Nicholas Sparks - A Walk to Remember

In1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near MoreheadCity, was a place like many other small southern towns. It was the kind ofplace where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get themail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefootfrom April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. Peoplewaved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knewhim or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to theCarolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in thePamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of life, and boats weremoored wherever you saw the Intracoastal Waterway. Only three channels came inon the television, though television was never important to those of us whogrew 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 Churchof Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches. WhenI was growing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, andthere were Baptist churches on practically every corner of town, though eachconsidered itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of everytypeFreewill Baptists, Southern Baptists, Congregational Baptists, MissionaryBaptists, Independent Baptists... well, you get the picture.

Backthen, the big event of the year was sponsored by the Baptist churchdowntownSouthern, if you really want to knowin conjunction with the localhigh school. Every year they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort Playhouse, which was actually a play that had beenwritten by Hegbert Sullivan, a minister whod been with the church since Mosesparted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasnt that old, but he was old enough thatyou could almost see through the guys skin. It was sort of clammy all thetime, and translucentkids would swear they actually saw the blood flowingthrough his veinsand 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 didnt want tokeep 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 angelsand who was to say whether theyd been sent by God, anyway?And who was to say he wouldnt revert to his sinful ways if they hadnt beensent directly from heaven? The play didnt exactly tell you in the endit sortof plays into faith and allbut Hegbert didnt trust ghosts if they werentactually sent by God, which wasnt explained in plain language, and this washis big problem with it. A few years back hed changed the end of the playsortof followed it up with his own version, complete with old man Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem to findthe place where Jesus once taught the scribes. It didnt fly too wellnot evento the congregation, who sat in the audience staring wide-eyed at thespectacleand the newspaper said things like Though it was certainlyinteresting, it wasnt exactly the play weve all come to know and love....

SoHegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own play. Hed written his ownsermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actuallyinteresting, especially when he talked about the wrath of God coming down onthe fornicators and all that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling,Ill tell you, when he talked about the fornicators. That was his real hotspot. When we were younger, my friends and I would hide behind the trees andshout, Hegbert is a fornicator! when we saw him walking down the street, andwed giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiest creatures ever to inhabitthe planet.

OldHegbert, hed stop dead in his tracks and his ears would perk upI swear toGod, they actually movedand hed turn this bright shade of red, like hed justdrunk gasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking outall over, like those maps of the Amazon River that you see inNational Geographic. Hed peer from side to side, his eyes narrowinginto slits as he searched for us, and then, just as suddenly, hed start to gopale again, back to that fishy skin, right before our eyes. Boy, it wassomething to watch, thats for sure.

So wedbe 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 ifhe thought wed be that stupid. Wed put our hands over our mouths to keep fromlaughing out loud, but somehow hed always zero in on us. Hed be turning fromside to side, and then hed stop, those beady eyes coming right at us, rightthrough the tree. I know who you are, Landon Carter, hed say, and the Lordknows, too. Hed let that sink in for a minute or so, and then hed finallyhead off again, and during the sermon that weekend hed stare right at us andsay something like God is merciful to children, but the children must beworthy as well. And wed sort of lower ourselves in the seats, not fromembarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles. Hegbert didnt understand usat 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 toput on that play instead. The play itself wasnt bad, actually, whichsurprised everyone the first year it was performed. Its basically the story ofa man who had lost his wife a few years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used tobe real religious, but he had a crisis of faith after his wife died duringchildbirth. Hes raising this little girl all on his own, but he hasnt beenthe greatest father, and what the little girl really wants for Christmas is aspecial music box with an angel engraved on top, a picture of which shed cutout from an old catalog. The guy searches long and hard to find the gift, buthe cant find it anywhere. So its Christmas Eve and hes still searching, andwhile hes out looking through the stores, he comes across a strange woman hesnever 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 alonely old woman who just wanted some company on Christmas Eve. At this pointthe mysterious woman asks Tom Thornton what he wants forChristmas, and he says that he wants his wife back. She brings him to the cityfountain and tells him to look in the water and hell find what hes lookingfor. When he looks in the water, he sees the face of his little girl, and hebreaks down and cries right there. While hes sobbing, the mysterious lady runsoff, and Tom Thornton searches but cant find her anywhere. Eventually he headshome, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind. He walks into his littlegirls room, and her sleeping figure makes him realize that shes all he hasleft of his wife, and he starts to cry again because he knows he hasnt been agood enough father to her. The next morning, magically, the music box isunderneath the tree, and the angel thats engraved on it looks exactly like thewoman hed seen the night before.

So itwasnt 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 itspopularity, Hegbert eventually had to move it from the church to the BeaufortPlayhouse, which had a lot more seating. By the time I was a senior in highschool, the performances ran twice to packed houses, which,considering who actually performed it, was a story in and of itself.