Read Online The Presence by T. Davis Bunn - Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    â€œI didn’t know you felt that way about the politics,” TJ said.
    â€œIt 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.”
    â€œWho you calling girl?” She rewarded him with a smile. “You telling me I could just say the word and make all this go away?”
    â€œThat what you want?”
    â€œPart 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.”
    â€œI can’t do this without you, Catherine,” he said again.
    â€œDon’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    The oil-skin windows had long since been replaced by glass, but many of the first lead panes were still there, run like clear frozen molasses to thicken and broaden at the base over these past hundred and twenty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