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工作对与每个人来说都很重要 ?
工作对与每个人来说都很重要 ?
09-05-01 & 发布
So things weren’t too terrible at first and really no worse than I had expected. It wasn’t until Lew and Angela showed up that everything really went sour.  They showed up a few minutes after we arrived. He was wearing that stupid T-shirt, Camels in his sleeve, and a glop of hair gel on his head. Angela hung all over him right from the beginning of the dance, and it didn’t take a genius to realize she’d had a few drinks before she got there. Her dress was really flashy-her mother worked in a salon and was up on all the latest fashions-and I noticed she’d picked up that ladylike habit called chewing gum. She really worked that gum, chewing it almost like a cow working her cud. Well, good old Lew spiked the punch bowl, and a few more people started getting tipsy. By the time the teachers found out, most of the punch was already gone and people were getting that glassy look in their eyes. When I saw Angela gobble up her second glass of punch, I knew I should keep my eye on her. Even though she’d dumped me, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She was the first girl I’d ever French-kissed, and even though our teeth clanked together so hard the first time we tried it that I saw stars and had to take aspirin when I got home, I still had feelings for her. So there I was, sitting with Jamie, barely listening as she described the wonders of Bible school, watching Angela out of the corner of my eye, when Lew spotted me looking at her. In one frenzied motion he grabbed Angela around the waist and dragged her over to the table, giving me one of those looks, the one that “means business.” You know the one I’m talking about. “Are you staring at my girl?” he asked, already tensing up. “No.” “Yeah, he was,” Angela said, kind of slurring out the words. “He was staring right at me. This is my old boyfriend, the one I told you about.” His eyes turned into little slits, just like Hegbert’s were prone to do. I guess I have this effect on lots of people. “So you’re the one,” he said, sneering. Now, I’m not much of a fighter. The only real fight I was ever in was in third grade, and I pretty much lost that one when I started to cry even before the guy punched me. Usually I didn’t have much trouble staying away from things like this because of my passive nature, and besides, no one ever messed with me when Eric was around. But Eric was off with Margaret somewhere, probably behind the bleachers.  “I wasn’t staring,” I said finally, “and I don’t know what she told you, but I doubt if it was true.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you calling Angela a liar?” he sneered. Oops. I think he would have hit me right there, but Jamie suddenly worked her way into the situation. “Don’t I know you?” she said cheerfully, looking right at him. Sometimes Jamie seemed oblivious of situations that were happening right in front of her. “Wait-yes, I do. You work in the garage downtown. Your father’s name is Joe, and your grandma lives out on Foster Road, by the railroad crossing.” A look of confusion crossed Lew’s face, as though he were trying to put together a puzzle with too many pieces. “How do you know all that? What he’d do, tell you about me, too?” “No,” Jamie said, “don’t be silly.” She laughed to herself. Only Jamie could find humor at a time like this. “I saw your picture in your grandma’s house. I was walking by, and she needed some help bringing in the groceries. Your picture was on the mantel.” Lew was looking at Jamie as though she had cornstalks growing out of her ears.  Meanwhile Jamie was fanning herself with her hand. “Well, we were just sitting down to take a breather from all that dancing. It sure gets hot out there. Would you like to join us? We’ve got a couple of chairs. I’d love to hear how your grandma is doing.” She sounded so happy about it that Lew didn’t know what to do. Unlike those of us who were used to this sort of thing, he’d never come across someone like Jamie before. He stood there for a moment or two, trying to decide if he should hit the guy with the girl who’d helped his grandma. If it sounds confusing to you, imagine what it was doing to Lew’s petroleum-damaged brain. He finally skulked off without responding, taking Angela with him. Angela had probably forgotten how the whole thing started anyway, owing to the amount she’d had to drink. Jamie and I watched him go, and when he was a safe distance away, I exhaled. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath.  “Thanks,” I said mumbled sheepishly, realizing that Jamie-Jamie!-was the one who’d saved me from grave bodily harm. Jamie looked at me strangely. “For what?” she asked, and when I didn’t exactly spell it out for her, she went right back into her story about Bible school, as if nothing had happened at all. But this time I found myself actually listening to her, at least with one of my ears. It was the least I could do. It turns out that it wasn’t the last we saw of either Lew or Angela that evening. The two glasses of punch had really done Angela in, and she threw up all over the ladies’ rest room. Lew, being the classy guy he was, left when he heard her retching, sort of slinking out the way he came in, and that was the last I saw of him.  Jamie, as fate would have it, was the one who found Angela in the bathroom, and it was obvious that Angela wasn’t doing too well. The only option was to clean her up and take her home before the teachers found out about it. Getting drunk was a big deal back then, and she’d be looking at suspension, maybe even expulsion, if she got caught. Jamie, bless her heart, didn’t want that to happen any more than I did, though I would have thought otherwise if you’d asked me beforehand, owing to the fact that Angela was a minor and in violation of the law. She’d also broken another one of Hegbert’s rules for proper behavior. Hegbert frowned on law-breaking and drinking, and though it didn’t get him going like fornication, we all knew he was deadly serious, and we assumed Jamie felt the same way. And maybe she did, but her helper instinct must have taken over. She probably took one look at Angela and thought “wounded critter” or something like that and took immediate charge of the situation. I went off and located Eric behind the bleachers, and he agreed to stand guard at the bathroom door while Jamie and I went in to tidy it up. Angela had done a marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks-even on the ceiling, though don’t ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched on all fours, cleaning up puke at the homecoming dance in my best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours, too, doing exactly the same thing.  