A Walk to Remember

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Walk to Remember By Nicholas Sparks

Chapter One

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 thehumidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a personfeel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April throughOctober beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their carswhenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the airsmelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. For many of thepeople there, fishing in the Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a wayof life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal Waterway. Only threechannels came in on the television, though television was never important to those ofus who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of whichthere were eighteen within the town limits alone. They went by names like theFellowship Hall Christian Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church ofSunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches. When I wasgrowing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, and there wereBaptist churches on practically every corner of town, though each considered itselfsuperior 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 churchdowntown?Southern, if you really want to know?in conjunction with the local highschool. 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'dbeen 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 sortof clammy all the time, and translucent?kids would swear they actually saw the bloodflowing through his veins?and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see in petstores around Easter.

Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel, because he didn't wantto keep on performing that old Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. Inhis mind Scrooge was a heathen, who came to his redemption only because he sawghosts, not angels?and who was to say whether they'd been sent by God, anyway? Andwho was to say he wouldn't revert to his sinful ways if they hadn't been sentdirectly from heaven? The play didn't exactly tell you in the end?it sort of playsinto faith and all?but Hegbert didn't trust ghosts if they weren't actually sent byGod, 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 ownversion, complete with old man Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off toJerusalem to find the place where Jesus once taught the scribes. It didn't fly toowell?not even to the congregation, who sat in the audience staring wide-eyed at thespectacle?and the newspaper said things like "Though it was certainly interesting, itwasn'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 ownsermons 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" andall that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling, I'll tell you, when he talkedabout the fornicators. That was his real hot spot. When we were younger, my friendsand I would hide behind the trees and shout, "Hegbert is a fornicator!" when we sawhim walking down the street, and we'd giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiestcreatures 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 drunkgasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out all over, likethose maps of the Amazon River that you see in National Geographic. He'd peer fromside to side, his eyes narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just assuddenly, he'd start to go pale again, back to that fishy skin, right before oureyes. 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 kidHegbert, anyway?) would stand there waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if hethought we'd be that stupid. We'd put our hands over our mouths to keep from laughingout 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. "Iknow who you are, Landon Carter," he'd say, "and the Lord knows, too." He'd let thatsink in for a minute or so, and then he'd finally head off again, and during thesermon that weekend he'd stare right at us and say something like "God is merciful tochildren, but the children must be worthy as well." And we'd sort of lower ourselvesin the seats, not from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles. Hegbertdidn't understand us at all, which was really sort of strange, being that he had akid 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 onthat play instead. The play itself wasn't bad, actually, which surprised everyone thefirst year it was performed. It's basically the story of a man who had lost his wifea few years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used to be real religious, but he had acrisis of faith after his wife died during childbirth. He's raising this little girlall on his own, but he hasn't been the greatest father, and what the little girlreally wants for Christmas is a special music box with an angel engraved on top, apicture of which she'd cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and hard tofind the gift, but he can't find it anywhere. So it's Christmas Eve and he's stillsearching, and while he's out looking through the stores, he comes across a strangewoman he's never seen before, and she promises to help him find the gift for hisdaughter. First, though, they help this homeless person (back then they were calledbums, by the way), then they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then visit alonely old woman who just wanted some company on Christmas Eve. At this point themysterious woman asks Tom Thornton what he wants for Christmas, and he says that hewants his wife back. She brings him to the city fountain and tells him to look in thewater and he'll find what he's looking for. When he looks in the water, he sees theface of his little girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While he'ssobbing, the mysterious lady runs off, and Tom Thornton searches but can't find heranywhere. 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 thatshe's all he has left of his wife, and he starts to cry again because he knows hehasn't been a good enough father to her. The next morning, magically, the music boxis underneath the tree, and the angel that's engraved on it looks exactly like thewoman he'd seen the night before.

So it wasn't that bad, really. If truth be told, people cried buckets whenever theysaw 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, whichhad a lot more seating. By the time I was a senior in high school, the performancesran twice to packed houses, which, considering who actually performed it, was a storyin and of itself.

