over again.”

He couldn't help it—he had to laugh at that one. “Of all the ways I could think to describe you, girl, the absolute last one I'd think of is helpless.”

“Who you calling girl?” She rewarded him with a smile. “You telling me I could just say the word and make all this go away?”

“That what you want?”

“Part of me,” she said, suddenly sober again. “The part I can't listen to wants to fight this as hard as I've ever fought anything in my life.”

“I can't do this without you, Catherine,” he said again.

“Don't I know it,” she retorted sharply, and held him close in a fierce embrace, then abruptly let him go. “Now, if I don't stop with this nonsense and see to breakfast, we're gonna be late for church.”

****

Church that morning was the old shell of a structure that had been the first Church of New Zion. It was a rough-hewn hall, measuring thirty-five paces long and eighteen wide. The exposed rafters were supported by five thin tree-trunks that had been cut and trimmed and stripped and laid in place lengthwise down the roof. Another seven logs, thicker and broader this time, formed the hall's supports. They were planted deep into the earth—three at each end of the hall and one in the middle, with the three central pillars cut higher so as to support the A-frame roof. The two doors at the back opened to either side of the supporting trunk. The walls and floors were split-timbered and held in place with wooden pegs; the original builders could not afford nails.

The oil-skin windows had long since been replaced by glass, but many of the first lead panes were still there, run like clear frozen molasses to thicken and broaden at the base over these past hundred and twenty years. The exterior had been sanded and repainted so often that the boards seemed to flow in curving waves. The roof had been torn up and replaced several times, most recently with untreated hickory planking closely resembling the original. Before that, the roof had been modern asphalt tile, which everyone had loathed. It had totally destroyed the feel of the place, and had lasted only nine months before passion overcame practicality, and the new one had been laid.

The simple structure, unadorned save for the whitewashed wooden cross that rose above the nave, stood in a grove of dogwoods. They had been planted the year after the church had been completed, and nowadays totally dwarfed the hall. In the springtime the sight of the simple whitewashed church standing amidst a cloud of blossoms stopped traffic on the highway and drew photographers from all over the state.

The newer church, made of brick and nine times as large, stood about a hundred yards farther away from the road. It was separated from the original edifice by the gardens and the parking lot because, as some liked to claim, it was the only way the worshipers could hear themselves think. TJ's grandfather had been head deacon when the newer church's cornerstone had been laid in 1932, and had fought tooth and nail to erect the second hall beyond the dogwoods. He had threatened to tie himself to the first tree to be cut down, and had said the only way they would harm one blossom was by spilling his own blood first.