I could practically hear Carey laughing a squeaky, maniacal laugh somewhere in the distance. We ended up sneaking out the back door of the gym, keeping Angela stable by walking on either side of her. She kept asking where Lew was, but Jamie told her not to worry. She had a real soothing way of talking to Angela, though Angela was so far gone, I doubt if she even knew who was speaking. We loaded Angela into the backseat of my car, where she passed out almost immediately, although not before she’d vomited once more on the floor of the car. The smell was so awful that we had to roll down the windows to keep from gagging, and the drive to Angela’s house seemed extra long. Her mother answered the door, took one look at her daughter, and brought her inside without so much as a word of thanks. I think she was embarrassed, and we really didn’t have much to say to her anyway. The situation pretty much spoke for itself. By the time we dropped her off it was ten forty-five, and we drove straight back to Jamie’s. I was really worried when we got there because of the way she looked and smelled, and I said a silent prayer hoping that Hegbert wasn’t awake. I didn’t want to have to explain this to him. Oh, he’d probably listen to Jamie if she was the one who told him about it, but I had the sinking feeling that he’d find a way to blame me anyway. So I walked her to the door, and we stood outside under the porchlight. Jamie crossed her arms and smiled a little, looking just as if she’d come in from an evening stroll where she’d contemplated the beauty of the world.  “Please don’t tell your father about this,” I said. “I won’t,” she said. She kept on smiling when she finally turned my way. “I had a good time tonight. Thank you for taking me to the dance.” Here she was, covered in puke, actually thanking me for the evening. Jamie Sullivan could really drive a guy crazy sometimes24In the two weeks following the homecoming dance, my life pretty much returned to normal. My father was back in Washington, D.C., which made things a lot more fun around my house, primarily because I could sneak out the window again and head to the graveyard for my late night forays. I don’t know what it was about the graveyard that attracted us so. Maybe it had something to do with the tombstones themselves, because as far as tombstones went, they were actually fairly comfortable to sit on. We usually sat in a small plot where the Preston family had been buried about a hundred years ago. There were eight tombstones there, all arranged in a circle, making it easy to pass the boiled peanuts back and forth between us. One time my friends and I decided to learn what we could about the Preston family, and we went to the library to find out if anything had been written about them. I mean, if you’re going to sit on someone’s tombstone, you might as well know something about them, right? It turns out that there wasn’t much about the family in the historical records, though we did find out one interesting tidbit of information. Henry Preston, the father, was a one-armed lumberjack, believe it or not. Supposedly he could cut down a tree as fast as any two-armed man. Now the vision of a one-armed lumberjack is pretty vivid right off the bat, so we talked about him a lot. We used to wonder what else he could do with only one arm, and we’d spend long hours discussing how fast he could pitch a baseball or whether or not he’d be able to swim across the Intracoastal Waterway. Our conversations weren’t exactly highbrow, I admit, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. Well, Eric and me were out there one Saturday night with a couple of other friends, eating boiled peanuts and talking about Henry Preston, when Eric asked me how my “date” went with Jamie Sullivan. He and I hadn’t seen much of each other since the homecoming dance because the football season was already in the playoffs and Eric had been out of town the past few weekends with the team.  “It was okay,” I said, shrugging, doing my best to play it cool.  Eric playfully elbowed me in the ribs, and I grunted. He outweighed me by at least thirty pounds. “Did you kiss her good-night?” “No.” He took a long drink from his can of Budweiser as I answered. I don’t know how he did it, but Eric never had trouble buying beer, which was strange, being that everyone in town knew how old he was. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, tossing me a sidelong glance.  “I would have thought that after she helped you clean the bathroom, you would have at least kissed her good night.” “Well, I didn’t.” “Did you even try?” “No.” “Why not?” “She’s not that kind of girl,” I said, and even though we all knew it was true, it still sounded like I was defending her. Eric latched on to that like a leech. “I think you like her,” he said. “You’re full of crap,” I answered, and he slapped my back, hard enough to force the breath right out of me. Hanging out with Eric usually meant that I’d have a few bruises the following day. “Yeah, I might be full of crap,” he said, winking at me, “but you’re the one who’s smitten with Jamie Sullivan.” I knew we were treading on dangerous ground. “I was just using her to impress Margaret,” I said. “And with all the love notes she’s been sending me lately, I reckon it must have worked.” Eric laughed aloud, slapping me on the back again. “You and Margaret-now that’s funny. . . .” I knew I’d just dodged a major bullet, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the conversation spun off in a new direction. I joined in now and then, but I wasn’t really listening to what they were saying. Instead I kept hearing this little voice inside me that made me wonder about what Eric had said.  