Bruce beamed.
“You knew about this?” Elisabeth asked him. He nodded. “I suppose you’ve met the new chaplain, too?”
Bruce nodded again and he and Joyce made eye contact.
“What?” Elisabeth said.
“Says he knows you,” Joyce said. “Name’s Phillips.”
Elisabeth sucked in a breath. “Ben Phillips is the new chaplain? Ben Phillips led you to Christ?”
Joyce smiled. “I’ve got to get to work,” she said, and right in front of his mother, she kissed Bruce full on the lips.
Elisabeth had collected herself by the time Joyce was gone. “You’ve been encouraging a girl who wasn’t a believer?” she said.
“It was only a matter of time, Mom,” he said.
Elisabeth sat shaking her head. “Have mercy,” she said. “Ben Phillips and now this.”
Elisabeth knew Ben would check the records and know all about Will. She sent him a note asking that he look her up in Will’s room some afternoon. In spite of herself, she couldn’t help but be conscious of her clothes and hair, wondering each day if this would be the one Ben chose to drop in on her.
She was writing a letter to a missionary when he appeared in the doorway. “Ben,” she said, standing. He approached and shook her hand, then looked with sympathy at Will. Ben did something no visitor had done in years. He bent to look into Will’s vacant eyes, reached under the sheet, and gripped a gnarled hand. “Will,” he said, “it’s Ben Phillips, and I’m here to pray for you.” Ben pleaded with God for comfort and rest for Will and grace for Elisabeth.
Ben was pushing fifty now. His hair was mostly white and he wore glasses, but he was trim and tastefully dressed. His limp was pronounced, and the scar on his neck still showed.
He said he had served three churches since seminary and jumped at the chance to do something different. “Churches are getting more board-oriented all the time, and I had one too many frustrations.” Elisabeth decided not to share her own stories of the same from Christ Church.
“I’m doing more singing now,” he said, “like in the old days. And I’m always looking for special music for our chapel services here. I know you have a gift.”
“I’m rarely here in the morning,” she said.
“If that changes, and you’re willing …”
“How’s your family?” she asked.
“My parents are both gone now,” he said. “And I’m alone. What’s become of your aunt?”
“Last I heard she was in a rest home, but she never communicates. It’s wonderful to see you, Ben.”
Over the next several months, Ben greeted her two or three times a week. Once he asked her to play when he sang a solo in the chapel. She made a special trip to do it. “We’ll have to try a duet sometime,” he said.
Bruce’s recovery was not as smooth as Elisabeth had hoped. Once he was home, she had expected him to improve quickly and soon begin work, saving money to attend Moody in the fall of 1944. But he was plagued by dark moods, periods of silence, even nightmares. He was finally able to work part-time on the line at Fairbanks-Morse, but the highlight of his week was Saturday night when Joyce would visit. Elisabeth arranged the guestroom for her, and Joyce often spent the night and joined them at Christ Church the next day. Trudy Childs, according to her mother, had joined another church. Elisabeth mourned her own estrangement from Frances and prayed they could reconnect one day.
By August, Bruce seemed much better, and he and Joyce were engaged. They married at Christmas and moved into an apartment in the third ward. Elisabeth felt she had nearly reconciled by mail with her daughter Betty, and only bad weather in New Mexico had made it impossible for her and Cliff to come by train for Bruce’s wedding.
In May of 1944, Bruce and Joyce announced that a baby was due the following January. Bruce, now working full-time at Fairbanks, still dreamt of attending Moody and began a rigorous series of their correspondence courses.
Elisabeth saw Bruce and Joyce often. They drove her to Jackson when Benjy finally consented to see her. He insisted on seeing only his mother, though in a note dictated to the chaplain he congratulated Bruce and Joyce on their marriage.
Elisabeth trembled with anticipation as she was led to a room where Benjamin was brought to her. She barely recognized him at first, a wasted wisp of a man, looking a decade older than his years. Elisabeth opened her arms to him when he shyly approached, and while he did not hug her back, he let her embrace him. They sat at a steel table.
“How’ve you been, Benjamin? All right?”
“For a guy doing life.”
“You’ve been getting all my mail?”
He nodded. “I’ve begun clerking for the chaplain.”
“That’s wonderful, Benjamin. You need to get back with the Lord.”
Benjamin shrugged. “Keep in touch,” he said, rising.
Elisabeth was determined not to cry, even though she was afraid it was what she had just said that had made him pull away so quickly. “I will,” she said, the tears coming. “May I come again next month?”
He shrugged. “I’ll let you know.”
Elisabeth left somewhat encouraged about Benjy. Something was better than nothing. She remained optimistic about Betty too, her letters lately sounding more spiritual than her mother recalled.
Elisabeth allowed herself to consider that her own prospects may have changed. She felt fulfilled in her church work, believing that perhaps God had honored her commitment to obedience. Though she worried that was bad theology, she was comforted by a season of relative calm.
The call that made Elisabeth cringe ever after at any ringing phone came just before midnight in the winter of her forty-fifth year.
