Afterward I sit in the chair that has come to be shaped like me. They are finishingup now ; her clothes are on , but still she is crying . It will become quieter afterthey leave, I know.
The excitement of the morning always upsets her , and today is no exception.
Finally the shade is opened and the nurses walk out . Both of them touch me andsmile as they walk by. I wonder what this means . I sit for just a second and stare ather, but she doesn't return the look. I understand , for she doesn't know who I am.
I'm a stranger to her. Then, turning away , I bow my head and pray silently for thestrength I know I will need .I have always been a firm believer in God and the powerof prayer , though to be honest , my faith has made for a list of questions Idefinitely want answered after I'm gone . Ready now . On go the glasses , out ofmy pocket comes a magnifier. I put it on the table for a moment while I open thenotebook .It takes two licks on my gnarled finger to get the wellworn cover open tothe first page . Then I put the magnifier in place . There is always a moment rightbefore I begin to read the story when my mind churns,And I wonder , Will it happen today ? I don't know , for I never know beforehand,and deep down it really doesn't matter . It's the possibility that keeps me going,not the guarantee , a sort of wager on my part . And though you may call me adreamer or fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.
I realize the odds, and science, are against me. But science is not the total answer;this ! Know , this I have learned in my lifetime . And that leaves me with the beliefthat miracles , no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occurWithout regard to the natural order of things . So once again , just as I do everyDay , I begin to read the notebook aloud , so that she can hear it , in the hope thatthe miracle that has come to dominate my life will once again prevail. And maybe,just maybe, it will.
Coast
It was early October 1946 , and Noah Calhoun watched the fading sun sink lowerfrom the wraparound porch of his plantation‐style home . He liked to sit here in theevenings , especially after working hard all day , and let his thoughts wander without
conscious direction. It was how he relaxed, a routine he'd learned from his father.
He especially liked to look at the trees and their reflections in the river. North
.Carolina trees are beautiful in deep autumn: greens, yellows, reds, oranges, everyshade in between . Their dazzling colors glow with the sun , and for the hundredthtime , Noah Calhoun wondered if the original owners of the house had spent theirevenings thinking the same things. The house was built in 1772, making itone of the oldest , as well as largest , homes in New Bern . Originally it was themain house on a working plantation , and he had bought it right after the war endedand had spent the last eleven months and a small fortune repairing it.
The reporter from the Raleigh paper had done an article on it a few weeks ago andsaid it was one of the finest restorations he'd ever seen . At least the house was .
The remaining property was another story , and that was where he'd spent most ofthe day. The home sat on twelve acres adjacent to Brices Creek, and he'd worked onthe wooden fence that lined the other three sides of the property, checking for dryrot or termites,replacing posts when he had to. He still had more work to do on it ,especially on the west side , and as he'd put the tools away earlier he'd made amental note to call and have some more lumber delivered. He'd gone into thehouse, drunk a glass of sweet tea , then showered . He always showered at the endof the day, the water washing away both dirt and fatigue.' Afterward he'd combedhis hair back, put on some faded jeans and a long‐sleeved blue shirt , poured himselfanother glass of sweet tea , and gone to the porch, where he now sat , where hesat every day at this time . He stretched his arms above his head , then out to thesides , rolling his shoulders as he completed the routine . He felt good and cleannow , fresh . His muscles were tired and he knew he'd be a little sore tomorrow, buthe was pleased that he had accomplished most of what he had wanted to do.
Noah reached for his guitar , remembering his father as he did so, thinking how muchhe missed him . He strummed once , adjusted the tension on two strings, thenstrummed again . This time it sounded about right , and he began to play. Softmusic, quiet music. He hummed for a little while at first, then began to sing as nightcame down around him . He played and sang until the sun was gone and the sky wasblack . It was a little after seven when he quit, and he settled back into his chair andbegan to rock. By habit, he looked upward and saw Orion and the Big Dipper, Geminiand the Pole Star, twinkling in the autumn sky.
He started to run the numbers in his head , then stopped . He knew he'd spent almosthis entire savings on the house and would have to find a job again soon, but hepushed the thought away and decided to enjoy the remaining months of restorationwithout worrying about it . It would work out for him , he knew; it always did .
Besides , thinking about money usually bored him . Early on, he'd learned to enjoysimple things, things that couldn't be bought, and he had a hard time understandingpeople who felt otherwise. It was another trait he got from his father. Clem, hishound dog, came up to him then and nuzzled his hand before lying down at his feet.
