The First Ladies Club Box Set

by J B Hawker

  The three women chatted about their families for another half-hour before Elizabeth glanced at her watch and got to her feet.

  “Come on, Judy. We’ve got to let Merrill get to bed.”

  “Gosh, yes!” Judy responded. “You look awful, Merrill. Do you need help getting up the stairs and into bed?”

  “No, thanks,” Merrill replied. “I don’t feel quite as bad as I must look. I can make it. Contemplating a nice long soak in that old claw-footed tub will carry me up the stairs. Thanks, again.”

  Merrill had her bath and her nightly devotions before climbing into her freshly made bed. She waited for the nighttime version of her cold medicine to kick in and just allowed her mind to drift.

  She’d been in her new home exactly one full day and she had already found two new friends. Smiling, she lifted up a prayer of thanks and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 2

  A low moan penetrated Merrill’s illness-and-antihistamine-befogged dreams, pulling her from a deep sleep.

  Squinting through sleep-glazed eyes at the unfamiliar room, she recalled where she was.

  The bedroom walls of her new home seemed to be vibrating with the deep bellow of a foghorn.

  When high-pitched whines and squeals followed the low rumble, she blinked and sat up in alarm.

  Merrill walked into the hallway holding her hands over her ears. She tried to locate the source of the sounds now melding into a sort of agonizing harmony.

  She moved farther from her bedroom and the noise became less painful.

  In the bathroom with the door shut, she was finally able to discern the notes of a pipe organ and realized they were coming from the church sanctuary on the other side of the wall.

  She showered and dressed, feeling all the time as if she were in the bowels of a monstrous calliope.

  Making her way to the downstairs sitting room, she unlatched and opened the private connecting door to the church.

  This doorway opened into a hallway which separated the sanctuary on one side from the choir room, restrooms and janitor’s closet on the other. At the far end, near the front of the church, the foyer and the Pastor’s Study were on opposite sides of the corridor.

  A door on her left opened into the sanctuary.

  Merrill stepped through this doorway and beheld a thin young man engrossed in playing a complicated classical organ composition. His eyes were closed, and his longish blond hair swung across his face in time with the music, while his elegant fingers flew over the dual keyboards and his stocking-clad feet danced on the pedals.

  The sound in the sanctuary was no longer overwhelming to Merrill’s ears and the beauty of the performance became overpowering in another way.

  The young organist’s talent and passion were exceptional.

  Merrill slipped onto a front pew and settled in to enjoy the music.

  During a quiet passage she sneezed violently, shattering the mood, and the music ceased.

  “Who are you?” the startled musician challenged, swinging around on the organ bench.

  “You can’t be in here, you know. This isn’t a homeless shelter,” he said.

  Merrill smiled ruefully, pulled a crumpled tissue from her pocket and blew her nose.

  Dressed as she was, in sweatpants and an over-sized t-shirt, the young man’s mistake was understandable.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m just getting over a nasty cold,” she explained.

  “Well, that’s too bad, but you can’t stay here. If you are ill, you should go to the clinic.”

  “I came in because I heard you playing. You have a beautiful gift.”

  “Thank you, but how did you get in here, anyway? I know I locked the front entrance.”

  “I came in through my private door. I guess I should introduce myself,” Merrill said, standing up and reaching out her hand.

  “I’m Doctor Merrill Bishop, the new pastor of this church. And you are…?”

  “Oh, my goodness!” the young man exclaimed as he jumped down from the organ and began to shake Merrill’s hand with great enthusiasm.

  “I’m Peregrine Bostwich, the church organist. Forgive me for being so rude. Welcome, Dr. Bishop. Welcome.”

  “The church is blessed to have you as our organist, Peregrine.”

  “Oh, well, not so much these days, I’m afraid, now I only get to play an electronic keyboard during our worship services.”

  “Why is that?” Merrill asked.

