Soon After (2 page)
Authors: Sherryle Kiser Jackson
Chapter 1
No Rest for The Weary
Willie Green strolled leisurely from the front entrance of the Pleasant Harvest Baptist Church to the office suite. He was keenly aware that his feet were confined to his dress shoes and his neck was noosed by his tie. As busy as his year had been combining churches with his wife, the couple decided to take an early vacation, a free frolicking Spring Break, like college students take. It started Easter Monday and lasted one blissful, congregation-free week. After seven days and six nights of sleeping in, walking along the Jersey shoreline, and dinning out at the quaint restaurants of Cape May, it was official. He had to go back to work.
He spotted Luella, their administrative assistant, on the telephone as he cleared the corner. He could tell by the tilt of her head and the coil of telephone cord around her finger that she had been conversing for a while and that the call was a personal one. Their absence had not offered her time off, but rather had offered a more relaxed work schedule. He cleared his throat to announce his arrival.
“Goodness, Pastor. You scared me,” Luella said, pausing to say goodbye to someone who had enough sense to quickly relinquish the call. She stood up. “Sorry.”
With a wave of his hand, Willie assured her that she hadn't committed any cardinal sin. “Next time I'll announce myself with a chorus of âSign me up for the Christian Jubilee'.”
The joke was lost on her. She was a young woman with an old name. She couldn't be any older than thirty. Good home and business school training, but a bit too staunch for his taste. Give him personable over professional any day, like his old church clerk and mother-figure, Mae Richardson, who had passed away right before their churches combined. Willie and Luella hadn't quite bonded, but Willie could understand why she and Vanessa meshed so well. His wife was all business, all the time. She would give Luella an itemized list of things to do with a timeline, then lock herself away for hours working on a project. Willie was always stir crazy locked in his office too long and craved social interaction by noon.
“I figured since it was after eleven that you and Sister Pastor were taking another day off. Where is Sister Pastor, by the way?”
“She's taking another day. Like you said, sometimes you need a vacation after your vacation.” He covered his mouth with his hand as if to let her in on a secret. “I think she just wanted a Willie-free day.”
Willie had thought certain that Vanessa would be ready to return to the church operations as well. He had always known her to quickly move on to the next thing. She had outlined at least four sermons while they were away that he knew she wanted to cross reference with the catalog of sermons she kept on her office computer. Plus she was involved in the planning of both the upcoming Trinity Conference and the Church's 50
th
Anniversary.
th
Anniversary.
He gave her a lecture about being present, enjoying the moment, and not taking too much work with them on their vacation. Once she got the idea, he figured it was taking her awhile to switch back out of relax mode. Willie nudged her at 8
A.M.
and then again at nine thirty when he finally got up to eat and get dressed. She rattled off some excuse from their four poster bed as if he were her employee and she was calling in sick.
A.M.
and then again at nine thirty when he finally got up to eat and get dressed. She rattled off some excuse from their four poster bed as if he were her employee and she was calling in sick.
“Well, I certainly have missed you two, and so have the fifty or so people who've called or left messages for you all,” Luella said in her chipper cadence.
As if on cue, her desk telephone rang at that moment. Willie listened as she acknowledged the caller with a perky and polite Pleasant Harvest greeting. “As a matter of fact, he's right here,” Luella said, banking the call before he could object.
“So much for getting situated,” Willie murmured as he looked for a place to rest his briefcase.
“She's on line two.”
“She?” Willie asked. His finger was poised on the receiver.
“Alexis Montgomery, a reporter for Channel 7.” She referenced a pad on her desk. “Called twice while you were away and once this morning. That would put her at the top of your call back list.”
Willie put up a finger to halt further explanation as he tried to figure out for a moment the possible nature of the call. “Hello, this is Pastor Willie Green.”
“Pastor Green, this is Alexis Montgomery. I am the assignment reporter that did the remote interview with you at the site of the Harvest Baptist Church on Easter Sunday.”
“Yes, I remember,” Willie said.
“I was wondering if I can set up an appointment to sit down with you to discuss a story idea I'm working on that would go into your affiliation with that church,” Alexis said.
Willie shook his head as he thought of the four months it had taken him to let go of his affiliation to Harvest Baptist Church, where he had served as a pastor for the past ten years. His mini vacation had helped to further remove himself from the recent calamity at his former church and its ramifications on the now homeless members.
Willie let out a puff of air. He felt a headache coming on. “Ms. Montgomery, I literally just got in the office. Let me get situated and get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Please, Pastor Green, this meeting, like everything in journalism, is time sensitive,” she pleaded.
“Ms. Montgomery,” Willie said, cutting off her hard sale with a diplomatic voice. “I am passing the phone to our secretary to get your call back information. Talk to you soon. Be blessed.”
Willie heard Luella ask the reporter to hold before banking the call again.
“I'm an administrative assistant,” Luella said.
“Huh?”
“You called me a secretary. âI am handing the phone off to my secretary.' My title is administrative assistant.”
Her tone was serious, but not sassy, so Willie looked at the young woman standing on the other side of the desk briefly to see if he had hurt her feelings, “Sorry.”
She reached across the desk and handed him a stack of mail and papers secured in folders and bound with a rubber band. “I guess I should debrief you. Wanna go in Sister Pastor's office or the study?”
Willie thought about it. “No, I'm going down the hall to my office. Give me a minute, you know, let me get acclimated to being at work again before coming down.”
Willie approached the door of the office that he used to seclude himself. The door was freshly stained after removing the lettering that read: F
IRST
L
ADY'S
L
OUNGE
. This had been the space where his mother-in-law kept his now wife and her sister out of their dad's hair when they were little and where they entertained the companions of traveling ministers. It was down the hall from Daddy Morton's personal study and the adjoining office that was now Vanessa's spacious headquarters.
