The letter made Elisabeth cry. Will shook his head. “That's about as big a man as I ever hope to meet.”
Will's work and his involvement both on the school board and the city traffic commission, not to mention church activities, kept him busy nearly every night of the week. He often told Elisabeth he hated to go out after dinner and leave her and the children again. But she was proud of him. He was a leader in the community and had recently been promoted to comptroller of the company, the youngest senior manager by fifteen years. Some saw him as the eventual president of Fairbanks-Morse.
Elisabeth felt as if each day was a long week, highlighted only by the time she spent with Bruce, and she collapsed into bed every night, waiting for Will to get home. To his credit, he still was first to rise when one of the children needed something in the night.
They wrote Ben and arranged to see him as soon as his school year was over in the summer of 1927. Elisabeth included pictures of the children, and Ben wrote back exulting over the one named for him.
Despite her fatigue, Elisabeth was delighted with her family as the time drew near for the big visit. She loved Will more every day, the depth of his character showing in so many ways that she wondered if she would ever be able to fathom it.
She worried about Benjy, now almost seven. His first grade teacher threatened to make him repeat the grade, then insisted on passing him so she would not have to deal with him anymore. He was not below average in intelligence but seemed incapable of sitting still, following rules, or being quiet.
Poor Betty was another matter. Barely three, she was miserable, unable to understand why merely breathing had to be so difficult. She had been to specialists and was on so much medication that Elisabeth wondered if she wouldn't be better off in a sanitarium or a different climate. She could not be cheered, nor be made to smile. She lacked interest in much of anything and sat sucking her fingers, her nose and eyes running.
Bruce was wonderful. He greeted his mother with a smile every time he saw her, reached to be hugged or carried, kissed her without being coerced. He seemed to see each day, indeed each room, person, or new situation as an adventure. His very countenance seemed to ask, “What's next, what's fun for us now?”
He talked in sentences by his second birthday and loved being the center of attention. He was the favorite of the young people at church, and teenagers competed to hold him and interact with him. Few babysat him a second time, however, because Benjy and Betty came with the package. Elisabeth grew desperate about them, praying she would not fail them. Bruce was easy.
Pastor Hill's wife, now in her sixties, agreed to move into the Bishop home and watch the children the weekend Elisabeth and Will went to Grand Rapids. Will had volunteered to let Elisabeth go alone. “I trust you,” he said, smiling.
“
I
don't trust
you,”
she said. “Imagine this place when I got back.” He feigned offense. “There is no way I could see Ben without you, Will. I don't know what I might do or say. I haven't seen him in more than nine years.”
They followed Ben's directions to a small apartment complex near the seminary on the east side of Grand Rapids. Elisabeth could barely breathe, imagining Ben watching from the window. “You look wonderful,” Will said as he walked her to the door. “He'll be thrilled to see you.”
“That's the last thing on my mind.”
When Ben opened the door, the years evaporated for Elisabeth. He smiled and shook their hands warmly. His hair was thin and gray, way too early for a thirty-two-year-old. He was only slightly smaller than she had remembered him, and his limp was more pronounced than she expected. His voice did not have the timbre it had when he was younger, but he said it was improving.
“It's been so long!” he said. “How remarkable to see you both!”
Will seemed bemused. Elisabeth didn't know what to say. “It's as if you're back from the grave,” she tried. “Well, I guess you are.”
“I knew this would be awkward,” Ben said. “I don't know what else it could be. But tell me about yourselves.”
Elisabeth was glad for the diversion. She bragged on Will, fearing she sounded as if she were trying to justify her choice. But she was proud of him and often spoke of him this way.
“God has blessed you,” Ben said. “He has blessed me too. I'm doing well in school, getting opportunities to speak. Many churches are looking for pastors, so I should have little trouble finding a place to serve.”
“You'll do well,” Will said. “I still remember your messages at camp.”
“How kind of you. Maybe someday
I'll
remember them!”
Ben and Will laughed, but the enormity of what Ben had endured washed over Elisabeth. The tension of seeing him again pushed her past the brink. She didn't want to sob in front of him, and she pulled a handkerchief from her handbag just in time to bury her face in it.
