Chapter 1
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In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City, lace 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 beh oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whehey saw someone oreet whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a st uo 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 els came in oelevision, though television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were tered around the churches, of which there were eighteen withiown limits alohey went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian Church, the Church of the Fiven People, the Church of Sunday Ato, 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 er of town, though each sidered itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists, gregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Indepe Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.Back then, the big event of the year onsored by the Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to know-in jun 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 whod been with the church since Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasnt that old, but he was old enough that you could almost see through the guys skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and translut-kids would swear they actually saw the blood flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see iores arouer.
Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel, because he didnt want to keep on perf that old Charles Dis 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 theyd bee by God, anyway? And who was to say he would to his sinful ways if they hadnt bee directly from heaven? The play didly tell you in the end-it sort of plays into faith and all-but Hegbert didnt trust ghosts if they werent actually sent by God, which wasnt explained in plain language, and this was his big problem with it. A few years back hed ged the end of the play-sort of followed it up with his own version, plete with old man Scrooge being a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem to find the place where Jesus oaught the scribes. It didnt fly too well-not even to the gregation, who sat in the audiearing wide-eyed at the spectacle-and the neer said things like "Though it was certainly iing, it wasly the play weve all e to know and love. . . ."
So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own play. Hed written his own sermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actually iing, especially whealked about the "wrath of God ing down on the fornicators" and all that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling, Ill tell you, whealked 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 dowreet, and wed giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiest creatures ever to inhabit the pla.
Old Hegbert, hed stop dead in his tracks and his ears would perk up-I swear to God, they actually moved-aurn this bright shade of red, like hed just drunk gasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start stig out all over, like those maps of the Amazon River that you see in National Geographic. Hed peer from side to side, his eyes narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just as suddenly, hed start to go pale again, back to that fishy skin, right before our eyes. Boy, it was something to watch, thats for sure.
So wed be hiding behind a tree and Hegbert (what kind of parents heir kid Hegbert, anyway?) would stand there waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if he thought wed be that stupid. Wed put our hands over our mouths to keep from laughing out loud, but somehow hed always zero in on us. Hed be turning from side to side, and theop, those beady eyes ing right at us, right through the tree. "I know who you are, Landon Carter," hed say, "and the Lord knows, too." Hed let that sink in for a minute or so, and then hed finally head off again, and during the sermon that weekeare right at us and say something like "God is merciful to children, but the children must be worthy as well." And wed sort of lower ourselves in the seats, not from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles. Hegbert didnt uand 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 wasnt bad, actually, which surprised everyohe first year it erformed. Its 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. Hes raising this little girl all on his own, but he hashe 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 shed cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and hard to find the gift, but he t find it anywhere. So its Christmas Eve aill searg, and while hes out looking through the stores, he es across a strange woman hes 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), theop at an orphao see some kids, then visit a lonely old woman who just wanted some pany 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 ier and hell find what hes looking for. When he looks ier, he sees the face of his little girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While hes sobbing, the mysterious lady runs off, and Tom Thornton searches but t find her anywhere. Eventually he heads home, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind. He walks into his little girls room, and her sleeping figure makes him realize that shes all he has left of his wife, aarts tain because he knows he hasnt been a good enough father to her. The m, magically, the music box is underh the tree, and the ahats engraved on it looks exactly like the woman hed seen the night before.
So it wasnt that bad, really. If truth be told, people cried buckets whehey saw it. The play sold out every year it erformed, 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, sidering 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 re 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 watg you, even when youre away from home, and that if you put your tr<u></u>ust in God, youll be all right in the end. It was a lesson that I would eventually learn in time, though it wasnt Hegbert who taught me.
