The Pastor's Wife Wears Biker Boots
Praise for The Pastor’s Wife Wear’s Biker Boots
The Pastor’s Wife Wears Biker Boots
Karla Akins
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
The Pastor’s Wife Wears Biker Boots
COPYRIGHT 2013 by Karla Akins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Pelican Ventures, LLC except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
eBook editions are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. eBooks may not be re-sold, copied or given away to other people. If you would like to share an eBook edition, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated are taken from the King James translation, public domain.
Harley Davidson is a trademark of Harley Davidson, Inc. Ultra Classic® and Electra Glide® are trademarks of Harley Davidson Inc.
Cover Art by
Nicola Martinez
Harbourlight Books, a division of Pelican Ventures, LLC
www.pelicanbookgroup.com
PO Box 1738 *Aztec, NM * 87410
Harbourlight Books sail and mast logo is a trademark of Pelican Ventures, LLC
Publishing History
First Harbourlight Edition, 2013
Paperback Edition ISBN 978-1-61116-282-0
Electronic Edition ISBN 978-1-61116-281-3
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
For the pastor’s wife who dares to be herself as she serves others with her life. God has not forgotten you (Hebrews 6:10)!
Praise for
The Pastor’s Wife Wear’s Biker Boots
Karla Akins is a master of humor! You’ll definitely find yourself laughing out loud at every twist and turn (especially when you see a bit of yourself in the characters)! ~Cheryl Martin, author of The Hawaiian Island Detective Club series
“Put on your helmet and strap on your boots, because Akins’ delightful novel
The Pastor’s Wife Wears Biker Boots
delivers a quirky look at what happens when a small community’s pastor’s wife decides to take life by the proverbial handles. Biker Boots is a story about life and love, laced with a humorous charm that will ride with a reader for years to come.” ~Jessica Nelson, author of
Love On The Range
“I love a story that’s not only interest-grabbing, but loaded with both sage wisdom and sparkling wit. Karla Akins delivers a perfect three-way combo in Biker Boots. This is charming, laugh-out-loud Christian fiction at its very finest.” ~Camille Eide, author of
Savanna’s Gift
, A Romantic Christmas Novella, White Rose Publishing
“Strap on your helmet, you’re in for a DELIGHTFUL ride with Biker Boots. While you’re at it, grab a box of tissues—for crying and for laughing out loud until you cry.” ~Susan F. Craft, author of
The Chamomile
, an inspirational Revolutionary War romantic suspense and winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick
Acknowledgements
To my husband Eddie: thanks for teaching me to ride my own motorcycle, for supporting my writing dreams and giving me sons. To Isaiah and Isaac who are patient to do without Mom while she writes and to Jesse and Noah for cheering me on, I love you more each day.
Thanks to my agent, Linda Glaz for believing in this story with her whole heart and to my editor, Fay Lamb and Editor-in-Chief, Nicola Martinez, for giving this new author the best tools to shine. I am blessed that God led me to Harbourlight.
Thanks, hugs and happy snoopy dances to my “Friday Critters,” Camille Eide, Emily Hendrickson, Jessica Nelson, Linda Glaz and Cheryl Martin. I'm so glad God ordered my steps to your open arms.
To Christian Fellowship Church of North Manchester, Indiana. You are the most loving church I’ve ever known. Your support of me is priceless. Thanks to all my friends and my
very special
first reader, Michele Hughes. I love and admire you all so much.
And to
all
my readers: thanks for your enthusiasm and feedback. I pray God’s blessings on you and yours!
Most of all, I thank my savior, Jesus Christ, for His grace and mercy and inspiration that endures forever. He is more than wonderful
1
The women of Eel
Falls First Independent Christian Community Church
Ladies Fellowship are a strong-willed, opinionated bunch.
And I’m their fearless leader.
OK, fine.
I’m afraid of them.
“Ladies, ladies.” I clapped my hands and spoke in my sweetest let’s-get-moving voice. “We have events to discuss, and I need your attention.”
Another smile and a rap on the table.
Invisible me.
And then?
Holy. Terror.
Women screamed, my mouth flew open, and Dorothea clasped her heart. Goliath and Timmy came barreling through the church basement door covered head-to-toe in mud, rejoicing in foul-smelling, slimy delight. All I could see were Timmy’s white teeth and the rims of his eyes. Goliath barked and danced around Timmy like an organ grinder’s monkey.
A really big one with bad breath.
I whispered a prayer for God to deliver me from the dog that so easily entangled Maude’s new Vera Bradley handbag.
I slammed my eyes shut, but Goliath’s bark snapped me back to reality. I threw my hands over my eyes and peeked through my fingers as the giant mastiff braced himself to shake off the pond scum.
Dread gurgled from deep inside me until it erupted like Mt. Vesuvius. “Nooooo!”
Like a slow-motion horror film, Goliath shook every inch of his 213-pound extra-wrinkly-skinned self. When he finished, the ladies at the table’s end were smothered in muck and drool.
“Pond!” Timmy smiled with pride and pointed out the door and down the street to the pond in front of our house. “Pond!”
