Because the panel came away in my hands with a small sigh of old wood, and behind it, wrapped in a blanket of oilcloth gone brittle as a leaf, lay a package the size of a hymnal, tied with a leather thong. The compartment was lined in cedar, joined without a single nail. It was the work of a craftsman. I sat back on my heels in the cold chapel, with the winter light coming in sideways through the clear glass windows, and I said a word that I do not say in church.
The members of the congregation were out in the yard painting the shutters, a dozen of them in work clothes. They had bought the old chapel for eleven thousand dollars at a county auction, and the work of turning it back into a house of worship had taken them two summers. Their pastor, a tall Black woman named Reverend Alvina Harper, came in wiping her hands on a rag. I held up the bundle. She took in her breath and said, “Mr. Stroud, do not unwrap that without us. I think this is something we will want to witness.”
They gathered at the front, on the old plank pews, twelve of them in their paint spattered clothes. Reverend Harper took the bundle from my hands with a reverence I will not forget. She set it on the pulpit shelf, untied the thong, and folded back the oilcloth one layer at a time. Inside lay three things. A plain pewter communion cup. A small leather bound minute book. And a folded sheet of heavy paper with a ribbon and a red wax seal. She unfolded the paper and held it to the window, and her lips began to move.
“It is a deed of gift,” she said finally, in a voice that cracked. “Dated the third of April, 1871. Josiah and Eliza Freeman, of Roane County, free people of color, give to the trustees of the Mount Zion Chapel two acres of land for the worship of Almighty God, on this one condition: that its doors shall never be closed to any person who comes in peace, of any color or station, and that the pulpit shall be open to any person of faith who would speak.” She stopped. She looked at her congregation. A woman in the second row had her hand pressed over her heart.
I should explain that the chapel had stood empty for forty years. When the last congregation dwindled, the building passed through several hands, and for a time it was a storage barn. No one in the county remembered who had given the land. The cup, the minute book, and the deed had been hidden by someone, in the base of the pulpit, with great care and more than a little fear. The minute book, when Reverend Harper opened it, explained why. The last entry was in the spring of 1895. It said that night riders had threatened the chapel, and that the trustees had resolved to hide the sacred things until a better time.
A better time. I thought about that for a moment, standing with my hat in my hand, in the dusty light, looking at twelve people in paint clothes who had spent two summers restoring a place they did not know had been waiting. The trustees had hidden those objects for them. They had trusted that someday someone would come and love the building enough to take it apart. Reverend Harper looked up at me. “Mr. Stroud, you could have broken that pulpit up for firewood.” I said I had considered it. We both laughed. It was a very large laugh in a very small chapel.
Their lawyer, a retired judge from Spencer named Mr. Whitlow, took the deed to the courthouse and had it reviewed. It was recorded, finally, a hundred and fifty years late. The condition was found valid and binding on the property, and the chapel, which was held now by a nonprofit of the congregation, was bound by it. The congregation was delighted. The board went one step further and wrote the condition of the Freemans into its own bylaws: the doors shall never be closed to any person who comes in peace. They voted unanimously. It took four minutes.
A genealogist from the state archives found the descendants of Josiah and Eliza Freeman within a month. There were forty one of them, scattered from Charleston to Cleveland to Atlanta, and many of them had never known about the land. A great great granddaughter, a retired nurse named Odessa, drove up from Huntington in a Buick the color of cream. She walked down the center aisle on the arm of her son, and she stopped at the third pew. She put her hand on the wood. “My mother used to tell us,” she said, “that our people built a church once, and that it was taken from us in the dark. We thought it was a story.”
Faith hidden in the dark is not defeated; it waits in the wood until a loving hand opens the door.
They held the dedication on a Sunday in October, with the doors thrown open and folding chairs set up on the lawn for the overflow. The forty one descendants sat in the front pews, and a choir from three counties sang in the loft. Reverend Harper preached from the pulpit that I had restored, in her good navy robe, on the text of Isaiah, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. She stood a long time with her hands on the old oak, and I saw her lips tremble. I sat at the back, in my work boots, because I had not brought a suit.
The communion cup was used that day for the first time in a hundred and thirty years. Odessa drank from it first, and then the pastor, and then the congregation, one by one, down the aisle, and then out the open doors onto the grass. A cardinal landed on the rail of the porch and watched. Old men wept openly. A boy in a clip on tie held the hand of his grandmother and asked in a whisper whether the chapel had always been this shiny. She said no. She said it had been waiting.
I charged them nothing for the pulpit. Reverend Harper protested, and I told her that I had been paid already. I carved a small plaque in oak and fixed it to the inside of the compartment, where the cup had been. It says: Hidden for love, found for love. Mount Zion Chapel, 1871. Open to all. When I drive past on Route 33, I slow down. There is usually a light on. There is always a car in the gravel lot. The doors, I notice, are never closed.