  “With the congregation so small, folks felt lost in this grand sanctuary. It’s too expensive to heat and the baptistery leaks, too, so the Deacons decided we would meet in the Social Hall. We can’t move the pipe organ, of course, and our baby grand is too big to fit in the annex,” he said, gesturing across the stage at a large shape covered by a canvas shroud.

  “What a shame for such impressive instruments to be idle,” Merrill said.

  “It breaks my heart to see these grand old ladies neglected,” he said, nodding. “I come over and play whenever I can, just to keep them tuned and in good shape.”

  “About that…do you suppose you could play them later in the day? The pipes are right against my bedroom and the sound is quite overpowering as it comes through the wall.”

  “Oh, gosh! It’s been so long since we had a pastor in the parsonage apartment, I didn’t think. I’m so sorry, Dr. Bishop,” Peregrine said, taking a seat beside her in the pew.

  “Call me Pastor Merrill, Peregrine, please.”

  “And you can call me Peri.”

  “Thank you, Peri. I thought it had been only a year since your last pastor left.”

  “That’s right. He never stayed in the apartment, though. He lived in Tillamook and just drove over on Sundays and Wednesday evenings,” Peri explained.

  “Oh?” Merrill said.

  This was news the pulpit committee had not shared with her.

  “Yeah, he was a substitute teacher in the Tillamook school district.”

  Merrill wondered what other church history might have been omitted by the search committee in their interviews.

  “I’m surprised I didn’t get a chance to meet you when I candidated here at the church a few months ago,” she said.

  “Gran and I were both sick with the flu that weekend, so we stayed home. It would never do to try to play music while coughing and sneezing all over everything, not even on an electronic keyboard,” Peregrine explained.

  Merrill sat for a moment admiring the exquisite sanctuary architecture, the leaded stained-glass windows and the vaulted ceiling.

  Impulsively, she promised herself to fill this sanctuary with worshipers again, somehow.

  “Say, Peri. I haven’t had breakfast, yet; would you like to join me? My apartment still isn’t fit for guests, with packing boxes everywhere, but there must be a good coffee shop in town where we can eat and get better acquainted.”

  “Sure. We can go to the Boatworks. I’ve had breakfast, but I can always eat one of their cranberry muffins. Shall we go in my car? It’s just outside.”

  “Sounds great. Let me dash in and get cleaned up. I’ll meet you out front.”

  Peri closed and locked the organ and slipped into his loafers, while Merrill returned to her apartment.

  When they met again in the parking lot, she wore neat black slacks and a plaid blazer and looked a great deal less like a bag lady.

  “Is this your car?” Merrill blurted, seeing Peri standing beside a shiny red vintage Jaguar, exactly like the one driven by Inspector Morse in the classic BBC television series.

  “You like it? I inherited it from my grandfather. It’s a dream to drive. Want to try it?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dare! Riding in it will be a treat, though,” Merrill said, sliding onto the creamy leather passenger seat.

  As Peri drove, Merrill imagined cruising along the streets of Oxford with the great Inspector and chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Peri asked.

  “Oh, I was just indulging in fli
ghts of fancy. I was trying to imagine myself on the roads of rural England in this beauty.”

  “I do that all the time! Did you ever watch that British TV show, ‘Inspector Morse’? He had a car just like this one.”

  Merrill admitted this was the source of her fantasy, as well, and immediately endeared herself to at least one member of her new congregation.

  The Boatworks Coffee Shop was in the town’s seaside shopping mall, a converted fish processing plant.

  Merrill found the seafaring décor charming and she was surprised by the variety of items on the menu.

  After ordering a spinach omelet, she shook a packet of sweetener into her coffee and leaned back, looking around.

  At this early morning hour, the café was busy with breakfast orders.

  Merrill tried to guess which of the customers would be going off to work after eating and who might be retirees settling down for their morning social hour.

  She wondered if any of these people were current or former members of her new congregation.