"Hey, girl, how're you doing?" he asked as he patted her head, and she whined softly,her soft round eyes peering upward. A car accident had taken her leg, but she stillmoved well enough and kept him company on quiet nights like these.
He was thirty‐one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't datedsince he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It washis own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him andany woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change evenif he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered ifhe was destined to be alone forever. The evening passed, staying warm, nice. Noahlistened to the crickets and the rustling leaves, thinking that the sound of nature wasmore real and aroused more emotion than things like cars and planes. Natural thingsgave back more than they took, and their sounds always brought him back to theway man was supposed to be. There were
times during the war, especially after a major engagement, when he had oftenthought about these simple sounds. "It'll keep you from going crazy," his father hadtold him the day he'd shipped out. "It's God's music and it'll take you home."
He finished his tea, went inside, found a book,then turned on the porch light on hisway back out. After sitting down again, he looked at the book. It was old, the coverwas torn, and the pages were stained with mud and water.
It was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and he had carried it with him throughoutthe war. It had even taken a bullet for him once.
He rubbed the cover, dusting it off just a little. Then he let the book open randomlyand read the words in front of him: This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into thewordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Theefully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night,sleep, death and the stars.
He smiled to himself. For some reason Whitman always reminded him of New Bern,and he was glad he'd come back. Though he'd been away for fourteen years, this washome and he knew a lot of people here, most of them from his youth. It wasn'tsurprising. Like so many southern towns, the people who lived here never changed,they just grew a bit older. His best friend these days was Gus, a seventy‐year‐old blackman who lived down the road. They had met a couple of weeks after Noah boughtthe house, when Gus had shown up with some homemade liquor and Brunswick stew,and the two had spent their first evening together getting drunk and telling stories.
Now Gus would show up a couple of nights a week, usually around eight. With fourkids and eleven grandchildren in the house, he needed to get out of the house nowand then, and Noah couldn't blame him.
Usually Gus would bring his harmonica, and after talking for a little while, they'd playa few songs together. Sometimes they played for hours. He'd come to regard Gus asfamily. There really wasn't anyone else, at least not since his father died last year. Hewas an only child; his mother had died of influenza when he was two, and though hehad wanted to at one time, he had never married. But he had been in love once, thathe knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever.
Perfect love did that to a person, and this had been perfect. Coastal clouds slowlybegan to roll across the evening sky, turning silver with the reflection of the moon.
As they thickened, he leaned his head back and rested it against the rocking chair. Hislegs moved automatically, keeping a steady rhythm, and as he did most evenings, hefelt his mind drifting back to a warm evening like this fourteen years ago.
It was just after graduation 1932, the opening night of the Neuse River Festival. Thetown was out in full, enjoying barbecue and games of chance. It was humid that night‐
‐for some reason he remembered that clearly. He arrived alone, and as he strolledthrough the crowd, looking for friends, he saw Fin and Sarah, two people he'd grownup with, talking to a girl he'd never seen before. She was pretty, he rememberedthinking, and when he finally joined them, she looked his way with a pair of hazy eyesthat kept on coming. "Hi," she'd said simply as she offered her hand, "Finley's told mea lot about you."
An ordinary beginning, something that would have been forgotten had it beenanyone but her. But as he shook her hand and met those striking emerald eyes, heknew before he'd taken his next breath that she was the one he could spend the restof his life looking for but never find again. She seemed that good, that perfect, whilea summer wind blew through the trees.
From there, it went like a tornado wind. Fin told him she was spending the summerin New Bern with her family because her father worked for R. J. Reynolds, and thoughhe only nodded, the way she was looking at him made his silence seem okay. Finlaughed then, because he knew what was happening, and Sarah suggested they getsome cherry Cokes, and the four of them stayed at the festival until the crowds werethin and everything closed up for the night.
They met the following day, and the day after that, and they soon becameinseparable. Every morning but Sunday when he had to go to church, he would finishhis chores as quickly as possible, then make a straight line to Fort Totten Park, whereshe'd be waiting for him. Because she was a newcomer and hadn't spent time in asmall town before, they spent their days doing things that were completely new toher.
