The Presence Read online

  “Amen, sister, amen!”

  “Snatched from the brink, saved from the flames, brought back to the heart of our Lord!” She raised her arms above her head, closed her eyes, and sang to the rafters, “Lord, Lord, I do glorify you! Night and day I glorify my Father! You healed my marriage, brought peace to our family! I praise the Lord for what He’s done in my home!”

  Her husband’s deep baritone broke out into “Amazing Grace,” and the whole room took it up, singing and clapping and threatening to lift the roof from the eaves with the power of their sound.

  TJ closed his eyes, humming his own tone-deaf tune. As often happened in such moments, he found himself looking back over an earlier experience, seeing it from the standpoint of one freed from earthly bonds. He listened to the music as it soared, unguided by choir or instrument, and he remembered the long-distance telephone conversation he’d had that morning just before he and Catherine left for church.

  ****

  Congressman John Silverwood had been blunt. “You’re finished down there, TJ. Finished for good, if you’re thinking of trying to sneak back up some local political ladder.”

  TJ made some noncommittal sound and listened to him launch into what TJ called the softening-up process, a strong tool in the hands of a skilled negotiator. Make the man feel, really believe deep down in his heart, that his only hope lay in doing what the other wanted.

  “The thing is,” Silverwood went on, “you need to get away, make a name for yourself, and then come back. The local ladder’s unnecessary. You’ve already climbed it. You can’t stay around as a loser, TJ. You have to go away and return as a different kind of winner.”

  “I understand,” TJ said. He had come to know Silverwood fairly well during the election process and had found him to be a direct man with an opinion. He was manipulative, yes, but a basic forthright honesty seemed to keep him from being shifty. He played the chess game of politics with skill, deftly maneuvering power and people to obtain what he wanted whenever possible. But he told you up front what he was after and how he felt about the issues at hand. TJ felt comfortable with the man, despite their very basic differences of opinion on so many levels.

  For one thing, Silverwood was not really all that concerned about education. TJ had long since accepted that as fact. It was simply another issue that could gain him what he wanted, which was political power. Anyone with a grain of sense could see that Silverwood was determined to climb just as high as he could up the political mountain.

  “You must have noticed it, old buddy,” Silverwood said. “Since the election, how many friends have you lost?”

  “I haven’t been around enough to find out.”

  “You’ll see soon enough then. They won’t know what to say to you. You’ll see that sense of shared humiliation in their eyes. They’ll hide behind a barrier of hostility every chance they get. Either that or the fakiest good-old-boy grins you’ve ever had to put up with. It’ll make you feel as if they don’t even remember your name.”

  That’s not the issue here, TJ said to himself, perhaps because he could feel the truth in the man’s words and found himself drawing away from the shame of his defeat. All he said was, “That makes sense.”

  “Of course it does. And what’s the reaction of the black community gonna be? Your endorsement of me split them right down the middle. Either you move fast and consolidate, or you lose them all. They’ll turn like the tide and surge back behind the party ticket. Know where that’ll leave you?”

  “Left out,” TJ responded, partly because he knew that was what Silverwood wanted to hear, and partly because he knew it was true. He stifled a sigh and said silently, you seem awfully far away right now, Father.

  “You’ll be high and dry, old buddy. Beached and left to rot. On the other hand, now, if you can just get out from under this and pull a hat trick somewhere else, you’ll come back in higher than when you left.” Silverwood paused, changed gears, and asked, “This is the first election you’ve ever lost, isn’t it?”

  “The first one.”

  “There’s a delayed reaction. I know you think the worst is over and I’m talking rubbish, but it’s true. I’ve been there, I’m sorry to say. Dealing with a political loss was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. Some days I really got paranoid. Did people talk about me behind my back? Was I gonna lose my business clients because they wanted to stick with a winner? Did my family think I was a loser? It went on for over a year. I tell you, TJ, dealing with your loss would be a lot easier if you were winning somewhere else.”

  “It makes sense, John, it really does.”

  “Then you’re interested.” It was not a question.

  “Yes, I guess I am.”

  “Excellent,” Silverwood said, clearly pleased. Then added hastily. “But don’t go making any major plans, TJ, not just yet. And for heaven’s sake don’t breathe a word about it to anyone. There’s a lot of work left to be done. A lot. This is a major deal we’re talking about here, and I’m gonna have to sweat blood to make it go.”

  TJ allowed himself a small smile. This was rule two in the political game. Present the deal as though you were championing the most difficult cause of the century. He would have been willing to lay odds that the appointment was already his.

  And that was rule three. Never go public with anything until the deal is sewn up; then make it sound as if it was a touch-and-go effort. People would remember a favor a lot longer if they thought the giver had spent long and sleepless nights struggling to make it happen. In the perverse way of human nature, they would want it more if they felt there was a good chance of not receiving it in the first place.

  “I’m very grateful for all your thoughtfulness,” TJ said dryly.

  “Of course you are. That’s why I want to bring you to Washington as fast as I can.” It was the honesty at work. “I’m up here sweating my tail off, trying to find me a few trustworthy friends in this city. You wouldn’t think that’d be too difficult, now, would you?”

