The Presence

by T. Davis Bunn

  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.

  TJ’s great-grandfather had been born a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. When the Civil War ended, he was a boy of thirteen who had already spent five years of servitude in the fields of a white master. His family banded together with twenty-three others, a total of ninety-nine souls, and headed north, where life was supposed to be better. They had no specific goal nor a firm grasp of geography beyond the borders of the next few farms down the road. All their worldly goods were carried in two battered wheelbarrows, a pushcart, and on their backs.

  The journey lasted over a year. When the band could not beg or forage enough food, they stopped to seek work. Steady labor was as scarce as money in those early Reconstruction days, and this, as much as anything, kept them heading north—always north.

  Miraculously, they all survived, including one toothless old grandmother of seventy-some years. And just at the point where they were ready to give up, when the bonding force of hope was no longer enough to keep the group from drifting apart, they happened upon a ramshackle Carolina community with more land than it could farm.

  It was a story repeated a thousand times throughout the South: All the white menfolk went off to fight, leaving the women to survive as best they could. With defeat came destitution, so the ladies sought out the shreds of other families with whom they could struggle for survival. Whole communities became ghost towns, leaving empty homes and untilled fields as the only legacy of what once had been.

  The band of travelers had chanced upon a small farming community that had lost every male over the age of fourteen. Every single one. Four hundred acres of prime tobacco land were going begging. And despite their best efforts, the white women were slowly starving.

  TJ’s great-grandfather had been one of the five men sent over to talk to the white women. They wanted to live there, they told the women. They would farm the land and tend the women’s homes as long as they could have enough land to build houses and plant gardens of their own. The white women made the men stand out in the pouring rain and kept three ancient bird guns trained on them. The women were clearly terrified of the newcomers. Only desperation made them listen. Finally they said that ten of the families could stay.

  The men refused. They had come too far together, been through too much, to split up now. Well, the eldest of the women demanded, what was to keep them fro
m sneaking in one night and slitting all their throats?

  It was TJ’s great-grandfather who replied. “The first house we want to build is God’s house,” he told the women. “All we want is a place to live as free men, like the Lord wants us to be.”

  The white women waited for the old lady to reply. She spent a long moment searching the black man’s face, then lowered her rifle and turned away.

  “Let them stay,” she said.

  They were home.

  The community stood on the outskirts of a tiny village called Zebulon, thirty miles, or one solid day on horseback, from the state capital. But the new arrivals didn’t know this. Nor did they care.

  A few among them knew how to read, and they were told to search the Scriptures for a name for their new home. The answer was found in the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah: “The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, “See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.” ‘ They will be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After, The City No Longer Deserted.”

  ****

  The old Praise Hall of the Church of New Zion rang with joy.

  “This is truly a day the Lord has made!” A pair of hands waved in the air, soon to be joined by a hundred others, swaying from side to side in a harmony punctuated by loud amens. “I pray that I will be where the Lord wants me to be!”

  “God is a GREAT God!” Catherine leapt up and shouted out, making TJ jump and shrink back in his corner. She lifted her hands and danced toward the center aisle, caught up now in the spirit of praise and worship. TJ heaved a silent sigh and sought safety in his Bible.

  The Church of New Zion’s original building was full to the bursting point, as it was most Sundays. The ancient floor thundered and shook to the pounding of two hundred feet as the faithful responded to the call to “dance their joy before the Lord!” The only soul who did not join in was TJ. From time to time pitying looks were cast his way. The man just didn’t realize all he was missing.

  There was no preacher in the Praise Hall. Those who felt they needed somebody else to talk for them were welcome in the big church across the way, the one with the pretty stained-glass windows and the choir all dressed up in robes and the reverend up there behind his fancy hand-carved wooden banister.

  When the new church had been completed in 1938, a lot of time and talk was spent worrying over what should be done with the old building. Some wanted it for a church social hall, others for a little museum; but the issue never came up for a vote. Long before the talk was over, a decision had been made. It was to be a Praise Hall.

  It took six years to finish the new church. They stopped every time the congregation ran out of money, started back when there was another hundred dollars in the kitty. Everything possible was done by church members, donating labor when the Depression years squeezed their purses dry. Other congregations called them fools for building in the height of the Depression; they held their tongues for the most part, saying only that bad times were the best times to praise the Lord.

  At first it was only the older people who attended the praise meetings, the ones who remembered how it was back before the church had a regular preacher. In the early days a traveling preacher would stop every few months and fill the little church with the word of the Lord. The rest of the time the congregation simply had to make do.

  They danced, they sang, they cried, and they prayed. Those who could would read the Scriptures, while the deacons and elders cared for the needs of the church and the congregation. During the long Sunday services, many of them lasting from dawn to dusk, those simple God-fearing people did the best they could with what they had.

  Most folks were mighty pleased with the new church, to have a regular preacher come in and call their little settlement home. Still, there were some who yearned for the old days, when they did as the Spirit called them, spoke when the Lord told them, ministered as they were led. And after the newness of the church had worn off a little, this group began meeting back in the old hall. Ignoring the criticism of those who called it the way of po’ black folks, their cries of joy rang out loud and clear in the Carolina air.

