Synopsis
Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister....Jamie
LETS BEGIN........
A Walk to Remember
NICHOLAS
SPARKS
Prologue
When I was seventeen, my life changed forever.
I know that there are people who wonder about me when I
say this. They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom
what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to
explain. Because I've lived here for most of my life, I don't
feel that I have to unless it's on my terms, and that would
take more time than most people are willing to give me. My
story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't
be packaged into something neat and simple that people would
immediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years,
the people still living here who knew me that year accept my
lack of explanation without question. My story in some ways
is their story because it was something that all of us lived
through.
It was I, however, who was closest to it. I'm fifty-seven
years old, but even now I can remember everything from that
year, down to the smallest details. I relive that year often
in my mind, bringing it back to life, and I realize that when
I do, I always feel a strange combination of sadness and joy.
There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and
take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I
did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as
they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever
I can. This happens more often than I let on.
It is April 12, in the last year before the millennium,
and as I leave my house, I glance around. The sky is overcast
and gray, but as I move down the street, I notice that the
dogwoods and azaleas are blooming. I zip my jacket just a
little. The temperature is cool, though I know it's only a
matter of weeks before it will settle in to something
comfortable and the gray skies give way to the kind of days
that make North Carolina one of the most beautiful places in
the world. With a sigh, I feel it all coming back to me. I
close my eyes and the years begin to move in reverse, slowly
ticking backward, like the hands of a clock rotating in the
wrong direction. As if through someone else's eyes, I watch
myself grow younger; I see my hair changing from gray to
brown, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begin to smooth, my
arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons I've learned with age grow
dimmer, and my innocence returns as that eventful year
approaches.
Then, like me, the world begins to change: roads narrow
and some become gravel, suburban sprawl has been replaced
with farmland, downtown streets teem with people, looking in
windows as they pass Sweeney's bakery and Palka's meat shop.
Men wear hats, women wear dresses. At the courthouse up the
street, the bell tower rings. . . .
I open my eyes and pause. I am standing outside the
Baptist church, and when I stare at the gable, I know exactly
who I am. My name is Landon Carter, and I'm seventeen years
old.
This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out.
First you will smile, and then you will cry-don't say you
haven't been warned.
Chapter 1
In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the
coast near Morehead City, was a place like many other small
southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity
rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail
made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked
around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees
draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever
they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not,
and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to
the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the
Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of
life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal
Waterway. Only three channels came in on the television,
though television was never important to those of us who grew
up there. Instead our lives were centered around the
churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits
alone. They went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian
Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church of
Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist
churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most
popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches
on practically every corner of town, though each considered
itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of
every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists,
Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent
Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.
Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the
Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to
know-in conjunction with the local high school. Every year
they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort
Playhouse, which was actually a play that had been written by
Hegbert Sullivan, a minister who'd been with the church since
Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old, but
he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy's
skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and
translucent-kids would swear they actually saw the blood
flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those
bunnies you see in pet stores around Easter.
Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel,
because he didn't want to keep on performing that old Charles
Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. In his mind Scrooge was a
heathen, who came to his redemption only because he saw
ghosts, not angels-and who was to say whether they'd been
sent by God, anyway? And who was to say he wouldn't revert to
his sinful ways if they hadn't been sent directly from
heaven? The play didn't exactly tell you in the end-it sort
of plays into faith and all-but Hegbert didn't trust ghosts
if they weren't actually sent by God, which wasn't explained
in plain language, and this was his big problem with it. A
few years back he'd changed the end of the play-sort of
followed it up with his own version, complete with old man
Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem
to find the place where Jesus once taught the scribes. It
didn't fly too well-not even to the congregation, who sat in
the audience staring wide-eyed at the spectacle-and the
newspaper said things like "Though it was certainly
interesting, it wasn't exactly the play we've all come to
know and love. . . ."
So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own
play. He'd written his own sermons his whole life, and some
of them, we had to admit, were actually interesting,
especially when he talked about the "wrath of God coming down
on the fornicators" and all that good stuff. That really got
his blood boiling, I'll tell you, when he talked about the
fornicators. That was his real hot spot. When we were
younger, my friends and I would hide behind the trees and
shout, "Hegbert is a fornicator!" when we saw him walking
down the street, and we'd giggle like idiots, like we were
the wittiest creatures ever to inhabit the planet.
Old Hegbert, he'd stop dead in his tracks and his ears
would perk up-I swear to God, they actually moved-and he'd
turn this bright shade of red, like he'd just drunk gasoline,
and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out
all over, like those maps of the Amazon River that you see in
National Geographic. He'd peer from side to side, his eyes
narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just as
suddenly, he'd start to go pale again, back to that fishy
skin, right before our eyes. Boy, it was something to watch,
that's for sure.
So we'd be hiding behind a tree and Hegbert (what kind of
parents name their kid Hegbert, anyway?) would stand there
waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if he thought we'd be
that stupid. We'd put our hands over our mouths to keep from
laughing out loud, but somehow he'd always zero in on us.
He'd be turning from side to side, and then he'd stop, those
beady eyes coming right at us, right through the tree. "I
know who you are, Landon Carter," he'd say, "and the Lord
knows, too." He'd let that sink in for a minute or so, and
then he'd finally head off again, and during the sermon that
weekend he'd stare right at us and say something like "God is
merciful to children, but the children must be worthy as
well." And we'd sort of lower ourselves in the seats, not
from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles.
Hegbert didn't understand us at all, which was really sort of
strange, being that he had a kid and all. But then again, she
was a girl. More on that, though, later.
Anyway, like I said, Hegbert wrote The Christmas Angel one
year and decided to put on that play instead. The play itself
wasn't bad, actually, which surprised everyone the first year
it was performed. It's basically the story of a man who had
lost his wife a few years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used
to be real religious, but he had a crisis of faith after his
wife died during childbirth. He's raising this little girl
all on his own, but he hasn't been the greatest father, and
what the little girl really wants for Christmas is a special
music box with an angel engraved on top, a picture of which
she'd cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and
hard to find the gift, but he can't find it anywhere. So it's
Christmas Eve and he's still searching, and while he's out
looking through the stores, he comes across a strange woman
he's never seen before, and she promises to help him find the
gift for his daughter. First, though, they help this homeless
person (back then they were called bums, by the way), then
they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then visit a
lonely old woman who just wanted some company on Christmas
Eve. At this point the mysterious woman asks Tom Thornton
what he wants for Christmas, and he says that he wants his
wife back. She brings him to the city fountain and tells him
to look in the water and he'll find what he's looking for.
When he looks in the water, he sees the face of his little
girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While he's
sobbing, the mysterious lady runs off, and Tom Thornton
searches but can't find her anywhere. Eventually he heads
home, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind. He
walks into his little girl's room, and her sleeping figure
makes him realize that she's all he has left of his wife, and
he starts to cry again because he knows he hasn't been a good
enough father to her. The next morning, magically, the music
box is underneath the tree, and the angel that's engraved on
it looks exactly like the woman he'd seen the night before.
So it wasn't that bad, really. If truth be told, people
cried buckets whenever they saw it. The play sold out every
year it was performed, and due to its popularity, Hegbert
eventually had to move it from the church to the Beaufort
Playhouse, which had a lot more seating. By the time I was a
senior in high school, the performances ran twice to packed
houses, which, considering who actually performed it, was a
story in and of itself.
You see, Hegbert wanted young people to perform the
play-seniors in high school, not the theater group. I reckon
he thought it would be a good learning experience before the
seniors headed off to college and came face-to-face with all
the fornicators. He was that kind of guy, you know, always
wanting to save us from temptation. He wanted us to know that
God is out there watching you, even when you're away from
home, and that if you put your trust in God, you'll be all
right in the end. It was a lesson that I would eventually
learn in time, though it wasn't Hegbert who taught me.
As I said before, Beaufort was fairly typical as far as
southern towns went, though it did have an interesting
history. Blackbeard the pirate once owned a house there, and
his ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, is supposedly buried
somewhere in the sand just offshore. Recently some
archaeologists or oceanographers or whoever looks for stuff
like that said they found it, but no one's certain just yet,
being that it sank over 250 years ago and you can't exactly
reach into the glove compartment and check the registration.
Beaufort's come a long way since the 1950s, but it's still
not exactly a major metropolis or anything. Beaufort was, and
always will be, on the smallish side, but when I was growing
up, it barely warranted a place on the map. To put it into
perspective, the congressional district that included
Beaufort covered the entire eastern part of the state-some
twenty thousand square miles-and there wasn't a single town
with more than twenty-five thousand people. Even compared
with those towns, Beaufort was regarded as being on the small
side. Everything east of Raleigh and north of Wilmington, all
the way to the Virginia border, was the district my father
represented.
I suppose you've heard of him. He's sort of a legend, even
now. His name is Worth Carter, and he was a congressman for
almost thirty years. His slogan every other year during the
election season was "Worth Carter represents ---," and the
person was supposed to fill in the city name where he or she
lived. I can remember, driving on trips when me and Mom had
to make our appearances to show the people he was a true
family man, that we'd see those bumper stickers, stenciled in
with names like Otway and Chocawinity and Seven Springs.
Nowadays stuff like that wouldn't fly, but back then that was
fairly sophisticated publicity. I imagine if he tried to do
that now, people opposing him would insert all sorts of foul
language in the blank space, but we never saw it once. Okay,
maybe once. A farmer from Duplin County once wrote the word
shit in the blank space, and when my mom saw it, she covered
my eyes and said a prayer asking for forgiveness for the poor
ignorant bastard. She didn't say exactly those words, but I
got the gist of it.
So my father, Mr. Congressman, was a bigwig, and everyone
but everyone knew it, including old man Hegbert. Now, the two
of them didn't get along, not at all, despite the fact that
my father went to Hegbert's church whenever he was in town,
which to be frank wasn't all that often. Hegbert, in addition
to his belief that fornicators were destined to clean the
urinals in hell, also believed that communism was "a sickness
that doomed mankind to heathenhood." Even though heathenhood
wasn't a word-I can't find it in any dictionary-the
congregation knew what he meant. They also knew that he was
directing his words specifically to my father, who would sit
with his eyes closed and pretend not to listen. My father was
on one of the House committees that oversaw the "Red
influence" supposedly infiltrating every aspect of the
country, including national defense, higher education, and
even tobacco farming. You have to remember that this was
during the cold war; tensions were running high, and we North
Carolinians needed something to bring it down to a more
personal level. My father had consistently looked for facts,
which were irrelevant to people like Hegbert. Afterward, when
my father would come home after the service, he'd say
something like "Reverend Sullivan was in rare form today. I
hope you heard that part about the Scripture where Jesus was
talking about the poor. . . ."
Yeah, sure, Dad. . . .
My father tried to defuse situations whenever possible. I
think that's why he stayed in Congress for so long. The guy
could kiss the ugliest babies known to mankind and still come
up with something nice to say. "He's such a gentle child,"
he'd say when a baby had a giant head, or, "I'll bet she's
the sweetest girl in the world," if she had a birthmark over
her entire face. One time a lady showed up with a kid in a
wheelchair. My father took one look at him and said, "I'll
bet you ten to one that you're smartest kid in your class."
And he was! Yeah, my father was great at stuff like that. He
could fling it with the best of 'em, that's for sure. And he
wasn't such a bad guy, not really, especially if you consider
the fact that he didn't beat me or anything. But he wasn't
there for me growing up. I hate to say that because nowadays
people claim that sort of stuff even if their parent was
around and use it to excuse their behavior. My dad . . . he
didn't love me . . . that's why I became a stripper and
performed on The Jerry Springer Show. . . . I'm not using it
to excuse the person I've become, I'm simply saying it as a
fact. My father was gone nine months of the year, living out
of town in a Washington, D.C., apartment three hundred miles
away. My mother didn't go with him because both of them
wanted me to grow up "the same way they had."
Of course, my father's father took him hunting and
fishing, taught him to play ball, showed up for birthday
parties, all that small stuff that adds up to quite a bit
before adulthood. My father, on the other hand, was a
stranger, someone I barely knew at all. For the first five
years of my life I thought all fathers lived somewhere else.
It wasn't until my best friend, Eric Hunter, asked me in
kindergarten who that guy was who showed up at my house the
night before that I realized something wasn't quite right
about the situation.
"He's my father," I said proudly.
"Oh," Eric said as he rifled through my lunchbox, looking
for my Milky Way, "I didn't know you had a father."
Talk about something whacking you straight in the face.
So, I grew up under the care of my mother. Now she was a
nice lady, sweet and gentle, the kind of mother most people
dream about. But she wasn't, nor could she ever be, a manly
influence in my life, and that fact, coupled with my growing
disillusionment with my father, made me become something of a
rebel, even at a young age. Not a bad one, mind you. Me and
my friends might sneak out late and soap up car windows now
and then or eat boiled peanuts in the graveyard behind the
church, but in the fifties that was the kind of thing that
made other parents shake their heads and whisper to their
children, "You don't want to be like that Carter boy. He's on
the fast track to prison."
Me. A bad boy. For eating boiled peanuts in the graveyard.
Go figure.
Anyway, my father and Hegbert didn't get along, but it
wasn't only because of politics. No, it seems that my father
and Hegbert knew each other from way back when. Hegbert was
about twenty years older than my father, and back before he
was a minister, he used to work for my father's father. My
grandfather-even though he spent lots of time with my
father-was a true bastard if there ever was one. He was the
one, by the way, who made the family fortune, but I don't
want you to imagine him as the sort of man who slaved over
his business, working diligently and watching it grow,
prospering slowly over time. My grandfather was much shrewder
than that. The way he made his money was simple-he started as
a bootlegger, accumulating wealth throughout Prohibition by
running rum up from Cuba. Then he began buying land and
hiring sharecroppers to work it. He took ninety percent of
the money the sharecroppers made on their tobacco crop, then
loaned them money whenever they needed it at ridiculous
interest rates. Of course, he never intended to collect the
money-instead he would foreclose on any land or equipment
they happened to own. Then, in what he called "his moment of
inspiration," he started a bank called Carter Banking and
Loan. The only other bank in a two-county radius had
mysteriously burned down, and with the onset of the
Depression, it never reopened. Though everyone knew what had
really happened, not a word was ever spoken for fear of
retribution, and their fear was well placed. The bank wasn't
the only building that had mysteriously burned down.
His interest rates were outrageous, and little by little
he began amassing more land and property as people defaulted
on their loans. When the Depression hit hardest, he
foreclosed on dozens of businesses throughout the county
while retaining the original owners to continue to work on
salary, paying them just enough to keep them where they were,
because they had nowhere else to go. He told them that when
the economy improved, he'd sell their business back to them,
and people always believed him.
Never once, however, did he keep his promise. In the end
he controlled a vast portion of the county's economy, and he
abused his clout in every way imaginable.
I'd like to tell you he eventually went to a terrible
death, but he didn't. He died at a ripe-old age while
sleeping with his mistress on his yacht off the Cayman
Islands. He'd outlived both his wives and his only son. Some
end for a guy like that, huh? Life, I've learned, is never
fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.
But back to the story. . . . Hegbert, once he realized
what a bastard my grandfather really was, quit working for
him and went into the ministry, then came back to Beaufort
and started ministering in the same church we attended. He
spent his first few years perfecting his fire-and-brimstone
act with monthly sermons on the evils of the greedy, and this
left him scant time for anything else. He was forty-three
before he ever got married; he was fifty-five when his
daughter, Jamie Sullivan, was born. His wife, a wispy little
thing twenty years younger than he, went through six
miscarriages before Jamie was born, and in the end she died
in childbirth, making Hegbert a widower who had to raise a
daughter on his own.
Hence, of course, the story behind the play.
People knew the story even before the play was first
performed. It was one of those stories that made its rounds
whenever Hegbert had to baptize a baby or attend a funeral.
Everyone knew about it, and that's why, I think, so many
people got emotional whenever they saw the Christmas play.
They knew it was based on something that happened in real
life, which gave it special meaning.
Jamie Sullivan was a senior in high school, just like me,
and she'd already been chosen to play the angel, not that
anyone else even had a chance. This, of course, made the play
extra special that year. It was going to be a big deal, maybe
the biggest ever-at least in Miss Garber's mind. She was the
drama teacher, and she was already glowing about the
possibilities the first time I met her in class.
Now, I hadn't really planned on taking drama that year. I
really hadn't, but it was either that or chemistry II. The
thing was, I thought it would be a blow-off class, especially
when compared with my other option. No papers, no tests, no
tables where I'd have to memorize protons and neutrons and
combine elements in their proper formulas . . . what could
possibly be better for a high school senior? It seemed like a
sure thing, and when I signed up for it, I thought I'd just
be able to sleep through most every class, which, considering
my late night peanut eating, was fairly important at the
time.
On the first day of class I was one of the last to arrive,
coming in just a few seconds before the bell rang, and I took
a seat in the back of the room. Miss Garber had her back
turned to the class, and she was busy writing her name in big
cursive letters, as if we didn't know who she was. Everyone
knew her-it was impossible not to. She was big, at least six
feet two, with flaming red hair and pale skin that showed her
freckles well into her forties. She was also overweight-I'd
say honestly she pushed two fifty-and she had a fondness for
wearing flower-patterned muumuus. She had thick, dark,
horn-rimmed glasses, and she greeted every one with,
"Helloooooo," sort of singing the last syllable. Miss Garber
was one of a kind, that's for sure, and she was single, which
made it even worse. A guy, no matter how old, couldn't help
but feel sorry for a gal like her.
Beneath her name she wrote the goals she wanted to
accomplish that year. "Self-confidence" was number one,
followed by "Self-awareness" and, third, "Self-fulfillment."
Miss Garber was big into the "self" stuff, which put her
really ahead of the curve as far as psychotherapy is
concerned, though she probably didn't realize it at the time.