As I said before, Beaufort was fairly typical as far as southern tow, though it did have an iing history. Blackbeard the pirate once owned a house there, and his ship, Queen Annes Revenge, is supposedly buried somewhere in the sand just offshore. Retly some archaeologists or oographers or whoever looks for stuff like that said they found it, but no ones certain just yet, being that it sank over 250 years ago and you t exactly reato the glove partment and check the registration. Beauforts e a long way sihe 1950s, but its still ly 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 pla the map. To put it into perspective, the gressional district that included Beaufort covered the entire eastern part of the state-some twenty thousand square miles-and there wasnt a siown with more thay-five thousand people. Even pared with those towns, Beaufort was regarded as being on the small side. Everythi of Raleigh and north of Wilmington, all the way to the Virginia border, was the district my father represented.
I suppose youve heard of him. Hes sort of a legend, even now. His name is Worth Carter, and he was a gressman for almost thirty years. His slogan every other year during the ele season was "Worth Carter represents ---," and the person was supposed to fill iy name where he or she lived. I remember, driving on trips when me and Mom had to make our appearao show the people he was a true family man, that wed see those bumper stickers, stenciled in with names like Otway and Choity and Seven Springs. Nowadays stuff like that wouldnt fly, but back then that was fairly sophisticated publicity. I imagine if he tried to do that now, people opposing him would i all sorts of foul language in the blank space, but we never saw it once. Okay, maybe once. A farmer from Duplin ty 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 fiveness for the pnorant bastard. She didnt say exactly those words, but I got the gist of it.
So my father, Mr. gressman, was a bigwig, and everyo everyone k, including old man Hegbert. Now, the two of them did along, not at all, despite the fact that my father went to Hegberts church whenever he was in town, which to be frank wasnt all that often. Hegbert, in addition to his belief that fornicators were destio the urinals in hell, also believed that unism was "a siess that doomed mankind to heathenhood." Even though heathenhood wasnt a word-I t find it in any diary-the gregation knew what he meant. They also khat he was direg 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 ittees that oversaw the "Red influence" supposedly infiltrating every aspect of the try, including national defense, higher education, and even tobacc. You have to remember that this was during the cold war; tensions were running high, and we North Carolinians needed something t it down to a more personal level. My father had sistently looked for facts, which were irrelevant to people like Hegbert. Afterward, when my father would e home after the service, hed 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 thats why he stayed in gress for so long. The guy could kiss the ugliest babies known to mankind and still e up with something o say. "Hes such a gentle child," hed say when a baby had a giant head, or, "Ill bet shes the sweetest girl in the world," if she had a birthmark over her entire face. Oime a lady showed up with a kid in a wheelchair. My father took one look at him and said, "Ill bet you ten to ohat youre 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, thats for sure. And he wasnt such a bad guy, not really, especially if you sider the fact that he did me or anything. But he wasnt there for me growing up. I hate to say that because noeople claim that sort of stuff even if their parent was around and use it to excuse their behavior. My dad . . . he didnt love me . . . thats why I became a stripper and performed on The Jerry Springer Show. . . . Im not using it to excuse the person Ive bee, Im 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 didnt go with him because both of them wanted me to grow up "the same way they had."
Of course, my fathers 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, oher hand, was a stranger, someone I barely k all. For the first five years of my life I thought all fathers lived somewhere else. It wasnt until my best friend, Eriter, asked me in kindergarten who that guy was who showed up at my house the night before that I realized something wasnt quite right about the situation.
"Hes my father," I said proudly.
"Oh," Eric said as he rifled through my lunchbox, looking for my Milky Way, "I didnt know you had a father."
Talk about something whag you straight in the face.
So, I grew up uhe care of my mother. Now she was a nice lady, sweet ale, the kind of mother most people dream about. But she wasnt, nor could she ever be, a manly influen my life, and that fact, coupled with my growing disillusio with my father, made me bee 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 dont want to be like that Carter boy. Hes on the fast track to prison."
Me. A bad boy. For eating boiled peanuts in the graveyard. Go figure.