  But it was the new preacher who finally set the seal of approval on the old Praise Hall.

  “There’s a certain smugness that’s set in among us,” Reverend Taylor said to the congregation about a year after they had moved into the new church. Amos Taylor was then a tall gangly young man, but his eyes glinted with a holy fire behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Yessir,” he said, “there’s a lot of people walkin’ around these parts with their noses stuck up in the air. Better watch out, is what I’m here to tell you, else you’re gonna see the Lord come along and slap you awake. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

  He stopped and looked out over his congregation. “Why don’t y’all just try and sit still for a second. You’re always tellin’ your children to do it. Now how about a little of that same lesson for you folks. Just sit down there right quiet, stop your fannin’, now, nobody’s gonna faint. Just sit there and tell me what you hear. Wait. What’s that? You hear what I’m hearin’? Is that joy I’m listenin’ to? Is that somebody out there singin’ praises to the Lord? Why, yes, I do believe that is.”

  The reverend’s eyes were blazing now. “There’s been something very alarmin’ brought to my attention. Something that scares me mightily. Know what it is? It’s pride. It’s greed. It’s the fear that freezes my belly up solid, scarin’ me so bad I can’t sleep at night, thinkin’ that so many of my flock are gonna burn for all eternity. You hear what I’m sayin’ out there? There’s people out there listenin’ to me that think they’re better off now that they sit in some fancy church, listenin’ to somebody else stand up here and do all the work.

  “Listen up, you sinners. You let me do the work, the Lord’s gonna know it. He don’t give you salvation for comin’ here. No sir. He’s gonna let you in if you BELIEVE. Now tell me something. Who’s the stronger believer? The one who sits in here and wishes that old fool would shut up so they can get back to their dinner, or the ones over there across the way, singin’ and shoutin’ their hearts out, praisin’ their Lord?”

  Not only did the bickering stop, but the old hall began to fill up almost every Sunday. And when the services ended, when the congregation in the new hall walked calmly out into the Carolina sunshine, shaking hands and smiling and talking politely in little groups, the doors to the old building beneath the dogwoods would slam back, and out would pour a storm of singing, clapping, shouting, hand-waving people, eyes uplifted to heaven. Laughing and embracing and praising God. And the polite small talk would dry up in front of the new church like dew on a hot summer morning.

  Still there were those who sought to leave the old ways behind, to forget the horrors of the past and the old ways of worship with them. They sought to mimic the white worshipers, calling their way civilized; and in their quiet stuffy way these people threatened to tear the church apart. But Reverend Amos Taylor and his elders stopped that before the roots of destruction could gain hold.

  The church continued to invite the circuit-riding preachers and traveling evangelists to visit. And every time a guest preacher was invited to fill the pulpit, Reverend Amos escaped to the Praise Hall, along with his deacons and elders. It became an unspoken rule that no one could become a church leader unless he had put in his “hard time,” as it came to be known.

  And so the little church in the dogwood grove remained, and grew, and taught future generations sacred lessons about their heritage.

  ****

  “The Lord ain’t never late. He may not be early, but He’s always on time. His time. It’s your time that ain’t right.”

  TJ loved the services in the Praise Hall, especially once Catherine had exploded up to dance and shout and sing for both of them. He had never been able to let go like that. Spontaneity was not a trait he knew even on a nodding
basis. But his heart was filled by what he felt and heard, and despite the disparaging looks from some of his fellow worshipers, TJ always sensed that this was what was most important.

  “When Jesus came in, the devil went out!” Another sister moved to the front and faced the swaying congregation. “There ain’t room for both in my life!”

  “God is a great God!” another responded above the amens.

  The sister started her testimony, and TJ made note of her opening words in his little book. The leather-bound volume was dog-eared; he went through a couple notebooks a year, filling them with his thoughts during worship and study, including some of his own prayers. The congregation had long since grown accustomed to his scribbling, and looked on it as one of a variety of strange habits collected and savored by TJ Case.

  The Praise Hall had no podium, no organ, no hymnals, no trappings whatsoever. There were seven pews on one side, eight on the other, all scarred and bowed by years of service. The floor was worn smooth by the scraping of a hundred thousand shuffling, dancing feet. High up near the eaves, the walls were still chinked with clay for insulation and burned black with the soot of countless kerosene lanterns. The only concessions to modern convenience were the string of electric bulbs hanging from the central pillar and a cranky oil stove set against the front wall.

  “They call us unlearned men,” the sister finished, hoarse and sweaty from her testimony. “That’s all right. They called the apostles unlearned men too.”

  “Say it, sister,” called her husband from his place at the back.

  “Listen to my man,” she said, pointing out and down like a hip basketball player. “Look back there at that smiling face and tell me the Lord don’t work miracles! What you see is a man transformed!”

  “Praise God!”

  “What you see is a man healed in body and mind!”

  “Washed clean from sin!”

  “What you see is a man who learned the message of love!”