  She knew enough of the church’s history to be aware that almost all the other Baptist churches in town spawned as splits from the First Baptist Church.

  Church splits are not the same as what are usually referred to as church plants.

  It is a good sign when a congregation grows and is able to plant new young churches. However, when disagreements within the church family grow into a congregational schism with one group leaving to start their own church, it harms the memberships of both the original church and the new one, as well as the community at large.

  This divisive history was the reason her new congregation was so small and desperate enough to call a clergywoman to the pulpit.

  She hoped she was equal to the challenges ahead.

  After years on the staff of a large Bay Area church, Merrill felt ready to become a senior pastor. Nevertheless, when the call came from Bannoch First Baptist, she had prayed long and hard before accepting.

  She’d come to believe the challenge she was taking on was God’s will for her life. Even so, it would be helpful for her to find out as much about her new flock as possible.

  “So, Peri, how long have you been a member of First Baptist?” she asked, taking a sip of her coffee.

  “I grew up in this church. My grandparents grew up in it, too. They raised me after my mother left me on their doorstep,” he replied cheerfully, popping another bite of muffin into his mouth.

  “They grow these cranberries in bogs around here, did you know that?” he said, still chewing.

  “What do you mean? Your mother just left you? Not literally on the doorstep, surely,” Merrill said, too shocked to be diverted by a discussion of the local agriculture.

  “I suppose that was a bit of hyperbole,” Peri said. “I’ll admit I tend to add a little color to my humdrum existence from time to time. But my mother actually did abandon me. One day she came for a visit, left me with the grands to go buy cigarettes and never came back. I was nine months old.”

  “Didn’t your grandparents try to find her?”

  Merrill was aghast. Her own children, two daughters, were grown, with families of their own. She couldn’t imagine one of them leaving a baby like that.

  “They looked. Even hired a private detective when the police couldn’t find her. She just faded away without a trace…like a wisp of smoke on the evening breeze,” Peri added, with a dramatically poetic expression and a wistful sigh.

  He obviously enjoyed telling his story to a new audience.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. And she’s never tried to contact you or her parents in all these years?”

  “Oh, the grands weren’t her parents. My father was their son and he died before I was born. Gran and Gramps tried to help my mother, so they could be close to me, you know, but she was a wild creature, by all accounts. Something of a gypsy, I imagine.”

  “You said you inherited your Jag from your grandfather, but your grandmother is still living, right?”

  “I’ll say! You’ll meet her at church on Sunday. Gran’s a real corker. I love her to death. She’s such a darling, I’m sure you’ll adore her, too.”

  Merrill smiled to hear the young man speak so fondly of his grandparents. Their influence on his upbringing was obvious in his old-fashioned mannerisms.

  After she finished her breakfast, Merrill asked Peregrine to take her back to the church, so she could finish unpacking and get her office set up.

  Once that was done, it would be time to begin work on her all-important first sermon for the upcoming Sunday.

  She had preached to this congregation when she candidated, but she knew she would be critically evaluated for the next several weeks before the people began to trust her.

  “This has been delightful, Peri,” she said, getting out of the car in front of the church.

  “Fun for me, too, Pastor Merrill. I’m looking forward to telling Gran all about our little visit. Ta! See you Sunday!”

  Merrill watched him drive away, thinking this theatrical and gifted young man was going to make her life in Bannoch extremely interesting.

  Chapter 3

  In the Fireside Room of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a regular meeting of the First Ladies Club was underway.

  Looking elegant, as usual, in a neat lavender skirt and blouse, Eskaletha Evans, club president and first lady of the AME church, stood behind a highly polished lectern beside a marble fireplace. She had just opened the floor for new business.

  Elizabeth Gilbert stood to be recognized.

  “Yes, Elizabeth?” Eskaletha said.

  “I would like to report on our visit to the First Baptist Church to welcome the new pastor’s wife.”

  “Proceed.”