Only the wealthy had extension phones in Three Rivers, and Elisabeth had not numbered herself among them for decades. Unsure how long the phone had been ringing, she ignored her slippers and tugged her robe on as she hurried stiff-legged toward the stairs. The hardwood creaked as her feet lost feeling on the icy floor. The thermometer outside the kitchen window had read nine below zero just hours before.
There was no one to waken anymore in the big house on Kelsey Street. “Keep ringing, phone,” she whispered, “unless you bring bad news.”
At the bottom of the stairs Elisabeth breathed a prayer and picked up.
“Mother Bishop, it’s Joyce. We’ve had an accident.”
Elisabeth clutched her robe tight at her throat. Her daughter-in-law sounded calm enough, but …
“Tell me you didn’t lose the baby.”
“I’m fine, so I assume the baby is too.”
Elisabeth hardly wanted to ask. “And Bruce?”
She heard her own heart as Joyce hesitated. “Bruce seems okay, but he’s trapped in the car.”
“Oh, no! Did you—”
“The police are on their way.”
“Thank God. Where are you?”
“Not far. M-60. We were coming back from visiting—”
“At this hour? Joyce! You’re due in what? A month?”
“The road looked clear, but at the big curve over by—”
“I know where it is.”
“There was ice. We slid into the ditch. Bruce steered away from the water. He somehow swung back up onto the road, but we flipped over.”
“Oh, Joyce!”
“He seems fine, but the wheel and the dashboard have him pinned.”
“I’ll come.”
“Please don’t. I’ll call you as soon as we get home. He didn’t even want me to tell you.”
“Just like him. How did you get out?”
“I crawled out the window. We weren’t far from a farmhouse. The people are so nice. I hated to wake them.”
“Call as soon as you know anything. And have someone check you over, honey.”
Elisabeth stood in the darkness of the living room, staring out at the streetlight on the corner. What a marvel, throwing off ten times the light of the gas lamps lit by hand, one by one at twilight, when she was a ch
ild. Back then a year could pass before she saw more than three automobiles. Now everyone had one. Some two. Imagine! Well, a flipped horse cart wouldn’t have trapped Bruce.
The weight of a lifetime of strife overcame Elisabeth, and she lowered herself to the floor, her face in her palms, the backs of her hands pressed against the gritty carpet. “Oh, God,” she began, “you have protected Bruce from so much. You must have great things in mind for him. He is completely yours. Let the police be your agents and may they get there even now to rescue one who wants above all to serve you.”
Elisabeth would not sleep. She alternately paced and sat on the couch in the stillness.
Since childhood, prayer had been as natural to Elisabeth as breathing. And during that time, God had required much of her, allowing her to be tested until she was forced to rely solely upon him. Her underpinnings had been ripped away with such regularity that she had often been tempted to settle into a life that didn’t shake its fist in the Enemy’s face.
Elisabeth didn’t want to change her past. But as she shivered in the wee hours of a bitter morning, she struggled with God yet again, as she had so often before, over the safety of her son. She had accepted so much, suffered so much, given so much, that surely God would grant her deepest, most heartfelt wish now, would he not? Hadn’t everything in her life and Bruce’s pointed to his being a living sacrifice?
She had long wondered whether there was any benefit, this side of heaven, for a lifetime commitment to obedience. After years of service, of countless hours in the Word and in prayer, Elisabeth found herself at yet another crossroad. She thought she understood grace, had told herself she understood sovereignty. But unless God spared her son, seemingly unhurt yet trapped in a twisted car on M-60 in the middle of a winter’s night, she feared there was something about God she still didn’t understand—and didn’t like.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Elisabeth could not recall feeling more alone. How she needed Will right now!
Years before, when she first began visiting him every day, she battled resentment that he had disengaged. She knew it wasn’t his fault. But when trying to make ends meet, to discipline Benjy, to keep Betty breathing, she could have used help.
Her friends, the women who had grown up in the church with her, backed away too. Mental illness—and there was no other way to describe Will’s malady—was simply not talked about. Elisabeth had been naïve to think any of Will’s or her friends would go to see him. Everyone found excuses. Frances Childs said she was so distraught over not being able to have her own children that she just couldn’t handle the “stress” of seeing Will so ill. For whatever help and comfort it might have been to Will to see familiar faces, no one but Pastor Hill and his wife ever came. The new pastor had never raised the subject.
Maybe it was better that Will had not had to endure the pain and hardship Elisabeth had. But how wonderful it would be on a night like tonight to be held, comforted, prayed with—to have someone with whom to share the load.
“I’ve asked for years that you would be my portion,” she prayed. “And I never really knew what it meant. If it means you’re all I’ve got and all I need, then I need you to be my father, my husband, and my friend right now. How long does it take to pull someone from a car? Forgive me for worrying. Help me rest in you. I know you are sovereign, I believe you love me, and I’m begging for the safety of my son.”
Elisabeth could wait no longer. She dialed Bruce and Joyce’s number. No answer.