Miss Garber was a pioneer in that field. Maybe it had
something to do with the way she looked; maybe she was just
trying to feel better about herself.
But I digress.
It wasn't until the class started that I noticed something
unusual. Though Beaufort High School wasn't large, I knew for
a fact that it was pretty much split fifty-fifty between
males and females, which was why I was surprised when I saw
that this class was at least ninety percent female. There was
only one other male in the class, which to my thinking was a
good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a "look out
world, here I come" kind of feeling. Girls, girls, girls . .
. I couldn't help but think. Girls and girls and no tests in
sight.
Okay, so I wasn't the most forward-thinking guy on the
block.
So Miss Garber brings up the Christmas play and tells
everyone that Jamie Sullivan is going to be the angel that
year. Miss Garber started clapping right away-she was a
member of the church, too-and there were a lot of people who
thought she was gunning for Hegbert in a romantic sort of
way. The first time I heard it, I remember thinking that it
was a good thing they were too old to have children, if they
ever did get together. Imagine-translucent with freckles? The
very thought gave everyone shudders, but of course, no one
ever said anything about it, at least within hearing distance
of Miss Garber and Hegbert. Gossip is one thing, hurtful
gossip is completely another, and even in high school we
weren't that mean.
Miss Garber kept on clapping, all alone for a while, until
all of us finally joined in, because it was obvious that was
what she wanted. "Stand up, Jamie," she said. So Jamie stood
up and turned around, and Miss Garber started clapping even
faster, as if she were standing in the presence of a bona
fide movie star.
Now Jamie Sullivan was a nice girl. She really was.
Beaufort was small enough that it had only one elementary
school, so we'd been in the same classes our entire lives,
and I'd be lying if I said I never talked to her. Once, in
second grade, she'd sat in the seat right next to me for the
whole year, and we'd even had a few conversations, but it
didn't mean that I spent a lot of time hanging out with her
in my spare time, even back then. Who I saw in school was one
thing; who I saw after school was something completely
different, and Jamie had never been on my social calendar.
It's not that Jamie was unattractive-don't get me wrong.
She wasn't hideous or anything like that. Fortunately she'd
taken after her mother, who, based on the pictures I'd seen,
wasn't half-bad, especially considering who she ended up
marrying. But Jamie wasn't exactly what I considered
attractive, either. Despite the fact that she was thin, with
honey blond hair and soft blue eyes, most of the time she
looked sort of . . . plain, and that was when you noticed her
at all. Jamie didn't care much about outward appearances,
because she was always looking for things like "inner
beauty," and I suppose that's part of the reason she looked
the way she did. For as long as I'd known her-and this was
going way back, remember-she'd always worn her hair in a
tight bun, almost like a spinster, without a stitch of makeup
on her face. Coupled with her usual brown cardigan and plaid
skirt, she always looked as though she were on her way to
interview for a job at the library. We used to think it was
just a phase and that she'd eventually grow out of it, but
she never had. Even through our first three years of high
school, she hadn't changed at all. The only thing that had
changed was the size of her clothes.
But it wasn't just the way Jamie looked that made her
different; it was also the way she acted. Jamie didn't spend
any time hanging out at Cecil's Diner or going to slumber
parties with other girls, and I knew for a fact that she'd
never had a boyfriend her entire life. Old Hegbert would
probably have had a heart attack if she had. But even if by
some odd turn of events Hegbert had allowed it, it still
wouldn't have mattered. Jamie carried her Bible wherever she
went, and if her looks and Hegbert didn't keep the boys away,
the Bible sure as heck did. Now, I liked the Bible as much as
the next teenage boy, but Jamie seemed to enjoy it in a way
that was completely foreign to me. Not only did she go to
vacation Bible school every August, but she would read the
Bible during lunch break at school. In my mind that just
wasn't normal, even if she was the minister's daughter. No
matter how you sliced it, reading Paul's letters to the
Ephesians wasn't nearly as much fun as flirting, if you know
what I mean.
But Jamie didn't stop there. Because of all her Bible
reading, or maybe because of Hegbert's influence, Jamie
believed it was important to help others, and helping others
is exactly what she did. I knew she volunteered at the
orphanage in Morehead City, but for her that simply wasn't
enough. She was always in charge of one fund-raiser or
another, helping everyone from the Boy Scouts to the Indian
Princesses, and I know that when she was fourteen, she spent
part of her summer painting the outside of an elderly
neighbor's house. Jamie was the kind of girl who would pull
weeds in someone's garden without being asked or stop traffic
to help little kids cross the road. She'd save her allowance
to buy a new basketball for the orphans, or she'd turn around
and drop the money into the church basket on Sunday. She was,
in other words, the kind of girl who made the rest of us look
bad, and whenever she glanced my way, I couldn't help but
feel guilty, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.
Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever
came across a wounded animal, for instance, she'd try to help
it, too. Opossums, squirrels, dogs, cats, frogs . . . it
didn't matter to her. Dr. Rawlings, the vet, knew her by
sight, and he'd shake his head whenever he saw her walking up
to the door carrying a cardboard box with yet another critter
inside. He'd take off his eyeglasses and wipe them with his
handkerchief while Jamie explained how she'd found the poor
creature and what had happened to it. "He was hit by a car,
Dr. Rawlings. I think it was in the Lord's plan to have me
find him and try to save him. You'll help me, won't you?"
With Jamie, everything was in the Lord's plan. That was
another thing. She always mentioned the Lord's plan whenever
you talked to her, no matter what the subject. The baseball
game's rained out? Must be the Lord's plan to prevent
something worse from happening. A surprise trigonometry quiz
that everyone in class fails? Must be in the Lord's plan to
give us challenges. Anyway, you get the picture.
Then, of course, there was the whole Hegbert situation,
and this didn't help her at all. Being the minister's
daughter couldn't have been easy, but she made it seem as if
it were the most natural thing in the world and that she was
lucky to have been blessed in that way. That's how she used
to say it, too. "I've been so blessed to have a father like
mine." Whenever she said it, all we could do was shake our
heads and wonder what planet she actually came from.
Despite all these other strikes, though, the one thing
that really drove me crazy about her was the fact that she
was always so damn cheerful, no matter what was happening
around her. I swear, that girl never said a bad thing about
anything or anyone, even to those of us who weren't that nice
to her. She would hum to herself as she walked down the
street, she would wave to strangers driving by in their cars.
Sometimes ladies would come running out of their house if
they saw her walking by, offering her pumpkin bread if they'd
been baking all day or lemonade if the sun was high in the
sky. It seemed as if every adult in town adored her. "She's
such a nice young lady," they'd say whenever Jamie's name
came up. "The world would be a better place if there were
more people like her."
But my friends and I didn't quite see it that way. In our
minds, one Jamie Sullivan was plenty.
I was thinking about all this while Jamie stood in front
of us on the first day of drama class, and I admit that I
wasn't much interested in seeing her. But strangely, when
Jamie turned to face us, I kind of got a shock, like I was
sitting on a loose wire or something. She wore a plaid skirt
with a white blouse under the same brown cardigan sweater I'd
seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her
chest that the sweater couldn't hide that I swore hadn't been
there just three months earlier. She'd never worn makeup and
she still didn't, but she had a tan, probably from Bible
school, and for the first time she looked-well, almost
pretty. Of course, I dismissed that thought right away, but
as she looked around the room, she stopped and smiled right
at me, obviously glad to see that I was in the class. It
wasn't until later that I would learn the reason why.
Chapter 2
After high school I planned to go to the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My father wanted me to go to
Harvard or Princeton like some of the sons of other
congressmen did, but with my grades it wasn't possible. Not
that I was a bad student. I just didn't focus on my studies,
and my grades weren't exactly up to snuff for the Ivy
Leagues. By my senior year it was pretty much touch and go
whether I'd even get accepted at UNC, and this was my
father's alma mater, a place where he could pull some
strings. During one of his few weekends home, my father came
up with the plan to put me over the top. I'd just finished my
first week of school and we were sitting down for dinner. He
was home for three days on account of Labor Day weekend. "I
think you should run for student body president," he said.
"You'll be graduating in June, and I think it would look good
on your record. Your mother thinks so, too, by the way."
My mother nodded as she chewed a mouthful of peas. She
didn't speak much when my father had the floor, though she
winked at me. Sometimes I think my mother liked to see me
squirm, even though she was sweet.
"I don't think I'd have a chance at winning," I said.
Though I was probably the richest kid in school, I was by no
means the most popular. That honor belonged to Eric Hunter,
my best friend. He could throw a baseball at almost ninety
miles an hour, and he'd led the football team to back-to-back
state titles as the star quarterback. He was a stud. Even his
name sounded cool.
"Of course you can win," my father said quickly. "We
Carters always win."
That's another one of the reasons I didn't like spending
time with my father. During those few times he was home, I
think he wanted to mold me into a miniature version of
himself. Since I'd grown up pretty much without him, I'd come
to resent having him around. This was the first conversation
we'd had in weeks. He rarely talked to me on the phone.
"But what if I don't want to?"
My father put down his fork, a bite of his pork chop still
on the tines. He looked at me crossly, giving me the
once-over. He was wearing a suit even though it was over
eighty degrees in the house, and it made him even more
intimidating. My father always wore a suit, by the way.
"I think," he said slowly, "that it would be a good idea."
I knew that when he talked that way the issue was settled.
That's the way it was in my family. My father's word was law.
But the fact was, even after I agreed, I didn't want to do
it. I didn't want to waste my afternoons meeting with
teachers after school-after school!-every week for the rest
of the year, dreaming up themes for school dances or trying
to decide what colors the streamers should be. That's really
all the class presidents did, at least back when I was in
high school. It wasn't like students had the power to
actually decide anything meaningful.
But then again, I knew my father had a point. If I wanted
to go to UNC, I had to do something. I didn't play football
or basketball, I didn't play an instrument, I wasn't in the
chess club or the bowling club or anything else. I didn't
excel in the classroom-hell, I didn't excel at much of
anything. Growing despondent, I started listing the things I
actually could do, but to be honest, there really wasn't that
much. I could tie eight different types of sailing knots, I
could walk barefoot across hot asphalt farther than anyone I
knew, I could balance a pencil vertically on my finger for
thirty seconds . . . but I didn't think that any of those
things would really stand out on a college application. So
there I was, lying in bed all night long, slowly coming to
the sinking realization that I was a loser. Thanks, Dad.
The next morning I went to the principal's office and
added my name to the list of candidates. There were two other
people running-John Foreman and Maggie Brown. Now, John
didn't stand a chance, I knew that right off. He was the kind
of guy who'd pick lint off your clothes while he talked to
you. But he was a good student. He sat in the front row and
raised his hand every time the teacher asked a question. If
he was called to give the answer, he would almost always give
the right one, and he'd turn his head from side to side with
a smug look on his face, as if proving how superior his
intellect was when compared with those of the other peons in
the room. Eric and I used to shoot spitballs at him when the
teacher's back was turned.
Maggie Brown was another matter. She was a good student as
well. She'd served on the student council for the first three
years and had been the junior class president the year
before. The only real strike against her was the fact that
she wasn't very attractive, and she'd put on twenty pounds
that summer. I knew that not a single guy would vote for her.
After seeing the competition, I figured that I might have
a chance after all. My entire future was on the line here, so
I formulated my strategy. Eric was the first to agree.
"Sure, I'll get all the guys on the team to vote for you,
no problem. If that's what you really want."
"How about their girlfriends, too?" I asked.
That was pretty much my entire campaign. Of course, I went
to the debates like I was supposed to, and I passed out those
dorky "What I'll do if I'm elected president" fliers, but in
the end it was Eric Hunter who probably got me where I needed
to be. Beaufort High School had only about four hundred
students, so getting the athletic vote was critical, and most
of the jocks didn't give a hoot who they voted for anyway. In
the end it worked out just the way I planned.
I was voted student body president with a fairly large
majority of the vote. I had no idea what trouble it would
eventually lead me to.
When I was a junior I went steady with a girl named Angela
Clark. She was my first real girlfriend, though it lasted for
only a few months. Just before school let out for the summer,
she dumped me for a guy named Lew who was twenty years old
and worked as a mechanic in his father's garage. His primary
attribute, as far as I could tell, was that he had a really
nice car. He always wore a white T-shirt with a pack of
Camels folded into the sleeve, and he'd lean against the hood
of his Thunderbird, looking back and forth, saying things
like "Hey, baby" whenever a girl walked by. He was a real
winner, if you know what I mean.
Well, anyway, the homecoming dance was coming up, and
because of the whole Angela situation, I still didn't have a
date. Everyone on the student council had to attend-it was
mandatory. I had to help decorate the gym and clean up the
next day-and besides, it was usually a pretty good time. I
called a couple of girls I knew, but they already had dates,
so I called a few more. They had dates, too. By the final
week the pickings were getting pretty slim. The pool was down
to the kinds of girls who had thick glasses and talked with
lisps. Beaufort was never exactly a hotbed for beauties
anyway, but then again I had to find somebody. I didn't want
to go to the dance without a date-what would that look like?
I'd be the only student body president ever to attend the
homecoming dance alone. I'd end up being the guy scooping
punch all night long or mopping up the barf in the bathroom.
That's what people without dates usually did.
Growing sort of panicky, I pulled out the yearbook from
the year before and started flipping through the pages one by
one, looking for anyone who might not have a date. First I
looked through the pages with the seniors. Though a lot of
them were off at college, a few of them were still around
town. Even though I didn't think I had much of a chance with
them, I called anyway, and sure enough, I was proven right. I
couldn't find anyone, at least not anyone who would go with
me. I was getting pretty good at handling rejection, I'll
tell you, though that's not the sort of thing you brag about
to your grandkids. My mom knew what I was going through, and
she finally came into my room and sat on the bed beside me.
"If you can't get a date, I'll be happy to go with you,"
she said.
"Thanks, Mom," I said dejectedly.
When she left the room, I felt even worse than I had
before. Even my mom didn't think I could find somebody. And
if I showed up with her? If I lived a hundred years, I'd
never live that down.
There was another guy in my boat, by the way. Carey
Dennison had been elected treasurer, and he still didn't have
a date, either. Carey was the kind of guy no one wanted to
spend time with at all, and the only reason he'd been elected
was because he'd run unopposed. Even then I think the vote
was fairly close. He played the tuba in the marching band,
and his body looked all out of proportion, as if he'd stopped
growing halfway through puberty. He had a great big stomach
and gangly arms and legs, like the Hoos in Hooville, if you
know what I mean. He also had a high-pitched way of
talking-it's what made him such a good tuba player, I
reckon-and he never stopped asking questions. "Where did you
go last weekend? Was it fun? Did you see any girls?" He
wouldn't even wait for an answer, and he'd move around
constantly as he asked so you had to keep turning your head
to keep him in sight. I swear he was probably the most
annoying person I'd ever met. If I didn't get a date, he'd
stand off on one side with me all night long, firing
questions like some deranged prosecutor.
So there I was, flipping through the pages in the junior
class section, when I saw Jamie Sullivan's picture. I paused
for just a second, then turned the page, cursing myself for
even thinking about it. I spent the next hour searching for
anyone halfway decent looking, but I slowly came to the
realization that there wasn't anyone left. In time I finally
turned back to her picture and looked again. She wasn't bad
looking, I told myself, and she's really sweet. She'd
probably say yes, I thought. . . .
I closed the yearbook. Jamie Sullivan? Hegbert's daughter?
No way. Absolutely not. My friends would roast me alive.
But compared with dating your mother or cleaning up puke
or even, God forbid . . Carey Dennison?
I spent the rest of the evening debating the pros and cons
of my dilemma. Believe me, I went back and forth for a while,
but in the end the choice was obvious, even to me. I had to
ask Jamie to the dance, and I paced around the room thinking
of the best way to ask her.
It was then that I realized something terrible, something
absolutely frightening. Carey Dennison, I suddenly realized,
was probably doing the exact same thing I was doing right
now. He was probably looking through the yearbook, too! He
was weird, but he wasn't the kind of guy who liked cleaning
up puke, either, and if you'd seen his mother, you'd know
that his choice was even worse than mine. What if he asked
Jamie first? Jamie wouldn't say no to him, and realistically
she was the only option he had. No one besides her would be
caught dead with him. Jamie helped everyone-she was one of
those equal opportunity saints. She'd probably listen to
Carey's squeaky voice, see the goodness radiating from his
heart, and accept right off the bat.
So there I was, sitting in my room, frantic with the
possibility that Jamie might not go to the dance with me. I
barely slept that night, I tell you, which was just about the
strangest thing I'd ever experienced. I don't think anyone
ever fretted about asking Jamie out before. I planned to ask
her first thing in the morning, while I still had my courage,
but Jamie wasn't in school. I assumed she was working with
the orphans over in Morehead City, the way she did every
month. A few of us had tried to get out of school using that
excuse, too, but Jamie was the only one who ever got away
with it. The principal knew she was reading to them or doing
crafts or just sitting around playing games with them. She
wasn't sneaking out to the beach or hanging out at Cecil's
Diner or anything. That concept was absolutely ludicrous.
"Got a date yet?" Eric asked me in between classes. He
knew very well that I didn't, but even though he was my best
friend, he liked to stick it to me once in a while.
"Not yet," I said, "but I'm working on it."
Down the hall, Carey Denison was reaching into his locker.
I swear he shot me a beady glare when he thought I wasn't
looking.
That's the kind of day it was.
The minutes ticked by slowly during my final class. The
way I figured it-if Carey and I got out at the same time, I'd
be able to get to her house first, what with those gawky legs
and all. I started to psych myself up, and when the bell
rang, I took off from school running at a full clip. I was
flying for about a hundred yards or so, and then I started to
get kind of tired, and then a cramp set in. Pretty soon all I
could do was walk, but that cramp really started to get to
me, and I had to bend over and hold my side while I kept
moving. As I made my way down the streets of Beaufort, I
looked like a wheezing version of the Hunchback of Notre
Dame.