You see, Hegbert wanted young people to perform the play?seniors in high school, notthe theater group. I reckon he thought it would be a good learning experience beforethe seniors headed off to college and came face-to-face with all the fornicators. Hewas that kind of guy, you know, always wanting to save us from temptation. He wantedus to know that God is out there watching you, even when you're away from home, andthat if you put your trust in God, you'll be all right in the end. It was a lessonthat 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, thoughit 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 thesand just offshore. Recently some archaeologists or oceanographers or whoever looksfor stuff like that said they found it, but no one's certain just yet, being that itsank over 250 years ago and you can't exactly reach into the glove compartment andcheck the registration. Beaufort's come a long way since the 1950s, but it's stillnot exactly a major metropolis or anything. Beaufort was, and always will be, on thesmallish side, but when I was growing up, it barely warranted a place on the map. Toput it into perspective, the congressional district that included Beaufort coveredthe entire eastern part of the state?some twenty thousand square miles?and therewasn't a single town with more than twenty-five thousand people. Even compared withthose towns, Beaufort was regarded as being on the small side. Everything east ofRaleigh and north of Wilmington, all the way to the Virginia border, was the districtmy father represented.

I suppose you've heard of him. He's sort of a legend, even now. His name is WorthCarter, and he was a congressman for almost thirty years. His slogan every other yearduring the election season was "Worth Carter represents??," and the person wassupposed to fill in the city name where he or she lived. I can remember, driving ontrips when me and Mom had to make our appearances to show the people he was a truefamily man, that we'd see those bumper stickers, stenciled in with names like Otwayand Chocawinity and Seven Springs. Nowadays stuff like that wouldn't fly, but backthen 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, butwe never saw it once. Okay, maybe once. A farmer from Duplin County once wrote theword shit in the blank space, and when my mom saw it, she covered my eyes andsaid a prayer asking for forgiveness for the poor ignorant bastard. She didn't sayexactly 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, despitethe fact that my father went to Hegbert's church whenever he was in town, which to befrank wasn't all that often. Hegbert, in addition to his belief that fornicators weredestined to clean the urinals in hell, also believed that communism was "a sicknessthat doomed mankind to heathenhood." Even though heathenhood wasn't a word?I can'tfind it in any dictionary?the congregation knew what he meant. They also knew that hewas directing his words specifically to my father, who would sit with his eyes closedand pretend not to listen. My father was on one of the House committees that oversawthe "Red influence" supposedly infiltrating every aspect of the country, includingnational defense, higher education, and even tobacco farming. You have to rememberthat this was during the cold war; tensions were running high, and we NorthCarolinians needed something to bring it down to a more personal level. My father hadconsistently 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 theScripture where Jesus was talking about the poor. . . ."

Yeah, sure, Dad. . . .

My father tried to defuse situations whenever possible. I think that's why he stayedin Congress for so long. The guy could kiss the ugliest babies known to mankind andstill come up with something nice to say. "He's such a gentle child," he'd say when ababy had a giant head, or, "I'll bet she's the sweetest girl in the world," if shehad a birthmark over her entire face. One time a lady showed up with a kid in awheelchair. My father took one look at him and said, "I'll bet you ten to one thatyou're smartest kid in your class." And he was! Yeah, my father was great at stufflike that. He could fling it with the best of 'em, that's for sure. And he wasn'tsuch a bad guy, not really, especially if you consider the fact that he didn't beatme or anything.

But he wasn't there for me growing up. I hate to say that because nowadays peopleclaim that sort of stuff even if their parent was around and use it to excusetheir behavior. My dad . . . he didn't love me . . . that's why I became astripper and performed on The Jerry Springer Show. . . . I'm not using it toexcuse the person I've become, I'm simply saying it as a fact. My father was gonenine months of the year, living out of town in a Washington, D.C., apartment threehundred miles away. My mother didn't go with him because both of them wanted me togrow 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 bitbefore adulthood. My father, on the other hand, was a stranger, someone I barely knewat all. For the first five years of my life I thought all fathers lived somewhereelse. It wasn't until my best friend, Eric Hunter, asked me in kindergarten who thatguy was who showed up at my house the night before that I realized something wasn'tquite 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'tknow 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, amanly influence in my life, and that fact, coupled with my growing disillusionmentwith my father, made me become something of a rebel, even at a young age. Not a badone, mind you. Me and my friends might sneak out late and soap up car windows now andthen or eat boiled peanuts in the graveyard behind the church, but in the fiftiesthat was the kind of thing that made other parents shake their heads and whisper totheir children, "You don't want to be like that Carter boy. He's on the fast track toprison."