Anyway, my father and Hegbert did along, but it wasnt only because of politio, 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 fathers father. My grandfather-even though he spent lots <mark></mark>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 dont want you to imagine him as the sort of man who slaved over his business, w diligently and watg it grow, pr slowly over time. My grandfather was much shrewder than that. The way he made his money was simple-he started as a bootlegger, accumulatih throughout Prohibition by running rum up from Cuba. Then he began buying land and hiring sharecroppers to work it. He took y pert of the mohe sharecroppers made oobacco crop, then loahem money whehey at ridiculous i rates. Of course, he never inteo collect the money-instead he would foreclose on any land or equipment they happeo 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-ty radius had mysteriously burned down, and with the o of the Depression, it never reopehough everyone knew what had really happened, not a word was ever spoken for fear of retribution, and their fear was well placed. The bank wasnt the only building that had mysteriously burned down.
His i rates were eous, 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 busihroughout the ty while retaining the inal owo tio 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 ey improved, hed sell their business back to them, and people always believed him.
Never once, however, did he keep his promise. In the end he trolled a vast portion of the tys ey, and he abused his clout in every way imaginable.
Id like to tell you he eventually went to a terrible death, but he didnt. He died at a ripe-old age while sleeping with his mistress on his yacht off the Cayman Islands. Hed outlived both his wives and his only son. Some end fuy like that, huh? Life, Ive learned, is never fair. If people teaything in school, that should be it.
But back to the story. . . . Hegbert, once he realized what a bastard my grandfather really was, quit w for him a into the ministry, then came back to Beaufort and started ministering in the same church we attended. He spent his first feerfeg his fire-and-brimsto with monthly sermons on the evils of the greedy, and this left him st 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 youhan he, went through six miscarriages before Jamie was born, and in the end she died in childbirth, making Hegbert a ho had to raise a daughter on his own.
Hence, of course, the story behind the play.
People khe 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 thats why, I think, so many people got emotional whehey saw the Christmas play. They k 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 shed already been chosen to play the angel, not that anyone else even had a ce. 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 Garbers mind. She was the drama teacher, and she was already glowing about the possibilities the first time I met her in class.
Now, I hadnt really planned on taking drama that year. I really hadnt, but it was either that or chemistry II. The thing was, I thought it would be a blow-off class, especially when pared with my other option. No papers, s, no tables where Id have to memorize protons arons and bine 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 Id just be able to sleep through most every class, which, sidering my late night peaing, was fairly important at the time.
On the first day of class I was one of the last to arrive, ing in just a few seds before the bell rang, and I took a seat in the back of the room. Miss Garber had her back turo the class, and she was busy writing her name in big cursive letters, as if we didnt 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 ht-Id say holy 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 oh, "Helloooooo," sort of singing the last syllable. Miss Garber was one of a kind, thats for sure, and she was single, which made it even worse. A guy, no matter how old, couldnt help but feel sorry fal like her.
Beh her name she wrote the goals she wao aplish that year. "Self-fidence" 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 ed, though she probably didnt realize it at the time. Miss Garber ioneer 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 wasnt until the class started that I noticed something unusual. Though Beaufort High School wasnt large, I knew for a fact that it retty much split fifty-fifty between males and females, which was why I was surprised when I saw that this class was at least y pert female. There was only oher male in the class, whiy thinking was a good thing, and for a moment I felt flush with a "look out world, here I e" kind of feeling. Girls, girls, girls . . . I couldnt help but think. Girls and girls and s in sight.
Okay, so I wasnt the most forward-thinking guy on the block.
So Miss Garber brings up the Christmas play and tells everyohat Jamie Sullivan is going to be the ahat 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 fbert 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. Imagiranslut with freckles? The very thought gave everyone shudders, but of course, no one ever said anything about it, at least within hearing distaniss Garber and Hegbert. Gossip is ohing, hurtful gossip is pletely another, and even in high s藏书网chool we werent 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 wed been in the same classes our entire lives, and Id be lying if I said I alked to her. Once, in sed grade, shed sat in the seat right o me for the whole year, and wed even had a few versations, but it didhat I spent a lot of time hanging out with her in my spare time, even back then. Who I saw in school was ohing; who I saw after school was something pletely different, and Jamie had never been on my social dar.