“I'm sorry,” Ben said. “I didn't mean to treat this lightly.”
Elisabeth collected herself. “Forgive me,” she said. “This is all just so bizarre. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for you.”
“In some respects I'm thankful for the amnesia so I can't imagine it either.”
“You never resented it, wished you had died?”
“I was confused and frustrated for so many years, I didn't know what to think. When my memory began returning, it was as if I was living my life over again. I couldn't wait to contact my loved ones, to climb all the way back. It still seems to have happened quickly.”
The scar that ran from the nape of Ben's neck to his Adam's apple was high-ridged and deep red. He said doctors concluded it had resulted from the bite of a large sea creature. “I won't show you the other scars,” Ben said. “I can hardly stand to look at them myself.”
At the end of the evening, Ben walked them to the door. “Your pastor there in Three RiversâHill, is it?”
“Yes.”
“I understand he may be moving on.”
Elisabeth flinched. Pastor Hill had been there since before she was born. She couldn't imagine the place without him. “He's not mentioned that.”
“I may be mistaken,” Ben said. “But at the seminary we were looking at a list of the pastors in this region who may soon start moving south or phasing out. We do that just to consider opportunities.”
Elisabeth shot a glance at Will, who appeared nonplussed.
“Oh, don't give it another thought,” Ben said. “I would never see myself as a candidate for that pulpit anyway.”
“Why not?” Elisabeth said, relieved but curious.
“I can't imagine serving the church where my former fiancée and her family attend. Too distracting. For me and the congregation.”
“Probably so.”
“Anyway, a church that size would probably be too selective to consider me.”
“I think you'd have your choice,” Will said. “Once a church has heard you.”
“That's kind, but older, more established congregations almost always insist on a family man, at least a married man.”
“Well, you're still young. There's plenty of time for that.”
Ben smiled and shook his head as he ushered them out. “Oh, no, that's not in my future. No, sir. Anyone other than who I had would never compare.”
Elisabeth sat silent for several miles. “How was that supposed to make me feel?” she said finally.
“Since you brought it up,” Will said, “all things considered, he spoiled a perfectly cordial reunion.”
“So my marrying ruined his life.”
“He just might feel that way.”
“But it was the war! How long was I supposed to wait? Would he like to know that I would not likely have married him anyway?”
“You're overreacting,” Will said, checking the rearview mirror.
“But what an awful thing for him to say.”
“How do you think it made
me
feel?
“
“I can only imagine, darling. You stole his fiancée and since no one else will ever do, he'll be a lonely cripple the rest of his life.”
“We're being a little hard on him,” Will said. “I wouldn't have wanted to marry anyone but you either.”
When they neared home Elisabeth reconsidered her reaction to Ben's comment. “I should be flattered, I suppose. It wasn't as if he planned to say it. Any number of women would find him a worthy husband.”
“You almost did.”
“Almost.”
At home Elisabeth detected relief in Mrs. Hill's eyes. “How were they?” she asked.
“A challenge. But that little one! He dropped off God's own tree, didn't he? I'll take him home with me any day of the week.”
“No you won't,” Elisabeth said. “He's all mine.”
“Say, Mrs. Hill,” Will said, hanging their jackets, “I trust Pastor knows how much he's appreciated. Does he?”
“Oh, I think so. People are mostly kind. There will always be critics. It comes with the territory, as they say.”
“I just hope he's planning to stay with us a long, long time.”
Mrs. Hill's eyes darted. “There are days when we tire of the flooding, the snow, the cold. And this is a long time to have stayed in one church. But I think Jack has a few more years in him.”
A week to the day after their visit, a letter arrived from Ben. Elisabeth opened it nervously. It read, “Dear Elisabeth and Will, I laid awake for hours after your visit, thrilled how God has blessed you. The insensitivity of my last remark crushes my conscience, and I beg your forgiveness for implying that losing you had irreparably damaged me. While it's true I cannot imagine sharing my life with another, blurting that was crass and the wrong way to end a wonderful evening. If you can find it in your hearts to forgive, I would like to put it behind us. In Christ, Ben.”
