“Special emphasis on education of gifted children,” Bella went on in her whiskey-and-cigarette rasp. “Answers to Mason Whitfield.” She turned to TJ. “Bet you haven’t even met the man yet.”
“Bella knows everything about everybody,” one of the women broke in. Her voice laid the compliment down heavy, but her eyes were saying something else entirely.
“It’s my job to know,” Bella said.
Thankfully the conversation turned to lighter topics, and TJ did what was clearly expected, which was to watch and listen. He felt it was all a theater put on for his benefit.
“I saw a good one today,” said the young man seated across from Bella. “A sign on somebody’s desk over in Commerce says, ‘The First Law of Bureaucracy: The first 90% of a job takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other 90%.’ ““That’s nothing,” said the woman across from TJ, shaking her head. Her spiky brown hair, stiff with mousse, didn’t move. “I had to go over to Senator Jenson’s office yesterday, and his secretary’s got this sign that says, ‘The more garbage you put up with, the more garbage you’re going to get.’ ““Yeah, I know her,” Bella said. She had the weariest eyes TJ had ever seen. “She tried to steal my coffee cup the last time she was in my office.”
“The one that says ‘The first guy who makes a sexist remark gets this hot coffee in his lap’? ““Yeah, I love that little grin the lady on the mug is wearing,” someone remarked.
“And that line on the reverse side, ‘Have a nice day.’ It’s perfect. Where’d you ever find it?”
“It’s a limited edition of one,” Bella replied smugly. TJ glanced at the other faces, realized they were paying her homage.
“You still liking your new job?” someone asked the woman across from him.
“It’s great,” she replied. “I landed in a real California-type agency. I feel totally at home. It’s so laid back you’d think the receptionist was passing out Valium.”
“Wow.”
As TJ listened to the empty banter, a change came over him. It was so gradual, so quiet in its approach, that he was not even sure when it began. But he did not question its arrival. It felt like a milder form of the sensations he had known that morning on the lake.
“It’s totally broke,” the woman was saying. “We get these daily memos asking if anyone wants to take early out, get pregnant, or sign on for a year’s leave of absence.”
“Sounds incredible.”
He was having difficulty concentrating on the conversation around him. His chest filled with some silent power—a living presence, a sense of higher awareness so strong that the scene before his eyes withdrew to a vast distance. The empty faces, the calculating eyes seemed like a dream. Only the sense of power growing within him was real.
“Yeah, just goes to show,” Carter Williams said, giving TJ a wink. “Dreams really do come true in Washington.”
“I guess it’s too early to ask what you’ll be doing?” one of the men asked TJ. The question was placed casually, but all eyes were on him now, ready to probe, study, and judge.
“I’m not exactly sure what my responsibilities will be,” TJ replied. He had real difficulty in saying the words. There was something else that needed to be done. He understood a growing purpose, a calm urgency, a need to be fulfilled. It did not matter that the sensation was illogical. The presence of the Holy Spirit was real. Guide me, Father, TJ prayed, and waited.
Bella finished her coffee and set her cup down with a clatter, as though demanding that attention return to her. “Well, you’ve just joined the only organization on earth that doesn’t discriminate,” she remarked.
The group was locked into an immediate embarrassment. Carter Williams looked straight at TJ, said nothing.
“Oh, there’s discrimination, all right,” one of the men said, trying to make a joke. “In Washington, though, it’s based on who’s got power and who doesn’t.”
“That’s not discrimination,” Bella declared flatly. “That’s politics.” She refused to see that she was making everyone thoroughly uncomfortable. “Black people here are just like anybody else. We don’t follow the slave mentality you still find in the rest of the country.”
Silence engulfed the entire table. The Presence within TJ reached out to Bella in unearthly tenderness, searching for her heart, seeking to fill the void mirrored in her eyes. It was as gentle as it was powerful, and the words simply came to him.
“Discrimination doesn’t begin with white against black,” he said quietly. “It’s a basic part of American society. The white lawyer looks down on the white truck driver. And the truck driver needs to look down on someone else just so he can feel a sense of worthiness too. You don’t have to go back to slavery to find the basis for discrimination. It’s everywhere. Here. Today. If you see yourself as superior to someone else for whatever reason, then you’re discriminating. If someone covets power as a means of showing superiority, he is discriminating.”
The table seemed frozen solid. TJ had the impression of several faces staring at him in openmouthed surprise, but all he could be certain of was the love he was feeling for this poor woman. The Presence within him simply poured itself out.
“The answer lies in the Bible,” he continued. “The apostle Paul tells us that we are all equal. All of us. If we can’t abide by this, then we are sinning. And the very worst kind of sin is the one which we don’t or won’t or can’t admit to.”
He stood and picked up his tray, and he felt all eyes at the table follow him. Before turning away, he said quietly, “It was nice meeting you all.”
As he was walking out of the cafeteria, Carter Williams caught up with him. “Man, I really admire what you said back there. But if you’re not out to commit professional suicide your first day on the job, you got to find some way to apologize to the Dragon Lady.”
“I have nothing to apologize for,” TJ replied.