Behind me I thought I heard Carey's high-pitched laughter.
I turned around, digging my fingers into my gut to stifle the
pain, but I couldn't see him. Maybe he was cutting through
someone's backyard! He was a sneaky bastard, that guy. You
couldn't trust him even for a minute.
I started to stumble along even faster, and pretty soon I
reached Jamie's street. By then I was sweating all over-my
shirt was soaked right through-and I was still wheezing
something fierce. Well, I reached her front door, took a
second to catch my breath, and finally knocked. Despite my
fevered rush to her house, my pessimistic side assumed that
Carey would be the one who opened the door for me. I imagined
him smiling at me with a victorious look in his eye, one that
essentially meant "Sorry, partner, you're too late."
But it wasn't Carey who answered, it was Jamie, and for
the first time in my life I saw what she'd look like if she
were an ordinary person. She was wearing jeans and a red
blouse, and though her hair was still pulled up into a bun,
she looked more casual than she usually did. I realized she
could actually be cute if she gave herself the opportunity.
"Landon," she said as she held open the door, "this is a
surprise!" Jamie was always glad to see everyone, including
me, though I think my appearance startled her. "You look like
you've been exercising," she said.
"Not really," I lied, wiping my brow. Luckily the cramp
was fading fast.
"You've sweat clean through your shirt."
"Oh, that?" I looked at my shirt. "That's nothing. I just
sweat a lot sometimes."
"Maybe you should have it checked by a doctor."
"I'll be okay, I'm sure."
"I'll say a prayer for you anyway," she offered as she
smiled. Jamie was always praying for someone. I might as well
join the club.
"Thanks," I said.
She looked down and sort of shuffled her feet for a
moment. "Well, I'd invite you in, but my father isn't home,
and he doesn't allow boys in the house while he's not
around."
"Oh," I said dejectedly, "that's okay. We can talk out
here, I guess." If I'd had my way, I would have done this
inside.
"Would you like some lemonade while we sit?" she asked. "I
just made some."
"I'd love some," I said.
"I'll be right back." She walked back into the house, but
she left the door open and I took a quick glance around. The
house, I noticed, was small but tidy, with a piano against
one wall and a sofa against the other. A small fan sat
oscillating in the corner. On the coffee table there were
books with names like Listening to Jesus and Faith Is the
Answer. Her Bible was there, too, and it was opened to the
chapter on Luke.
A moment later Jamie returned with the lemonade, and we
took a seat in two chairs near the corner of the porch. I
knew she and her father sat there in the evenings because I
passed by their house now and then. As soon as we were
seated, I saw Mrs. Hastings, her neighbor across the street,
wave to us. Jamie waved back while I sort of scooted my chair
so that Mrs. Hastings couldn't see my face. Even though I was
going to ask Jamie to the dance, I didn't want anyone-even
Mrs. Hastings-to see me there on the off chance that she'd
already accepted Carey's offer. It was one thing to actually
go with Jamie, it was another thing to be rejected by her in
favor of a guy like Carey.
"What are you doing?" Jamie asked me. "You're moving your
chair into the sun."
"I like the sun," I said. She was right, though. Almost
immediately I could feel the rays burning through my shirt
and making me sweat again.
"If that's what you want," she said, smiling. "So, what
did you want to talk to me about?"
Jamie reached up and started to adjust her hair. By my
reckoning, it hadn't moved at all. I took a deep breath,
trying to gather myself, but I couldn't force myself to come
out with it just yet.
"So," I said instead, "you were at the orphanage today?"
Jamie looked at me curiously. "No. My father and I were at
the doctor's office."
"Is he okay?"
She smiled. "Healthy as can be."
I nodded and glanced across the street. Mrs. Hastings had
gone back inside, and I couldn't see anyone else in the
vicinity. The coast was finally clear, but I still wasn't
ready.
"Sure is a beautiful day," I said, stalling.
"Yes, it is."
"Warm, too."
"That's because you're in the sun."
I looked around, feeling the pressure building. "Why, I'll
bet there's not a single cloud in the whole sky."
This time Jamie didn't respond, and we sat in silence for
a few moments.
"Landon," she finally said, "you didn't come here to talk
about the weather, did you?"
"Not really."
"Then why are you here?"
The moment of truth had arrived, and I cleared my throat.
"Well . . . I wanted to know if you were going to the
homecoming dance."
"Oh," she said. Her tone made it seem as if she were
unaware that such a thing existed. I fidgeted in my seat and
waited for her answer.
"I really hadn't planned on going," she finally said.
"But if someone asked you to go, you might?"
It took a moment for her to answer.
"I'm not sure," she said, thinking carefully. "I suppose I
might go, if I got the chance. I've never been to a
homecoming dance before."
"They're fun," I said quickly. "Not too much fun, but
fun." Especially when compared to my other options, I didn't
add.
She smiled at my turn of phrase. "I'd have to talk to my
father, of course, but if he said it was okay, then I guess I
could."
In the tree beside the porch, a bird started to chirp
noisily, as if he knew I wasn't supposed to be here. I
concentrated on the sound, trying to calm my nerves. Just two
days ago I couldn't have imagined myself even thinking about
it, but suddenly there I was, listening to myself as I spoke
the magic words.
"Well, would you like to go to the dance with me?"
I could tell she was surprised. I think she believed that
the little lead-up to the question probably had to do with
someone else asking her. Sometimes teenagers sent their
friends out to "scout the terrain," so to speak, so as not to
face possible rejection. Even though Jamie wasn't much like
other teenagers, I'm sure she was familiar with the concept,
at least in theory.
Instead of answering right away, though, Jamie glanced
away for a long moment. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach
because I assumed she was going to say no. Visions of my
mother, puke, and Carey flooded through my mind, and all of a
sudden I regretted the way I'd behaved toward her all these
years. I kept remembering all the times I'd teased her or
called her father a fornicator or simply made fun of her
behind her back. Just when I was feeling awful about the
whole thing and imagining how I would ever be able to avoid
Carey for five hours, she turned and faced me again. She had
a slight smile on her face.
"I'd love to," she finally said, "on one condition."
I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful.
"Yes?"
"You have to promise that you won't fall in love with me."
I knew she was kidding by the way she laughed, and I
couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes, I had
to admit, Jamie had a pretty good sense of humor. I smiled
and gave her my word.
Chapter 3
As a general rule, Southern Baptists don't dance. In
Beaufort, however, it wasn't a rule that was ever strictly
enforced. The minister before Hegbert-don't ask me what his
name was-took sort of a lax view about school dances as long
as they were chaperoned, and because of that, they'd become a
tradition of sorts. By the time Hegbert came along, it was
too late to change things. Jamie was pretty much the only one
who'd never been to a school dance and frankly, I didn't know
whether she even knew how to dance at all.
I admit that I also had some concerns about what she would
wear, though it wasn't something I would tell her. When Jamie
went to the church socials-which were encouraged by
Hegbert-she usually wore an old sweater and one of the plaid
skirts we saw in school every day, but the homecoming dance
was supposed to be special. Most of the girls bought new
dresses and the boys wore suits, and this year we were
bringing in a photographer to take our pictures. I knew Jamie
wasn't going to buy a new dress because she wasn't exactly
well-off. Ministering wasn't a profession where people made a
lot of money, but of course ministers weren't in it for
monetary gain, they were in it for the long haul, if you know
what I mean. But I didn't want her to wear the same thing she
wore to school every day, either. Not so much for me-I'm not
that cold-hearted-but because of what others might say. I
didn't want people to make fun of her or anything.
The good news, if there was any, was that Eric didn't rib
me too bad about the whole Jamie situation because he was too
busy thinking about his own date. He was taking Margaret
Hays, who was the head cheerleader at our school. She wasn't
the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she was nice in
her own way. By nice, of course, I'm talking about her legs.
Eric offered to double-date with me, but I turned him down
because I didn't want to take any chances with Eric teasing
Jamie or anything like that. He was a good guy, but he could
be kind of heartless sometimes, especially when he had a few
shots of bourbon in him.
The day of the dance was actually quite busy for me. I
spent most of the afternoon helping to decorate the gym, and
I had to get to Jamie's about a half hour early because her
father wanted to talk to me, though I didn't know why. Jamie
had sprung that one on me just the day before, and I can't
say I was exactly thrilled by the prospect of it. I figured
he was going to talk about temptation and the evil path it
can lead us to. If he brought up fornication, though, I knew
I would die right there on the spot. I said small prayers all
day long in the hope of avoiding this conversation, but I
wasn't sure if God would put my prayers on the front burner,
if you know what I mean, because of the way I'd behaved in
the past. I was pretty nervous just thinking about it.
After I showered I put on my best suit, swung by the
florist to pick up Jamie's corsage, then drove to her house.
My mom had let me borrow the car, and I parked it on the
street directly in front of Jamie's house. We hadn't turned
the clocks back yet, so it was still light out when I got
there, and I strolled up the cracked walkway to her door. I
knocked and waited for a moment, then knocked again. From
behind the door I heard Hegbert say, "I'll be right there,"
but he wasn't exactly racing to the door. I must have stood
there for two minutes or so, looking at the door, the
moldings, the little cracks in the windowsills. Off to the
side were the chairs that Jamie and I had sat in just a few
days back. The one I sat in was still turned in the opposite
direction. I guess they hadn't sat there in the last couple
of days.
Finally the door creaked open. The light coming from the
lamp inside shadowed Hegbert's face slightly and sort of
reflected through his hair. He was old, like I said,
seventy-two years by my reckoning. It was the first time I'd
ever seen him up close, and I could see all the wrinkles on
his face. His skin really was translucent, even more so than
I'd imagined.
"Hello, Reverend," I said, swallowing my trepidation. "I'm
here to take Jamie to the homecoming dance."
"Of course you are," he said. "But first, I wanted to talk
with you."
"Yes, sir, that's why I came early."
"C'mon in."
In church Hegbert was a fairly snappy dresser, but right
now he looked like a farmer, dressed in overalls and a
T-shirt. He motioned for me to sit on the wooden chair he'd
brought in from the kitchen. "I'm sorry it took a little
while to open the door. I was working on tomorrow's sermon,"
he said.
I sat down.
"That's okay, sir." I don't know why, but you just had to
call him "sir." He sort of projected that image.
"All right, then, so tell me about yourself."
I thought it was a fairly ridiculous question, with him
having such a long history with my family and all. He was
also the one who had baptized me, by the way, and he'd seen
me in church every Sunday since I'd been a baby.
"Well, sir," I began, not really knowing what to say, "I'm
the student body president. I don't know whether Jamie
mentioned that to you."
He nodded. "She did. Go on."
"And . . . well, I hope to go to the University of North
Carolina next fall. I've already received the application."
He nodded again. "Anything else?"
I had to admit, I was running out of things after that.
Part of me wanted to pick up the pencil off the end table and
start balancing it, giving him the whole thirty seconds'
worth, but he wasn't the kind of guy who would appreciate it.
"I guess not, sir."
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"No, sir."
He sort of stared at me for a long time, as if thinking
about it.
"Why did you ask my daughter to the dance?" he finally
said.
I was surprised, and I know that my expression showed it.
"I don't know what you mean, sir."
"You're not planning to do anything to . . . embarrass
her, are you?"
"No, sir," I said quickly, shocked by the accusation. "Not
at all. I needed someone to go with, and I asked her. It's as
simple as that."
"You don't have any pranks planned?"
"No, sir. I wouldn't do that to her. . . ."
This went on for a few more minutes-his grilling me about
my true intentions, I mean-but luckily Jamie stepped out of
the back room, and her father and I both turned our heads at
the same moment. Hegbert finally stopped talking, and I
breathed a sigh of relief. She'd put on a nice blue skirt and
a white blouse I'd never seen before. Fortunately she'd left
her sweater in the closet. It wasn't too bad, I had to admit,
though I knew she'd still be underdressed compared with
others at the dance. As always, her hair was pulled up in a
bun. Personally I think it would have looked better if she'd
kept it down, but that was the last thing I wanted to say.
Jamie looked like . . . well, Jamie looked exactly like she
usually did, but at least she wasn't planning on bringing her
Bible. That would have just been too much to live down.
"You're not giving Landon a hard time, are you?" she said
cheerfully to her father.
"We were just visiting," I said quickly before he had a
chance to respond. For some reason I didn't think he'd told
Jamie about the kind of person he thought I was, and I didn't
think that now would be a good time.
"Well, we should probably go," she said after a moment. I
think she sensed the tension in the room. She walked over to
her father and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't stay up too
late working on the sermon, okay?"
"I won't," he said softly. Even with me in the room, I
could tell he really loved her and wasn't afraid to show it.
It was how he felt about me that was the problem.
We said good-bye, and on our way to the car I handed Jamie
her corsage and told her I'd show her how to put it on once
we got in the car. I opened her door for her and walked
around the other side, then got in as well. In that short
period of time, Jamie had already pinned on the flower.
"I'm not exactly a dimwit, you know. I do know how to pin
on a corsage."
I started the car and headed toward the high school, with
the conversation I'd just had with Hegbert running through my
mind.
"My father doesn't like you very much," she said, as if
knowing what I was thinking.
I nodded without saying anything.
"He thinks you're irresponsible."
I nodded again.
"He doesn't like your father much, either."
I nodded once more.
"Or your family."
I get the picture.
"But do you know what I think?" she asked suddenly.
"Not really." By then I was pretty depressed.
"I think that all this was in the Lord's plan somehow.
What do you think the message is?"
Here we go, I thought to myself.
I doubt if the evening could have been much worse, if you
want to know the truth. Most of my friends kept their
distance, and Jamie didn't have many friends to begin with,
so we spent most of our time alone. Even worse, it turned out
that my presence wasn't even required anymore. They'd changed
the rule owing to the fact that Carey couldn't get a date,
and that left me feeling pretty miserable about the whole
thing as soon as I found out about it. But because of what
her father had said to me, I couldn't exactly take her home
early, now, could I? And more than that, she was really
having a good time; even I could see that. She loved the
decorations I'd helped put up, she loved the music, she loved
everything about the dance. She kept telling me how wonderful
everything was, and she asked me whether I might help her
decorate the church someday, for one of their socials. I sort
of mumbled that she should call me, and even though I said it
without a trace of energy, Jamie thanked me for being so
considerate. To be honest, I was depressed for at least the
first hour, though she didn't seem to notice.
Jamie had to be home by eleven o'clock, an hour before the
dance ended, which made it somewhat easier for me to handle.
Once the music started we hit the floor, and it turned out
that she was a pretty good dancer, considering it was her
first time and all. She followed my lead pretty well through
about a dozen songs, and after that we headed to the tables
and had what resembled an ordinary conversation. Sure, she
threw in words like "faith" and "joy" and even "salvation,"
and she talked about helping the orphans and scooping
critters off the highway, but she was just so damn happy, it
was hard to stay down for long.
So things weren't too terrible at first and really no
worse than I had expected. It wasn't until Lew and Angela
showed up that everything really went sour.
They showed up a few minutes after we arrived. He was
wearing that stupid T-shirt, Camels in his sleeve, and a glop
of hair gel on his head. Angela hung all over him right from
the beginning of the dance, and it didn't take a genius to
realize she'd had a few drinks before she got there. Her
dress was really flashy-her mother worked in a salon and was
up on all the latest fashions-and I noticed she'd picked up
that ladylike habit called chewing gum. She really worked
that gum, chewing it almost like a cow working her cud.
Well, good old Lew spiked the punch bowl, and a few more
people started getting tipsy. By the time the teachers found
out, most of the punch was already gone and people were
getting that glassy look in their eyes. When I saw Angela
gobble up her second glass of punch, I knew I should keep my
eye on her. Even though she'd dumped me, I didn't want
anything bad to happen to her. She was the first girl I'd
ever French-kissed, and even though our teeth clanked
together so hard the first time we tried it that I saw stars
and had to take aspirin when I got home, I still had feelings
for her.
So there I was, sitting with Jamie, barely listening as
she described the wonders of Bible school, watching Angela
out of the corner of my eye, when Lew spotted me looking at
her. In one frenzied motion he grabbed Angela around the
waist and dragged her over to the table, giving me one of
those looks, the one that "means business." You know the one
I'm talking about.
"Are you staring at my girl?" he asked, already tensing
up.
"No."
"Yeah, he was," Angela said, kind of slurring out the
words. "He was staring right at me. This is my old boyfriend,
the one I told you about."
His eyes turned into little slits, just like Hegbert's
were prone to do. I guess I have this effect on lots of
people.
"So you're the one," he said, sneering.
Now, I'm not much of a fighter. The only real fight I was
ever in was in third grade, and I pretty much lost that one
when I started to cry even before the guy punched me. Usually
I didn't have much trouble staying away from things like this
because of my passive nature, and besides, no one ever messed
with me when Eric was around. But Eric was off with Margaret
somewhere, probably behind the bleachers.
"I wasn't staring," I said finally, "and I don't know what
she told you, but I doubt if it was true."
His eyes narrowed. "Are you calling Angela a liar?" he
sneered.
Oops.
I think he would have hit me right there, but Jamie
suddenly worked her way into the situation.
"Don't I know you?" she said cheerfully, looking right at
him. Sometimes Jamie seemed oblivious of situations that were
happening right in front of her. "Wait-yes, I do. You work in
the garage downtown. Your father's name is Joe, and your
grandma lives out on Foster Road, by the railroad crossing."
A look of confusion crossed Lew's face, as though he were
trying to put together a puzzle with too many pieces.