They agreed that Will should respond with a simple note of thanks for the evening and an assurance that Ben should not give his parting comment another thought. They would watch his career with interest, trusting God to put him into a pastorate that complemented his many gifts.
Elisabeth thought often of Ben and the odyssey of their relationship, but she never again mentioned his name to Will. She tucked the memories in a deep corner of her mind and heart, assuming she would never see him again and deciding that that was best.
T
he Depression hit Three Rivers in 1929 like a Michigan tornado. The neighbors on both sides of Elisabeth moved away in the night within weeks of each other, rumors saying both men had lost fortunes in the stock market. Elisabeth's only hint had come when the wife to her west said, “I suppose your husband's company will save you from losing
your
house.”
Elisabeth was so unversed in the issue that she didn't even respond. Within days, the woman and her husband had disappeared, and a holding company had come in to secure what was left of the home.
Fairbanks-Morse took a tremendous hit, sales dropping every month. Will came home more haggard every night. Barely twenty-nine, he looked ten years older.
“We laid off more men,” he said one night. “Nearly a hundred.”
“For how long this time?” Elisabeth said.
He hung his head and pressed his lips together, appearing to fight tears. “There's no plan to bring them back. I don't know what they're going to do.”
“Should
you
start looking, hon?”
He shook his head. “We're safe at my level, but there'll be no raises for a while. We're asking mid-level managers to take a cut, and we can't cut them if we're not willing to take a hit too. And here we had only about a year to go on our mortgage.”
“I know, Will. You've done great.” She followed him upstairs, grateful the kids seemed preoccupied.
“Could have done better. We haven't watched the budget the way we'll have to now. We could have paid off the mortgage by now and been ahead of the game.”
“You couldn't know this was coming.”
“I'm the comptroller,” he said, “yet I underestimated it.” He stood and shook his head. “All F-M needs is one quarter where the demand for product matches one of the quarters from last year, and our fortunes turn.”
But things grew darker. Elisabeth hated the look on Will's face when he announced the first pay cut. “It's severe,” he said. “The car will sit until I get back to my previous salary. I'm willing to walk. Are you?”
“Whatever you say, Will. I believe God will see us through.”
Elisabeth believed that had to be the worst of it, but banks closed and businesses failed every day. More neighbors went bankrupt. One day Will came home and, without a word, changed clothes and began digging a huge garden in the backyard. She rushed out. “What is it?”
“Can't you guess?”
“Another cut?”
He nodded and kept working.
“You love corn, beans, onions, and carrots, don't you, sweetheart?” she said. He nodded again. “Take a break and have a lemonade while you keep an eye on the kids. I'll be right back.”
She walked to the grocer and returned with seeds and bulbs. “Will,” she said. “We'll beat this.”
His mood had brightened some. He showed her his lemonade, a couple of shaved lemon peelings in a glass of water. “I didn't even waste ice,” he said.
His pay was cut again the next quarter and one more time the next. Inside a year his salary was reduced four times, parts of the plant had been shut down, and the workforce decimated.
“I'm still willing to work,” Elisabeth said.
“We've been through that,” he said. He took seriously the scriptural mandate for a man to provide for his family and for a mother to nurture her children. “Besides, your working wouldn't net us enough to be worth it, with babysitting and all. I appreciate it, but the discussion is over.”
The final blow came at his next quarterly review. Despite being one of the senior officers, he told her, “If I choose to stay, my rate of pay remains the same.”
“That's like a raise in these times,” Elisabeth said.
He hesitated. Then, “The
rate of
pay is the same, but all they can offer is half a week's work.”
“How do they expect us to live?”
“It's generous, Elspeth. You should see what this means to the men on the line. They're down to almost no pay and glad to have work.”
Elisabeth found no shame in looking for bargains, pinching pennies, wearing clothes until they needed mending, and then wearing them some more. Businesses that extended credit gradually reduced the payments so people could pay at least something. Some credit loans were suspended indefinitely in the hopes that when the economy turned, people would remain loyal and do the right thing.