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 ofpolitics. 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 aminister, he used to work for my father's father. My grandfather?even though he spentlots 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 thesort 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 hemade his money was simple?he started as a bootlegger, accumulating wealth throughoutProhibition by running rum up from Cuba. Then he began buying land and hiringsharecroppers to work it. He took ninety percent of the money the sharecroppers madeon their tobacco crop, then loaned them money whenever they needed it at ridiculousinterest rates. Of course, he never intended to collect the money?instead he wouldforeclose on any land or equipment they happened to own. Then, in what he called "hismoment of inspiration," he started a bank called Carter Banking and Loan. The onlyother bank in a two-county radius had mysteriously burned down, and with the onset ofthe Depression, it never reopened. Though everyone knew what had really happened, nota word was ever spoken for fear of retribution, and their fear was well placed. Thebank wasn't the only building that had mysteriously burned down.

His interest rates were outrageous, and little by little he began amassing more landand property as people defaulted on their loans. When the Depression hit hardest, heforeclosed on dozens of businesses throughout the county while retaining the originalowners to continue to work on salary, paying them just enough to keep them where theywere, because they had nowhere else to go. He told them that when the economyimproved, 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 portionof 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 diedat a ripe-old age while sleeping with his mistress on his yacht off the CaymanIslands. 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, thatshould be it.

But back to the story. . . . Hegbert, once he realized what a bastard my grandfatherreally was, quit working for him and went into the ministry, then came back toBeaufort and started ministering in the same church we attended. He spent his firstfew years perfecting his fire-and-brimstone act with monthly sermons on the evils ofthe greedy, and this left him scant time for anything else. He was forty-three beforehe 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 sixmiscarriages before Jamie was born, and in the end she died in childbirth, makingHegbert a widower who had to raise a daughter on his own. Hence, of course, the storybehind the play.

People knew the story even before the play was first performed. It was one of thosestories that made its rounds whenever Hegbert had to baptize a baby or attend afuneral. Everyone knew about it, and that's why, I think, so many people gotemotional whenever they saw the Christmas play. They knew it was based on somethingthat happened in real life, which gave it special meaning.

Jamie Sullivan was a senior in high school, just like me, and she'd already beenchosen 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 thebiggest ever?at least in Miss Garber's mind. She was the drama teacher, and she wasalready 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 waseither 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 whereI'd have to memorize protons and neutrons and combine elements in their properformulas . . . what could possibly be better for a high school senior? It seemed likea sure thing, and when I signed up for it, I thought I'd just be able to sleepthrough most every class, which, considering my late night peanut eating, was fairlyimportant at the time.

On the first day of class I was one of the last to arrive, coming in just a fewseconds before the bell rang, and I took a seat in the back of the room. Miss Garberhad her back turned to the class, and she was busy writing her name in big cursiveletters, as if we didn't know who she was. Everyone knew her?it was impossible notto. She was big, at least six feet two, with flaming red hair and pale skin thatshowed her freckles well into her forties. She was also overweight?I'd say honestlyshe pushed two fifty and she had a fondness for wearing flower-patterned muumuus. Shehad 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 helpbut 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 reallyahead of the curve as far as psychotherapy is concerned, though she probably didn'trealize it at the time. Miss Garber was a pioneer in that field. Maybe it hadsomething to do with the way she looked; maybe she was just trying to feel betterabout herself.

But I digress.