IRST
L
ADY'S
L
OUNGE
. This had been the space where his mother-in-law kept his now wife and her sister out of their dad's hair when they were little and where they entertained the companions of traveling ministers. It was down the hall from Daddy Morton's personal study and the adjoining office that was now Vanessa's spacious headquarters.
His wife was rooted here, and being in a space that was once her father's had to have special meaning for her
,
Willie thought.
,
Willie thought.
Although he had pondered remodeling the office suites to suit them both, he didn't want to have that debate with Vanessa. It would be like negotiating more closet space at home. It wasn't worth the breath. He didn't know why it bothered him so much. Maybe because he was the co-pastor to a congregation of nearly 500 whose office was in a lounge. It was a modest size office minus the gingham covered couches and doily-covered coffee table. In fact, with the addition of his old office furniture and desk set, it was eerily like his office at Harvest Baptist Church. Maybe he was being a stereotypical man, but size did matter.
The pile Luella gave him got tossed in the center of his desk along with his keys. From his briefcase, he extracted a souvenir photo of him and Vanessa on a dinner cruise. The empty case got placed by the door for the return trip home after placing the photo in a prominent position. He took great satisfaction in booting up his office computer. According to technicians, his computer rendered the only stable connection to the outside world when they had come to work on the church's system. They had no immediate solution to getting Vanessa's computer online or maintaining Luella's connection. He welcomed Vanessa and Luella who had no choice but to come-a-knockin' every so often on Willie's door when they needed to reach out to resources beyond the Pleasant Harvest network.
Willie was trying to figure out the password to the guestbook feature that allowed people to reach out to their ministry online for prayer requests when Luella buzzed to say she would be coming down. He unraveled the bundle he was given earlier so he could be prepared. Contracts for conference space and spreadsheets of allocated funds for the Trinity Conference followed by a few preacher profiles cluttered his desk. There were checks made out with a financial secretary report that needed Vanessa's authorizing signature. Underneath all that was a call back list of people he didn't know and drafts of ministry lessons he didn't create.
Luella entered after a short rap on the door. She extended more papers for him to grasp. “I accidentally gave you Sister Pastor's pile.”
Although he was still gathering Vanessa's bundle back together, he noticed Vanessa's pile was considerably thicker.
“So what do you have for me?” Willie asked.
“Membership roles, invitations, a couple of messages, and a few commercial Bible study aides to review.”
“Is that it?“ Willie said.
“Yep,” she assured.
Willie looked up at her from her tailor-made suit to her tailor-made smile. He wondered if she could be stashing his work in File 13. He looked through Vanessa's pile again. Although he and Vanessa had informally designated the membership needs to him and the business end of the ministry to her, who was to say he couldn't handle both in her absence?
“Why don't you sit down, Luella?” Willie said, noticing how she anxiously stomped the heel of her right shoe into the carpet. “How did things really go while we were away? Tell me about Sunday.”
He watched her sit down hesitantly in the small leather upright chair across from his desk and tilt her legs to the side before crossing them at the ankles. She used Vanessa's inbox pile that he had given back to her to cover her lap. Willie pushed back in his chair as if he were about to unload his burdens to a therapist.
“Well, Sunday was interesting. Minister Morton preached. No, it was more like she taught a lesson on Faithfulness. Although she kind of lost people, trying to relate the text to her personal stories about her engagement and wedding planning. It was like Star Jones on
The View
before her wedding to Al Reynolds.” Luella chuckled, allowing herself to fall back into the pad of the chair. She caught herself and brought back the professional polish with a fake cough. She stood. “It was good though.”
The View
before her wedding to Al Reynolds.” Luella chuckled, allowing herself to fall back into the pad of the chair. She caught herself and brought back the professional polish with a fake cough. She stood. “It was good though.”
Keisha Morton was Vanessa's sister and the current minister to the singles at Pleasant Harvest. She surprised everyone when she informally announced her engagement to Willie's mentee, Paul Grant, on Easter Sunday.
“Oh, and tell Sister Pastor that I'd like to personally thank you both for not informing her sister and your sister-in-law that you were going out of town when you asked her to preach.” Her perturbed expression revealed the sarcasm.
This time Willie chuckled. “She worried you to death, didn't she?”
“She called for a moratorium on scheduling things on the church calendars until she decided on a date for the wedding. How dare you go out of town before she officially declared the date for the wedding of the century? Dra-ma,” Luella sang.
They both shared a good laugh before Willie said, “All I can say is pray for Paul.”
“Pray for us all,” Luella responded, doing an about face for the door.
“Wait a minute,” Willie said, halting her retreat. “What about my members
?”
?”
“We had to use the Ministry Tree you came up with. I know Sister Pastor thought it wouldn't work for a congregation this size, but the chain of command really worked well. We alerted all ministry heads that you were out of town. Plus put a note on our website. Then Theodora Marshall was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday.”
“And?” Willie said, cutting her off. This is what he had been waiting for. This was the kind of stuff that got his blood pumping.
“We started at the bottom and worked up. She is a part of the Prayer Partners Ministry. We called the ministry leader, who in turn kept her watchcare deacon and ministry members updated. I even went to see her myself on Thursday after work. Another member was about to be evicted, but that got resolved. I made you a report that I will email you later.”
Willie didn't want a report. He wanted Luella to sit down and describe for him how Sister Marshall looked. Was she rail-thin or did she look about ready for a chicken dinner, as Mae would have categorized it? He wanted to know details about the sacrifices people made to help her and others in need. He wanted to hear how the saints rallied around her and prayed for her strength.
“Like I said, the Ministry Tree worked well and should alleviate some of the personal responsibility that falls on you and Sister Pastor,” Luella said, practically from the doorway.
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