A Walk to Remember (7 page)

“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?

T
he next day I talked to Miss Garber, went through the audition, and got the part. Eddie, by the way, wasn’t upset at all. In fact, I could tell he was actually relieved about the whole thing. When Miss Garber asked him if he’d be willing to let me play the role of Tom Thornton, his face sort of relaxed right there and one of his eyes popped back open. “Y-y-yes, a-a-absolutely,” he said, stuttering.
“I—I—I un-un-understand.”
It took him practically ten seconds to get the words out.

For his generosity, however, Miss Garber gave him the role of the bum, and we knew he’d do fairly well in that role. The bum, you
see, was completely mute, but the angel always knew what he was thinking. At one point in the play she has to tell the mute bum that God will always watch out for him because God especially cares for the poor and downtrodden. That was one of the tip-offs to the audience that she’d been sent from heaven. Like I said earlier, Hegbert wanted it to be real clear who offered redemption and salvation, and it certainly wasn’t going to be a few rickety ghosts who just popped up out of nowhere.

Rehearsals started the next week, and we rehearsed in the classroom, because the Playhouse wouldn’t open their doors for us until we’d got all the “little bugs” out of our performance. By little bugs, I mean our tendency to accidentally knock over the props. The props had been made about fifteen years ago, when the play was in its first year, by Toby Bush, a sort of roving handyman who had done a few projects for the Playhouse in the past. He was a roving handyman because he drank beer all day long while he worked, and by about two o’clock or so he’d really be flying. I guess he couldn’t see straight, because he’d accidentally whack his fingers with the hammer at least once a day. Whenever that happened, he’d throw down the hammer and jump up
and down, holding his fingers, cursing everyone from his mother to the devil. When he finally calmed down, he’d have another beer to soothe the pain before going back to work. His knuckles were the size of walnuts, permanently swollen from years of whacking, and no one was willing to hire him on a permanent basis. The only reason Hegbert had hired him at all was because he was far and away the lowest bidder in town.