The thing was, Jamie was probably the best date I could have had that night, especially considering how the evening turned out. Not many dates-heck, not many people, period-would have done what she did. At the same time, her being a good date didn’t mean I liked her. I hadn’t talked to her at all since the dance, except when I saw her in drama class, and even then it was only a few words here and there. If I liked her at all, I told myself, I would have wanted to talk to her. If I liked her, I would have offered to walk her home. If I liked her, I would have wanted to bring her to Cecil’s Diner for a basket of hushpuppies and some RC cola. But I didn’t want to do any of those things. I really didn’t. In my mind, I’d already served my penance. The next day, Sunday, I was in my room, working on my application to UNC. In addition to the transcripts from my high school and other personal information, they required five essays of the usual type. If you could meet one person in history, who would that person be and why? Name the most significant influence in your life and why you feel that way. What do you look for in a role model and why? The essay questions were fairly predictable-our English teacher had told us what to expect-and I’d already worked on a couple of variations in class as homework.  English was probably my best subject. I’d never received anything lower than an A since I first started school, and I was glad the emphasis for the application process was on writing. If it had been on math, I might have been in trouble, especially if it included those algebra questions that talked about the two trains leaving an hour apart, traveling in opposite directions at forty miles an hour, etc. It wasn’t that I was bad in math-I usually pulled at least a C-but it didn’t come naturally to me, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I was writing one of my essays when the phone rang. The only phone we had was located in the kitchen, and I had to run downstairs to grab the receiver. I was breathing so loudly that I couldn’t make out the voice too well, though it sounded like Angela. I immediately smiled to myself. Even though she’d been sick all over the place and I’d had to clean it up, she was actually pretty fun to be around most of the time. And her dress really had been something, at least for the first hour. I figured she was probably calling to thank me or even to get together for a barbecue sandwich and hushpuppies or something.  “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? 25The 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-ununderstand.” 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. But Hegbert wouldn’t allow drinking or cursing, and Toby really didn’t know how to work within such a strict environment. As a result, the work was kind of sloppy, though it wasn’t obvious right off the bat. After a few years the props began to fall apart, and Hegbert took it upon himself to keep the things together. But while Hegbert was good at thumping the Bible, he wasn’t too good at thumping nails, and the props had bent, rusty nails sticking out all over, poking through the plywood in so many places that we had to be careful to walk exactly where we were supposed to. If we bumped them the wrong way, we’d either cut ourselves or the props would topple over, making little nail holes all over the stage floor. After a couple of years the Playhouse stage had to be resurfaced, and though they couldn’t exactly close their doors to Hegbert, they made a deal with him to be more careful in the future.  That meant we had to practice in the classroom until we’d worked out the “little bugs.” Fortunately Hegbert wasn’t involved with the actual production of the play, because of all his ministering duties. That role fell to Miss Garber, and the first thing she told us to do was to memorize our lines as quickly as possible. We didn’t have as much time as was usually allotted for rehearsals because Thanksgiving came on the last possible day in November, and Hegbert didn’t want the play to be performed too close to Christmas, so as not to interfere with “its true meaning.” That left us only three weeks to get the play just right, which was about a week shorter than usual.  The rehearsals began at three o’clock, and Jamie knew all her lines the first day there, which wasn’t really surprising. What was surprising was that she knew all my lines, too, as well as everyone else’s. We’d be going over a scene, she’d be doing it without the script, and I’d be looking down at a stack of pages, trying to figure out what my next line should be, and whenever I looked up she had this real shiny look about her, as if waiting for a burning bush or something. The only lines I knew were the mute bum’s, at least on that first day, and all of a sudden I was actually envious of Eddie, at least in that regard. This was going to be a lot of work, not exactly what I’d expected when I’d signed up for the class. My noble feelings about doing the play had worn off by the second day of rehearsals. Even though I knew I was doing the “right thing,” my friends didn’t understand it at all, and they’d been riding me since they’d found out. “You’re doing what?” Eric asked when he learned about it. “You’re doing the play with Jamie Sullivan? Are you insane or just plain stupid?” I sort of mumbled that I had a good reason, but he wouldn’t let it drop, and he told everyone around us that I had a crush on her. I denied it, of course, which just made them assume it was true, and they’d laugh all the louder and tell the next person they saw. The stories kept getting wilder, too-by lunchtime I’d heard from Sally that I was thinking of getting engaged. I actually think Sally was jealous about it. She’d had a crush on me for years, and the feeling might have been mutual except for the fact that she had a glass eye, and that was something I just couldn’t ignore. Her bad eye reminded me of something you’d see stuffed into the head of a mounted owl in a tacky antique shop, and to be honest, it sort of gave me the willies.  