“Help,” I mouthed.
I looked at my good friends, Lily and Opal, and made a silent plea for rescue.
They both nodded and grabbed Timmy as I dashed toward Goliath who had Bernice pinned to the floor, licking her like a Popsicle. His head was twice the size of hers, and he ignored her screaming and the violent kicks of her size-ten feet. She swung at him with her handbag, and he responded as if it were a fabulous game of tag, woofing and slurping with fervent delight. If the cantankerous matriarch hadn’t used an entire can of hairspray, he would have inhaled every curl atop her freshly-styled head.
Bernice might not have been able to see through glasses covered in muck, but she could scream. “Norman! Help! I’m being attacked by a mad dog!” And she bellowed something about the immediate return of Christ and the rapture of the dead.
Everyone else yelled at Bernice to shut up.
Finally, Lily caught Goliath and took Timmy and the monster dog home. I helped Bernice crawl out from underneath the table and tried to clean the sludge from her floral-patterned blouse. She spun in a circle and slapped my hand away.
“I never…” Bernice’s eyes blazed with fury.
I fought hard to hold in my laughter. I’d never known her to be speechless.
Bernice wiped at her face with a small hankie, but it covered little territory. “I never, I never…” She attempted to pat her hair back into place. Her left eye peeked out from a circle of mud and a small piece of algae clung to her twitching eyebrow as she glared at me. “The pastor and board will hear about this. I never…”
I did my best to restore pastoral peace and harmony to the group by closing the meeting in prayer, but I don’t think their hearts were in it.
All the ladies left except for me and Mrs. Huntington. Together we mopped up the mud, but I had a feeling we’d be discovering new spots to clean for months. After she left, I went outside to empty the mop bucket.
The air was warm and stars peeked through a dark, cloudless sky. I spilled the dingy water on the ground and took a deep breath.
And then I slumped to the grass and sobbed.
“Is this all there is to being a pastor’s wife, God? One mess after another?” I stared down at the puddle I’d made as it swirled and reflected dancing stars at my feet.
Some people, when God speaks to them, hear harps, or bells, or angels singing.
The apostle Paul, Alexander the Great, and Joan of Arc saw a bright light.
But in the distant darkness of night?
I
heard a call.
The unmistakable rumble of the one thing on this earth—besides cheesecake—that makes my heart flutter and goose bumps crawl from the base of my neck to the tips of my purple nail-polished toes.
I raised my head slowly and saw a vision.
Cobalt blue, mixed with shimmering chrome, reflected the moon’s silver rays and sang in deep, rhythmic tones. I stood transfixed, completely mesmerized in the glimmer of metallic paint. The moon danced on chrome pipes that vibrated in sync with the steady cadence of the V-twin’s deep symphonic timbre. My enchanted heart beat in fifth gear, and I released an audible sigh.
Caught up in rapturous wonder, my eyes followed Reba O’Malley as she maneuvered her Harley Davidson Road King around the corner and past the church. I waved as she passed, but she didn’t see me. “Lord,” I whispered as my eyes followed the bike’s graceful rumba down the road, “are there Harleys in heaven?”
The only answer was the guttural rhythm of Reba’s dream machine calling me to adventures I’d never known.
2
As God usually does when I’m at the end of my rope, He ties a knot for me to hang onto. This time, the knot’s name was Reba.
I’d just finished adding oregano to my famous spaghetti sauce when the phone rang.
“You’re going to have to come help me,” Reba said in her matter-of-fact way. “Timmy’s having a meltdown, and I can’t get him past it.
”
“Oh no. What is it this time?
”
“We’re out of five-inch corner braces, and I can’t convince him that more will be here tomorrow.”
She popped her gum into the phone.
“I’ll be right there
.”
I turned off the stove, jumped into the van with Timmy’s weighted blanket, and sped the one mile to O’Malley’s Hardware store.
When I pulled up to the curb and jumped out, Trace, Reba’s husband, opened the door and let me in. I could hear Timmy screaming from the stock room.
Customers
avoided my gaze and pretended not to hear.
“I’m sorry, Trace,” I whispered, giving him what I hoped was a pained, apologetic look.
“It’s OK, Kirstie. It’s just going to take time
.” Trace’s smooth, basso voice calmed my aching spirit. God bless him. Not a church-going man, but he had a heart of gol
d.
Before coming to Eel Falls, my husband’s resume looked like Swiss cheese because of Timmy, whose outbursts and aggression embarrassed other congregations. Unfamiliar with autism, they blamed us for his unusual and disruptive behaviors.
I hurried to the stock room and found Timmy rocking in a corner on the floor between two shelves. Reba stood by talking to him softly, making sure he wouldn’t hurt himself. She moved from the corner so I could sit beside him.
“Timmy, it’s Mommy.” I draped the weighted blanket over his shoulders. “Shhhh, it’s Mommy. It’s OK.
”
“No bay-sez, no bay-sez. Bay-sez all gone. No bay-sez.
”
“I know. I know.” Fingers taut, I rubbed his arms up and down and down and up. “Braces will be here tomorrow. It’s OK.
”