The Notebook(2)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

He remembered talking to Gus about her. The first time he mentioned her. Gus started 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 been watchin’ you workin’ day and night, slavin’ so hard you barely have time to catch your 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.”

Gus was right, of course. New Bern was haunted now. Haunted by the ghost of her memory. He saw her in Fort Totten Park, their place, every time he walked by. When he sat on the porch at night with his guitar, he saw her beside him, listening as he played the music of his childhood. Everywhere he looked, he saw things that brought her back to life.

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 possums scurrying near the creek. At nine thirty he closed the book, went upstairs to the bedroom and wrote in his journal. Forty minutes later he was sleeping. Clem wandered up the stairs, sniffed him as he slept, and then paced in circles before finally curling up at the foot of his bed.

EARLIER THAT evening and a hundred miles away, she sat alone on the porch swing of her parents’ home, one leg tucked beneath her, wondering if she’d made the right decision. She’d struggled with it for days-and had struggled some more this evening-but in the end she knew she would never forgive herself if she let the opportunity 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 the wedding.” She felt bad about the lie, but knew there was no way she could tell him the truth. Her leaving had nothing to do with him, and it wouldn’t he fair of her to ask him to understand.

It was an easy drive from Raleigh, slightly more than two hours, and she arrived a little before eleven. She checked into a small inn downtown, went to her room and unpacked her suitcase, hanging her dresses in the closet and putting everything else in 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.

She sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the phone and called Lon. He couldn’t speak long, but before they hung up she gave him the phone number where she was staying and promised to call the following day. Good, she thought while hanging up the phone. Routine conversation, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to make him suspicious.

She’d known him almost four years now, it was 1942 when they met, the world at war and America one year in. Everyone was doing their part and she was volunteering at the hospital downtown. The first waves of wounded young soldiers were coming home, and she spent her days with broken men and shattered bodies. When Lon, with his easy charm, introduced himself at a party, she saw in him exactly what she needed: someone with confidence about the future and a sense of humour that drove all her fears away.

He was handsome, intelligent and driven, a successful lawyer eight years older than she, and he pursued his job with passion, not only winning cases but also making a name for himself. She understood his vigorous pursuit of success, for her father and most of the men she met in her social circle were the same way. Like them, he’d been raised that way, and, in the caste system of the South, family name and accomplishments were often the most important consideration in marriage. In some cases they were the only consideration.

Though she had quietly rebelled against this idea since childhood and had dated a few men best described as reckless, she found herself drawn to Lon’s easy ways and had gradually come to love him. Despite the long hours he worked, he was good to her. He was a gentleman, mature and responsible, and during those terrible periods of the war when she needed someone to hold her, he never once turned her away. She felt secure with him and knew he loved her as well and that was why she had accepted his proposal.

Thinking these things made her feel guilty about being here, and she knew she should pack her things and leave before she changed her mind. She picked up her handbag, hesitated and almost made it to the door. But coincidence had pushed her here, and she put the bag down, again realizing that if she quit now she would always wonder what would have happened. She couldn’t live with that

She went to the bathroom and started a bath. After checking the temperature she walked to the chest of drawers in the bedroom, taking off her gold earrings as she crossed the room. She found her sponge bag, opened it and pulled out a razor and a bar of soap, then undressed in front of the chest of drawers. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her body was firm and well proportioned, br**sts softly rounded, stomach flat, legs slim. She’d inherited her mother’s high cheekbones, smooth skin and blonde hair, but her best feature was her own. She had “eyes like ocean waves”, as Lon liked to say.

Taking the razor and soap, she went to the bathroom again, turned off the tap, set a towel where she could reach it and stepped gingerly into the bath.

She liked the way a bath relaxed her, and she slipped lower in the water. The day had been long and her back was tense, but she was pleased she had finished shopping so quickly. She had to go hack to Raleigh with something tangible, and the things she had picked out would work fine. She made a mental note to find the names of some other stores in the Beaufort area, then suddenly doubted she would need to. Lon wasn’t the type to check up on her.

She reached for the soap, lathered up and began to shave her legs. As she did, she thought about her parents and what they would think of her behaviour. No doubt they would disapprove, especially her mother. Her mother had never really accepted what had happened the summer they’d spent here and wouldn’t accept it now; no matter what reason she gave.

She soaked a while longer in the bath before finally getting out and towelling off. She went to the closet and looked for a dress, finally choosing a long yellow one that dipped slightly in the front, the kind that was common in the South. She slipped it on and looked in the mirror, turning from side to side. It fitted her well, but she eventually decided against it and put it back on the hanger. Instead she found a more casual, less revealing dress and put that on. Light blue with a touch of lace, it buttoned up at the front, and though it didn’t look quite as nice as the first one, it conveyed an image she thought would be more appropriate.

She wore little make-up, just a touch of eye shadow and mascara to accent her eyes. Perfume next, not too much. She found a pair of small hooped earrings, put those on, then slipped on the tan, low-heeled sandals she had been wearing earlier. She brushed her blonde hair, pinned it up and looked in the mirror. No, it was too much, she thought, and she let it back down. Better.

When she was finished she stepped back and evaluated herself. She looked good: not too dressy, not too casual. She didn’t want to overdo it. After all, she didn’t know what to expect. It had been a long time-probably too long-and many different things could have happened, even things she didn’t want to consider.