I guess that was when I started to resent Jamie again. I know it wasn’t her fault, but I was the one who was taking the arrows for Hegbert, who hadn’t exactly gone out of his way the night of homecoming to make me feel welcome. I began to stumble through my lines in class for the next few days, not really even attempting to learn them, and occasionally I’d crack a joke or two, which everyone laughed at, except for Jamie and Miss Garber. After rehearsal was over I’d head home to put the play out of my mind, and I wouldn’t even bother to pick up the script. Instead I’d joke with my friends about the weird things Jamie did and tell fibs about how it was Miss Garber who had forced me into the whole thing. Jamie, though, wasn’t going to let me off that easy. No, she got me right where it hurts, right smack in the old ego. I was out with Eric on Saturday night following Beaufort’s third consecutive state championship in football, about a week after rehearsals had started. We were hanging out at the waterfront outside of Cecil’s Diner, eating hushpuppies and watching people cruising in their cars, when I saw Jamie walking down the street. She was still a hundred yards away, turning her head from side to side, wearing that old brown sweater again and carrying her Bible in one hand. It must have been nine o’clock or so, which was late for her to be out, and it was even stranger to see her in this part of town. I turned my back to her and pulled the collar up on my jacket, but even Margaret-who had banana pudding where her brain should have been-was smart enough to figure out who she was looking for.  “Landon, your girlfriend is here.” “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend.” “Your fianc¨|e, then.” I guess she’d talked to Sally, too. “I’m not engaged,” I said. “Now knock it off.” I glanced over my shoulder to see if she’d spotted me, and I guess she had. She was walking toward us. I pretended not to notice. “Here she comes,” Margaret said, and giggled. “I know,” I said. Twenty seconds later she said it again. “She’s still coming.” I told you she was quick. “I know,” I said through gritted teeth. If it wasn’t for her legs, she could almost drive you as crazy as Jamie. I glanced around again, and this time Jamie knew I’d seen her and she smiled and waved at me. I turned away, and a moment later she was standing right beside me.  “Hello, Landon,” she said to me, oblivious of my scorn. “Hello, Eric, Margaret . . .” She went around the group. Everyone sort of mumbled “hello” and tried not to stare at the Bible. Eric was holding a beer, and he moved it behind his back so she wouldn’t see it.  Jamie could even make Eric feel guilty if she was close enough to him. They’d been neighbors at one time, and Eric had been on the receiving end of her talks before. Behind her back he called her “the Salvation Lady,” in obvious reference to the Salvation Army. “She would have been a brigadier general,” he liked to say. But when she was standing right in front of him, it was another story. In his mind she had an in with God, and he didn’t want to be in her bad graces.  “How are you doing, Eric? I haven’t seen you around much recently.” She said this as if she still talked to him all the time. He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at his shoes, playing that guilty look for all it was worth. “Well, I haven’t been to church lately,” he said. Jamie smiled that glittery smile. “Well, that’s okay, I suppose, as long as it doesn’t become a habit or anything.” “It won’t.” Now I’ve heard of confession-that thing when Catholics sit behind a screen and tell the priest about all their sins-and that’s the way Eric was when he was next to Jamie. For a second I thought he was going to call her “ma’am.” “You want a beer?” Margaret asked. I think she was trying to be funny, but no one laughed. Jamie put her hand to her hair, tugging gently at her bun. “Oh . . . no, not really . . .  thank you, though.” She looked directly at me with a really sweet glow, and right away I knew I was in trouble. I thought she was going to ask me off to the side or something, which to be honest I thought would turn out better, but I guess that wasn’t in her plans.  “Well, you did really well this week at rehearsals,” she said to me. “I know you’ve got a lot of lines to learn, but I’m sure you’re going to get them all real soon. And I just wanted to thank you for volunteering like you did. You’re a real gentleman.” “Thanks,” I said, a little knot forming in my stomach. I tried to be cool, but all my friends were looking right at me, suddenly wondering if I’d been telling them the truth about Miss Garber forcing it on me and everything. I hoped they missed it.  “Your friends should be proud of you,” Jamie added, putting that thought to rest.  “Oh, we are,” Eric said, pouncing. “Very proud. He’s a good guy, that Landon, what with his volunteering and all.” Oh no. Jamie smiled at him, then turned back to me again, her old cheerful self. “I also wanted to tell you that if you need any help, you can come by anytime. We can sit on the porch like we did before and go over your lines if you need to.” I saw Eric mouth the words “like we did before” to Margaret. This really wasn’t going well at all. By now the pit in my stomach was as big as Paul Bunyan’s bowling ball. “That’s okay,” I mumbled, wondering how I could squirm my way out of this. “I can learn them at home.” “Well, sometimes it helps if someone’s there to read with you, Landon,” Eric offered. I told you he’d stick it to me, even though he was my friend. “No, really,” I said to him, “I’ll learn the lines on my own.” “Maybe,” Eric said, smiling, “you two should practice in front of the orphans, once you’ve got it down a little better. Sort of a dress rehearsal, you know? I’m sure they’d love to see it.” You could practically see Jamie’s mind start clicking at the mention of the word orphans. Everyone knew what her hot button was. “Do you think so?” she asked.  