He taught her how to bait a line and fish the shallows for largemouth bass and tookher exploring through the backwoods of the Croatan Forest. They rode in canoes andwatched summer thunderstorms, and to him it seemed as though they'd alwaysknown each other. But he learned things as well. At the town dance in the tobaccobarn, it was she who taught him how to waltz and do the Charleston, and thoughthey stumbled through the first few songs, her patience with him eventually paid off,and they danced together until the music ended. He walked her home afterward, andwhen they paused on the porch after saying good night, he kissed her for the firsttime and wondered why he had waited as long as he had. Later in the summer hebrought her to this house, looked past the decay, and told her that one day he wasgoing to own it and fix it up. They spent hours together talking about their dreams‐‐
his of seeing the world, hers of being an artist‐‐and on a humid night in August, theyboth lost their virginity.
When she left three weeks later, she took a piece of him and the rest of summer withher. He watched her leave town on an early rainy morning, watched through eyesthat hadn't slept the night before, then went home and packed a bag. He spent thenext week alone on Harkers Island. Noah ran his hands through his hair and checkedhis watch. Eight‐twelve. He got up and walked to the front of the house and lookedup the road. Gus wasn't in sight, and Noah figured he wouldn't be coming. He wentback to his rocker and sat again.
He remembered talking to Gus about her. The first time he mentioned her, Gusstarted to shake his head and laugh. "So that's the ghost you been running from."
When asked what he meant, Gus said, "You know, the ghost, the memory. I beenwatchin' you, workin' day and night, slavin' so hard you barely have time to catchyour breath. People do that for three reasons. Either they crazy, or stupid, or tryin'
to forget. And with you, I knew you was tryin' to forget. I just didn't know what.”
He thought about what Gus had said. Gus was right, of course. New Bern was hauntednow. Haunted by the ghost of her memory. He saw her in Fort Totten Park, theirplace, every time he walked by. Either sitting on the bench or standing by the gate,always smiling, blond hair softly touching her shoulders, her eyes the color ofemeralds. When he sat on the porch at night with his guitar, he saw her beside him,listening quietly as he played the music of his childhood.
He felt the same when he went to Gaston's Drug Store, or to the Masonic theater,oreven when he strolled downtown. Everywhere he looked, he saw her image, sawthings that brought her back to life.
It was odd, he knew that. He had grown up in New Bern. Spent his first seventeenyears here. But when he thought about New Bern, he seemed to remember only thelast summer, the summer they were together. Other memories were simplyfragments, pieces here and there of growing up, and few, if any, evoked any feeling.
He had told Gus about it one night, and not only had Gus understood, but he had beenthe first to explain why. He said simply, "My daddy used to tell me that the first timeyou fall in love, it changes your life forever, and no matter how hard you try,the feelin'
never goes away. This girl you been tellin' me about was your first love. And nomatter what you do, she'll stay with you forever.”
Noah shook his head, and when her image began to fade, he returned to Whitman.
He read for an hour, looking up every now and then to see raccoons and possumsscurrying near the creek. At nine‐thirty he closed the book, went upstairs to thebedroom, and wrote in his journal, including both personal observations and thework he'd accomplished on the house. Forty minutes later, he was sleeping. Clemwandered up the stairs, sniffed him as he slept, and then paced in circles before finallycurling up at the foot of his bed.
Earlier that evening and a hundred miles away, she sat alone on the porch swing ofher parents' home, one leg crossed beneath her. The seat had been slightly damp
when she sat down; rain had fallen earlier, hard and stinging, but the clouds werefading now and she looked past them, toward the stars, wondering if she'd made theright decision. She'd struggled with it for days‐‐and had struggled some more thisevening‐‐but in the end, she knew she would never forgive herself if she let theopportunity slip away.
Lon didn't know the real reason she left the following morning. The week before,she'd hinted to him that she might want to visit some antique shops near the coast.
"It's just a couple of days," she said, "and besides, I need a break from planning thewedding." She felt bad about the lie but knew there was no way she could tell himthe truth. Her leaving had nothing to do with him, and it wouldn't be fair of her toask him to understand.
It was an easy drive from Raleigh, slightly more than two hours, and she arrived alittle before eleven. She checked into a small inn downtown, went to her room, andunpacked her suitcase, hanging her dresses in the closet and putting everything elsein the drawers.
She had a quick lunch, asked the waitress for directions to the nearest antique stores,then spent the next few hours shopping. By four‐thirty she was back in her room. Shesat on the edge of the bed, picked up the phone, and called Lon. He couldn't speaklong, he was due in court, but before they hung up she gave him the phone numberwhere she was staying and promised to call the following day. Good, she thoughtwhile hanging up the phone. Routine conversation, nothing out of the ordinary.
