The Excuse

A story, loosely based on Matthew Eleven

by Bob Freye

Hayden Graney poked at the mound of shredded turkey on his plate. Whatever stuck to his fork was quickly pitched into his mouth. He chomped on the turkey until he could scoop up a load of mashed potato, and then that went into his open mouth to mix with what was already half-chewed.

As the whole mess was ground together, Hayden managed to mumble another contribution to the conversation. And though the words were barely recognizable, Sondra Jansen knew exactly what he was saying.

“I’d go to church, but I can’t stand that pastor.” 

Hayden had driven deliveries for Prairie Land Propane for a dozen years, and Sondra had worked the front counter for the last eight. When he wasn’t on the road, Hayden was in and out of the office, and when he was in, he talked.

They all did. The little shop was a close family environment, and everyone talked about everything.

When she could, Sondra liked to talk about church, and Hayden was always ready to explain why he didn’t go.

“He’s like a dark cloud,” he said through the remains of turkey and mashed potato. “Never a smile, never does anything fun, as far as I can see.”

Another fork-load of food was waiting, and Hayden paused his speech to shovel the turkey and green beans into his mouth.

“He’s nice enough,” Sondra said. “Everyone says he’s a very good teacher. And the kids like him.”

She had met the pastor of the Blaine Road Church a few times in the past, and she liked him. He was somewhat serious. She would admit that. He reminded her of a college professor, all caught up in whatever he was teaching.

“What do kids know,” Hayden sputtered, sending a few random bits of green bean flying across the table. “They like anything.”

Sondra leaned back to get away from the spray. Hayden was not exactly a beam of sunlight himself. A pessimist since birth, he had sharpened his negativity over the course of a failed marriage and the loss of the family farm. He never talked about either, but Sondra knew that such disappointments would weigh heavily on anyone. Hayden wasn’t as tough as he would like everyone to believe.

“How about our church?” she asked, sounding deliberately unconcerned.

Sondra crossed her arms and studied Hayden’s face. This had become a game. She would invite, and he would explain why the idea was absolutely unthinkable. Maybe if he would have changed his story occasionally, updated his excuses, she might have listened more closely. But it was always the same.

“Your pastor’s no better,” he said before filling his mouth with a mixture of whatever he found on his plate.

“He’s young, he’s bright, he’s funny,” she said. “You’d like him.”

He just grunted. His arm was cramping up on him. It had taken to doing that from time to time. He stretched it out, bending the elbow this way and that to take the kinks out of his muscles. He probably wasn’t using them enough.

“I’ve seen him,” he told Sondra, “and I don’t like him. He’s not a proper pastor. All that guitar playing and drama in the service, that’s not church.”

He grimaced, and Sondra wondered why the game was different today. All that stretching and frowning. Speaking of drama, Hayden was adding a fair bit of overacting to his own performance today.

He reached back as if he was trying to retrieve his wallet, but he stopped in mid-reach and tightened his frown until he looked positively miserable.

“Don’t tell me you forgot your wallet,” Sondra said, smiling. “You said you’d pay, and I’m not in the mood for a lame excuse.”

It was a great line, but he didn’t react. He just sat there, with a far-away look in his eyes.

“Church ought to be serious,” Hayden said after a moment, continuing on as if he had simply lost track of the conversation. “You can’t be fiddling around in the house of God.”

The waitress saw Hayden wave his arm, and she came over to the table, thinking he probably wanted something.

“What can I get for you, dear?”

Hayden didn’t know. His arm had tightened, and he could feel an uneasiness in his stomach.

“Are you alright?” Sondra asked.

It was probably the turkey special. He had been eating it for twenty years, but they probably got it all goofed up this time. What would it be? Would salmonella cause this fluttering of his stomach? And what about the tightness in his chest? What would cause that?

He thought he should move toward the bathroom, but when he stood up, he came crashing down onto the floor and lay in a heap in the aisle.

“Are you feeling alright, dear?” the waitress asked. But almost immediately she hurried away to the front of the restaurant to call for an ambulance.

Several people gathered around Hayden and tried to help him feel more comfortable. They straightened him out and put a rolled up jacket under his head. He looked cold, so they tossed another jacket over him, but he pulled it off.

Sondra laid a hand on his shoulder.

“We’re right here, Hayden,” she assured him. “And we won’t go anywhere. We’ll stay right with you while you wait.”

His eyes were wide and frightened.

“I’m calling my pastor,” she said, very seriously. “No excuses this time.”

Some people say that when death is very near, you see a long hallway with a bright light. Hayden didn’t see that. He didn’t see anything, really, except the restaurant and the faces of the people that crowded around him to help.

But he heard something. Maybe it was that same long hallway, and someone was standing at the other end, calling to him. Maybe it was a voice from way back in his past, a voice that he had forgotten until now.

Maybe it was just something he had known all along and been able to ignore.

“Hayden,” it said, “no excuses!”

So that answered one question about life after death, he thought. It was the voice of his third grade teacher, the stern Miss Boxer, a tall willowy woman with round-rimmed glasses and a perpetual scowl.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She had smiled, on occasion. Quite often, he had to admit. She had only scowled when he had offended her sense of classroom decorum by teasing a classmate or losing his homework or destroying the knees in his good school pants by playing too rough or too wild at some inane game outside on the playground.   

She had scowled when he had disappointed her.

New faces appeared around him, and the old faces melted away. Something was wrapped around his arm, and someone began to poke him and prod him, looking in his eyes and listening to his chest.

Sondra waited nearby as the first responders got Hayden ready for the ride to the hospital. When they had him up on the stretcher and prepared to move, he whispered something in the ear of the nearest EMT.

“What?” the young man asked, and he leaned down again to listen.

When they took Hayden away, the EMT waited behind with a message for Sondra. 

“He wanted me to tell you something,” he said. “It must have been important, but I don’t know what it means.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“He told me to tell you that God sounds like Miss Boxer,” the EMT reported with a puzzled look on his face. “Does that mean anything?”

“No.”

“He also said to tell you thank you.”

That meant something.

“You’d better double check,” she told the man. “That might not be the real Hayden Graney.”

He smiled and followed the rest of the crew out to the ambulance.

Sondra reached for her cell phone and dialed the number for her pastor’s house. She would call the other pastor as well, and he would have his choice. He could have dark and serious, or he could have young and energetic.

But one way or another, he would listen.

“No excuses, Hayden,” she said out loud. “Not this time.”

##

A last word:

In Matthew eleven, verses sixteen through nineteen, Jesus warns the crowd to be very careful of the excuses they try to use. They didn’t like John, because he stayed away from the bustle of the city. He lived out in the wilderness, so they thought he was strange. Jesus lived among them. He ate at the local restaurants, and he shared a glass of wine at a wedding. But they didn’t like him, either. He was too much like them.

“You are just spoiled children,” Jesus said. “You spend so much time on your excuses that you can’t recognize the truth when you see it.”

  
[-] © 2007 by Bob Freye