Eric nodded seriously. “I’m sure of it. Landon was the one who thought of it first, but I know that if I was an orphan, I’d love something like that, even if it wasn’t exactly the real thing.” “Me too,” Margaret chimed in. As they spoke, the only thing I could think about was that scene from Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the back. Et tu, Eric? “It was Landon’s idea?” she asked, furrowing her brow. She looked at me, and I could tell she was still mulling it over. But Eric wasn’t about to let me off the hook that easy. Now that he had me flopping on the deck, the only thing left to do was gut me. “You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you, Landon?” he said. “Helping the orphans, I mean.” It wasn’t exactly something you could answer no to, was it? “I reckon so,” I said under my breath, staring at my best friend. Eric, despite the remedial classes he was in, would have been one hell of a chess player.  “Good, then, it’s all settled. That’s if it’s okay with you, Jamie.” His smile was so sweet, it could have flavored half the RC cola in the county.  “Well . . . yes, I suppose I’ll have to talk to Miss Garber and the director of the orphanage, but if they say it’s okay, I think it would be a fine idea.” And the thing was, you could tell she was really happy about it. Checkmate. The next day I spent fourteen hours memorizing my lines, cursing my friends, and wondering how my life had spun so out of control. My senior year certainly wasn’t turning out the way I thought it would when it began, but if I had to perform for a bunch of orphans, I certainly didn’t want to look like an idiot. 26The first thing we did was talk to Miss Garber about our plans for the orphans, and she thought it was a marvelous idea. That was her favorite word, by the waymarvelous-after she’d greeted you with “Hellooooo.” On Monday, when she realized that I knew all my lines, she said, “Marvelous!” and for the next two hours whenever I’d finish up a scene, she’d say it again. By the end of the rehearsal, I’d heard it about four zillion times. But Miss Garber actually went our idea one better. She told the class what we were doing, and she asked if other members of the cast would be willing to do their parts as well, so that the orphans could really enjoy the whole thing. The way she asked meant that they really didn’t have a choice, and she looked around the class, waiting for someone to nod so she could make it official. No one moved a muscle, except for Eddie. Somehow he’d inhaled a bug up his nose at that exact moment, and he sneezed violently. The bug flew out his nose, shot across his desk, and landed on the floor right by Norma Jean’s leg. She jumped out of her chair and screamed out loud, and the people on either side of her shouted, “Eww . . . gross!” The rest of the class started looking around and craning their necks, trying to see what happened, and for the next ten seconds there was total pandemonium in the classroom. For Miss Garber, that was as good of an answer as she needed.  “Marvelous,” she said, closing the discussion. Jamie, meanwhile, was getting really excited about performing for the orphans.  During a break in rehearsals she pulled me aside and thanked me for thinking of them. “There’s no way you would know,” she said almost conspiratorially, “but I’ve been wondering what to do for the orphanage this year. I’ve been praying about it for months now because I want this Christmas to be the most special one of all.” “Why is this Christmas so important?” I asked her, and she smiled patiently, as if I’d asked a question that didn’t really matter. “It just is,” she said simply. The next step was to talk it over with Mr. Jenkins, the director of the orphanage.  Now I’d never met Mr. Jenkins before, being that the orphanage was in Morehead City, which was across the bridge from Beaufort, and I’d never had any reason to go there. When Jamie surprised me with the news the following day that we’d be meeting him later that evening, I was sort of worried that I wasn’t dressed nice enough. I know it was an orphanage, but a guy wants to make a good impression.  Even though I wasn’t as excited about it as Jamie was (no one was as excited as Jamie), I didn’t want to be regarded as the Grinch who ruined Christmas for the orphans, either. Before we went to the orphanage for our meeting, we had to walk to my house to pick up my mom’s car, and while there, I planned on changing into something a little nicer. The walk took about ten minutes or so, and Jamie didn’t say much along the way, at least until we got to my neighborhood. The homes around mine were all large and well kept, and she asked who lived where and how old the houses were. I answered her questions without much thought, but when I opened the front door to my house, I suddenly realized how different this world was compared with her own. She had a shocked expression on her face as she looked around the living room, taking in her surroundings. No doubt it was the fanciest home she’d ever been in. A moment later I saw her eyes travel to the paintings that lined the walls. My ancestors, so to speak. As with many southern families, my entire lineage could be traced in the dozen faces that lined the walls. She stared at them, looking for a resemblance, I think, then turned her attention to the furnishings, which still looked practically new, even after twenty years. The furniture had been handmade, assembled or carved from mahogany and cherry, and designed specifically for each room. It was nice, I had to admit, but it wasn’t something I really thought about. To me, it was just a house. My favorite part of it was the window in my room that led to the porch on the upper level. That was my escape hatch. I showed her around, though, giving her a quick tour of the sitting room, the library, the den, and the family room, Jamie’s eyes growing wider with each new room. My mom was out on the sun porch, sipping a mint julep and reading, and heard us poking around. She came back inside to say hello.  I think I told you that every adult in town adored Jamie, and that included my mom.  