As she was already shouldering past him, TJ let his inbred manners take over, and ushered her into the den.
“What a lovely home. It certainly is nice of you to let us meet you here.”
“I’m not sure—”
“We could set up right here in your study, and be through in less than an hour,” she said, her pretty eyes pleading.
“I thought you just wanted to ask a couple of questions,” TJ stalled, alarmed by the prospect of facing a camera and discussing his faith.
“Well, that’s right, I do.” She gave him a practiced smile. “But we have to get your answers down on film, don’t we?”
“I suppose so,” he said, defeated.
“Wonderful,” she said. Hurriedly she signalled to the crew waiting by the door before TJ could raise another objection.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said, and fled to the bathroom.
Once the door was shut and locked, TJ leaned against the wall, covered his eyes with one hand, prayed as directly as his pounding heart and frantic mind would allow. Television, Lord, oh Lord, what on earth am I supposed to say? That you called me up here? They’ll laugh me right out of town, are you listening to me? I know you’ve set this interview up for a purpose. It’s too crazy to think about any other way. And I know I’ve been on television before, but that was politics. That was in another life. This is now, Lord. What am I supposed to say?
The answer was silence. No inspiration, no guiding light, no comforting presence. Nothing. TJ uncovered his eyes with a sigh, felt a thousand years old.
There was a knock at the door. “We’re ready any time you are, Mr. Case.”
Shoulders bowed, he opened the door. She greeted him with another smile, but this one did not cover the steely glint in her eyes. She was clearly looking forward to this.
“May I?” She reached up, straightened his tie, put a small hand on his arm and guided him forward.
Two tall tripods supported enormous television lights, glaring eyes focused on the two chairs flanking the coffee table. She waited for TJ to sit down, settled herself, all business now.
A technician fitted a lapel mike on both of them; the cameraman did a light check and set his focus; the technician asked for a sound check.
“Test, one, two,” she said crisply, nodded to TJ to do the same, sat straighter when he complied.
“Ready,” came the signal.
“Oh!” TJ sprang from his chair as though propelled by an invisible hand. It startled everyone. “Just a moment.” He walked toward the bookshelves, and in doing so pulled off his microphone.
“Hey!” The technician ripped off his headphones, hurried over, picked up the mike, inspected the wiring.
“Excuse me,” TJ apologized, searching frantically. “Here it is. I’m sorry. I forgot something important.”
The technician looked at the newscaster, shrugged, said, “Seems okay.”
TJ came back over, sat down, waited while the technician refitted his mike, endured the newscaster’s exasperated look in silence.
“Could you say something again, Mr. Case? Make sure your mike still works.”
“I thought I might need a Bible,” he said, and set it down on the table between them.
Her sharp retort was cut off by the technician saying calmly, “Loud and clear.”
TJ could sense her desire to dominate. She had an impressive force, this young woman, and she used it with consummate skill; first to manipulate him into agreeing, and now to overwhelm the interview itself. He felt lost, carried by their professional ease like a leaf floating downstream.
The cameraman made a final focus on her face, said, “Rolling.”
“This is Sandra Hastings for WBTV News, here at the home of Mr. Thomas Jefferson Case. Mr. Case, recently appointed Special Assistant to the President for Education, is currently at the center of a most remarkable development.”
It was very different this time. There was no physical sensation at all—no thrill, no sense of Presence, no filling of his being with some divine force. It simply was. As the newscaster began to speak, TJ knew he was not alone. There was no room for doubt, for question, for concern over what was to be said. It did not matter what she asked. He knew.
“Mr. Case, a lawyer from North Carolina, has brought a bit of the Bible Belt up with him to Washington. In the short time he has been here, he has managed to establish an astonishingly successful prayer meeting within the White House itself.”
She turned to him, and the camera swung with her. “Mr. Case, how many participants do you have right now?”
“At our meeting this morning, there were around three hundred,” he replied, his voice solid, strong. He was so sure of what was to be said that there was no need to even speak loudly. The Spirit was with him.
Ms. Hastings was clearly not expecting such quiet confidence from him under the gun. She hesitated, asked, “And how long have you been here in Washington?”
“This is my third week.”
“Don’t you find that somewhat remarkable, three hundred White House staffers gathering every morning for prayer?”
“No more remarkable than the fact that the Lord would choose me to act as His servant.”
“I see.” She seemed momentarily at a loss, then, “And you feel sure that this is the Lord’s work here?”
“How else would you explain the gathering of three hundred members of the White House staff?” TJ replied in the same calm voice. “What I find remarkable is that so many people could witness such an event and still doubt the power of our Lord.”
Sandra Hastings reacted as though slapped. The glint of steel hardened her gaze. “Tell me, Mr. Case. Do you believe that the Bible still holds relevance in the face of all our modern-day difficulties?”
He did not need to hesitate. No search for an answer was required. It was as though the reply was prepared and presented to him before she even spoke. “I believe the Bible, as God’s divinely ordained message for mankind, is the only relevant guide to today’s problems.”
“You say, then, that there is an answer to all of today’s complex problems in the Bible?”