  Silverwood suddenly sounded very tired. “I tell you, TJ, it’s like squeezing blood from a stone. I don’t mind helping the other guy out, and I don’t mind sharing the pie. But if a man says he’s with me, well, I expect him to be with me through thick and thin. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Of course you do. Okay. Lemme tell you what we’re thinking about up here.” There was the sound of a creaking chair, a desk drawer opening, and TJ smiled again. It was one of Silverwood’s habits. He would lean dangerously far back in his swivel chair, kick off his shoes, open a desk drawer, and stick his toes into the recesses. TJ had seen him do it countless times during the campaign.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about this education thing,” Silverwood said. “How much it means to you and how much plain good sense you made when you talked about it. Given the right position, you could really carry it forward here in Washington. You see what I mean?”

  “Yes.” Despite himself, TJ felt the excitement rise. Education was the issue closest to his heart, the single most important point he had championed during his political career.

  “The administration’s going to be under a lot of pressure to do something about education. The campaign was full of promises, you know that. The problem is, they didn’t offer much in the way of solid policies to back them up. They’re gonna have to scramble for new programs. If the White House doesn’t hit Congress hard and fast on this one, the Democrats are going to take the ball and run with it.”

  “They’re under pressure, aren’t they?” Was this what God intended, that he go and come back a winner, with a new education bill as a feather in his cap?

  “Sitting under the gun,” Silverwood agreed. “And that’s where you come in. I’d like to see you inside the White House, TJ. My man on the spot. Think you’d like it?”

  “I’m your man, John.” TJ heard the strength in his own voice and prayed that the Father would not let him be led astray.

  “Th
at’s right, you are.” Silverwood laughed to take the sting out of his words. “It’ll be good to have a real ally up here, TJ, someone I can trust. Not just today, but as long as we’re up here.” He paused long enough to make sure TJ understood fully, then went on, “Well, I can’t promise anything, not yet. But you can be sure that I’ll be working on this like a kid on a lollipop. I’m gonna put myself on the line, see if I can’t get this one for you. You stay close to the phone, old buddy. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got something definite.”

  ****

  TJ flicked through the pages of his little notebook, marveling at the profound wisdom gifted him by these simple people. His eyes caught on several phrases, and he felt the Holy Spirit illuminate the words.

  “The race doesn’t go to the swift or the strong. It goes to the one who finishes the race.”

  “He is our hope. Our only hope. And His line is always open. It’s you who’s got to stay on the line.”

  “If you’re ashamed of Him, He’s ashamed of you. Love Him. Serve Him. God is my everything. God is my all in all.”

  As though on cue, the congregation began the final hymn, the same one that closed all the Praise Hall services. TJ rose to his feet as the rear doors were flung open and the congregation flowed out, singing and clapping and filling the tiny grove with their joy: “It’s not my mother, nor my father, but it’s me, oh, Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.”

  A cold wind greeted him as he left the chapel. Bundled into his overcoat, he stood beneath the naked dogwoods and gazed at the blue-blue depths overhead. He heard Catherine’s laughter and turned around.

  With her was a woman he had known since childhood, Alice Neally. It was hard to look at this gray-haired matron of over two hundred pounds and recall the elfin sprite who had climbed the maples in the backyard and challenged him to see who could reach the uppermost branches first.

  “You write down some pretty things today, chile?” Alice opened her generous mouth and laughed, and a bit of the childhood spirit showed through. “I swear, TJ, we’s gonna have you up there in front next week, we sho’ is.”

  “Out of the question,” he replied. “You’ll simply have to let me worship in my own way.”

  “Listen to how that man talk. You got to get in the spirit, chile! Open yoah heart to the Lawd!”

  Catherine clasped his arm, drew up close, and said to Alice, “My husband wouldn’t know a good time if it came up and beat him over the head with a stick.”

  Alice laughed loud enough to turn heads over by the new church. “That’s the truth, that’s the truth.” She looked around. “Y’all seen that man of mine?”

  “I saw him walking over toward the cemetery,” TJ said.

  The air seemed to go out of the big woman’s body. “Three years in the grave, and that man still grieves over our little girl. They say it’s the woman who misses a chile, and the good Lawd knows I do, but nothin’ like that man.” Alice shook her head. “I wakes up some nights and hears him talkin’ to her, jes’ like she was settin’ there beside the bed. Like to scared me to death the first time I heard it. I turned on the light, and his eyes was all shut up tight, and I knew he was dreamin’. Near broke my heart, layin’ there listenin’ to him talk to his chile.”

  TJ and Catherine nodded their silent sympathy and walked with her to the edge of the dogwoods, where a knee-high, rusting iron fence marked the entrance to the cemetery.

  Closest to the trees lay the old graves. In the summer they were covered with bright flowers, planted each spring by the older women of the congregation. Today they were quiet and brown, each ringed by bits of brightly colored glass that sparkled in the winter sun. Back in the early days the people couldn’t afford tombstones, so they had marked their graves with bits of broken bottles. TJ always thought them gay and beckoning, as though those who remained behind were bent on celebrating the passage of their loved one on to a better place.