"How do you know all that? What he'd do, tell you about
me, too?"
"No," Jamie said, "don't be silly." She laughed to
herself. Only Jamie could find humor at a time like this. "I
saw your picture in your grandma's house. I was walking by,
and she needed some help bringing in the groceries. Your
picture was on the mantel."
Lew was looking at Jamie as though she had cornstalks
growing out of her ears.
Meanwhile Jamie was fanning herself with her hand. "Well,
we were just sitting down to take a breather from all that
dancing. It sure gets hot out there. Would you like to join
us? We've got a couple of chairs. I'd love to hear how your
grandma is doing."
She sounded so happy about it that Lew didn't know what to
do. Unlike those of us who were used to this sort of thing,
he'd never come across someone like Jamie before. He stood
there for a moment or two, trying to decide if he should hit
the guy with the girl who'd helped his grandma. If it sounds
confusing to you, imagine what it was doing to Lew's
petroleum-damaged brain.
He finally skulked off without responding, taking Angela
with him. Angela had probably forgotten how the whole thing
started anyway, owing to the amount she'd had to drink. Jamie
and I watched him go, and when he was a safe distance away, I
exhaled. I hadn't even realized I'd been holding my breath.
"Thanks," I said mumbled sheepishly, realizing that
Jamie-Jamie!-was the one who'd saved me from grave bodily
harm. Jamie looked at me strangely. "For what?" she asked,
and when I didn't exactly spell it out for her, she went
right back into her story about Bible school, as if nothing
had happened at all. But this time I found myself actually
listening to her, at least with one of my ears. It was the
least I could do.
It turns out that it wasn't the last we saw of either Lew
or Angela that evening. The two glasses of punch had really
done Angela in, and she threw up all over the ladies' rest
room. Lew, being the classy guy he was, left when he heard
her retching, sort of slinking out the way he came in, and
that was the last I saw of him. Jamie, as fate would have it,
was the one who found Angela in the bathroom, and it was
obvious that Angela wasn't doing too well. The only option
was to clean her up and take her home before the teachers
found out about it. Getting drunk was a big deal back then,
and she'd be looking at suspension, maybe even expulsion, if
she got caught.
Jamie, bless her heart, didn't want that to happen any
more than I did, though I would have thought otherwise if
you'd asked me beforehand, owing to the fact that Angela was
a minor and in violation of the law. She'd also broken
another one of Hegbert's rules for proper behavior. Hegbert
frowned on law-breaking and drinking, and though it didn't
get him going like fornication, we all knew he was deadly
serious, and we assumed Jamie felt the same way. And maybe
she did, but her helper instinct must have taken over. She
probably took one look at Angela and thought "wounded
critter" or something like that and took immediate charge of
the situation. I went off and located Eric behind the
bleachers, and he agreed to stand guard at the bathroom door
while Jamie and I went in to tidy it up. Angela had done a
marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the
toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks-even on the ceiling,
though don't ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched
on all fours, cleaning up puke at the homecoming dance in my
best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid
in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours,
too, doing exactly the same thing.
I could practically hear Carey laughing a squeaky,
maniacal laugh somewhere in the distance.
We ended up sneaking out the back door of the gym, keeping
Angela stable by walking on either side of her. She kept
asking where Lew was, but Jamie told her not to worry. She
had a real soothing way of talking to Angela, though Angela
was so far gone, I doubt if she even knew who was speaking.
We loaded Angela into the backseat of my car, where she
passed out almost immediately, although not before she'd
vomited once more on the floor of the car. The smell was so
awful that we had to roll down the windows to keep from
gagging, and the drive to Angela's house seemed extra long.
Her mother answered the door, took one look at her daughter,
and brought her inside without so much as a word of thanks. I
think she was embarrassed, and we really didn't have much to
say to her anyway. The situation pretty much spoke for
itself.
By the time we dropped her off it was ten forty-five, and
we drove straight back to Jamie's. I was really worried when
we got there because of the way she looked and smelled, and I
said a silent prayer hoping that Hegbert wasn't awake. I
didn't want to have to explain this to him. Oh, he'd probably
listen to Jamie if she was the one who told him about it, but
I had the sinking feeling that he'd find a way to blame me
anyway.
So I walked her to the door, and we stood outside under
the porchlight. Jamie crossed her arms and smiled a little,
looking just as if she'd come in from an evening stroll where
she'd contemplated the beauty of the world.
"Please don't tell your father about this," I said.
"I won't," she said. She kept on smiling when she finally
turned my way. "I had a good time tonight. Thank you for
taking me to the dance."
Here she was, covered in puke, actually thanking me for
the evening. Jamie Sullivan could really drive a guy crazy
sometimes.
Chapter 4
In the two weeks following the homecoming dance, my life
pretty much returned to normal. My father was back in
Washington, D.C., which made things a lot more fun around my
house, primarily because I could sneak out the window again
and head to the graveyard for my late night forays. I don't
know what it was about the graveyard that attracted us so.
Maybe it had something to do with the tombstones themselves,
because as far as tombstones went, they were actually fairly
comfortable to sit on.
We usually sat in a small plot where the Preston family
had been buried about a hundred years ago. There were eight
tombstones there, all arranged in a circle, making it easy to
pass the boiled peanuts back and forth between us. One time
my friends and I decided to learn what we could about the
Preston family, and we went to the library to find out if
anything had been written about them. I mean, if you're going
to sit on someone's tombstone, you might as well know
something about them, right?
It turns out that there wasn't much about the family in
the historical records, though we did find out one
interesting tidbit of information. Henry Preston, the father,
was a one-armed lumberjack, believe it or not. Supposedly he
could cut down a tree as fast as any two-armed man. Now the
vision of a one-armed lumberjack is pretty vivid right off
the bat, so we talked about him a lot. We used to wonder what
else he could do with only one arm, and we'd spend long hours
discussing how fast he could pitch a baseball or whether or
not he'd be able to swim across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Our conversations weren't exactly highbrow, I admit, but I
enjoyed them nonetheless.
Well, Eric and me were out there one Saturday night with a
couple of other friends, eating boiled peanuts and talking
about Henry Preston, when Eric asked me how my "date" went
with Jamie Sullivan. He and I hadn't seen much of each other
since the homecoming dance because the football season was
already in the playoffs and Eric had been out of town the
past few weekends with the team.
"It was okay," I said, shrugging, doing my best to play it
cool.
Eric playfully elbowed me in the ribs, and I grunted. He
outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.
"Did you kiss her good-night?"
"No."
He took a long drink from his can of Budweiser as I
answered. I don't know how he did it, but Eric never had
trouble buying beer, which was strange, being that everyone
in town knew how old he was.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, tossing me a
sidelong glance.
"I would have thought that after she helped you clean the
bathroom, you would have at least kissed her good night."
"Well, I didn't."
"Did you even try?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"She's not that kind of girl," I said, and even though we
all knew it was true, it still sounded like I was defending
her.
Eric latched on to that like a leech.
"I think you like her," he said.
"You're full of crap," I answered, and he slapped my back,
hard enough to force the breath right out of me. Hanging out
with Eric usually meant that I'd have a few bruises the
following day.
"Yeah, I might be full of crap," he said, winking at me,
"but you're the one who's smitten with Jamie Sullivan."
I knew we were treading on dangerous ground.
"I was just using her to impress Margaret," I said. "And
with all the love notes she's been sending me lately, I
reckon it must have worked."
Eric laughed aloud, slapping me on the back again.
"You and Margaret-now that's funny. . . ."
I knew I'd just dodged a major bullet, and I breathed a
sigh of relief as the conversation spun off in a new
direction. I joined in now and then, but I wasn't really
listening to what they were saying. Instead I kept hearing
this little voice inside me that made me wonder about what
Eric had said.
The thing was, Jamie was probably the best date I could
have had that night, especially considering how the evening
turned out. Not many dates-heck, not many people,
period-would have done what she did. At the same time, her
being a good date didn't mean I liked her. I hadn't talked to
her at all since the dance, except when I saw her in drama
class, and even then it was only a few words here and there.
If I liked her at all, I told myself, I would have wanted to
talk to her. If I liked her, I would have offered to walk her
home. If I liked her, I would have wanted to bring her to
Cecil's Diner for a basket of hushpuppies and some RC cola.
But I didn't want to do any of those things. I really didn't.
In my mind, I'd already served my penance.
The next day, Sunday, I was in my room, working on my
application to UNC. In addition to the transcripts from my
high school and other personal information, they required
five essays of the usual type. If you could meet one person
in history, who would that person be and why? Name the most
significant influence in your life and why you feel that way.
What do you look for in a role model and why? The essay
questions were fairly predictable-our English teacher had
told us what to expect-and I'd already worked on a couple of
variations in class as homework.
English was probably my best subject. I'd never received
anything lower than an A since I first started school, and I
was glad the emphasis for the application process was on
writing. If it had been on math, I might have been in
trouble, especially if it included those algebra questions
that talked about the two trains leaving an hour apart,
traveling in opposite directions at forty miles an hour, etc.
It wasn't that I was bad in math-I usually pulled at least a
C-but it didn't come naturally to me, if you know what I
mean.
Anyway, I was writing one of my essays when the phone
rang. The only phone we had was located in the kitchen, and I
had to run downstairs to grab the receiver. I was breathing
so loudly that I couldn't make out the voice too well, though
it sounded like Angela. I immediately smiled to myself. Even
though she'd been sick all over the place and I'd had to
clean it up, she was actually pretty fun to be around most of
the time. And her dress really had been something, at least
for the first hour. I figured she was probably calling to
thank me or even to get together for a barbecue sandwich and
hushpuppies or something.
"Landon?"
"Oh, hey," I said, playing it cool, "what's going on?"
There was a short pause on the other end.
"How are you?"
It was then that I suddenly realized I wasn't speaking to
Angela. Instead it was Jamie, and I almost dropped the phone.
I can't say that I was happy about hearing from her, and for
a second I wondered who had given her my phone number before
I realized it was probably in the church records.
"Landon?"
"I'm fine," I finally blurted out, still in shock.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"Sort of."
"Oh . . . I see . . . ,"she said, trailing off. She paused
again.
"Why are you calling me?" I asked.
It took her a few seconds to get the words out.
"Well . . . I just wanted to know if you wouldn't mind
coming by a little later this afternoon."
"Coming by?"
"Yes. To my house."
"Your house?" I didn't even try to disguise the growing
surprise in my voice. Jamie ignored it and went on.
"There's something I want to talk to you about. I wouldn't
ask if it wasn't important."
"Can't you just tell me over the phone?"
"I'd rather not."
"Well, I'm working on my college application essays all
afternoon," I said, trying to get out of it.
"Oh . . . well . . . like I said, it's important, but I
suppose I can talk to you Monday at school. . . ."
With that, I suddenly realized that she wasn't going to
let me off the hook and that we'd end up talking one way or
the other. My brain suddenly clicked through the scenarios as
I tried to figure out which one I should do-talk to her where
my friends would see us or talk at her house. Though neither
option was particularly good, there was something in the back
of my mind, reminding me that she'd helped me out when I'd
really needed it, and the least I could do was to listen to
what she had to say. I may be irresponsible, but I'm a nice
irresponsible, if I do say so myself.
Of course, that didn't mean everyone else had to know
about it.
"No," I said, "today is fine. . . ."
We arranged to meet at five o'clock, and the rest of the
afternoon ticked by slowly, like the drips from Chinese water
torture. I left my house twenty minutes early, so I'd have
plenty of time to get there. My house was located near the
waterfront in the historic part of town, just a few doors
down from where Blackbeard used to live, overlooking the
Intracoastal Waterway. Jamie lived on the other side of town,
across the railroad tracks, so it would take me about that
long to get there.
It was November, and the temperature was finally cooling
down. One thing I really liked about Beaufort was the fact
that the springs and falls lasted practically forever. It
might get hot in the summer or snow once every six years, and
there might be a cold spell that lasted a week or so in
January, but for the most part all you needed was a light
jacket to make it through the winter. Today was one of those
perfect days-mid-seventies without a cloud in the sky.
I made it to Jamie's house right on time and knocked on
her door. Jamie answered it, and a quick peek inside revealed
that Hegbert wasn't around. It wasn't quite warm enough for
sweet tea or lemonade, and we sat in the chairs on the porch
again, without anything to drink. The sun was beginning to
lower itself in the sky, and there wasn't anyone on the
street. This time I didn't have to move my chair. It hadn't
been moved since the last time I'd been there.
"Thank you for coming, Landon," she said. "I know you're
busy, but I appreciate your taking the time to do this."
"So, what's so important?" I said, wanting to get this
over with as quickly as possible.
Jamie, for the first time since I'd known her, actually
looked nervous as she sat with me. She kept bringing her
hands together and pulling them apart.
"I wanted to ask you a favor," she said seriously.
"A favor?"
She nodded.
At first I thought she was going to ask me to help her
decorate the church, like she'd mentioned at homecoming, or
maybe she needed me to use my mother's car to bring some
stuff to the orphans. Jamie didn't have her license, and
Hegbert needed their car anyway, being that there was always
a funeral or something he had to go to. But it still took a
few seconds for her to get the words out.
She sighed, her hands coming together again.
"I'd like to ask you if you wouldn't mind playing Tom
Thornton in the school play," she said.
Tom Thornton, like I said before, was the man in search of
the music box for his daughter, the one who meets the angel.
Except for the angel, it was far and away the most important
role.
"Well . . . I don't know," I said, confused. "I thought
Eddie Jones was going to be Tom. That's what Miss Garber told
us."
Eddie Jones was a lot like Carey Dennison, by the way. He
was really skinny, with pimples all over his face, and he
usually talked to you with his eyes all squinched up. He had
a nervous tic, and he couldn't help but squinch his eyes
whenever he got nervous, which was practically all the time.
He'd probably end up spouting his lines like a psychotic
blind man if you put him in front of a crowd. To make things
worse, he had a stutter, too, and it took him a long time to
say anything at all. Miss Garber had given him the role
because he'd been the only one who offered to do it, but even
then it was obvious she didn't want him either. Teachers were
human, too, but she didn't have much of an option, since no
one else had come forward.
"Miss Garber didn't say that exactly. What she said was
that Eddie could have the role if no one else tried out for
it."
"Can't someone else do it instead?"
But there really wasn't anyone else, and I knew it.
Because of Hegbert's requirement that only seniors perform,
the play was in a bind that year. There were about fifty
senior boys at the high school, twenty-two of whom were on
the football team, and with the team still in the running for
the state title, none of them would have the time to go to
the rehearsals. Of the thirty or so who were left, more than
half were in the band and they had after-school practice as
well. A quick calculation showed that there were maybe a
dozen other people who could possibly do it.
Now, I didn't want to do the play at all, and not only
because I'd come to realize that drama was just about the
most boring class ever invented. The thing was, I'd already
taken Jamie to homecoming, and with her as the angel, I just
couldn't bear the thought that I'd have to spend every
afternoon with her for the next month or so. Being seen with
her once was bad enough . . . but being seen with her every
day? What would my friends say?
But I could tell this was really important to her. The
simple fact that she'd asked made that clear. Jamie never
asked anyone for a favor. I think deep down she suspected
that no one would ever do her a favor because of who she was.
The very realization made me sad.
"What about Jeff Bangert? He might do it," I offered.
Jamie shook her head. "He can't. His father's sick, and he
has to work in the store after school until his father gets
back on his feet."
"What about Darren Woods?"
"He broke his arm last week when he slipped on the boat.
His arm is in a sling."
"Really? I didn't know that," I said, stalling, but Jamie
knew what I was doing.
"I've been praying about it, Landon," she said simply, and
sighed for the second time. "I'd really like this play to be
special this year, not for me, but because of my father. I
want it to be the best production ever. I know how much it
will mean to him to see me be the angel, because this play
reminds him of my mother. . . ." She paused, collecting her
thoughts. "It would be terrible if the play was a failure
this year, especially since I'm involved."
She stopped again before going on, her voice becoming more
emotional as she went on.
"I know Eddie would do the best he could, I really do. And
I'm not embarrassed to do the play with him, I'm really not.
Actually, he's a very nice person, but he told me that he's
having second thoughts about doing it. Sometimes people at
school can be so . . . so . . . cruel, and I don't want Eddie
to be hurt. But . . ." She took a deep breath, "but the real
reason I'm asking is because of my father. He's such a good
man, Landon. If people make fun of his memory of my mother
while I'm playing the part . . . well, that would break my
heart. And with Eddie and me . . . you know what people would
say."
I nodded, my lips pressed together, knowing that I would
have been one of those people she was talking about. In fact,
I already was. Jamie and Eddie, the dynamic duo, we called
them after Miss Garber had announced that they'd be the ones
doing the roles. The very fact that it was I who had started
it up made me feel terrible, almost sick to my stomach.
She straightened up a little in her seat and looked at me
sadly, as if she already knew I was going to say no. I guess
she didn't know how I was feeling. She went on.
"I know that challenges are always part of the Lord's
plan, but I don't want to believe that the Lord is cruel,
especially to someone like my father. He devotes his life to
God, he gives to the community. And he's already lost his
wife and has had to raise me on his own. And I love him so
much for it. . . ."
Jamie turned away, but I could see the tears in her eyes.
It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry. I think part of
me wanted to cry, too.
"I'm not asking you to do it for me," she said softly,
"I'm really not, and if you say no, I'll still pray for you.
I promise. But if you'd like to do something kind for a
wonderful man who means so much to me . . . Will you just
think about it?"
Her eyes looked like those of a cocker spaniel that had
just messed on the rug. I looked down at my feet.
"I don't have to think about it," I finally said. "I'll do
it."
I really didn't have a choice, did I?A Walk to Remember
NICHOLAS
SPARKS
Prologue
When I was seventeen, my life changed forever.