It wasn't until the class started that I noticed something unusual. Though BeaufortHigh School wasn't large, I knew for a fact that it was pretty much split fifty-fiftybetween males and females, which was why I was surprised when I saw that this classwas at least ninety percent female. There was only one other male in the class, whichto my thinking was a good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a "look outworld, here I come" kind of feeling. Girls, girls, girls . . . I couldn't help butthink. 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 isgoing to be the angel that year. Miss Garber started clapping right away?she was amember of the church, too?and there were a lot of people who thought she was gunningfor Hegbert in a romantic sort of way. The first time I heard it, I remember thinkingthat it was a good thing they were too old to have children, if they ever did gettogether. Imagine?translucent with freckles? The very thought gave everyone shudders,but of course, no one ever said anything about it, at least within hearing distanceof Miss Garber and Hegbert. Gossip is one thing, hurtful gossip is completelyanother, 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 joinedin, because it was obvious that was what she wanted. "Stand up, Jamie," she said. SoJamie stood up and turned around, and Miss Garber started clapping even faster, as ifshe 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 ithad 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 inthe 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 wassomething 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 oranything like that. Fortunately she'd taken after her mother, who, based on thepictures 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 thatshe was thin, with honey blond hair and soft blue eyes, most of the time she lookedsort of . . . plain, and that was when you noticed her at all. Jamie didn't care muchabout outward appearances, because she was always looking for things like "innerbeauty," and I suppose that's part of the reason she looked the way she did. For aslong as I'd known her?and this was going way back, remember?she'd always worn herhair 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 thoughshe were on her way to interview for a job at the library. We used to think it wasjust a phase and that she'd eventually grow out of it, but she never had. Eventhrough our first three years of high school, she hadn't changed at all. The onlything 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 wayshe acted. Jamie didn't spend any time hanging out at Cecil's Diner or going toslumber parties with other girls, and I knew for a fact that she'd never had aboyfriend her entire life. Old Hegbert would probably have had a heart attack if shehad. But even if by some odd turn of events Hegbert had allowed it, it still wouldn'thave mattered. Jamie carried her Bible wherever she went, and if her looks andHegbert didn't keep the boys away, the Bible sure as heck did. Now, I liked the Bibleas much as the next teenage boy, but Jamie seemed to enjoy it in a way that wascompletely 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 justwasn'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 youknow what I mean.

But Jamie didn't stop there. Because of all her Bible reading, or maybe because ofHegbert's influence, Jamie believed it was important to help others, and helpingothers is exactly what she did. I knew she volunteered at the orphanage in MoreheadCity, but for her that simply wasn't enough. She was always in charge of onefund-raiser or another, helping everyone from the Boy Scouts to the IndianPrincesses, and I know that when she was fourteen, she spent part of her summerpainting the outside of an elderly neighbor's house. Jamie was the kind of girl whowould pull weeds in someone's garden without being asked or stop traffic to helplittle kids cross the road. She'd save her allowance to buy a new basketball for theorphans, 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, andwhenever she glanced my way, I couldn't help but feel guilty, even though I hadn'tdone anything wrong.

Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever came across a woundedanimal, 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, andhe'd shake his head whenever he saw her walking up to the door carrying a cardboardbox with yet another critter inside. He'd take off his eyeglasses and wipe them withhis handkerchief while Jamie explained how she'd found the poor creature and what hadhappened to it. "He was hit by a car, Dr. Rawlings. I think it was in the Lord's planto 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 alwaysmentioned the Lord's plan whenever you talked to her, no matter what the subject. Thebaseball game's rained out? Must be the Lord's plan to prevent something worse fromhappening. A surprise trigonometry quiz that everyone in class fails? Must be in theLord'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 atall. Being the minister's daughter couldn't have been easy, but she made it seem asif it were the most natural thing in the world and that she was lucky to have beenblessed in that way. That's how she used to say it, too. "I've been so blessed tohave a father like mine." Whenever she said it, all we could do was shake our headsand wonder what planet she actually came from.

Despite all these other strikes, though, the one thing that really drove mecrazy about her was the fact that she was always so damn cheerful, no matter what washappening around her. I swear, that girl never said a bad thing about anything oranyone, even to those of us who weren't that nice to her. She would hum to herself asshe 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 washigh in the sky. It seemed as if every adult in town adored her. "She's such a niceyoung lady," they'd say whenever Jamie's name came up. "The world would be a betterplace if there were more people like her."

But my friends and I didn't quite see it that way. In our minds, one Jamie Sullivanwas plenty.

I was thinking about all this while Jamie stood in front of us on the first day ofdrama 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 loosewire or something. She wore a plaid skirt with a white blouse under the same browncardigan sweater I'd seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her chestthat the sweater couldn't hide that I swore hadn't been there just three monthsearlier. She'd never worn makeup and she still didn't, but she had a tan, probablyfrom 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 stoppedand smiled right at me, obviously glad to see that I was in the class. It wasn'tuntil later that I would learn the reason why.