Even though Hegbert was always giving the kinds of sermons that had our family’s name written all over them, my mom never held it against Jamie, because of how sweet she was. So they talked while I was upstairs rifling through my closet for a clean shirt and a tie. Back then boys wore ties a lot, especially when they were meeting someone in a position of authority. When I came back down the stairs fully dressed, Jamie had already told my mom about the plan. “It’s a wonderful idea,” Jamie said, beaming at me. “Landon’s really got a special heart.” My mom-after making sure she’d heard Jamie correctly-faced me with her eyebrows raised. She stared at me like I was an alien.  “So this was your idea?” my mom asked. Like everyone else in town, she knew Jamie didn’t lie. I cleared my throat, thinking of Eric and what I still wanted to do to him. It involved molasses and fire ants, by the way. “Kind of,” I said. “Amazing.” It was the only word she could get out. She didn’t know the details, but she knew I must have been boxed into a corner to do something like this. Mothers always know stuff like that, and I could see her peering closely at me and trying to figure it out. To escape her inquisitive gaze, I checked my watch, feigned surprise, and casually mentioned to Jamie that we’d better be going. My mom got the car keys from her pocketbook and handed them to me, still giving me the once-over as we headed out the door. I breathed a sigh of relief, imagining that I’d somehow gotten away with something, but as I walked Jamie to the car, I heard my mother’s voice again. “Come on over anytime, Jamie!” my mom shouted. “You’re always welcome here.” Even mothers could stick it to you sometimes. I was still shaking my head as I got in the car. “Your mother’s a wonderful lady,” Jamie said. I started the engine. “Yeah,” I said, “I guess so.” “And your house is beautiful.” “Uh-huh.” “You should count your blessings.” “Oh,” I said, “I do. I’m practically the luckiest guy alive.” Somehow she didn’t catch the sarcastic tone of my voice.  We got to the orphanage just about the time it was getting dark. We were a couple of minutes early, and the director was on the phone. It was an important call and he couldn’t meet with us right away, so we made ourselves comfortable. We were waiting on a bench in the hallway outside his door, when Jamie turned to me. Her Bible was in her lap. I guess she wanted it for support, but then again, maybe it was just her habit. “You did really well today,” she said. “With your lines, I mean.” “Thanks,” I said, feeling proud and dejected at exactly the same time. “I still haven’t learned my beats, though,” I offered. There was no way we could practice those on the porch, and I hoped she wasn’t going to suggest it.  “You will. They’re easy once you know you all the words.” “I hope so.” Jamie smiled, and after a moment she changed the subject, sort of throwing me off track. “Do you ever think about the future, Landon?” she asked.  I was startled by her question because it sounded . . . so ordinary. “Yeah, sure. I guess so,” I answered cautiously. “Well, what do you want to do with your life?” I shrugged, a little wary of where she was going with this. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t figured that part out. I’m going to UNC next fall, at least I hope so. I have to get accepted first.” “You will,” she said. “How do you know?” “Because I’ve prayed for that, too.” When she said it, I thought we were heading into a discussion about the power of prayer and faith, but Jamie tossed yet another curveball at me.  “How about after college? What do you want to do then?” “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Maybe I’ll be a one-armed lumberjack.” She didn’t think it was funny. “I think you should become a minister,” she said seriously. “I think you’re good with people, and they’d respect what you have to say.” Though the concept was absolutely ridiculous, with her I just knew it came from the heart and she intended it as a compliment. “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ll do that, but I’m sure I’ll find something.” It took a moment for me to realize that the conversation had stalled and that it was my turn to ask a question. “How about you? What do you want to do in the future?” Jamie turned away and got a far-off gaze in her eyes, making me wonder what she was thinking, but it vanished almost as quickly as it came.  “I want to get married,” she said quietly. “And when I do, I want my father to walk me down the aisle and I want everyone I know to be there. I want the church bursting with people.” “That’s all?” Though I wasn’t averse to the idea of marriage, it seemed kind of silly to hope for that as your life’s goal. “Yes,” she said. “That’s all I want.” The way she answered made me suspect that she thought she’d end up like Miss Garber. I tried to make her feel better, even though it still seemed silly to me.  “Well, you’ll get married someday. You’ll meet some guy and the two of you will hit it off, and he’ll ask you to marry him. And I’m sure that your father will be happy to walk you down the aisle.” I didn’t mention the part about having a big crowd in the church. I guess it was the one thing that even I couldn’t imagine. Jamie thought carefully about my answer, really pondering the way I said it, though I didn’t know why. “I hope so,” she said finally. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, don’t ask me how, so I moved on to something new. “So how long have you been coming to the orphanage?” I asked conversationally.  “Seven years now. I was ten years old the first time I came. I was younger than a lot of the kids here.” “Do you enjoy it, or does it make you sad?” “Both. Some of the children here came from really horrible situations. It’s enough to break your heart when you hear about it. But when they see you come in with some books from the library or a new game to play, their smiles just take all the sadness away. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.” She practically glowed when she spoke. Though she wasn’t saying it to make me feel guilty, that was exactly the way I felt. It was one of the reasons it was so hard to put up with her, but by then I was getting fairly used to it. She could twist you every way but normal, I’d come to learn. At that moment, Mr. Jenkins opened the door and invited us in. The office looked almost like a hospital room, with black-and-white tiled floors, white walls and ceilings, a metal cabinet against the wall. Where the bed would normally have been, there was a metal desk that looked like it had been stamped off the assembly line. It was almost neurotically clean of anything personal. There wasn’t a single picture or anything. Jamie introduced me, and I shook Mr. Jenkins’s hand. After we sat down, Jamie did most of the talking. They were old friends, you could see that right off, and Mr.  Jenkins had given her a big hug as soon as she’d entered. After smoothing out her skirt, Jamie explained our plan. Now, Mr. Jenkins had seen the play a few years back, and he knew exactly what she was talking about almost as soon as she started. But even though Mr. Jenkins liked Jamie a lot and knew she meant well, he didn’t think it was a good idea. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. That’s how I knew what he was thinking. “Why not?” Jamie asked, her brow furrowed. She seemed genuinely perplexed by his lack of enthusiasm. Mr. Jenkins picked up a pencil and started tapping it on his desk, obviously thinking about how to explain himself. In time, he put down the pencil and sighed.  “Even though it’s a wonderful offer and I know you’d like to do something special, the play is about a father who eventually comes to realize how much he loves his daughter.” He let that sink in for a moment and picked up the pencil again.  “Christmas is hard enough around here without reminding the kids of what they’re missing. I think that if the children see something like that . . .” He didn’t even have to finish. Jamie put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my,” she said right away, “you’re right. I hadn’t thought about that.” Neither had I, to tell you the truth. But it was obvious right off the bat that Mr. Jenkins made sense. He thanked us anyway and chatted for a while about what he planned to do instead. “We’ll have a small tree and a few gifts-something that all of them can share. “You’re welcome to visit Christmas Eve. . . .” After we said our good-byes, Jamie and I walked in silence without saying anything. I could tell she was sad. The more I hung around Jamie, the more I realized she had lots of different emotions-she wasn’t always cheerful and happy.  Believe it or not, that was the first time I recognized that in some ways she was just like the rest of us. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” I said softly. “I am, too.” She had that faraway look in her eyes again, and it was a moment before she went on. “I just wanted to do something different for them this year. Something special that they would remember forever. I thought for sure this was it. . . .” She sighed. “The Lord seems to have a plan that I just don’t know about yet.” She was quiet for a long time, and I looked at her. Seeing Jamie feeling bad was almost worse than feeling bad because of her. Unlike Jamie, I deserved to feel bad about myself-I knew what kind of person I was. But with her . . .  “While we’re here, do you want to stop in to see the kids?” I asked into the silence.  It was the only thing I could think to do that might make her feel better. “I could wait out here while you talk to them, or go to the car if you want.” “Would you visit them with me?” she asked suddenly.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could handle it, but I knew she really wanted me there. And she was feeling so down that the words came out automatically.  “Sure, I’ll go.” “They’ll be in the rec room now. That’s where they usually are at this time,” she said. We walked down the corridors to the end of the hall, where two doors opened into a good-size room. Perched in the far corner was a small television with about thirty metal folding chairs placed all around it. The kids were sitting in the chairs, crowded around it, and you could tell that only the ones in the front row had a good view of the thing. I glanced around. In the corner was an old Ping-Pong table. The surface was cracked and dusty, the net nowhere to be seen. A couple of empty Styrofoam cups sat on top of it, and I knew it hadn’t been used in months, maybe years. Along the wall next to the Ping-Pong table were a set of shelves, with a few toys here and there-blocks and puzzles, a couple of games. There weren’t too many, and the few that were there looked as if they’d been in this room for a long time. Along the near walls were small individual desks piled with newspapers, scribbled on with crayons.  We stood in the doorway for just a second. We hadn’t been noticed yet, and I asked what the newspapers were for. “They don’t have coloring books,” she whispered, “so they use newspapers.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke-instead her attention was directed at the kids. She’d begun to smile again. “Are these all the toys they have?” I asked. She nodded. “Yes, except for the stuffed animals. They’re allowed to keep those in their rooms. This is where the rest of the things are kept.” I guess she was used to it. To me, though, the sparseness of the room made the whole thing depressing. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a place like this.  Jamie and I finally walked into the room, and one of the kids turned around at the sound of our steps. He was about eight or so, with red hair and freckles, his two front teeth missing. “Jamie!” he shouted happily when he saw her, and all of a sudden all the other heads turned. The kids ranged in age from about five to twelve, more boys than girls. After twelve they had to be sent to live with foster parents, I later learned.  “Hey, Roger,” Jamie said in response, “how are you?” With that, Roger and some of the others began to crowd around us. A few of the other kids ignored us and moved closer to the television now that there were free seats in the front row. Jamie introduced me to one of the older kids who’d come up and asked if I was her boyfriend. By his tone, I think that he had the same opinion of Jamie that most of the kids in our high school had.  “He’s just a friend,” she said. “But he’s very nice.” Over the next hour, we visited with the children. I got a lot of questions about where I lived and whether my house was big or what kind of car I owned, and when we finally had to leave, Jamie promised that she’d be back soon. I noticed that she didn’t promise I would be with her. While we were walking back to the car, I said, “They’re a nice bunch of kids.” I shrugged awkwardly. “I’m glad that you want to help them.” Jamie turned to me and smiled. She knew there wasn’t much to add after that, but I could tell she was still wondering what she was going to do for them that Christmas. 27By early December, just over two weeks into rehearsals, the sky was winter dark before Miss Garber would let us leave, and Jamie asked me if I wouldn’t mind walking her home. I don’t know why she wanted me to. Beaufort wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity back then. The only murder I’d ever heard about had occurred six years earlier when a guy was stabbed outside of Maurice’s Tavern, which was a hangout for people like Lew, by the way. For an hour or so it caused quite a stir, and phone lines buzzed all over town while nervous women wondered about the possibility of a crazed lunatic wandering the streets, preying on innocent victims. Doors were locked, guns were loaded, men sat by the front windows, looking for anyone out of the ordinary who might be creeping down the street. But the whole thing was over before the night was through when the guy walked into the police station to give himself up, explaining that it was a bar fight that got out of hand. Evidently the victim had welshed on a bet. The guy was charged with second-degree murder and got six years in the state penitentiary. The policemen in our town had the most boring jobs in the world, but they still liked to strut around with a swagger or sit in coffee shops while they talked about the “big crime,” as if they’d cracked the case of the Lindbergh baby. But Jamie’s house was on the way to mine, and I couldn’t say no without hurting her feelings. It wasn’t that I liked her or anything, don’t get the wrong idea, but when you’ve had to spend a few hours a day with someone, and you’re going to continue doing that for at least another week, you don’t want to do anything that might make the next day miserable for either of you.  The play was going to be performed that Friday and Saturday, and lots of people were already talking about it. Miss Garber had been so impressed by Jamie and me that she kept telling everyone it was going to be the best play the school had ever done. She had a real flair for promotion, too, we found out. We had one radio station in town, and they interviewed her over the air, not once, but twice. “It’s going to be marvelous,” she pronounced, “absolutely marvelous.” She’d also called the newspaper, and they’d agreed to write an article about it, primarily because of the Jamie-Hegbert connection, even though everyone in town already knew about it.  But Miss Garber was relentless, and just that day she’d told us the Playhouse was going to bring in extra seats to accommodate the extra-large crowd expected. The class sort of oohed and aahed, like it was a big deal or something, but then I guess it was to some of them. Remember, we had guys like Eddie in class. He probably thought that this would be the only time in his life when someone might be interested in him. The sad thing was, he was probably right. You might think I’d be getting excited about it, too, but I really wasn’t. My friends were still teasing me at school, and I hadn’t had an afternoon off in what seemed like forever. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I was doing the “right thing.” I know it’s not much, but frankly, it was all I had. Occasionally I even felt sort of good about it, too, though I never admitted it to anyone. I could practically imagine the angels in heaven, standing around and staring wistfully down at me with little tears filling the corners of their eyes, talking about how wonderful I was for all my sacrifices.  So I was walking her home that first night, thinking about this stuff, when Jamie asked me a question. “Is it true you and your friends sometimes go to the graveyard at night?” Part of me was surprised that she was even interested. Though it wasn’t exactly a secret, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing she’d care about at all.  “Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “Sometimes.” “What do you do there, besides eat peanuts?” I guess she knew about that, too. “I don’t know,” I said. “Talk . . . joke around. It’s just a place we like to go.” “Does it ever scare you?” “No,” I answered. “Why? Would it scare you?” “I don’t know,” she said. “It might.” “Why?” “Because I’d worry that I might do something wrong.” “We don’t do anything bad there. I mean, we don’t knock over the tombstones or leave our trash around,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her about our conversations about Henry Preston because I knew that wasn’t the sort of thing Jamie would want to hear about. Last week Eric had wondered aloud how fast a guy like that could lie in bed and . . . well . . . you know. “Do you ever just sit around and listen to the sounds?” she asked. “Like the crickets chirping, or the rustling of leaves when the wind blows? Or do you ever just lie on your backs and stare at the stars?” Even though she was a teenager and had been for four years, Jamie didn’t know the first thing about teenagers, and trying to understand teenage boys for her was like trying to decipher the theory of relativity. “Not really,” I said. She nodded a little. “I think that’s what I’d do if I were there, if I ever go, I mean. I’d just look around to really see the place, or sit quietly and listen.” This whole conversation struck me as strange, but I didn’t press it, and we walked in silence for a few moments. And since she’d asked a little about me, I sort of felt obliged to ask her about herself. I mean, she hadn’t brought up the Lord’s plan or anything, so it was the least I could do. “So, what do you do?” I asked. “Besides working with the orp