She called the police department.
“Three Rivers police, Officer Fox.”
Elisabeth explained what Joyce had told her about the accident. “So I expected to have heard something by now.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to call the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to—”
“Was Bruce Bishop injured?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I was directed to—”
“How badly is he hurt?”
“I was about to call you, Mrs. Bishop. Do you need a ride to—”
“I’ll drive,” Elisabeth said. “But I want to know what to expect.”
“I’ve not been given all the details.”
“Is my son dead?”
“I have not gotten that word, ma’am, no.”
“But he was injured.”
“That’s my understanding.”
“And my daughter-in-law? She was to call me.”
“The request that we call you came from her, Mrs. Bishop.”
“Is she all right?”
“As far as I know.”
“Why didn’t she call?”
“I don’t want to alarm you, but I have been asked to request that you come quickly.”
Elisabeth threw her heavy coat on over her bathrobe, stepped into her boots, and gingerly made her way down the back stairs to the garage. People would understand.
The old Ford whined before finally turning over. Elisabeth’s bare legs were so cold, she left the sliding garage door open for the first time in her life. Her prayers were incoherent. She quoted verses she’d known since childhood: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.”
How many times had that last verse been quoted to her in an attempt to persuade her that Will’s infirmity, that Benjy’s crimes, that Betty’s asthma were somehow God’s ideas? Elisabeth had no doubt the Scripture was true. But she had become convinced that either she had not been called according to God’s purpose, or that things work together for good only once the saints get to heaven.
As for tonight? It made no sense. “God, let him be alive.”
Elisabeth pulled up to the emergency room entrance and ran in. Four uniformed police officers looked grave and sneaked glances at her.
“Mrs. Bishop?” a nurse said from behind a desk.
“Is my son alive?”
“He’s in surgery right now, ma’am.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know all the details yet—”
“Of course you do! Why won’t anyone tell me anything?”
“The doctor will meet with you as soon as he’s out of surgery.”
“Where’s my daughter-in-law?”
“In the waiting room. She’s expecting you.”
“What happened anyway? I was told—” Elisabeth whirled to look at the policemen. “Who was there?”
One cop sat with his head in his hands, a cast on his right wrist, and a special shoe on his right foot, protecting bandaged toes. As she started for him, another intercepted her.
“Ma’am, this officer is not ready to talk about what happened. He lost his partner, and he was driving.”
“He lost his—you mean, there—”
“Was a fatality, yes, ma’am. And your son is hardly out of the woods, so I would suggest—”
“But what happened?”
“I wasn’t there, but I’ll not let you demand details of this officer just now.”
Elisabeth found Joyce at the end of the hall, grimacing, her hands gently cradling her abdomen. Her feet and legs were wrapped in a huge blanket, her wet shoes and socks near a heat register close by.
“Are you all right, dear?” Elisabeth asked, sitting next to her.
Joyce nodded. “Just uncomfortable.”
“What in the world—?”
“The police car hit our car!”
What? This was God’s answer to her prayer that the police would get there quickly?
“I guess the cop didn’t realize how fast he was going or how icy it was,” Joyce said. “Crazy thing is, I know him. Guy Hies
tand. He used to drive race cars with my dad.”
“Then he ought to know how to drive fast.”
“You’d think.”
“He hit your car going how fast?”
Joyce shrugged. “It sounded awful. It pushed our car back down into the ditch and it wound up on its side in that water.” She began to cry. “Bruce doesn’t deserve this! After all he went through, to be trapped in that car with water rising …”
“He was under water?”
“He was fighting to keep his nose above the surface. I ran down in there and tried to rock the car, but—”
“Joyce! With a baby due next month!”
“Was I supposed to let him drown? Guy was hurt himself and was working on his partner, who looked unconscious.”
“How’d you get Bruce out?”
“The farmer had followed me out, and he helped me lean against the roof of the car and tip it enough for Bruce to breathe. The firemen finally got him out.”
“How bad was he?”
Joyce shook her head. “They stabilized him on this board thing, strapped his head down. He was bleeding from the ears. The emergency room doctor said something about internal injuries. They told me the surgeon would talk to me as soon as he could. I asked if someone would call you.”
Elisabeth took Joyce’s hands in hers. “Father,” she began, “I’ve quit trying to understand your ways. Give the doctors wisdom and use their skill …” Elisabeth was flooded with the realization that the last time she prayed that professionals would be used of God, the police made things worse. She feared if she kept praying she’d say things a new Christian shouldn’t hear. “Joyce, would you continue?”
Silence. Elisabeth peeked at Joyce.
“Mother, I’m not happy with God right now.”
Neither was Elisabeth, but she couldn’t admit that. “Careful, honey,” she said.
“I mean it! Bruce tells me you’re a prayer warrior, that you trust God for everything.”
“I try.”
“Why? I haven’t seen one clue that he’s still working.”
“But your own salvation …”
Joyce struggled heavily to her feet. “When was the last time you had a prayer answered?”
Though None Go with Me Page 23