I know that there are people who wonder about me when I
say this. They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom
what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to
explain. Because I've lived here for most of my life, I don't
feel that I have to unless it's on my terms, and that would
take more time than most people are willing to give me. My
story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't
be packaged into something neat and simple that people would
immediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years,
the people still living here who knew me that year accept my
lack of explanation without question. My story in some ways
is their story because it was something that all of us lived
through.
It was I, however, who was closest to it. I'm fifty-seven
years old, but even now I can remember everything from that
year, down to the smallest details. I relive that year often
in my mind, bringing it back to life, and I realize that when
I do, I always feel a strange combination of sadness and joy.
There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and
take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I
did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as
they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever
I can. This happens more often than I let on.
It is April 12, in the last year before the millennium,
and as I leave my house, I glance around. The sky is overcast
and gray, but as I move down the street, I notice that the
dogwoods and azaleas are blooming. I zip my jacket just a
little. The temperature is cool, though I know it's only a
matter of weeks before it will settle in to something
comfortable and the gray skies give way to the kind of days
that make North Carolina one of the most beautiful places in
the world. With a sigh, I feel it all coming back to me. I
close my eyes and the years begin to move in reverse, slowly
ticking backward, like the hands of a clock rotating in the
wrong direction. As if through someone else's eyes, I watch
myself grow younger; I see my hair changing from gray to
brown, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begin to smooth, my
arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons I've learned with age grow
dimmer, and my innocence returns as that eventful year
approaches.
Then, like me, the world begins to change: roads narrow
and some become gravel, suburban sprawl has been replaced
with farmland, downtown streets teem with people, looking in
windows as they pass Sweeney's bakery and Palka's meat shop.
Men wear hats, women wear dresses. At the courthouse up the
street, the bell tower rings. . . .
I open my eyes and pause. I am standing outside the
Baptist church, and when I stare at the gable, I know exactly
who I am. My name is Landon Carter, and I'm seventeen years
old.
This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out.
First you will smile, and then you will cry-don't say you
haven't been warned.
Chapter 1
In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the
coast near Morehead City, was a place like many other small
southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity
rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail
made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked
around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees
draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever
they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not,
and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to
the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the
Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of
life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal
Waterway. Only three channels came in on the television,
though television was never important to those of us who grew
up there. Instead our lives were centered around the
churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits
alone. They went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian
Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church of
Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist
churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most
popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches
on practically every corner of town, though each considered
itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of
every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists,
Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent
Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.
Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the
Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to
know-in conjunction with the local high school. Every year
they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort
Playhouse, which was actually a play that had been written by
Hegbert Sullivan, a minister who'd been with the church since
Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old, but
he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy's
skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and
translucent-kids would swear they actually saw the blood
flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those
bunnies you see in pet stores around Easter.
Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel,
because he didn't want to keep on performing that old Charles
Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. In his mind Scrooge was a
heathen, who came to his redemption only because he saw
ghosts, not angels-and who was to say whether they'd been
sent by God, anyway? And who was to say he wouldn't revert to
his sinful ways if they hadn't been sent directly from
heaven? The play didn't exactly tell you in the end-it sort
of plays into faith and all-but Hegbert didn't trust ghosts
if they weren't actually sent by God, which wasn't explained
in plain language, and this was his big problem with it. A
few years back he'd changed the end of the play-sort of
followed it up with his own version, complete with old man
Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem
to find the place where Jesus once taught the scribes. It
didn't fly too well-not even to the congregation, who sat in
the audience staring wide-eyed at the spectacle-and the
newspaper said things like "Though it was certainly
interesting, it wasn't exactly the play we've all come to
know and love. . . ."
So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own
play. He'd written his own sermons his whole life, and some
of them, we had to admit, were actually interesting,
especially when he talked about the "wrath of God coming down
on the fornicators" and all that good stuff. That really got
his blood boiling, I'll tell you, when he talked about the
fornicators. That was his real hot spot. When we were
younger, my friends and I would hide behind the trees and
shout, "Hegbert is a fornicator!" when we saw him walking
down the street, and we'd giggle like idiots, like we were
the wittiest creatures ever to inhabit the planet.
Old Hegbert, he'd stop dead in his tracks and his ears
would perk up-I swear to God, they actually moved-and he'd
turn this bright shade of red, like he'd just drunk gasoline,
and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out
all over, like those maps of the Amazon River that you see in
National Geographic. He'd peer from side to side, his eyes
narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just as
suddenly, he'd start to go pale again, back to that fishy
skin, right before our eyes. Boy, it was something to watch,
that's for sure.
So we'd be hiding behind a tree and Hegbert (what kind of
parents name their kid Hegbert, anyway?) would stand there
waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if he thought we'd be
that stupid. We'd put our hands over our mouths to keep from
laughing out loud, but somehow he'd always zero in on us.
He'd be turning from side to side, and then he'd stop, those
beady eyes coming right at us, right through the tree. "I
know who you are, Landon Carter," he'd say, "and the Lord
knows, too." He'd let that sink in for a minute or so, and
then he'd finally head off again, and during the sermon that
weekend he'd stare right at us and say something like "God is
merciful to children, but the children must be worthy as
well." And we'd sort of lower ourselves in the seats, not
from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles.
Hegbert didn't understand us at all, which was really sort of
strange, being that he had a kid and all. But then again, she
was a girl. More on that, though, later.
Anyway, like I said, Hegbert wrote The Christmas Angel one
year and decided to put on that play instead. The play itself
wasn't bad, actually, which surprised everyone the first year
it was performed. It's basically the story of a man who had
lost his wife a few years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used
to be real religious, but he had a crisis of faith after his
wife died during childbirth. He's raising this little girl
all on his own, but he hasn't been the greatest father, and
what the little girl really wants for Christmas is a special
music box with an angel engraved on top, a picture of which
she'd cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and
hard to find the gift, but he can't find it anywhere. So it's
Christmas Eve and he's still searching, and while he's out
looking through the stores, he comes across a strange woman
he's never seen before, and she promises to help him find the
gift for his daughter. First, though, they help this homeless
person (back then they were called bums, by the way), then
they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then visit a
lonely old woman who just wanted some company on Christmas
Eve. At this point the mysterious woman asks Tom Thornton
what he wants for Christmas, and he says that he wants his
wife back. She brings him to the city fountain and tells him
to look in the water and he'll find what he's looking for.
When he looks in the water, he sees the face of his little
girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While he's
sobbing, the mysterious lady runs off, and Tom Thornton
searches but can't find her anywhere. Eventually he heads
home, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind. He
walks into his little girl's room, and her sleeping figure
makes him realize that she's all he has left of his wife, and
he starts to cry again because he knows he hasn't been a good
enough father to her. The next morning, magically, the music
box is underneath the tree, and the angel that's engraved on
it looks exactly like the woman he'd seen the night before.
So it wasn't that bad, really. If truth be told, people
cried buckets whenever they saw it. The play sold out every
year it was performed, and due to its popularity, Hegbert
eventually had to move it from the church to the Beaufort
Playhouse, which had a lot more seating. By the time I was a
senior in high school, the performances ran twice to packed
houses, which, considering who actually performed it, was a
story in and of itself.
You see, Hegbert wanted young people to perform the
play-seniors in high school, not the theater group. I reckon
he thought it would be a good learning experience before the
seniors headed off to college and came face-to-face with all
the fornicators. He was that kind of guy, you know, always
wanting to save us from temptation. He wanted us to know that
God is out there watching you, even when you're away from
home, and that if you put your trust in God, you'll be all
right in the end. It was a lesson that I would eventually
learn in time, though it wasn't Hegbert who taught me.
As I said before, Beaufort was fairly typical as far as
southern towns went, though it did have an interesting
history. Blackbeard the pirate once owned a house there, and
his ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, is supposedly buried
somewhere in the sand just offshore. Recently some
archaeologists or oceanographers or whoever looks for stuff
like that said they found it, but no one's certain just yet,
being that it sank over 250 years ago and you can't exactly
reach into the glove compartment and check the registration.
Beaufort's come a long way since the 1950s, but it's still
not exactly a major metropolis or anything. Beaufort was, and
always will be, on the smallish side, but when I was growing
up, it barely warranted a place on the map. To put it into
perspective, the congressional district that included
Beaufort covered the entire eastern part of the state-some
twenty thousand square miles-and there wasn't a single town
with more than twenty-five thousand people. Even compared
with those towns, Beaufort was regarded as being on the small
side. Everything east of Raleigh and north of Wilmington, all
the way to the Virginia border, was the district my father
represented.
I suppose you've heard of him. He's sort of a legend, even
now. His name is Worth Carter, and he was a congressman for
almost thirty years. His slogan every other year during the
election season was "Worth Carter represents ---," and the
person was supposed to fill in the city name where he or she
lived. I can remember, driving on trips when me and Mom had
to make our appearances to show the people he was a true
family man, that we'd see those bumper stickers, stenciled in
with names like Otway and Chocawinity and Seven Springs.
Nowadays stuff like that wouldn't fly, but back then that was
fairly sophisticated publicity. I imagine if he tried to do
that now, people opposing him would insert all sorts of foul
language in the blank space, but we never saw it once. Okay,
maybe once. A farmer from Duplin County once wrote the word
shit in the blank space, and when my mom saw it, she covered
my eyes and said a prayer asking for forgiveness for the poor
ignorant bastard. She didn't say exactly those words, but I
got the gist of it.
So my father, Mr. Congressman, was a bigwig, and everyone
but everyone knew it, including old man Hegbert. Now, the two
of them didn't get along, not at all, despite the fact that
my father went to Hegbert's church whenever he was in town,
which to be frank wasn't all that often. Hegbert, in addition
to his belief that fornicators were destined to clean the
urinals in hell, also believed that communism was "a sickness
that doomed mankind to heathenhood." Even though heathenhood
wasn't a word-I can't find it in any dictionary-the
congregation knew what he meant. They also knew that he was
directing his words specifically to my father, who would sit
with his eyes closed and pretend not to listen. My father was
on one of the House committees that oversaw the "Red
influence" supposedly infiltrating every aspect of the
country, including national defense, higher education, and
even tobacco farming. You have to remember that this was
during the cold war; tensions were running high, and we North
Carolinians needed something to bring it down to a more
personal level. My father had consistently looked for facts,
which were irrelevant to people like Hegbert. Afterward, when
my father would come home after the service, he'd say
something like "Reverend Sullivan was in rare form today. I
hope you heard that part about the Scripture where Jesus was
talking about the poor. . . ."
Yeah, sure, Dad. . . .
My father tried to defuse situations whenever possible. I
think that's why he stayed in Congress for so long. The guy
could kiss the ugliest babies known to mankind and still come
up with something nice to say. "He's such a gentle child,"
he'd say when a baby had a giant head, or, "I'll bet she's
the sweetest girl in the world," if she had a birthmark over
her entire face. One time a lady showed up with a kid in a
wheelchair. My father took one look at him and said, "I'll
bet you ten to one that you're smartest kid in your class."
And he was! Yeah, my father was great at stuff like that. He
could fling it with the best of 'em, that's for sure. And he
wasn't such a bad guy, not really, especially if you consider
the fact that he didn't beat me or anything. But he wasn't
there for me growing up. I hate to say that because nowadays
people claim that sort of stuff even if their parent was
around and use it to excuse their behavior. My dad . . . he
didn't love me . . . that's why I became a stripper and
performed on The Jerry Springer Show. . . . I'm not using it
to excuse the person I've become, I'm simply saying it as a
fact. My father was gone nine months of the year, living out
of town in a Washington, D.C., apartment three hundred miles
away. My mother didn't go with him because both of them
wanted me to grow up "the same way they had."
Of course, my father's father took him hunting and
fishing, taught him to play ball, showed up for birthday
parties, all that small stuff that adds up to quite a bit
before adulthood. My father, on the other hand, was a
stranger, someone I barely knew at all. For the first five
years of my life I thought all fathers lived somewhere else.
It wasn't until my best friend, Eric Hunter, asked me in
kindergarten who that guy was who showed up at my house the
night before that I realized something wasn't quite right
about the situation.
"He's my father," I said proudly.
"Oh," Eric said as he rifled through my lunchbox, looking
for my Milky Way, "I didn't know you had a father."
Talk about something whacking you straight in the face.
So, I grew up under the care of my mother. Now she was a
nice lady, sweet and gentle, the kind of mother most people
dream about. But she wasn't, nor could she ever be, a manly
influence in my life, and that fact, coupled with my growing
disillusionment with my father, made me become something of a
rebel, even at a young age. Not a bad one, mind you. Me and
my friends might sneak out late and soap up car windows now
and then or eat boiled peanuts in the graveyard behind the
church, but in the fifties that was the kind of thing that
made other parents shake their heads and whisper to their
children, "You don't want to be like that Carter boy. He's on
the fast track to prison."
Me. A bad boy. For eating boiled peanuts in the graveyard.
Go figure.
Anyway, my father and Hegbert didn't get along, but it
wasn't only because of politics. No, it seems that my father
and Hegbert knew each other from way back when. Hegbert was
about twenty years older than my father, and back before he
was a minister, he used to work for my father's father. My
grandfather-even though he spent lots of time with my
father-was a true bastard if there ever was one. He was the
one, by the way, who made the family fortune, but I don't
want you to imagine him as the sort of man who slaved over
his business, working diligently and watching it grow,
prospering slowly over time. My grandfather was much shrewder
than that. The way he made his money was simple-he started as
a bootlegger, accumulating wealth throughout Prohibition by
running rum up from Cuba. Then he began buying land and
hiring sharecroppers to work it. He took ninety percent of
the money the sharecroppers made on their tobacco crop, then
loaned them money whenever they needed it at ridiculous
interest rates. Of course, he never intended to collect the
money-instead he would foreclose on any land or equipment
they happened to own. Then, in what he called "his moment of
inspiration," he started a bank called Carter Banking and
Loan. The only other bank in a two-county radius had
mysteriously burned down, and with the onset of the
Depression, it never reopened. Though everyone knew what had
really happened, not a word was ever spoken for fear of
retribution, and their fear was well placed. The bank wasn't
the only building that had mysteriously burned down.
His interest rates were outrageous, and little by little
he began amassing more land and property as people defaulted
on their loans. When the Depression hit hardest, he
foreclosed on dozens of businesses throughout the county
while retaining the original owners to continue to work on
salary, paying them just enough to keep them where they were,
because they had nowhere else to go. He told them that when
the economy improved, he'd sell their business back to them,
and people always believed him.
Never once, however, did he keep his promise. In the end
he controlled a vast portion of the county's economy, and he
abused his clout in every way imaginable.
I'd like to tell you he eventually went to a terrible
death, but he didn't. He died at a ripe-old age while
sleeping with his mistress on his yacht off the Cayman
Islands. He'd outlived both his wives and his only son. Some
end for a guy like that, huh? Life, I've learned, is never
fair. If people teach anything in school, that should be it.
But back to the story. . . . Hegbert, once he realized
what a bastard my grandfather really was, quit working for
him and went into the ministry, then came back to Beaufort
and started ministering in the same church we attended. He
spent his first few years perfecting his fire-and-brimstone
act with monthly sermons on the evils of the greedy, and this
left him scant time for anything else. He was forty-three
before he ever got married; he was fifty-five when his
daughter, Jamie Sullivan, was born. His wife, a wispy little
thing twenty years younger than he, went through six
miscarriages before Jamie was born, and in the end she died
in childbirth, making Hegbert a widower who had to raise a
daughter on his own.
Hence, of course, the story behind the play.
People knew the story even before the play was first
performed. It was one of those stories that made its rounds
whenever Hegbert had to baptize a baby or attend a funeral.
Everyone knew about it, and that's why, I think, so many
people got emotional whenever they saw the Christmas play.
They knew it was based on something that happened in real
life, which gave it special meaning.
Jamie Sullivan was a senior in high school, just like me,
and she'd already been chosen to play the angel, not that
anyone else even had a chance. This, of course, made the play
extra special that year. It was going to be a big deal, maybe
the biggest ever-at least in Miss Garber's mind. She was the
drama teacher, and she was already glowing about the
possibilities the first time I met her in class.
Now, I hadn't really planned on taking drama that year. I
really hadn't, but it was either that or chemistry II. The
thing was, I thought it would be a blow-off class, especially
when compared with my other option. No papers, no tests, no
tables where I'd have to memorize protons and neutrons and
combine elements in their proper formulas . . . what could
possibly be better for a high school senior? It seemed like a
sure thing, and when I signed up for it, I thought I'd just
be able to sleep through most every class, which, considering
my late night peanut eating, was fairly important at the
time.
On the first day of class I was one of the last to arrive,
coming in just a few seconds before the bell rang, and I took
a seat in the back of the room. Miss Garber had her back
turned to the class, and she was busy writing her name in big
cursive letters, as if we didn't know who she was. Everyone
knew her-it was impossible not to. She was big, at least six
feet two, with flaming red hair and pale skin that showed her
freckles well into her forties. She was also overweight-I'd
say honestly she pushed two fifty-and she had a fondness for
wearing flower-patterned muumuus. She had thick, dark,
horn-rimmed glasses, and she greeted every one with,
"Helloooooo," sort of singing the last syllable. Miss Garber
was one of a kind, that's for sure, and she was single, which
made it even worse. A guy, no matter how old, couldn't help
but feel sorry for a gal like her.
Beneath her name she wrote the goals she wanted to
accomplish that year. "Self-confidence" was number one,
followed by "Self-awareness" and, third, "Self-fulfillment."
Miss Garber was big into the "self" stuff, which put her
really ahead of the curve as far as psychotherapy is
concerned, though she probably didn't realize it at the time.