“Did you hear me say anything about a cause? No, you didn’t. I’m not talking about logic here. I’m talking about revenge.” The man was clearly worried for him. “Bella’s been here since before the Civil War, and her only love in life is making hamburger outta staffers. Somebody told me she even did in a deputy secretary back in the Carter days. Absolutely neutered the guy.”
“‘And they went their way,’ “ TJ quoted, “‘joyfully proclaiming their thanks for being able to suffer in the name of their Lord.’ ““What’s that? Something from the Bible?”
“Acts,” TJ said.
“Yeah, well, all I got to say is, you better have the funeral service down real good. ‘Cause if you don’t find a way to get back on Bella’s good side, you’re gonna need it.” He patted TJ on the shoulder. “Be seeing you around. That is, if Bella leaves anything besides the bones.”
Chapter Seven
After supper that evening TJ told Jeremy what had happened during his first day on the job and about the doubts that were now working their way to the surface. He did not mention the unusual sense of God’s presence he had experienced in the cafeteria. Now that it was no longer evident, it was hard to believe that something unseen could have felt so real. But he did tell Jeremy about his encounter with Bella Saunders.
“I wonder maybe if I should have avoided it,” he concluded.
“Don’t seem to me you had any choice at all,” Jeremy replied.
“I could have stood up and walked away. Or just sat there and kept my mouth shut. I could have done a hundred different things, all but stand up and beat my chest.”
“If you came up here plannin’ on buryin’ your head in the sand, yeah, I suppose you coulda run away. But I recollect there bein’ somethin’ else that needed doin’ up here.”
“What’s that, Jem?” TJ ran an uncertain hand over his cheek. “Can you remember what on earth we’re doing up here?”
“Far as I remember, it had somethin’ to do with followin’ His lead.”
“I feel about as out of place here as a fish on dry land.”
“
Seems to me the Bible says somethin’ about blessed is the man who doesn’t feel like he belongs here on earth.”
TJ smiled. “You’ve got an answer for just about everything tonight, don’t you?”
“‘Bout these things there ain’t much room for doubt, old buddy,” said Jeremy. “While I was listenin’ to you talk about that scene at lunch, I was thinkin’ to myself, man, I’ll bet you there’s been a lotta times the Lord’s tried to work through people like He did through you. Tried to get in there and help somebody. But we’re just too busy listenin’ to the voices of the world to pay any attention. Too worried about our jobs or our reputations or what people’re gonna say behind our backs. So whoever it was that needed help right then got nothin’ but empty words. You know, if I was God, I’d be kickin’ holes in walls right about then.”
“I heard somebody call her the Dragon Lady,” TJ said idly. He got up and refilled both their coffee cups from the pot on the stove. “People kept sticking their heads in my office, not saying anything, just looking in like you’d stop and look at an animal in the zoo. I could kind of hear what they were thinking. You know, there he is, the guy who committed hari-kari in the cafeteria his first day on the job.”
“If there’s one thing I’m not worried about, it’s whether the Lord is watchin’ over you,” said Jeremy, stirring sugar into his coffee. “You just keep on tryin’ to do His will. Let these other turkeys take care of their own selves.”
****
TJ had hardly been at his desk for five minutes the next morning when Bella Saunders appeared, trailing cigarette smoke and stale perfume. “Mind if I come in?”
“Please do,” he said. He stood and scooted around to hold her chair. When he looked up, Ann was standing in the doorway.
“I guess you don’t want to be disturbed,” she smirked.
“Thank you, no.”
She shut the door with a knowing smile, and TJ wondered what it was going to be like trying to work with people in his office who weren’t really on his side.
“A real gentleman. I like that,” Bella said. “Got an ashtray?”
“I think I saw one here yesterday.” TJ glanced around, spotted one on the conference table. It was pewter and stamped with some official insignia.
“Thanks.” Bella set the ashtray in front of her on his desk and dragged deeply on her cigarette. “It was real interesting what you said yesterday about the lawyer looking down on the truck driver.” The smoke poured out with her words. “See, my father was a truck driver.”
TJ sat down, felt his stomach sink a notch. “I didn’t mean anything personal—”
“He was always real defensive about the way people looked at him,” she plowed through his apology. “He was a real proud man. Real proud. And hard.”
She paused for another puff, a shaky one this time. “He’d get so excited watching the news or reading the paper he couldn’t sit still. There wasn’t anything he loved more than hearing about some big-time politician or businessman being dragged through the mud.”
Her mouth tasted a smile. “I can still hear what he’d say, almost shouting it out. ‘Sweet revenge. Yessir, all those good times are over. Revenge, baby. How sweet it is.’ “As she spoke, TJ felt the same inward connection as the day before. Perhaps because he was not caught so flat-footed by its arrival, he was able to listen to Bella and watch his own inward transformation at the same time.
“He was a hard man. I’ve said that already, haven’t I? He was hard on us children and hard on my mother. Especially when he’d been drinking. He could get so mean then, he used to scare me something awful. It was like some devil got out and took over his body when he’d been drinking.
“There were a couple of black men who drove trucks for the same company as my father. We’d all get together sometimes, and he was always real nice to their faces. But the things he said behind their backs were just terrible.”