Elisabeth cut off the telephone service, even the newspaper. She no longer bought beefsteak. She expanded the garden to cover the entire backyard, and what could not be consumed or canned she sold for pennies, which she hoarded.
She made egg sandwiches for Benjy's lunch. He told her one day, “I traded mine for a meat sandwich.”
“Meat?” she said. “Who can afford meat in their sandwiches?”
He told her the boy's name. “Will,” she whispered. “They live in the fourth ward, and his father's out of work.”
Will told Benjy, “Save a quarter of that meat sandwich tomorrow and I'll trade you a jawbreaker for it.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Will said, sniffing the evidence the next day and showing it to Elisabeth.
She nodded. “Dog food. Canned horsemeat. Benjy! Come in here, please!”
In the midst of adversity Elisabeth felt closer to God than ever. She continued her open communication with him, rose early to read, and stayed as active in the church as her schedule would allow. Benjy caused her no end of grief, responding to neither discipline nor punishment and only a select few forms of positive reinforcement. She agreed with Will that rewarding him for merely acceptable behavior set a dangerous precedent.
Betty, about to start school, had improved not at all. The combination of medicines and humidifying contraptions had become so confusing and ineffective that Elisabeth began praying for a miracle. The poor child didn't deserve this, and Elisabeth worried that Betty would never know a normal life and never have a reason to smile.
Meanwhile, little Bruce was as engaging as ever, providing Will and her with diversion and entertainment. He was a generous, giving child, and she worried that he got less of her attention merely because he had fewer needs than the older two.
Will tried to maintain his civic activities, even adding a few volunteer positions. Elisabeth privately resented his increased time away during the evenings, but she knew service was part of his makeup. He had to do and to give and feel needed. She needed him too, but she couldn't complain. When he was home and had a spare hour before bed, he studied correspondence management courses from LaSalle Extension University.
“In times of adversity,” he explained, “most people struggle to get by. I believe God would have me ready to advance as soon as the climate changes.”
When their money was nearly gone, Will talked to the bank about refinancing the mortgage. He told Elisabeth it would help their case if the whole family showed up to illustrate the need. It was all she could do to keep Benjy reigned in while Will was pleading his case.
“I'm sympathetic,” the loan officer told him. “But we simply don't have the capital. If I were going to extend credit to one customer, it would be you. You're the moneyman at the biggest plant in town. When this economy turns, you'll be back up to hundreds and hundreds of workers, and we want to keep doing business with you. My cards are all on the table, sir. I find myself in the unenviable position of having to turn you down flat and beg you to understand and not make me suffer for it later. If I had dime one, I'd lend it to you right now. In fact, if you need a personal loan, just between us, and anything short of a hundred dollars would help you, you name it.”
That, Will told Elisabeth later, sounded too much like charity. “If I can't borrow against a piece of real estate like ours, I don't want a loan. We'll make it.”
“You won't hold it against the banker, will you?”
Will shook his head. “If it wasn't for Fairbanks, Elisabeth, that bank would have closed a year ago. I
know
if they had it, they'd lend it to me.”
Elisabeth wasn't listening. He had thrown her off. “What did you just call me?”
“Pardon?”
“You just called me Elisabeth.”
“So?”
“Elisabeth! Will! You've never, ever called me Elisabeth.”
He looked lost. “Isn't that your name?”
“Not to you it isn't! You've been working too hard, Will Bishop. You've called me Elspeth for longer than I can remember, and you're the only one I let do it. Now what's this Elisabeth?”
He smiled but looked embarrassed and seemed to try to cover. “You told me I sounded hick saying Elspeth.”
“When did I ever say something like that?”
“In fourth or fifth grade.”
She swatted his arm. “That doesn't count. You
were
hick then. Elspeth has always been your name for me.”
“Yes, ma'am,” he said.
She hugged him. “That was a new one, Will, I must say.”