Miss Garber was a pioneer in that field. Maybe it had
something to do with the way she looked; maybe she was just
trying to feel better about herself.
But I digress.
It wasn't until the class started that I noticed something
unusual. Though Beaufort High School wasn't large, I knew for
a fact that it was pretty much split fifty-fifty between
males and females, which was why I was surprised when I saw
that this class was at least ninety percent female. There was
only one other male in the class, which to my thinking was a
good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a "look out
world, here I come" kind of feeling. Girls, girls, girls . .
. I couldn't help but think. Girls and girls and no tests in
sight.
Okay, so I wasn't the most forward-thinking guy on the
block.
So Miss Garber brings up the Christmas play and tells
everyone that Jamie Sullivan is going to be the angel that
year. Miss Garber started clapping right away-she was a
member of the church, too-and there were a lot of people who
thought she was gunning for Hegbert in a romantic sort of
way. The first time I heard it, I remember thinking that it
was a good thing they were too old to have children, if they
ever did get together. Imagine-translucent with freckles? The
very thought gave everyone shudders, but of course, no one
ever said anything about it, at least within hearing distance
of Miss Garber and Hegbert. Gossip is one thing, hurtful
gossip is completely another, and even in high school we
weren't that mean.
Miss Garber kept on clapping, all alone for a while, until
all of us finally joined in, because it was obvious that was
what she wanted. "Stand up, Jamie," she said. So Jamie stood
up and turned around, and Miss Garber started clapping even
faster, as if she were standing in the presence of a bona
fide movie star.
Now Jamie Sullivan was a nice girl. She really was.
Beaufort was small enough that it had only one elementary
school, so we'd been in the same classes our entire lives,
and I'd be lying if I said I never talked to her. Once, in
second grade, she'd sat in the seat right next to me for the
whole year, and we'd even had a few conversations, but it
didn't mean that I spent a lot of time hanging out with her
in my spare time, even back then. Who I saw in school was one
thing; who I saw after school was something completely
different, and Jamie had never been on my social calendar.
It's not that Jamie was unattractive-don't get me wrong.
She wasn't hideous or anything like that. Fortunately she'd
taken after her mother, who, based on the pictures I'd seen,
wasn't half-bad, especially considering who she ended up
marrying. But Jamie wasn't exactly what I considered
attractive, either. Despite the fact that she was thin, with
honey blond hair and soft blue eyes, most of the time she
looked sort of . . . plain, and that was when you noticed her
at all. Jamie didn't care much about outward appearances,
because she was always looking for things like "inner
beauty," and I suppose that's part of the reason she looked
the way she did. For as long as I'd known her-and this was
going way back, remember-she'd always worn her hair in a
tight bun, almost like a spinster, without a stitch of makeup
on her face. Coupled with her usual brown cardigan and plaid
skirt, she always looked as though she were on her way to
interview for a job at the library. We used to think it was
just a phase and that she'd eventually grow out of it, but
she never had. Even through our first three years of high
school, she hadn't changed at all. The only thing that had
changed was the size of her clothes.
But it wasn't just the way Jamie looked that made her
different; it was also the way she acted. Jamie didn't spend
any time hanging out at Cecil's Diner or going to slumber
parties with other girls, and I knew for a fact that she'd
never had a boyfriend her entire life. Old Hegbert would
probably have had a heart attack if she had. But even if by
some odd turn of events Hegbert had allowed it, it still
wouldn't have mattered. Jamie carried her Bible wherever she
went, and if her looks and Hegbert didn't keep the boys away,
the Bible sure as heck did. Now, I liked the Bible as much as
the next teenage boy, but Jamie seemed to enjoy it in a way
that was completely foreign to me. Not only did she go to
vacation Bible school every August, but she would read the
Bible during lunch break at school. In my mind that just
wasn't normal, even if she was the minister's daughter. No
matter how you sliced it, reading Paul's letters to the
Ephesians wasn't nearly as much fun as flirting, if you know
what I mean.
But Jamie didn't stop there. Because of all her Bible
reading, or maybe because of Hegbert's influence, Jamie
believed it was important to help others, and helping others
is exactly what she did. I knew she volunteered at the
orphanage in Morehead City, but for her that simply wasn't
enough. She was always in charge of one fund-raiser or
another, helping everyone from the Boy Scouts to the Indian
Princesses, and I know that when she was fourteen, she spent
part of her summer painting the outside of an elderly
neighbor's house. Jamie was the kind of girl who would pull
weeds in someone's garden without being asked or stop traffic
to help little kids cross the road. She'd save her allowance
to buy a new basketball for the orphans, or she'd turn around
and drop the money into the church basket on Sunday. She was,
in other words, the kind of girl who made the rest of us look
bad, and whenever she glanced my way, I couldn't help but
feel guilty, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.
Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever
came across a wounded animal, for instance, she'd try to help
it, too. Opossums, squirrels, dogs, cats, frogs . . . it
didn't matter to her. Dr. Rawlings, the vet, knew her by
sight, and he'd shake his head whenever he saw her walking up
to the door carrying a cardboard box with yet another critter
inside. He'd take off his eyeglasses and wipe them with his
handkerchief while Jamie explained how she'd found the poor
creature and what had happened to it. "He was hit by a car,
Dr. Rawlings. I think it was in the Lord's plan to have me
find him and try to save him. You'll help me, won't you?"
With Jamie, everything was in the Lord's plan. That was
another thing. She always mentioned the Lord's plan whenever
you talked to her, no matter what the subject. The baseball
game's rained out? Must be the Lord's plan to prevent
something worse from happening. A surprise trigonometry quiz
that everyone in class fails? Must be in the Lord's plan to
give us challenges. Anyway, you get the picture.
Then, of course, there was the whole Hegbert situation,
and this didn't help her at all. Being the minister's
daughter couldn't have been easy, but she made it seem as if
it were the most natural thing in the world and that she was
lucky to have been blessed in that way. That's how she used
to say it, too. "I've been so blessed to have a father like
mine." Whenever she said it, all we could do was shake our
heads and wonder what planet she actually came from.
Despite all these other strikes, though, the one thing
that really drove me crazy about her was the fact that she
was always so damn cheerful, no matter what was happening
around her. I swear, that girl never said a bad thing about
anything or anyone, even to those of us who weren't that nice
to her. She would hum to herself as she walked down the
street, she would wave to strangers driving by in their cars.
Sometimes ladies would come running out of their house if
they saw her walking by, offering her pumpkin bread if they'd
been baking all day or lemonade if the sun was high in the
sky. It seemed as if every adult in town adored her. "She's
such a nice young lady," they'd say whenever Jamie's name
came up. "The world would be a better place if there were
more people like her."
But my friends and I didn't quite see it that way. In our
minds, one Jamie Sullivan was plenty.
I was thinking about all this while Jamie stood in front
of us on the first day of drama class, and I admit that I
wasn't much interested in seeing her. But strangely, when
Jamie turned to face us, I kind of got a shock, like I was
sitting on a loose wire or something. She wore a plaid skirt
with a white blouse under the same brown cardigan sweater I'd
seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her
chest that the sweater couldn't hide that I swore hadn't been
there just three months earlier. She'd never worn makeup and
she still didn't, but she had a tan, probably from Bible
school, and for the first time she looked-well, almost
pretty. Of course, I dismissed that thought right away, but
as she looked around the room, she stopped and smiled right
at me, obviously glad to see that I was in the class. It
wasn't until later that I would learn the reason why.
Chapter 2
After high school I planned to go to the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My father wanted me to go to
Harvard or Princeton like some of the sons of other
congressmen did, but with my grades it wasn't possible. Not
that I was a bad student. I just didn't focus on my studies,
and my grades weren't exactly up to snuff for the Ivy
Leagues. By my senior year it was pretty much touch and go
whether I'd even get accepted at UNC, and this was my
father's alma mater, a place where he could pull some
strings. During one of his few weekends home, my father came
up with the plan to put me over the top. I'd just finished my
first week of school and we were sitting down for dinner. He
was home for three days on account of Labor Day weekend. "I
think you should run for student body president," he said.
"You'll be graduating in June, and I think it would look good
on your record. Your mother thinks so, too, by the way."
My mother nodded as she chewed a mouthful of peas. She
didn't speak much when my father had the floor, though she
winked at me. Sometimes I think my mother liked to see me
squirm, even though she was sweet.
"I don't think I'd have a chance at winning," I said.
Though I was probably the richest kid in school, I was by no
means the most popular. That honor belonged to Eric Hunter,
my best friend. He could throw a baseball at almost ninety
miles an hour, and he'd led the football team to back-to-back
state titles as the star quarterback. He was a stud. Even his
name sounded cool.
"Of course you can win," my father said quickly. "We
Carters always win."
That's another one of the reasons I didn't like spending
time with my father. During those few times he was home, I
think he wanted to mold me into a miniature version of
himself. Since I'd grown up pretty much without him, I'd come
to resent having him around. This was the first conversation
we'd had in weeks. He rarely talked to me on the phone.
"But what if I don't want to?"
My father put down his fork, a bite of his pork chop still
on the tines. He looked at me crossly, giving me the
once-over. He was wearing a suit even though it was over
eighty degrees in the house, and it made him even more
intimidating. My father always wore a suit, by the way.
"I think," he said slowly, "that it would be a good idea."
I knew that when he talked that way the issue was settled.
That's the way it was in my family. My father's word was law.
But the fact was, even after I agreed, I didn't want to do
it. I didn't want to waste my afternoons meeting with
teachers after school-after school!-every week for the rest
of the year, dreaming up themes for school dances or trying
to decide what colors the streamers should be. That's really
all the class presidents did, at least back when I was in
high school. It wasn't like students had the power to
actually decide anything meaningful.
But then again, I knew my father had a point. If I wanted
to go to UNC, I had to do something. I didn't play football
or basketball, I didn't play an instrument, I wasn't in the
chess club or the bowling club or anything else. I didn't
excel in the classroom-hell, I didn't excel at much of
anything. Growing despondent, I started listing the things I
actually could do, but to be honest, there really wasn't that
much. I could tie eight different types of sailing knots, I
could walk barefoot across hot asphalt farther than anyone I
knew, I could balance a pencil vertically on my finger for
thirty seconds . . . but I didn't think that any of those
things would really stand out on a college application. So
there I was, lying in bed all night long, slowly coming to
the sinking realization that I was a loser. Thanks, Dad.
The next morning I went to the principal's office and
added my name to the list of candidates. There were two other
people running-John Foreman and Maggie Brown. Now, John
didn't stand a chance, I knew that right off. He was the kind
of guy who'd pick lint off your clothes while he talked to
you. But he was a good student. He sat in the front row and
raised his hand every time the teacher asked a question. If
he was called to give the answer, he would almost always give
the right one, and he'd turn his head from side to side with
a smug look on his face, as if proving how superior his
intellect was when compared with those of the other peons in
the room. Eric and I used to shoot spitballs at him when the
teacher's back was turned.
Maggie Brown was another matter. She was a good student as
well. She'd served on the student council for the first three
years and had been the junior class president the year
before. The only real strike against her was the fact that
she wasn't very attractive, and she'd put on twenty pounds
that summer. I knew that not a single guy would vote for her.
After seeing the competition, I figured that I might have
a chance after all. My entire future was on the line here, so
I formulated my strategy. Eric was the first to agree.
"Sure, I'll get all the guys on the team to vote for you,
no problem. If that's what you really want."
"How about their girlfriends, too?" I asked.
That was pretty much my entire campaign. Of course, I went
to the debates like I was supposed to, and I passed out those
dorky "What I'll do if I'm elected president" fliers, but in
the end it was Eric Hunter who probably got me where I needed
to be. Beaufort High School had only about four hundred
students, so getting the athletic vote was critical, and most
of the jocks didn't give a hoot who they voted for anyway. In
the end it worked out just the way I planned.
I was voted student body president with a fairly large
majority of the vote. I had no idea what trouble it would
eventually lead me to.
When I was a junior I went steady with a girl named Angela
Clark. She was my first real girlfriend, though it lasted for
only a few months. Just before school let out for the summer,
she dumped me for a guy named Lew who was twenty years old
and worked as a mechanic in his father's garage. His primary
attribute, as far as I could tell, was that he had a really
nice car. He always wore a white T-shirt with a pack of
Camels folded into the sleeve, and he'd lean against the hood
of his Thunderbird, looking back and forth, saying things
like "Hey, baby" whenever a girl walked by. He was a real
winner, if you know what I mean.
Well, anyway, the homecoming dance was coming up, and
because of the whole Angela situation, I still didn't have a
date. Everyone on the student council had to attend-it was
mandatory. I had to help decorate the gym and clean up the
next day-and besides, it was usually a pretty good time. I
called a couple of girls I knew, but they already had dates,
so I called a few more. They had dates, too. By the final
week the pickings were getting pretty slim. The pool was down
to the kinds of girls who had thick glasses and talked with
lisps. Beaufort was never exactly a hotbed for beauties
anyway, but then again I had to find somebody. I didn't want
to go to the dance without a date-what would that look like?
I'd be the only student body president ever to attend the
homecoming dance alone. I'd end up being the guy scooping
punch all night long or mopping up the barf in the bathroom.
That's what people without dates usually did.
Growing sort of panicky, I pulled out the yearbook from
the year before and started flipping through the pages one by
one, looking for anyone who might not have a date. First I
looked through the pages with the seniors. Though a lot of
them were off at college, a few of them were still around
town. Even though I didn't think I had much of a chance with
them, I called anyway, and sure enough, I was proven right. I
couldn't find anyone, at least not anyone who would go with
me. I was getting pretty good at handling rejection, I'll
tell you, though that's not the sort of thing you brag about
to your grandkids. My mom knew what I was going through, and
she finally came into my room and sat on the bed beside me.
"If you can't get a date, I'll be happy to go with you,"
she said.
"Thanks, Mom," I said dejectedly.
When she left the room, I felt even worse than I had
before. Even my mom didn't think I could find somebody. And
if I showed up with her? If I lived a hundred years, I'd
never live that down.
There was another guy in my boat, by the way. Carey
Dennison had been elected treasurer, and he still didn't have
a date, either. Carey was the kind of guy no one wanted to
spend time with at all, and the only reason he'd been elected
was because he'd run unopposed. Even then I think the vote
was fairly close. He played the tuba in the marching band,
and his body looked all out of proportion, as if he'd stopped
growing halfway through puberty. He had a great big stomach
and gangly arms and legs, like the Hoos in Hooville, if you
know what I mean. He also had a high-pitched way of
talking-it's what made him such a good tuba player, I
reckon-and he never stopped asking questions. "Where did you
go last weekend? Was it fun? Did you see any girls?" He
wouldn't even wait for an answer, and he'd move around
constantly as he asked so you had to keep turning your head
to keep him in sight. I swear he was probably the most
annoying person I'd ever met. If I didn't get a date, he'd
stand off on one side with me all night long, firing
questions like some deranged prosecutor.
So there I was, flipping through the pages in the junior
class section, when I saw Jamie Sullivan's picture. I paused
for just a second, then turned the page, cursing myself for
even thinking about it. I spent the next hour searching for
anyone halfway decent looking, but I slowly came to the
realization that there wasn't anyone left. In time I finally
turned back to her picture and looked again. She wasn't bad
looking, I told myself, and she's really sweet. She'd
probably say yes, I thought. . . .
I closed the yearbook. Jamie Sullivan? Hegbert's daughter?
No way. Absolutely not. My friends would roast me alive.
But compared with dating your mother or cleaning up puke
or even, God forbid . . Carey Dennison?
I spent the rest of the evening debating the pros and cons
of my dilemma. Believe me, I went back and forth for a while,
but in the end the choice was obvious, even to me. I had to
ask Jamie to the dance, and I paced around the room thinking
of the best way to ask her.
It was then that I realized something terrible, something
absolutely frightening. Carey Dennison, I suddenly realized,
was probably doing the exact same thing I was doing right
now. He was probably looking through the yearbook, too! He
was weird, but he wasn't the kind of guy who liked cleaning
up puke, either, and if you'd seen his mother, you'd know
that his choice was even worse than mine. What if he asked
Jamie first? Jamie wouldn't say no to him, and realistically
she was the only option he had. No one besides her would be
caught dead with him. Jamie helped everyone-she was one of
those equal opportunity saints. She'd probably listen to
Carey's squeaky voice, see the goodness radiating from his
heart, and accept right off the bat.
So there I was, sitting in my room, frantic with the
possibility that Jamie might not go to the dance with me. I
barely slept that night, I tell you, which was just about the
strangest thing I'd ever experienced. I don't think anyone
ever fretted about asking Jamie out before. I planned to ask
her first thing in the morning, while I still had my courage,
but Jamie wasn't in school. I assumed she was working with
the orphans over in Morehead City, the way she did every
month. A few of us had tried to get out of school using that
excuse, too, but Jamie was the only one who ever got away
with it. The principal knew she was reading to them or doing
crafts or just sitting around playing games with them. She
wasn't sneaking out to the beach or hanging out at Cecil's
Diner or anything. That concept was absolutely ludicrous.
"Got a date yet?" Eric asked me in between classes. He
knew very well that I didn't, but even though he was my best
friend, he liked to stick it to me once in a while.
"Not yet," I said, "but I'm working on it."
Down the hall, Carey Denison was reaching into his locker.
I swear he shot me a beady glare when he thought I wasn't
looking.
That's the kind of day it was.
The minutes ticked by slowly during my final class. The
way I figured it-if Carey and I got out at the same time, I'd
be able to get to her house first, what with those gawky legs
and all. I started to psych myself up, and when the bell
rang, I took off from school running at a full clip. I was
flying for about a hundred yards or so, and then I started to
get kind of tired, and then a cramp set in. Pretty soon all I
could do was walk, but that cramp really started to get to
me, and I had to bend over and hold my side while I kept
moving. As I made my way down the streets of Beaufort, I
looked like a wheezing version of the Hunchback of Notre
Dame.
