The Corps man took off his hard hat very slowly, read the first line again, and said, Mrs Johnson, I cannot move a levee through this. Nobody can. Do you know what you have under this glass.
I knew it was old. I did not know it was that.
The framed document in the drawer of the pulpit Leroy carved was from 1865. It was the original grant of that corner of land, deeded at the end of the war to the freed families who worked it, in trust, for a house of worship, in perpetuity. Leroys people were among those families. The little cypress church Leroy rebuilt stood on ground that had been set aside for exactly that purpose for a hundred and sixty years, recorded, sealed, and never broken.
He told me the church would be underwater one way or another. Then he read a line written the year slavery ended, and he held his hat in his hands like a man in a pew.
Land held in a perpetual charitable and religious trust, with a federal-era grant and a claim to the historic register, is not a thing the Corps bulldozes for a setback. There are other ways to run a levee, and once the lawyers and the historic-preservation people saw that 1865 grant, the Corps found one. The setback bends around the chapel now. It will cost them. It will not cost us Leroys church.
My grandson, who first showed me that very seal in his history book, helped me get the grant properly recognized and protected so no hard hat ever comes for it again.
We still get twelve on a good Sunday in the little cypress church on the corner. Somebody still preaches there every week, same as somebody has since 1865. Leroy kept the key to that pulpit drawer on his belt until the day he died, and I have worn it on a string ever since, and now I know he was not guarding prize money or a will. He was guarding the deed to a promise made the year his people were freed.