“Every one of them,” he replied quietly, instantly.
“Could we discuss a specific example?”
“Certainly.”
She leaned forward, homing in for the kill. “How would you feel the Bible answers the problem of, say, the plight of the homeless in America?”
The answers did not appear gradually. The books, chapters and verses surged into his mind. He picked up the Bible, wondered for a moment why he had chosen his seldom-used Living Bible version, then understood.
“I am going to use a modern-day translation,” he said, opening the Book, “because it may have more meaning to many of your viewers.”
He found the first passage with a minimum of page turning. “Zechariah, chapter eleven, verses sixteen and seventeen. ‘I will give this nation a shepherd who will not care for the dying ones, nor look after the young, nor heal the broken bones, nor feed the healthy ones, nor carry the lame that cannot walk; instead, he will eat the fat ones, even tearing off their feet. Woe to this shepherd who doesn’t care for the flock. God’s sword will cut his arm and pierce through his right eye; his arm will become useless and his right eye blinded.’” He looked up, said, “It is very common in biblical terms for worldly leaders to be cast in the role of shepherds. We don’t have to look any further than the morning’s paper to see what effect the policies of our government and business communities are having on our less-fortunate citizens.”
TJ flipped over a section, was barely surprised to find he had turned to the page he sought. Truly it was a day for miracles. “Isaiah, chapter five, verse eight, says, ‘You buy up property so others have no place to live. Your homes are built on great estates so you can be alone in the midst of the earth.’” He raised his head long enough to say, “I realize that this describes many people in our society. However, I also think that it is a straightforward descript
ion of how many of our landlords and developers live, don’t you?”
Again he turned to the Book, found the place, and said, “Micah, chapter two, beginning with the first verse, reads, ‘You rise at dawn to carry out your schemes; because you can, you do. You want a certain piece of land, or someone else’s house (though it is all he has); you take it by fraud and threats and violence.’ Verses eight and nine read, ‘You steal the shirts right off the backs of those who trusted you. You have driven out the widows from their homes and stripped their children of every God-given right.’” He looked up, facing both the newscaster and the camera. Ms. Hastings seemed to have turned to stone. “The Lord’s judgment of these wrongdoers is equally clear.” He looked down, turned, said, “In Zechariah, chapter nine, verses three and four, we read, ‘Though Tyre has armed herself to the hilt, and become so rich that silver is like dirt to her, and fine gold like dust in the streets, yet the Lord will dispossess her, and hurl her fortifications into the sea; and she shall be set on fire and burned to the ground.’” “Zephaniah, chapter one, verse eleven, is even more explicit when it says, ‘All your greedy businessmen, all your loan sharks—all will die.’” He closed the Book, looked her square in the eyes, quoted from memory: “Zechariah, chapter one, verse five, answers your earlier question about whether the Bible still applies to today’s society. It says, ‘Your fathers and their prophets are now long dead, but remember the lesson they learned, that God’s Word endures.’” There was a long, long moment of silence while the camera watched the two watch each other. Finally the newscaster turned reluctantly away, faced the camera, said in a subdued voice, “This is Sandra Hastings, for WBTV News.”
Chapter Twelve
John Nakamishi was waiting for him in the hall after the Tuesday morning prayer meeting. “Did you see the 10 o’clock news last night?”
TJ shook his head, said, “I could scarcely keep my eyes open long enough to find my bed.”
“They showed your interview right at the beginning.”
“Did they?”
John nodded, his face as impassive as ever. “You really ate that girl alive.”
He smiled. “That’s not the way it felt at the time.”
“I taped it. You can see for yourself. When the camera zoomed in for that closing shot, you could see that you really got under her skin.”
“I was scared to death before it started,” TJ confessed.
“Were you really?” John was surprised. “It didn’t show at all.”
“Not while it was going on. Before. Once it started, well—” TJ wondered how he could explain it.
“The Spirit was upon you.” He nodded calmly. “Yes, that was clear too.”
TJ cast a startled glance at his assistant. Here he was, trying to find some way to describe what still embarrassed him tremendously, and John Nakamishi treated it like some everyday occurrence.
“Yes,” TJ agreed quietly, “I suppose it was.”
“What’s it like? I can see it on your face during the prayer meetings too. I feel it myself, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever known it to happen so intensely.”
TJ struggled to find the words. “When the Presence is there, it is the most natural thing in the world. And the most real. The more powerful the inner impression, the more detached I seem from the world around me.”
“There isn’t room inside us for the Spirit and the world both. Not at the same time.”
What a remarkable young man, TJ thought. “Sometimes when it’s over I question the experience. It’s hard then for me to believe that it really happened. I try halfheartedly to convince myself that it was just my imagination.”
“I do the same thing,” John Nakamishi agreed, quiet and calm as ever. “The old self fights like anything to maintain control. I love that passage in Colossians, I don’t know how often I’ve read it. The trouble is, it’s not as easy to put off the old self as Paul makes it out to be.”
“He didn’t say it was easy,” TJ said. “He just said do it.”
“Maybe so,” John Nakamishi conceded. “But he didn’t tell us it was something we’d have to keep doing every single day for the rest of our lives.”