Behind me I thought I heard Carey's high-pitched laughter.
I turned around, digging my fingers into my gut to stifle the
pain, but I couldn't see him. Maybe he was cutting through
someone's backyard! He was a sneaky bastard, that guy. You
couldn't trust him even for a minute.
I started to stumble along even faster, and pretty soon I
reached Jamie's street. By then I was sweating all over-my
shirt was soaked right through-and I was still wheezing
something fierce. Well, I reached her front door, took a
second to catch my breath, and finally knocked. Despite my
fevered rush to her house, my pessimistic side assumed that
Carey would be the one who opened the door for me. I imagined
him smiling at me with a victorious look in his eye, one that
essentially meant "Sorry, partner, you're too late."
But it wasn't Carey who answered, it was Jamie, and for
the first time in my life I saw what she'd look like if she
were an ordinary person. She was wearing jeans and a red
blouse, and though her hair was still pulled up into a bun,
she looked more casual than she usually did. I realized she
could actually be cute if she gave herself the opportunity.
"Landon," she said as she held open the door, "this is a
surprise!" Jamie was always glad to see everyone, including
me, though I think my appearance startled her. "You look like
you've been exercising," she said.
"Not really," I lied, wiping my brow. Luckily the cramp
was fading fast.
"You've sweat clean through your shirt."
"Oh, that?" I looked at my shirt. "That's nothing. I just
sweat a lot sometimes."
"Maybe you should have it checked by a doctor."
"I'll be okay, I'm sure."
"I'll say a prayer for you anyway," she offered as she
smiled. Jamie was always praying for someone. I might as well
join the club.
"Thanks," I said.
She looked down and sort of shuffled her feet for a
moment. "Well, I'd invite you in, but my father isn't home,
and he doesn't allow boys in the house while he's not
around."
"Oh," I said dejectedly, "that's okay. We can talk out
here, I guess." If I'd had my way, I would have done this
inside.
"Would you like some lemonade while we sit?" she asked. "I
just made some."
"I'd love some," I said.
"I'll be right back." She walked back into the house, but
she left the door open and I took a quick glance around. The
house, I noticed, was small but tidy, with a piano against
one wall and a sofa against the other. A small fan sat
oscillating in the corner. On the coffee table there were
books with names like Listening to Jesus and Faith Is the
Answer. Her Bible was there, too, and it was opened to the
chapter on Luke.
A moment later Jamie returned with the lemonade, and we
took a seat in two chairs near the corner of the porch. I
knew she and her father sat there in the evenings because I
passed by their house now and then. As soon as we were
seated, I saw Mrs. Hastings, her neighbor across the street,
wave to us. Jamie waved back while I sort of scooted my chair
so that Mrs. Hastings couldn't see my face. Even though I was
going to ask Jamie to the dance, I didn't want anyone-even
Mrs. Hastings-to see me there on the off chance that she'd
already accepted Carey's offer. It was one thing to actually
go with Jamie, it was another thing to be rejected by her in
favor of a guy like Carey.
"What are you doing?" Jamie asked me. "You're moving your
chair into the sun."
"I like the sun," I said. She was right, though. Almost
immediately I could feel the rays burning through my shirt
and making me sweat again.
"If that's what you want," she said, smiling. "So, what
did you want to talk to me about?"
Jamie reached up and started to adjust her hair. By my
reckoning, it hadn't moved at all. I took a deep breath,
trying to gather myself, but I couldn't force myself to come
out with it just yet.
"So," I said instead, "you were at the orphanage today?"
Jamie looked at me curiously. "No. My father and I were at
the doctor's office."
"Is he okay?"
She smiled. "Healthy as can be."
I nodded and glanced across the street. Mrs. Hastings had
gone back inside, and I couldn't see anyone else in the
vicinity. The coast was finally clear, but I still wasn't
ready.
"Sure is a beautiful day," I said, stalling.
"Yes, it is."
"Warm, too."
"That's because you're in the sun."
I looked around, feeling the pressure building. "Why, I'll
bet there's not a single cloud in the whole sky."
This time Jamie didn't respond, and we sat in silence for
a few moments.
"Landon," she finally said, "you didn't come here to talk
about the weather, did you?"
"Not really."
"Then why are you here?"
The moment of truth had arrived, and I cleared my throat.
"Well . . . I wanted to know if you were going to the
homecoming dance."
"Oh," she said. Her tone made it seem as if she were
unaware that such a thing existed. I fidgeted in my seat and
waited for her answer.
"I really hadn't planned on going," she finally said.
"But if someone asked you to go, you might?"
It took a moment for her to answer.
"I'm not sure," she said, thinking carefully. "I suppose I
might go, if I got the chance. I've never been to a
homecoming dance before."
"They're fun," I said quickly. "Not too much fun, but
fun." Especially when compared to my other options, I didn't
add.
She smiled at my turn of phrase. "I'd have to talk to my
father, of course, but if he said it was okay, then I guess I
could."
In the tree beside the porch, a bird started to chirp
noisily, as if he knew I wasn't supposed to be here. I
concentrated on the sound, trying to calm my nerves. Just two
days ago I couldn't have imagined myself even thinking about
it, but suddenly there I was, listening to myself as I spoke
the magic words.
"Well, would you like to go to the dance with me?"
I could tell she was surprised. I think she believed that
the little lead-up to the question probably had to do with
someone else asking her. Sometimes teenagers sent their
friends out to "scout the terrain," so to speak, so as not to
face possible rejection. Even though Jamie wasn't much like
other teenagers, I'm sure she was familiar with the concept,
at least in theory.
Instead of answering right away, though, Jamie glanced
away for a long moment. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach
because I assumed she was going to say no. Visions of my
mother, puke, and Carey flooded through my mind, and all of a
sudden I regretted the way I'd behaved toward her all these
years. I kept remembering all the times I'd teased her or
called her father a fornicator or simply made fun of her
behind her back. Just when I was feeling awful about the
whole thing and imagining how I would ever be able to avoid
Carey for five hours, she turned and faced me again. She had
a slight smile on her face.
"I'd love to," she finally said, "on one condition."
I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful.
"Yes?"
"You have to promise that you won't fall in love with me."
I knew she was kidding by the way she laughed, and I
couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. Sometimes, I had
to admit, Jamie had a pretty good sense of humor. I smiled
and gave her my word.
Chapter 3
As a general rule, Southern Baptists don't dance. In
Beaufort, however, it wasn't a rule that was ever strictly
enforced. The minister before Hegbert-don't ask me what his
name was-took sort of a lax view about school dances as long
as they were chaperoned, and because of that, they'd become a
tradition of sorts. By the time Hegbert came along, it was
too late to change things. Jamie was pretty much the only one
who'd never been to a school dance and frankly, I didn't know
whether she even knew how to dance at all.
I admit that I also had some concerns about what she would
wear, though it wasn't something I would tell her. When Jamie
went to the church socials-which were encouraged by
Hegbert-she usually wore an old sweater and one of the plaid
skirts we saw in school every day, but the homecoming dance
was supposed to be special. Most of the girls bought new
dresses and the boys wore suits, and this year we were
bringing in a photographer to take our pictures. I knew Jamie
wasn't going to buy a new dress because she wasn't exactly
well-off. Ministering wasn't a profession where people made a
lot of money, but of course ministers weren't in it for
monetary gain, they were in it for the long haul, if you know
what I mean. But I didn't want her to wear the same thing she
wore to school every day, either. Not so much for me-I'm not
that cold-hearted-but because of what others might say. I
didn't want people to make fun of her or anything.
The good news, if there was any, was that Eric didn't rib
me too bad about the whole Jamie situation because he was too
busy thinking about his own date. He was taking Margaret
Hays, who was the head cheerleader at our school. She wasn't
the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she was nice in
her own way. By nice, of course, I'm talking about her legs.
Eric offered to double-date with me, but I turned him down
because I didn't want to take any chances with Eric teasing
Jamie or anything like that. He was a good guy, but he could
be kind of heartless sometimes, especially when he had a few
shots of bourbon in him.
The day of the dance was actually quite busy for me. I
spent most of the afternoon helping to decorate the gym, and
I had to get to Jamie's about a half hour early because her
father wanted to talk to me, though I didn't know why. Jamie
had sprung that one on me just the day before, and I can't
say I was exactly thrilled by the prospect of it. I figured
he was going to talk about temptation and the evil path it
can lead us to. If he brought up fornication, though, I knew
I would die right there on the spot. I said small prayers all
day long in the hope of avoiding this conversation, but I
wasn't sure if God would put my prayers on the front burner,
if you know what I mean, because of the way I'd behaved in
the past. I was pretty nervous just thinking about it.
After I showered I put on my best suit, swung by the
florist to pick up Jamie's corsage, then drove to her house.
My mom had let me borrow the car, and I parked it on the
street directly in front of Jamie's house. We hadn't turned
the clocks back yet, so it was still light out when I got
there, and I strolled up the cracked walkway to her door. I
knocked and waited for a moment, then knocked again. From
behind the door I heard Hegbert say, "I'll be right there,"
but he wasn't exactly racing to the door. I must have stood
there for two minutes or so, looking at the door, the
moldings, the little cracks in the windowsills. Off to the
side were the chairs that Jamie and I had sat in just a few
days back. The one I sat in was still turned in the opposite
direction. I guess they hadn't sat there in the last couple
of days.
Finally the door creaked open. The light coming from the
lamp inside shadowed Hegbert's face slightly and sort of
reflected through his hair. He was old, like I said,
seventy-two years by my reckoning. It was the first time I'd
ever seen him up close, and I could see all the wrinkles on
his face. His skin really was translucent, even more so than
I'd imagined.
"Hello, Reverend," I said, swallowing my trepidation. "I'm
here to take Jamie to the homecoming dance."
"Of course you are," he said. "But first, I wanted to talk
with you."
"Yes, sir, that's why I came early."
"C'mon in."
In church Hegbert was a fairly snappy dresser, but right
now he looked like a farmer, dressed in overalls and a
T-shirt. He motioned for me to sit on the wooden chair he'd
brought in from the kitchen. "I'm sorry it took a little
while to open the door. I was working on tomorrow's sermon,"
he said.
I sat down.
"That's okay, sir." I don't know why, but you just had to
call him "sir." He sort of projected that image.
"All right, then, so tell me about yourself."
I thought it was a fairly ridiculous question, with him
having such a long history with my family and all. He was
also the one who had baptized me, by the way, and he'd seen
me in church every Sunday since I'd been a baby.
"Well, sir," I began, not really knowing what to say, "I'm
the student body president. I don't know whether Jamie
mentioned that to you."
He nodded. "She did. Go on."
"And . . . well, I hope to go to the University of North
Carolina next fall. I've already received the application."
He nodded again. "Anything else?"
I had to admit, I was running out of things after that.
Part of me wanted to pick up the pencil off the end table and
start balancing it, giving him the whole thirty seconds'
worth, but he wasn't the kind of guy who would appreciate it.
"I guess not, sir."
"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"No, sir."
He sort of stared at me for a long time, as if thinking
about it.
"Why did you ask my daughter to the dance?" he finally
said.
I was surprised, and I know that my expression showed it.
"I don't know what you mean, sir."
"You're not planning to do anything to . . . embarrass
her, are you?"
"No, sir," I said quickly, shocked by the accusation. "Not
at all. I needed someone to go with, and I asked her. It's as
simple as that."
"You don't have any pranks planned?"
"No, sir. I wouldn't do that to her. . . ."
This went on for a few more minutes-his grilling me about
my true intentions, I mean-but luckily Jamie stepped out of
the back room, and her father and I both turned our heads at
the same moment. Hegbert finally stopped talking, and I
breathed a sigh of relief. She'd put on a nice blue skirt and
a white blouse I'd never seen before. Fortunately she'd left
her sweater in the closet. It wasn't too bad, I had to admit,
though I knew she'd still be underdressed compared with
others at the dance. As always, her hair was pulled up in a
bun. Personally I think it would have looked better if she'd
kept it down, but that was the last thing I wanted to say.
Jamie looked like . . . well, Jamie looked exactly like she
usually did, but at least she wasn't planning on bringing her
Bible. That would have just been too much to live down.
"You're not giving Landon a hard time, are you?" she said
cheerfully to her father.
"We were just visiting," I said quickly before he had a
chance to respond. For some reason I didn't think he'd told
Jamie about the kind of person he thought I was, and I didn't
think that now would be a good time.
"Well, we should probably go," she said after a moment. I
think she sensed the tension in the room. She walked over to
her father and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't stay up too
late working on the sermon, okay?"
"I won't," he said softly. Even with me in the room, I
could tell he really loved her and wasn't afraid to show it.
It was how he felt about me that was the problem.
We said good-bye, and on our way to the car I handed Jamie
her corsage and told her I'd show her how to put it on once
we got in the car. I opened her door for her and walked
around the other side, then got in as well. In that short
period of time, Jamie had already pinned on the flower.
"I'm not exactly a dimwit, you know. I do know how to pin
on a corsage."
I started the car and headed toward the high school, with
the conversation I'd just had with Hegbert running through my
mind.
"My father doesn't like you very much," she said, as if
knowing what I was thinking.
I nodded without saying anything.
"He thinks you're irresponsible."
I nodded again.
"He doesn't like your father much, either."
I nodded once more.
"Or your family."
I get the picture.
"But do you know what I think?" she asked suddenly.
"Not really." By then I was pretty depressed.
"I think that all this was in the Lord's plan somehow.
What do you think the message is?"
Here we go, I thought to myself.
I doubt if the evening could have been much worse, if you
want to know the truth. Most of my friends kept their
distance, and Jamie didn't have many friends to begin with,
so we spent most of our time alone. Even worse, it turned out
that my presence wasn't even required anymore. They'd changed
the rule owing to the fact that Carey couldn't get a date,
and that left me feeling pretty miserable about the whole
thing as soon as I found out about it. But because of what
her father had said to me, I couldn't exactly take her home
early, now, could I? And more than that, she was really
having a good time; even I could see that. She loved the
decorations I'd helped put up, she loved the music, she loved
everything about the dance. She kept telling me how wonderful
everything was, and she asked me whether I might help her
decorate the church someday, for one of their socials. I sort
of mumbled that she should call me, and even though I said it
without a trace of energy, Jamie thanked me for being so
considerate. To be honest, I was depressed for at least the
first hour, though she didn't seem to notice.
Jamie had to be home by eleven o'clock, an hour before the
dance ended, which made it somewhat easier for me to handle.
Once the music started we hit the floor, and it turned out
that she was a pretty good dancer, considering it was her
first time and all. She followed my lead pretty well through
about a dozen songs, and after that we headed to the tables
and had what resembled an ordinary conversation. Sure, she
threw in words like "faith" and "joy" and even "salvation,"
and she talked about helping the orphans and scooping
critters off the highway, but she was just so damn happy, it
was hard to stay down for long.
So things weren't too terrible at first and really no
worse than I had expected. It wasn't until Lew and Angela
showed up that everything really went sour.
They showed up a few minutes after we arrived. He was
wearing that stupid T-shirt, Camels in his sleeve, and a glop
of hair gel on his head. Angela hung all over him right from
the beginning of the dance, and it didn't take a genius to
realize she'd had a few drinks before she got there. Her
dress was really flashy-her mother worked in a salon and was
up on all the latest fashions-and I noticed she'd picked up
that ladylike habit called chewing gum. She really worked
that gum, chewing it almost like a cow working her cud.
Well, good old Lew spiked the punch bowl, and a few more
people started getting tipsy. By the time the teachers found
out, most of the punch was already gone and people were
getting that glassy look in their eyes. When I saw Angela
gobble up her second glass of punch, I knew I should keep my
eye on her. Even though she'd dumped me, I didn't want
anything bad to happen to her. She was the first girl I'd
ever French-kissed, and even though our teeth clanked
together so hard the first time we tried it that I saw stars
and had to take aspirin when I got home, I still had feelings
for her.
So there I was, sitting with Jamie, barely listening as
she described the wonders of Bible school, watching Angela
out of the corner of my eye, when Lew spotted me looking at
her. In one frenzied motion he grabbed Angela around the
waist and dragged her over to the table, giving me one of
those looks, the one that "means business." You know the one
I'm talking about.
"Are you staring at my girl?" he asked, already tensing
up.
"No."
"Yeah, he was," Angela said, kind of slurring out the
words. "He was staring right at me. This is my old boyfriend,
the one I told you about."
His eyes turned into little slits, just like Hegbert's
were prone to do. I guess I have this effect on lots of
people.
"So you're the one," he said, sneering.
Now, I'm not much of a fighter. The only real fight I was
ever in was in third grade, and I pretty much lost that one
when I started to cry even before the guy punched me. Usually
I didn't have much trouble staying away from things like this
because of my passive nature, and besides, no one ever messed
with me when Eric was around. But Eric was off with Margaret
somewhere, probably behind the bleachers.
"I wasn't staring," I said finally, "and I don't know what
she told you, but I doubt if it was true."
His eyes narrowed. "Are you calling Angela a liar?" he
sneered.
Oops.
I think he would have hit me right there, but Jamie
suddenly worked her way into the situation.
"Don't I know you?" she said cheerfully, looking right at
him. Sometimes Jamie seemed oblivious of situations that were
happening right in front of her. "Wait-yes, I do. You work in
the garage downtown. Your father's name is Joe, and your
grandma lives out on Foster Road, by the railroad crossing."
A look of confusion crossed Lew's face, as though he were
trying to put together a puzzle with too many pieces.
"How do you know all that? What he'd do, tell you about
me, too?"