Its not that Jamie was unattractive-do me wrong. She wasnt hideous or anything like that. Fortunately shed taken after her mother, who, based on the pictures Id seen, wasnt half-bad, especially sidering who she ended up marrying. But Jamie wasly what I sidered 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 didnt care much about outward appearances, because she was always looking for things like "inner beauty," a<big>..</big>nd I suppose thats part of the reason she looked the way she did. For as long as Id known her-and this was going way back, remember-shed always worn her hair in a tight bun, almost like a spinster, without a stitakeup 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 shed eventually grow out of it, but she never had. Even through our first three years of high school, she hadnt ged at all. The only thing that had ged was the size of her clothes.
But it wasnt just the way Jamie looked that made her different; it was also the way she acted. Jamie didnt spend any time hanging out at Cecils Diner oing to slumber parties with irls, and I knew for a fact that shed 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 wouldnt have mattered. Jamie carried her Bible wherever she went, and if her looks and Hegbert didhe boys away, the Bible sure as heck did. Now, I liked the Bible as much as the eenage boy, but Jamie seemed to enjoy it in a way that was pletely fn 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 wasnt normal, even if she was the ministers daughter. No matter how you sliced it, reading Pauls letters to the Ephesians wasnt nearly as much fun as flirting, if you know what I mean.
But Jamie didnt stop there. Because of all her Bible reading, or maybe because of Hegberts 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 wasnt 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 neighbors house. Jamie was the kind of girl who would pull weeds in someones garden without being asked or stop traffic to help little kids cross the road. Shed save her allowao buy a new basketball for the orphans, or shed 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 couldnt help but feel guilty, even though I hadnt done anything wrong.
Nor did Jamie limit her good deeds to people. If she ever came across a wounded animal, for instance, shed try to help it, too. Opossums, squirrels, dogs, cats, frogs . . . it didnt matter to her. Dr. Rawlings, the vet, knew her by sight, and hed shake his head whenever he saw her walking up to the door carrying a cardboard box with yet another critter inside. Hed take off his eyeglasses and wipe them with his handkerchief while Jamie explained how shed found the poor creature and what had happeo it. "He was hit by a car, Dr. Rawlings. I think it was in the Lords plan to have me find him and try to save him. Youll help me, wont you?"
With Jamie, everything was in the Lords plan. That was ahing. She always mentiohe Lords plan whenever you talked to her, no matter what the subject. The baseball games rained out? Must be the Lords plan to prevent something worse from happening. A surprise trigory quiz that everyone in class fails? Must be in the Lords plan to give us challenges. Anyway, you get the picture.
Then, of course, there was the whole Hegbert situation, and this didnt help her at all. Being the ministers daughter couldnt have been easy, but she made it seem as if it were the mos<var></var>t natural thing in the world and that she was lucky to have been blessed in that way. Thats how she used to say it, too. "Ive been so blessed to have a father like mine." Whenever she said it, all we could do was shake our heads and wonder la she actually came from.
Despite all these other strikes, though, the ohing 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 werent that o her. She would hum to herself as she walked dowreet, she would wave ters driving by in their cars. Sometimes ladies would e running out of their house if they saw her walking by, her pumpkin bread if theyd been baking all day or lemonade if the sun was high in the sky. It seemed as if every adult in town adored her. "Shes such a nice young lady," theyd say whenever Jamies name came up. "The world would be a better place if there were more people like her."
But my friends and I didnt quite see it that way. In our minds, one Jamie Sullivan lenty.
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 wasnt muterested in seeing her. But strangely, when Jamie turo 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 uhe same brown cardigaer Id seen a million times, but there were two new bumps on her chest that the sweater couldnt hide that I swore hadhere just three months earlier. Shed never worn makeup and she still didnt, 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 wasnt until later that I would learn the reason why.
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