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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 |
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