She stabbed her cigarette out with an angry motion, clearly fighting hard to maintain control. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I stayed awake half the night thinking about what you said and remembering things I hadn’t thought of for years. But I don’t know why I’m sitting here running my mouth like this.”
He felt the Presence extending outward like a rising sea of calm, washing words into his mind. “You’re here because you’re tired of carrying these burdens,” he said quietly, reaching through her anger and distress with compassion.
Suddenly she was weeping softly. “Look at me,” she sniffled. “I can’t even control the faucets.”
“You’re tired of feeling the emptiness, tired of running from the pain. In all those years of running, you’ve never escaped. And you know you never can. Do you know why, Bella? Because you carry what you flee from in your mind and in your heart.”
With that, she broke down completely. “I’m so alone,” she sobbed.
“How wrong you are,” TJ said softly. “You’ve never been alone.”
“I’m old, I’m alone, and nobody cares. Nobody.” She looked at him through eyes streaming tears and mascara. “What are you doing to me?”
“‘Verily I say unto you, Unless a man dies and is born again, he can never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Have you ever heard those words before?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I have. I can’t remember.” She crumpled her hanky and dabbed at her eyes. “I must look a wreck.”
TJ spoke, his words a gift from somewhere beyond his earthly limits. He felt the Spirit moving, touching, teaching, praying. He held a gift he could only know by giving it to another.
“It’s a verse from the New Testament, and it means that you must allow the worldly self with all its pains and fears and doubts and struggles to pass away,” he told her. “First you must see this old self for what it is—nothing but a lie. A lie seeking to convince itself and others that it’s real.
“When you see it honestly for what it is, you can recognize it as worthless. It is not a treasure to be guarded. It is not worth fighting and hating and hurting others to keep intact. It is a burden. The heaviest one you can ever know. Do you feel the weight?”
“It’s like a stone on my heart,” she said, with hopeless eyes and a trembling voice.
“You can be free,” he said, his voice still soft, the words still a gift. “Let that burden of sin and guilt go.”
The tears came anew. “But how?”
TJ smiled with a tenderness that reflected the love in his heart. “By turning it all over to God. By accepting His Son Jesus as your personal Savior.”
She was crying so hard now that the words were barely a whisper.
TJ asked her, “Would you join me now in prayer?”
****
When Congressman John Silverwood arrived at his office, his stomach churned from another argument with his wife. He had accused her of caring more for her position than for their marriage, and she had accused him of being blind to everything but his own political ambition. There was no mention of love, not even a casual questioning of how the other person was feeling.
In the cab on his way to work, Silverwood decided he would stop calling her every day. All they did was argue anyway. It left him feeling sick.
He did not bother to make polite conversation with his secretary. Marge knew him well enough to understand his mood. She offered him only one small smile with his telephone messages and mail.
Bobby was in Silverwood’s doorway before he sat down. “Ted Robinson’s called you five times already this morning. Says it’s urgent. Want me to get him?”
“Go ahead,” he said dully, sorting through messages and letters, scribbling notes to aides on most, setting some aside to handle himself. A few he threw away—lobbyists and busybodies who pestered him constantly, offering him nothing but exhaustion, frustration, and illogical ideas.
His hand hesitated over the last telephone message, from a Ms. Sally Watkins, asking him to call her back. Sally Watkins? Where had he heard that name before? Then he rem
embered. The beauty he had met in the hall yesterday, the one who worked for Congressman Hesper. He felt his blood sing as he remembered her look. The gloom he had carried into the office lifted.
The phone rang. It was Bobby, saying he had Robinson on line two. Silverwood pushed the button and heard, “What say, John? How’s it going this morning?”
“Fine,” he said, still staring at the phone message from Sally Watkins.
“Got anything we need to discuss?”
“You called me,” Silverwood replied.
“Yeah, that’s right.” The head of the North Carolina Republican party seemed unsure of himself. “Listen, ah, how’re those HUD investigations moving along?”
Silverwood put the message slip down. “You want to know about the investigation or about the meeting I had with your man yesterday?”
“He’s not my man.” Robinson hesitated. “Listen, John. Gotta be careful with this Shermann.”
Bobby appeared in the doorway, and Silverwood waved him away. “What’re you doing, sending me somebody like that, Ted? The man didn’t even tell me who his client was.”
“I’m not talking about the client. I’m talking about Shermann.” Robinson sounded almost frightened. “Just take it easy with him, John. Humor the guy.”
Silverwood opened a side drawer, leaned back in his chair, pried off his shoes, slid his feet into the recesses. “How am I supposed to humor somebody who basically admits that his client has been up to criminal activities?”
“He said that?”
“More or less. Bobby was sitting in the office with me.”
Robinson thought it over. “Well, I guess there wasn’t anything else you could have done.”
“Who is this guy?”
“He’s a menace,” Ted Robinson replied, his voice showing spark for the first time. “I’m surprised the grass doesn’t wither under his feet.”
“Then what on earth are you doing sending him to me?”
“I didn’t have any choice. Don’t ask me anything more, because I’m not going to tell you. Just listen to what I say, John. Be careful around this guy.”
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