"No," Jamie said, "don't be silly." She laughed to
herself. Only Jamie could find humor at a time like this. "I
saw your picture in your grandma's house. I was walking by,
and she needed some help bringing in the groceries. Your
picture was on the mantel."
Lew was looking at Jamie as though she had cornstalks
growing out of her ears.
Meanwhile Jamie was fanning herself with her hand. "Well,
we were just sitting down to take a breather from all that
dancing. It sure gets hot out there. Would you like to join
us? We've got a couple of chairs. I'd love to hear how your
grandma is doing."
She sounded so happy about it that Lew didn't know what to
do. Unlike those of us who were used to this sort of thing,
he'd never come across someone like Jamie before. He stood
there for a moment or two, trying to decide if he should hit
the guy with the girl who'd helped his grandma. If it sounds
confusing to you, imagine what it was doing to Lew's
petroleum-damaged brain.
He finally skulked off without responding, taking Angela
with him. Angela had probably forgotten how the whole thing
started anyway, owing to the amount she'd had to drink. Jamie
and I watched him go, and when he was a safe distance away, I
exhaled. I hadn't even realized I'd been holding my breath.
"Thanks," I said mumbled sheepishly, realizing that
Jamie-Jamie!-was the one who'd saved me from grave bodily
harm. Jamie looked at me strangely. "For what?" she asked,
and when I didn't exactly spell it out for her, she went
right back into her story about Bible school, as if nothing
had happened at all. But this time I found myself actually
listening to her, at least with one of my ears. It was the
least I could do.
It turns out that it wasn't the last we saw of either Lew
or Angela that evening. The two glasses of punch had really
done Angela in, and she threw up all over the ladies' rest
room. Lew, being the classy guy he was, left when he heard
her retching, sort of slinking out the way he came in, and
that was the last I saw of him. Jamie, as fate would have it,
was the one who found Angela in the bathroom, and it was
obvious that Angela wasn't doing too well. The only option
was to clean her up and take her home before the teachers
found out about it. Getting drunk was a big deal back then,
and she'd be looking at suspension, maybe even expulsion, if
she got caught.
Jamie, bless her heart, didn't want that to happen any
more than I did, though I would have thought otherwise if
you'd asked me beforehand, owing to the fact that Angela was
a minor and in violation of the law. She'd also broken
another one of Hegbert's rules for proper behavior. Hegbert
frowned on law-breaking and drinking, and though it didn't
get him going like fornication, we all knew he was deadly
serious, and we assumed Jamie felt the same way. And maybe
she did, but her helper instinct must have taken over. She
probably took one look at Angela and thought "wounded
critter" or something like that and took immediate charge of
the situation. I went off and located Eric behind the
bleachers, and he agreed to stand guard at the bathroom door
while Jamie and I went in to tidy it up. Angela had done a
marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the
toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks-even on the ceiling,
though don't ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched
on all fours, cleaning up puke at the homecoming dance in my
best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid
in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours,
too, doing exactly the same thing.
I could practically hear Carey laughing a squeaky,
maniacal laugh somewhere in the distance.
We ended up sneaking out the back door of the gym, keeping
Angela stable by walking on either side of her. She kept
asking where Lew was, but Jamie told her not to worry. She
had a real soothing way of talking to Angela, though Angela
was so far gone, I doubt if she even knew who was speaking.
We loaded Angela into the backseat of my car, where she
passed out almost immediately, although not before she'd
vomited once more on the floor of the car. The smell was so
awful that we had to roll down the windows to keep from
gagging, and the drive to Angela's house seemed extra long.
Her mother answered the door, took one look at her daughter,
and brought her inside without so much as a word of thanks. I
think she was embarrassed, and we really didn't have much to
say to her anyway. The situation pretty much spoke for
itself.
By the time we dropped her off it was ten forty-five, and
we drove straight back to Jamie's. I was really worried when
we got there because of the way she looked and smelled, and I
said a silent prayer hoping that Hegbert wasn't awake. I
didn't want to have to explain this to him. Oh, he'd probably
listen to Jamie if she was the one who told him about it, but
I had the sinking feeling that he'd find a way to blame me
anyway.
So I walked her to the door, and we stood outside under
the porchlight. Jamie crossed her arms and smiled a little,
looking just as if she'd come in from an evening stroll where
she'd contemplated the beauty of the world.
"Please don't tell your father about this," I said.
"I won't," she said. She kept on smiling when she finally
turned my way. "I had a good time tonight. Thank you for
taking me to the dance."
Here she was, covered in puke, actually thanking me for
the evening. Jamie Sullivan could really drive a guy crazy
sometimes.
Chapter 4
In the two weeks following the homecoming dance, my life
pretty much returned to normal. My father was back in
Washington, D.C., which made things a lot more fun around my
house, primarily because I could sneak out the window again
and head to the graveyard for my late night forays. I don't
know what it was about the graveyard that attracted us so.
Maybe it had something to do with the tombstones themselves,
because as far as tombstones went, they were actually fairly
comfortable to sit on.
We usually sat in a small plot where the Preston family
had been buried about a hundred years ago. There were eight
tombstones there, all arranged in a circle, making it easy to
pass the boiled peanuts back and forth between us. One time
my friends and I decided to learn what we could about the
Preston family, and we went to the library to find out if
anything had been written about them. I mean, if you're going
to sit on someone's tombstone, you might as well know
something about them, right?
It turns out that there wasn't much about the family in
the historical records, though we did find out one
interesting tidbit of information. Henry Preston, the father,
was a one-armed lumberjack, believe it or not. Supposedly he
could cut down a tree as fast as any two-armed man. Now the
vision of a one-armed lumberjack is pretty vivid right off
the bat, so we talked about him a lot. We used to wonder what
else he could do with only one arm, and we'd spend long hours
discussing how fast he could pitch a baseball or whether or
not he'd be able to swim across the Intracoastal Waterway.
Our conversations weren't exactly highbrow, I admit, but I
enjoyed them nonetheless.
Well, Eric and me were out there one Saturday night with a
couple of other friends, eating boiled peanuts and talking
about Henry Preston, when Eric asked me how my "date" went
with Jamie Sullivan. He and I hadn't seen much of each other
since the homecoming dance because the football season was
already in the playoffs and Eric had been out of town the
past few weekends with the team.
"It was okay," I said, shrugging, doing my best to play it
cool.
Eric playfully elbowed me in the ribs, and I grunted. He
outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.
"Did you kiss her good-night?"
"No."
He took a long drink from his can of Budweiser as I
answered. I don't know how he did it, but Eric never had
trouble buying beer, which was strange, being that everyone
in town knew how old he was.
He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, tossing me a
sidelong glance.
"I would have thought that after she helped you clean the
bathroom, you would have at least kissed her good night."
"Well, I didn't."
"Did you even try?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"She's not that kind of girl," I said, and even though we
all knew it was true, it still sounded like I was defending
her.
Eric latched on to that like a leech.
"I think you like her," he said.
"You're full of crap," I answered, and he slapped my back,
hard enough to force the breath right out of me. Hanging out
with Eric usually meant that I'd have a few bruises the
following day.
"Yeah, I might be full of crap," he said, winking at me,
"but you're the one who's smitten with Jamie Sullivan."
I knew we were treading on dangerous ground.
"I was just using her to impress Margaret," I said. "And
with all the love notes she's been sending me lately, I
reckon it must have worked."
Eric laughed aloud, slapping me on the back again.
"You and Margaret-now that's funny. . . ."
I knew I'd just dodged a major bullet, and I breathed a
sigh of relief as the conversation spun off in a new
direction. I joined in now and then, but I wasn't really
listening to what they were saying. Instead I kept hearing
this little voice inside me that made me wonder about what
Eric had said.
The thing was, Jamie was probably the best date I could
have had that night, especially considering how the evening
turned out. Not many dates-heck, not many people,
period-would have done what she did. At the same time, her
being a good date didn't mean I liked her. I hadn't talked to
her at all since the dance, except when I saw her in drama
class, and even then it was only a few words here and there.
If I liked her at all, I told myself, I would have wanted to
talk to her. If I liked her, I would have offered to walk her
home. If I liked her, I would have wanted to bring her to
Cecil's Diner for a basket of hushpuppies and some RC cola.
But I didn't want to do any of those things. I really didn't.
In my mind, I'd already served my penance.
The next day, Sunday, I was in my room, working on my
application to UNC. In addition to the transcripts from my
high school and other personal information, they required
five essays of the usual type. If you could meet one person
in history, who would that person be and why? Name the most
significant influence in your life and why you feel that way.
What do you look for in a role model and why? The essay
questions were fairly predictable-our English teacher had
told us what to expect-and I'd already worked on a couple of
variations in class as homework.
English was probably my best subject. I'd never received
anything lower than an A since I first started school, and I
was glad the emphasis for the application process was on
writing. If it had been on math, I might have been in
trouble, especially if it included those algebra questions
that talked about the two trains leaving an hour apart,
traveling in opposite directions at forty miles an hour, etc.
It wasn't that I was bad in math-I usually pulled at least a
C-but it didn't come naturally to me, if you know what I
mean.
Anyway, I was writing one of my essays when the phone
rang. The only phone we had was located in the kitchen, and I
had to run downstairs to grab the receiver. I was breathing
so loudly that I couldn't make out the voice too well, though
it sounded like Angela. I immediately smiled to myself. Even
though she'd been sick all over the place and I'd had to
clean it up, she was actually pretty fun to be around most of
the time. And her dress really had been something, at least
for the first hour. I figured she was probably calling to
thank me or even to get together for a barbecue sandwich and
hushpuppies or something.
"Landon?"
"Oh, hey," I said, playing it cool, "what's going on?"
There was a short pause on the other end.
"How are you?"
It was then that I suddenly realized I wasn't speaking to
Angela. Instead it was Jamie, and I almost dropped the phone.
I can't say that I was happy about hearing from her, and for
a second I wondered who had given her my phone number before
I realized it was probably in the church records.
"Landon?"
"I'm fine," I finally blurted out, still in shock.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"Sort of."
"Oh . . . I see . . . ,"she said, trailing off. She paused
again.
"Why are you calling me?" I asked.
It took her a few seconds to get the words out.
"Well . . . I just wanted to know if you wouldn't mind
coming by a little later this afternoon."
"Coming by?"
"Yes. To my house."
"Your house?" I didn't even try to disguise the growing
surprise in my voice. Jamie ignored it and went on.
"There's something I want to talk to you about. I wouldn't
ask if it wasn't important."
"Can't you just tell me over the phone?"
"I'd rather not."
"Well, I'm working on my college application essays all
afternoon," I said, trying to get out of it.
"Oh . . . well . . . like I said, it's important, but I
suppose I can talk to you Monday at school. . . ."
With that, I suddenly realized that she wasn't going to
let me off the hook and that we'd end up talking one way or
the other. My brain suddenly clicked through the scenarios as
I tried to figure out which one I should do-talk to her where
my friends would see us or talk at her house. Though neither
option was particularly good, there was something in the back
of my mind, reminding me that she'd helped me out when I'd
really needed it, and the least I could do was to listen to
what she had to say. I may be irresponsible, but I'm a nice
irresponsible, if I do say so myself.
Of course, that didn't mean everyone else had to know
about it.
"No," I said, "today is fine. . . ."
We arranged to meet at five o'clock, and the rest of the
afternoon ticked by slowly, like the drips from Chinese water
torture. I left my house twenty minutes early, so I'd have
plenty of time to get there. My house was located near the
waterfront in the historic part of town, just a few doors
down from where Blackbeard used to live, overlooking the
Intracoastal Waterway. Jamie lived on the other side of town,
across the railroad tracks, so it would take me about that
long to get there.
It was November, and the temperature was finally cooling
down. One thing I really liked about Beaufort was the fact
that the springs and falls lasted practically forever. It
might get hot in the summer or snow once every six years, and
there might be a cold spell that lasted a week or so in
January, but for the most part all you needed was a light
jacket to make it through the winter. Today was one of those
perfect days-mid-seventies without a cloud in the sky.
I made it to Jamie's house right on time and knocked on
her door. Jamie answered it, and a quick peek inside revealed
that Hegbert wasn't around. It wasn't quite warm enough for
sweet tea or lemonade, and we sat in the chairs on the porch
again, without anything to drink. The sun was beginning to
lower itself in the sky, and there wasn't anyone on the
street. This time I didn't have to move my chair. It hadn't
been moved since the last time I'd been there.
"Thank you for coming, Landon," she said. "I know you're
busy, but I appreciate your taking the time to do this."
"So, what's so important?" I said, wanting to get this
over with as quickly as possible.
Jamie, for the first time since I'd known her, actually
looked nervous as she sat with me. She kept bringing her
hands together and pulling them apart.
"I wanted to ask you a favor," she said seriously.
"A favor?"
She nodded.
At first I thought she was going to ask me to help her
decorate the church, like she'd mentioned at homecoming, or
maybe she needed me to use my mother's car to bring some
stuff to the orphans. Jamie didn't have her license, and
Hegbert needed their car anyway, being that there was always
a funeral or something he had to go to. But it still took a
few seconds for her to get the words out.
She sighed, her hands coming together again.
"I'd like to ask you if you wouldn't mind playing Tom
Thornton in the school play," she said.
Tom Thornton, like I said before, was the man in search of
the music box for his daughter, the one who meets the angel.
Except for the angel, it was far and away the most important
role.
"Well . . . I don't know," I said, confused. "I thought
Eddie Jones was going to be Tom. That's what Miss Garber told
us."
Eddie Jones was a lot like Carey Dennison, by the way. He
was really skinny, with pimples all over his face, and he
usually talked to you with his eyes all squinched up. He had
a nervous tic, and he couldn't help but squinch his eyes
whenever he got nervous, which was practically all the time.
He'd probably end up spouting his lines like a psychotic
blind man if you put him in front of a crowd. To make things
worse, he had a stutter, too, and it took him a long time to
say anything at all. Miss Garber had given him the role
because he'd been the only one who offered to do it, but even
then it was obvious she didn't want him either. Teachers were
human, too, but she didn't have much of an option, since no
one else had come forward.
"Miss Garber didn't say that exactly. What she said was
that Eddie could have the role if no one else tried out for
it."
"Can't someone else do it instead?"
But there really wasn't anyone else, and I knew it.
Because of Hegbert's requirement that only seniors perform,
the play was in a bind that year. There were about fifty
senior boys at the high school, twenty-two of whom were on
the football team, and with the team still in the running for
the state title, none of them would have the time to go to
the rehearsals. Of the thirty or so who were left, more than
half were in the band and they had after-school practice as
well. A quick calculation showed that there were maybe a
dozen other people who could possibly do it.
Now, I didn't want to do the play at all, and not only
because I'd come to realize that drama was just about the
most boring class ever invented. The thing was, I'd already
taken Jamie to homecoming, and with her as the angel, I just
couldn't bear the thought that I'd have to spend every
afternoon with her for the next month or so. Being seen with
her once was bad enough . . . but being seen with her every
day? What would my friends say?
But I could tell this was really important to her. The
simple fact that she'd asked made that clear. Jamie never
asked anyone for a favor. I think deep down she suspected
that no one would ever do her a favor because of who she was.
The very realization made me sad.
"What about Jeff Bangert? He might do it," I offered.
Jamie shook her head. "He can't. His father's sick, and he
has to work in the store after school until his father gets
back on his feet."
"What about Darren Woods?"
"He broke his arm last week when he slipped on the boat.
His arm is in a sling."
"Really? I didn't know that," I said, stalling, but Jamie
knew what I was doing.
"I've been praying about it, Landon," she said simply, and
sighed for the second time. "I'd really like this play to be
special this year, not for me, but because of my father. I
want it to be the best production ever. I know how much it
will mean to him to see me be the angel, because this play
reminds him of my mother. . . ." She paused, collecting her
thoughts. "It would be terrible if the play was a failure
this year, especially since I'm involved."
She stopped again before going on, her voice becoming more
emotional as she went on.
"I know Eddie would do the best he could, I really do. And
I'm not embarrassed to do the play with him, I'm really not.
Actually, he's a very nice person, but he told me that he's
having second thoughts about doing it. Sometimes people at
school can be so . . . so . . . cruel, and I don't want Eddie
to be hurt. But . . ." She took a deep breath, "but the real
reason I'm asking is because of my father. He's such a good
man, Landon. If people make fun of his memory of my mother
while I'm playing the part . . . well, that would break my
heart. And with Eddie and me . . . you know what people would
say."
I nodded, my lips pressed together, knowing that I would
have been one of those people she was talking about. In fact,
I already was. Jamie and Eddie, the dynamic duo, we called
them after Miss Garber had announced that they'd be the ones
doing the roles. The very fact that it was I who had started
it up made me feel terrible, almost sick to my stomach.
She straightened up a little in her seat and looked at me
sadly, as if she already knew I was going to say no. I guess
she didn't know how I was feeling. She went on.
"I know that challenges are always part of the Lord's
plan, but I don't want to believe that the Lord is cruel,
especially to someone like my father. He devotes his life to
God, he gives to the community. And he's already lost his
wife and has had to raise me on his own. And I love him so
much for it. . . ."
Jamie turned away, but I could see the tears in her eyes.
It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry. I think part of
me wanted to cry, too.
"I'm not asking you to do it for me," she said softly,
"I'm really not, and if you say no, I'll still pray for you.
I promise. But if you'd like to do something kind for a
wonderful man who means so much to me . . . Will you just
think about it?"
Her eyes looked like those of a cocker spaniel that had
just messed on the rug. I looked down at my feet.
"I don't have to think about it," I finally said. "I'll do
it."
I really didn't have a choice, did I?
Wow! Cindy you are a woman after my own heart. thanks so much for posting a walk to remember. I've watch the film and it's so beyond words.
ReplyDeleteThank you Binta dear.
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