She looked down and saw her hands were shaking, and she laughed to herself. It was strange; she wasn’t normally this nervous.

She found her handbag and car keys, then picked up the room key. She turned it over in her hand a couple of times, thinking – You’ve come this far, don’t give up now. She nearly left then, but instead sat on the bed again. She checked her watch. Almost six o’clock. She knew she had to leave in a few minutes-she didn’t want to arrive after dark-but she needed a little more time.

“Damn,” she whispered. “What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for it.” But once she said it she knew it wasn’t true. If nothing else, she would have her answer.

She opened her handbag and thumbed through it until she came to a folded-up piece of newspaper. After taking it out slowly, almost reverently, she unfolded it and stared at it for a while. “This is why,” she finally said to herself, “this is what it’s all about.”

NOAH GOT UP at five and kayaked for an hour up Brices Creek, as he usually did. When he finished he changed into his work clothes, warmed some bread rolls from the day before, grabbed a couple of apples and washed his breakfast down with two cups of coffee.

He worked on the fencing again, repairing the posts. It was an Indian summer, the temperature over eighty degrees, and by lunchtime he was hot and tired and glad of the break.

He ate at the creek because the mullets were jumping. He liked to watch them jump three or four limes and glide through the air before vanishing into the brackish water. For some reason he had always been pleased by the fact that their instinct hadn’t changed for thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of years.

Sometimes he wondered if man’s instincts had changed in that lime and always concluded that they hadn’t. At least in the basic, most primal ways. As far as he could tell, man had always been aggressive, always striving to dominate, trying to control the world and everything in it. The war in Europe and Japan proved that.

He stopped working a little after three and walked to a small shed that sat near his dock. He went in, found his fishing pole, a couple of lures and some live crickets he kept on hand, then walked out to the dock, baited his hook and cast his line.

Fishing always made him reflect on his life, and he did so now. After his mother died he could remember spending his days in a dozen different homes. For one reason or another, he stuttered badly as a child and was teased for it. He began to speak less and less, and by the age of five he wouldn’t speak at all. When he started classes, his teachers thought he was retarded and recommended that he be pulled out of school.

Instead, his father took matters into his own hands. He kept him in school and afterwards made him come to the timber yard where he worked, to haul and stack wood. “It’s good that we spend some time together,” he would say as they worked side-by-side, “just like my daddy and I did.”

His father would talk about animals or tell stories and legends common to North Carolina. Within a few months Noah was speaking again, though not well, and his father decided to teach him to read with books of poetry. “Learn to read this aloud and you’ll be able to say anything you want to.” His father had been right again, and by the following year Noah had lost his stutter. But he continued to go to the timber yard every day simply because his father was there, and in the evenings he would read the works of Whitman and Tennyson aloud as his father rocked beside him. He had been reading poetry ever since.

When he got a little older he spent most of his weekends and vacations alone. He explored the Croatan forest in his first canoe, following Brices Creek for twenty miles until he could go no further, then hiked the remaining miles to the coast. Camping and exploring became his passion, and he spent hours in the forest, whistling quietly and playing his guitar for beavers and geese and wild blue herons. Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and he’d always identified with poets.

Although he was quiet, years of heavy lifting at the timber yard helped him excel in sports, and his athletic success led to popularity. He enjoyed the football and track meets, and, though most of his teammates spent their free time together as well, he rarely joined them. He had a few girlfriends in school but none had ever made an impression on him. Except for one. And she came after graduation.

Allie. His Allie.

He remembered talking to Fin about Allie after they left the festival that first night, and Fin had laughed. Then he’d made two predictions: first that they would fall in love, and second that it wouldn’t work out.

There was a slight tug at his line and Noah hoped for a large-mouth bass, but the tugging eventually stopped and, after reeling his line in and checking the bait, he cast again.

Fin ended up being right on both counts. Most of the summer she had to make excuses to her parents whenever they wanted to see each other. It wasn’t that they didn’t like him-it was that he was from a different class, too poor, and they would never approve if their daughter became serious with someone like him. “I don’t care what my parents think, I love you and always will,” she would say. “We’ll find a way to be together.”

But in the end they couldn’t. By early September the tobacco had been harvested and she had no choice but to return with her family to Winston-Salem. “Only the summer is over, Allie, not us,” he’d said the morning she left. “We’ll never be over.” But they were. For a reason he didn’t understand, the letters he wrote went unanswered.

He decided to leave New Bern to help get her off his mind, and also because the Depression made earning a living in New Bern almost impossible. He went first to Norfolk and worked at a shipyard for six months before he was laid off, then moved to New Jersey because he’d heard the economy wasn’t so bad there.

He found a job in a scrap yard, separating scrap metal from everything else. The owner, a Jewish man named Morris Goldman, was intent on collecting as much scrap metal as he could, convinced that a war was going to start in Europe and that America would be dragged in again. Noah didn’t care. He was just happy to have a job.

He worked hard. Not only did it help him keep his mind off Allie during the day, but it was something he felt he had to do. His daddy had always said: “Give a day’s work for a day’s pay. Anything less is stealing.” That attitude pleased his boss. “It’s a shame you aren’t Jewish,” Goldman would say, “you’re such a fine boy in so many other ways.” It was the best compliment Goldman could give.

He continued to think about Allie at night. He wrote to her once a month but never received a reply. Eventually he wrote one final letter and forced himself to accept the fact that the summer they’d spent with one another was the only thing they’d ever share.