The Presence (3 page)

The first Christmas after TJ's election, Catherine had stitched a needlepoint plaque for him. It read: “Whosoever will be great among you shall be your servant,” a verse from the Gospel of Mark. TJ hung it in his legislative chambers, directly across from his desk. When visitors commented on it, he told them it was his lifeline. Now it was upstairs in the attic gathering dust, along with all the other debris from his political life. Once he could look at it again without feeling a pang of loss, he would probably hang it in his law office.

****

Through the faint veil of dawn the nearby shoreline slowly grew visible. Clumps of muhly grass hugged the waterline, and a dogwood painted with autumn colors nestled between two stumpy pond pines. Beyond that, red cedar and spindly pine trees rose like ghostly sentinels in the morning mist. The air was close and breathless, the water utterly still. It was warm for November, and TJ was comfortable in his flannel shirt and jeans.

Little Frying Pan Lake was the worst-kept secret in North Carolina, and wasn't really a lake at all. It was set snug in the heart of a marsh that lay off the Inland Waterway. The place could be reached only through a very narrow, very deep passage that was impossible to find unless somebody showed the first-timer how to line up the old cedar stump, the derelict pier, and the correct point on the compass.

From the air, Little Frying Pan and its entry channel looked like a skillet with a bent handle. The body of water was a half-mile wide and lined with meandering marsh banks, muhly grass, and rotting trees hung heavy with Spanish moss. It was the best spawning ground for large-mouth bass this side of the Everglades. Trouble was, the place had simply become overfished.

Local fishing guides swore customers to absolute secrecy, took them in, and hoped for a big tip. The customers in turn brought friends they wanted to impress with their knowledge of local lore. Stories about fair-sized catches grew into legends about an Indian guide who caught a large-mouth bass so big it sank his canoe.

Jeremy sometimes talked about how it had been twenty years ago, when local fishermen would never have dreamed of entering the haven under power. Back then, they cut their motors halfway down the channel and rowed in. It was an unspoken rule, like not talking in church. A hushed silence hung over the place, and fishermen greeted each other with solemn waves and hand signals. Lifting the stringer from the water meant you had a good catch. Details were kept for the boat dock.

Nowadays on a summer Sunday the passage looked like an interstate highway. Boats swooped up and down the channel with high-powered outboards whining and rumbling, their wakes swamping the muhly grass. Fresh arrivals glared at other boats as though they were trespassing on private property. Most of the local fishermen and almost all of the fish had long since departed.

But during the rest of the year, the early mornings still held the awesome hush of a sanctuary. Jeremy Hughes loved to maneuver his boatload of kids down the passage, after first stopping and carefully explaining to all and sundry that he would personally strangle the first nonbeliever who dared disturb the haven's silence.

Jeremy always tried to arrive right at dusk, after all the fishermen had given up in disgust and gone home. He would send the kids to bed with a Bible passage and a story. He tried to instill a pride of heritage in the Indians, a wonder of history in the sharecroppers' sons and daughters, a reverence for nature in them all.

TJ and Catherine had made the trip with Jeremy and the kids once a month until the crisis of the past half-year had begun. They always departed ever humbled by the wisdom of this uneducated man.

Jeremy lavished all the love he had on these children who had been fed the dregs of affection. There's three words you're gonna learn the meaning of, he told them time and again, even if I gotta drill holes in your thick skulls and stuff it in. And what are they, he would roar. Faith, hope and love, the children would shout back, laughter shining from their faces. And what's the greatest of these, he would ask. Love, they would cry in unison. Right, he would say. I guess I won't drown you after all.

****

A distant whooping echoed through the soft autumn morning. Soon the air would be filled with a thousand birdsongs, a choir that TJ had enjoyed since childhood. He breathed a deep sigh and gave silent thanks for the wonder of another dawn.

Then it happened, and his world was changed forever.

With a grace and ease that made the power even more awesome, a silence descended upon him. It was not the stillness of the morning. It was a presence that flooded his heart, his mind, his entire being and
commanded
him:

Be still.

As gentle as it was powerful, as loving as it was demanding, the Presence was all-consuming. And the Presence was God.

The dawn became a holy fire. The lake, the sky, the shore—all were filled with a holy light.

Blinded by the all-transforming power, yet knowing without question what he was witnessing, TJ fell to his knees. He was filled with a single thought: I am unworthy.

In the mirror of this perfect light came a clear and total vision of life's purpose. He was created to worship God. All else seemed a shabby pretense of sham and indulgence. A sin. A lie.

I am unworthy.

The light and stillness intensified, and the Voice spoke.

Who will speak for Me?

There was no doubt, no need to wonder. The request was a perfect gift of total love, and in its answer was the key to life.

I will, TJ Case replied.

Then go to your rulers
, the gentle Voice said to him.
They are in need of Me.

An instant of confusion. Then a shock of understanding. Washington, TJ said. I am to go to Washington. For a moment his spirit quailed, and he asked aloud, “But what will I say?”

The light and power began to diminish, drawing down to the Bible that had fallen from his lap. Gradually the world returned to the awakening dawn, yet a passage on the open page continued to shine with a holy light.

With trembling hands TJ picked up his Bible and read:

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.”

Congressman John Silverwood, the junior member of the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina, allowed his two luncheon partners to enter the restaurant before him. It was clearly expected and all part of the game.

The customary period of decompression following his recent election had been cut short by the request to come to Washington for this luncheon. His two colleagues were here because the Republican National Committee was having its first strategy session for congressional committee appointments. They had a hole in their schedules and decided it was a good time to meet with Silverwood. The possibility that the newly elected congressman might find it inconvenient to fly to Washington on twelve-hour notice did not enter their minds. They called and Silverwood came. It was that simple.