  He left the women and went over to stand in front of his grandfather’s grave. A tiny fence, no more than ten inches high, ran around this section of the yard, as it did around several other family plots. On one side of his grandfather was his grandmother’s grave. On the other was his mother’s.

  He knew his mother only from pictures as dated as his birth. His favorite was one taken not long before he was conceived, according to his grandmother. It was a portrait of a beautiful woman with skin the color of sourwood honey. Her nose was soft and round and close to her face. Her mouth was full and looked liable to smile at a moment’s notice. But she wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were filled with a deep, deep sorrow.

  His grandmother had told him that the picture had been planned as a surprise birthday present for TJ’s grandfather. The day they went to the studio, however, TJ’s mother had refused to face the camera. She knew, his grandmother had told him. She knew just exactly what was coming. She was just too much in love to change anything.

  TJ had been eight years old the day his grandmother first brought the picture out from the bottom of her hope chest. She sat in the old rocking chair beside the big windows and motioned for him to join her, which meant he was to stand beside her right leg. It had been his very own special place ever since he had grown too big to sit in her lap. She draped one bony arm around his shoulders, showed him the picture, and said, “That’s your momma.”

  TJ had seen countless pictures of her before. Every single room in his grandparents’ house contained at least a couple of pictures of his mother. But this one he had never seen before, and the power of that photograph took his breath away.

  Don’t let your grandfather see you looking at this, his grandmother warned him. He wouldn’t be pleased to hear I’d given it to you.

  Why not TJ asked, and saw the same unending sadness in his grandmother’s eyes that was in the photograph.

  Your grandfather cannot abide this picture, she told him. The day your momma went into the hospital, he took it off the mantel and told me to burn it. Told me it nigh on broke his heart to see it.

  With the candor of youth he had asked his grandmother, why doesn’t it bother you like that?

  She looked at him with unshed tears in her eyes and said, it does, child, it does. But I just have to keep telling myself that the good Lord knew what He was doing. If your momma hadn’t fallen in love with that man, there wouldn’t be this grandchild here beside me now.

  His grandmother loved to talk about what his mother had been like as a child, and her eyes would shine with laughter as she described her daughter’s saucy ways. She would glow with pride as she spoke about the honors won in the mostly white private school. Your momma was one of the first black women to graduate from that school, she told him, and the very first to graduate with honors.

  The school’s curriculum consisted of the last two years of high school and the first two years of college—what the proper families of that day called a “ladies finishing school.” TJ’s grandfather wanted his daughter to go to that school because it offered the best education in the state for young women. It was expensive, and her going there was frowned upon by some of their own people—and was certainly not approved of by most white folks. But the opinions of others never stopped TJ’s grandfather once he made up his mind.

  Then his grandmother would reach a point when she would grow extremely quiet, and the sadness and the tension would hang heavy in the air.

  TJ had never known what to do or say when his grandmother reached that point. He usually just waited, and she usually sighed a long breath and said, if I’ve asked myself once I’ve asked it a thousand times, whether we made a mistake in letting your mother go off to that school. There’s a hundred questions I’m set to ask the Lord when my time comes, but that one’s gonna be at the top of the list. Yes, Lord, once and for all you’re gonna put my poor mind to rest and tell me if I did as I should.

  All he had known was that she had run away and that she had later returned. Once, only once, TJ had asked his grandmother why his mother had left home
to go live up north.

  His grandmother turned around and looked at him as though she couldn’t quite place him in her mind. The look was so full of pain and longing that it had scared him worse than just about anything that had ever scared him before or since. Then her mind seemed to focus and she asked, what was that you said, child, her voice all soft and full of love. Nothing, he said, not wanting to bring back that awful look of suffering, not ever. I was just talking to myself.

  His grandfather, now, that was a completely different matter. Every time he talked about his daughter, a shadow would heave across his face for a moment; then his features would turn to stone.

  His grandfather had a face that always reminded TJ of those old portraits of American Indian chiefs—full of planes and hollows and sharp angles—all set under skin the color of ebony. The nose was a hatchet, the mouth a thin line that was kept from looking cruel only by the stern integrity that radiated from the man.

  His grandmother told him once that the old man was one-quarter Arapaho, one-quarter Choctaw, three-quarters saint, and one-third stubborn old goat. TJ said he didn’t think that all added up right. I’m not talking arithmetic, she replied sharply. I’m talking about your grandfather. He’s twice the man anybody else is, and ‘bout more than I can handle the best part of every day.

  His grandfather remained the memory that held him firmly to the path of the Lord. In his moments of greatest doubt and indecision, TJ always asked himself what his grandfather would have done in the same situation. It amazed him how other people were able to find their way down the twisting, winding road of life without someone like his grandfather to guide them.

  ****

  It startled him when Catherine came up and slipped her arm around his waist. She looked up at him with compassion and understanding. “You ready to go home, honey?”

  He looked back to the grave and said, “I miss that old man.”

  “I know you do,” she replied quietly, holding him close.

  Especially now, he thought to himself. I feel so weak, so vulnerable, so unsure of what I’m supposed to do.