TJ paused at the door to their offices, asked, “John, how would you like to come home for dinner with me and meet my wife?”
“Call me Nak, please,” he replied. “I’d like that very much.”
“Fine. She’ll be coming in today, so I’ll see if she feels like having company tomorrow evening.”
TJ opened the door to their offices, heard Linda say, “Oh, just a moment, I think he’s coming in now.” She cradled the phone, said, “It’s a Mr. Roberts from ABC in New York. He saw a tape of your interview and wants you to appear on the Good Morning America show.”
TJ faltered. He hated being interviewed, avoided it whenever possible. And this time it was national television. He turned to Nak, pleaded for advice with his eyes.
The young man’s calm remained unfazed. “Perhaps we should talk.”
“He says it’s really urgent,” Linda said.
“They always do,” Nak told him. “Everything’s a crisis for television people.”
“Tell him I’ll call back just as soon as my conference is over.” To Nak he said, “Come on in.”
Once they were seated, Nak said, “I think a decision has to be taken here. If you go ahead and speak to them, you may be jeopardizing your career.”
“It sounds like you’ve been thinking this over for days,” TJ said.
“This is a pretty standard Washington issue,” he replied. “You as a White House staffer have one primary responsibility, and that is to support the President. All publicity is supposed to go to him, not to you. Wherever possible, his people are expected to stay behind the throne and out of the limelight. If you agree to appear on national television without express permission, the administration may decide to let you go.”
TJ thought it over, asked, “So you’re telling me not to do it?”
“No,” he paused a moment, shaking his head. “I couldn’t advise you like that.”
“Why not?”
John Nakamishi chose his words carefully. “Because I’m not sure what it is you’re supposed to be doing here.”
TJ leaned back in his seat, waited for him to continue.
“I’ve watched you up there in those prayer meetings, and I’ve seen the Spirit at work.” Nak shifted in his chair. “But it wasn’t until I saw you last night on television that I understood.”
“Understood what?”
“That you’re here for a higher purpose. I don’t know what it is, but it hit me yesterday that I had kind of unconsciously been accepting this ever since we met. There’s something else going on here, something more important than whether you get this education policy through or not.”
“I don’t know of anything much more important than the education of our nation’s children,” TJ said.
Nak leaned forward, said, “Sir, that’s not important. Or rather, it’s not the most important thing. What you need to be sure of is whether it’s what the Lord wants you to be doing. That’s what you have to decide.”
TJ regarded him for a moment, said quietly, “Now I understand why the Lord brought us together.”
“I think now might be a good time for us to pray,” Nak replied.
When they had bowed their heads, John Nakamishi began, “Dear Heavenly Father, it is an awesome moment when we realize that your hand is at work. It is also a hard moment, for we are filled with our own desires and our own goals, and they seem so incredibly important to us. We want so much for our goals to be yours, so much sometimes that we have trouble seeing what it is you want us to do.”
As Nak prayed, TJ felt the Presence build within him, a gentle, comforting hand, one that communicated in ways beyond mere words. TJ heard Nak’s prayer and he heard the Spirit within his heart, and he knew what had to be done. He knew.
“Help us to understand, Father,” John Nakamishi went on, “th
at your own perspective is infinitely higher than ours. What we see is such a tiny piece of the whole. We cannot fathom your divine purpose, it is beyond our human understanding. Help us to accept this, and give us the strength to turn our goals over to you. All of them, Lord. Even the most precious, the ones we have worked on all our lives. Help us to turn them over to you, and see you transform them so that they too fit your divine will. Give us this ability to trust you, Father. Open our ears and our eyes and our hearts to your direction, and let us accept your will and your goals as our own. In the name of Jesus. Amen.”
TJ opened his eyes, said to his assistant, “I want you to call the television producer for me. If I call, there’s too great a chance that he’ll argue. Tell him that I will do the interview, but only if he agrees, in writing, to limit the questions to educational issues.”
“He won’t like it,” Nak replied.
“No, he won’t,” TJ agreed. “But he’ll do it.”
“You know?” Nak’s eyes widened slightly.
TJ hesitated, pushed his doubt aside, trusted in the memory of the Spirit’s guiding presence. “Yes,” he replied quietly. “I know.”
****
It started raining soon after they crossed the Virginia border, and by the time they drove into Washington the rain had turned to snow. When they arrived at Bancroft Place, Jeremy slithered up the path behind Catherine, carrying the two heaviest cases. Catherine carried nothing but her cosmetics case. She wanted to see the house first, was what she told Jeremy.
Catherine fished the keys out of Jeremy’s coat pocket and opened the front door. She took one look inside, said, “Land sakes, Jeremy Hughes, what on earth have you gone and done?”
The big man suddenly felt very bashful. “I just wanted y’all to be comfortable,” he mumbled.
She stopped long enough to pull out her hatpin and take off the hard blue traveling hat with its miniature blue veil. She started to set it down on the little table by the front door, hesitated, looked closer. Its inlaid surface and rich sheen spoke of great age and greater cost. Catherine put her hat down very gingerly.
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