First to pass through the restaurant's entrance was the senior senator from North Carolina, Reginald Erskins, staunch defender of the right and powerful kingpin on a number of major committees. Senator Erskins was a tall man in his early sixties who hid excess poundage under carefully tailored suits. The mane of silver hair, the self-satisfied expression, the pompous bearing—it all spoke of a man most at home with the mantle of worldy power.

Following Erskins was Ted Robinson, chairman of the North Carolina Republican party, a man who had stood behind innumerable thrones for more than thirty years. When he had taken on the chairmanship, the Republicans had been, in his own words, the biggest joke in the state. Finding Republicans in North Carolina, he had once told an interviewer, was harder than finding seashells in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But all that had changed, and changed drastically. In these most recent elections Robinson had delivered a Republican governor, fourteen new Republican state legislators, seven new state senators, and the first Republican U.S. Congressman from the eastern district in the country's history. If John Silverwood held any importance at all in Ted Robinson's eyes, it was because he represented even better things to come.

The Monocle was a smallish restaurant on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. Silverwood thought it horribly overpriced, but he was not yet accustomed to the cost of living in this city. The size of the mortgage he was going to pay for his two-bedroom Georgetown townhouse gave him nightmares.

The maitre d' bowed and scraped over the senator, barely gave Silverwood a glance, then marched them to what he announced was the senator's regular table. Silverwood wondered how on earth three people were going to sit at it. Maybe they were expected to hold their plates in their laps.

The table was about as big as a Carolina serving dish and covered with layers of starched linen. Silverwood had to suck in his belly and scrunch around to keep from bouncing the guy at the next table off the wall.

Ted Robinson was equally unimpressed. He watched the maitre d' stalk off, snapping orders at bustling waiters, said, “That is positively the fakiest, most ridiculous Italian accent I have ever heard. What is he, Persian?”

“Lebanese,” the senator replied, casually glancing through the menu before shutting it and setting it down. It almost covered the table. “The fellow at The Rotunda was Persian.”

“Yeah, that's right.” Robinson gave a frosty smile. “What was his name, Alfredo? Alfonzo?”

“Something like that,” the senator replied. “What a character.”

“Not anymore,” Robinson said. He looked at Silverwood and explained, “Back, what, eight or nine years ago—”

“Longer,” the senator interrupted.

“Whenever. Back in the Carter administration there was this restaurant near the National Democratic Club called The Rotunda. The maitre d' was this really suave-looking Persian. He drove a forty-thousand-dollar Porsche and had a house in Georgetown.”

“Not an apartment,” the senator emphasized. “A house.”

“Yeah, well, one day our pal was found in the back of his Porsche with a bullet in his head. He was supposedly supplying drugs to the staffers on the Hill.”

“I never liked that restaurant,” the senator said. “Even on the sunniest day the place was dark as a tomb.”

“Nobody'd go in there after that,” Robinson went on. “So they closed it down and the Democrats moved their club in there.”

“On Saint Patrick's Day Tip O'Neill would come in and sing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,' then dance a jig.”

Throughout the leisurely lunch the senator and the party chief entertained their freshman colleague with bits of Washington lore, the latest gossip, predictions over who would be picked for the choicest posts within the new administration, and instructions about how the new boy on Capitol Hill was expected to field certain major issues. Silverwood kept his mouth shut and listened. These men could be his most powerful allies or his worst enemies.

John Silverwood was from old Carolina stock. He often pointed out that relatives still worked a tobacco farm which was a hundred years older than the United States of America. The fact that the only farming he had ever done was plant a few flower bulbs was seldom mentioned.

Silverwood was not a big man. He stood an inch under six feet, but most people thought of him as taller because he intentionally held himself very erect. He maintained a rigid workout schedule, pumping iron and playing racquetball four times a week. Those ninety minutes of unleashed fury were the only time he let himself go from the emotional armor he showed to the outside world.

The junior congressman was a patient man. It was not the patience of a calm sea, however; it was more the tension of a steel cable pulled taut by a thousand-pound load. He had waited through two terms in county politics, six years in the state legislature, and eleven of the longest pre-election months of his life to get to where he was now. Waited, listened, and learned.

He was one of the new breed, set to wheel and deal in the world of modern Washington politics. The centralized power structure, where rule of might was balanced between a strong president and the senior members of Congress, was crumbling. Nowadays power was in perpetual flux, passing from back-room staffer to newly elected congressman to assistant secretary and back again, its movement governed by the issue of the moment. Who held the reins was determined more by the media and special interest groups than by experience or seniority.

John Silverwood had studied this long and hard. He was determined to become an expert at headline-grabbing media politics. He knew that the player's identity was far less important than how the media portrayed him. He had trained to develop a solid television image. He was armed, he was elected, and as soon as Congress convened he would be stalking his elusive prey: Power.

He was careful not to let any of this show. The Old Guard was solidly entrenched in the North Carolina Republican party. They allowed no threat to the established pattern. Fresh blood was admitted only after showing themselves to be true followers of the system. Silverwood had long since developed as bland an expression as his craggy features would allow. What he really felt, what he really wanted, remained buried deep.

Over coffee the conversation turned to his recent election. Self-satisfied backslapping over the addition of his district to the Republican ranks led to optimistic predictions on how the trend might continue.

“Been a right busy week,” Senator Erskins said. “What with meeting the new administration and the committee going hard on all the new appointments.”