He went upstairs muttering, “Didn't seem that big a deal ⦔
Elisabeth found that while praying for her family, she mostly thanked God for Will and requested more rest for him. With Benjy she prayed for patience and a dramatic change in his behavior and, more importantly, his character. He was as difficult in church and Sunday school as in grade school, and she was embarrassed. Elisabeth herself had clucked about parents who didn't control their children. She knew people already considered her a failure.
For sickly Betty her prayers were simply for relief, for the child as well as everyone else in the family who suffered with her and because of her. Elisabeth loved her, but she found pity wearying. She could barely stand to watch and listen as the little thing wheezed and dripped and groaned and cried all day. It was hardly Betty's fault, yet Elisabeth battled resenting her for the incessant irritation.
Bruce was easy to pray for. She simply asked that God use all the incredible gifts he had clearly planted in the boy. By age four he was reading, conversing with adults, even doing sums. One day a pastry vendor pushed his cart past the house, advertising donuts two for five cents. Bruce looked at Elisabeth, beaming, and pulled a nickel from his pocket. He had been carrying it around for weeks. “You want a donut, Mom? Do ya, huh? Do ya?”
“You want to buy a donut for each of us?”
“I want to buy one for Daddy and Mommy and Benjy and Betty and me!”
“You can buy only two.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yes. Read the sign and figure it out.”
Other kids and a neighbor lady had stopped the cart. Bruce looked at it, looked at Elisabeth, looked at his nickel, and set off. He stood at the edge of the little mob surrounding the cart until the vendor noticed him. “And what might I do for you, little one?” he said.
Bruce had the nickel hidden tight in his fist. “Can I just have one donut for a penny?”
Elisabeth was surprised. He knew full well the difference between a nickel and penny. She had laid it out for him on the table, showing him how many pennies equaled a nickel.
“Hm,” the vendor said. “Two for a nickel comes to two and a half cents each.” Bruce stood staring at him with a beseeching look. “But sure, I can give you one for a penny.”
As the vendor grabbed one with a sheet of waxed paper, Bruce said, “Good!” and opened his hand to reveal the nickel. “I'll take five!”
The vendor roared and the crowd cheered as Elisabeth came running. “No! No!” she said. “Two will be fine.”
“Are you kidding, ma'am?” the pastry man said. “The pitch alone was worth the loss of margin!”
“Please, don't feel obligated.”
“Give the boy the five,” a woman said, wiping her eyes. “I'd pay for 'em myself just for having seen a little businessman in the bud!”
Elisabeth finally let Bruce take the five donuts. He carefully set aside the three for the rest of the family and later took great pride in presenting them. Whenever he saw the pastry vendor he ran toward him yelling, “One for a penny?”
The vendor pretended to be irate and said, “No more of that from you, you little rapscallion! Now off with you!” and Bruce ran away, squealing with delight.
Money got so tight that Elisabeth began taking in laundry. Will was not happy about it, but he allowed it because, “at least you're here. And we
can
use the money.” He helped out in a grocery store and sold soda pop from a stand on the beach after work and on Saturdays during the summer. He spent his two and a half days off each week working for the city's public works department, once tearing up and relaying pavement bricks for the installation of streetlights. He told Elisabeth he had not worked so hard since high school, but the extra fifteen dollars carried them another week.
Just when Elisabeth thought she could never love Will more than she did, she discovered another facet to his personality or heard another amazing story. He ran a small savings and loan department out of the office at Fairbanks for the benefit of hourly employees. It was small potatoes, and mostly men on the line invested for a small return or borrowed for emergencies.
Will mentioned that one day a worker requested a larger than average loan for an operation, the last hope for his ailing daughter. “We didn't have enough cash on hand, so I asked a couple of the guys who seemed to save regularly to put in a little extra if they could, so we could extend the loan. Not only would they be helping this man and his daughter, but also everybody who invested would share the risk. They did, and we made the loan. Today the man's daughter is improving.”
“That's wonderful, Will. Do you realize you did that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I'm somethin', ain't I?”
“Seriously, how does that make you feel?”
“I wish someone would do the same for our company.”