  Elizabeth re-tucked her blouse into the waistband of her tweed skirt and smoothed her navy-blue cardigan before speaking.

  “As planned, Judy and I went around to the First Baptist parsonage apartment a couple of days ago. We were surprised to learn the woman living there is not the pastor’s wife,” Elizabeth began.

  “She’s the pastor!” Judy piped up, and all order dissolved as the rest of the women began commenting on this surprising bit of news.

  “Ladies, please!” Eskaletha said. “Let Elizabeth give her report.”

  “Well, that is the main bit of news,” Elizabeth continued, slightly deflated. “Although we learned that Merrill…she’s the Rev. Dr. I. Merrill Bishop we’d heard was coming…she used to be a pastor’s wife, before her husband passed away. She’s single now, but Judy and I thought she would need all the support she can get. So, we decided to invite her to join us, anyway.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” offered Gwennie Barthlette.

  Gwennie, wife of the Nazarene Church pastor, was a stocky woman in her mid-fifties, wearing lime-green stretch pants and a bright blue sweatshirt embellished with a sequin-studded basket of big-eyed kittens across its front.

  “Why ever not?” Judy challenged, twisting around in her chair to look more directly at Gwennie and nearly choking herself by sitting on her long hand knit scarf as she swiveled around.

  “Well, she’s been to seminary and she’s a doctor, and all,” Gwennie replied. “Why would she even want to hang out with us? You know how these seminary-trained types always want to lord it over the rest of us. They even look down on my Jim, even though he’s ordained, just because he never went to seminary…Well, I say St. Peter never went to seminary and he did okay! Besides, she’s a woman. Women preachers are always so liberal. She’s probably a wild-eyed feminist, too.”

  “I’m surprised you feel so strongly about this, Gwennie,” Elizabeth replied. “When we invited Dr. Bishop, we had no idea anyone would object.”

  “Well, I do. If that woman comes, it will change everything. She’ll start telling us what to do and how to do it. I’ll bet she’ll start promoting her liberal theology at all the meetings and want us to join protests and who knows what all.”

  “
She didn’t seem like that type to me,” Judy protested, crossing her arms beneath the bosom of her stained blouse, unwittingly exaggerating her substantial bust. “She was nice, and she’s taken on a huge challenge with that church, all on her own. She will need friends to support and comfort her, if she’s going to make a go of it.”

  “If she shows up at the next meeting, you can count me out,” Gwennie stated.

  “She won’t be showing up anywhere, unless we all agree,” Elizabeth explained. “I told her we would let her know the time and place of the next meeting. We didn’t invite her for today because we wanted you all to know ahead of time that she’s the pastor and not the pastor’s wife. I confess, it never entered my head there might be a problem.”

  “I really don’t think there is a problem,” Naidenne Davidson said.

  Naidenne was one of the younger members of the group and something of a favorite, owing to her sweet nature and the fact these women had helped to rescue her from a desperate criminal’s clutches a couple of years before.

  In her early forties, tall and slim, with riotous red-gold curls and lots of energy, Naidenne was an asset to this group, as well as to her husband’s ministry at the Bannoch Community Fellowship.

  “Gwennie, you are jumping to some pretty strong conclusions about this newcomer to our community,” Naidenne said. “But we can’t know if any of your ideas are correct without more information, isn’t that right?”

  Gwennie looked around, and then down at her battered red sneakers before clearing her throat and replying, “I guess so.”

  “I move we invite Reverend Bishop to a social function, so we can get to know her and see if she would fit in our group, and then we can make a decision about inviting her to join the club, or not,” Naidenne suggested.

  “I second that!” Judy chimed in, bouncing in her chair.

  “It has been moved and seconded that we invite Dr. Bishop to a social function and get to know her before making a decision about asking her to join the First Ladies Club,” Eskaletha pronounced.

  “All in favor, raise your hand…Any nays? It appears to be unanimous. So, what kind of social function shall this get-together, be?”