In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City, lace like many other small southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beh oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whehey saw someone oreet whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a st uo the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal Waterway. Only three els came in oelevision, though television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were tered around the churches, of which there were eighteen withiown limits alohey went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian Church, the Church of the Fiven People, the Church of Sunday Ato, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches on practically every er of town, though each sidered itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists, gregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Indepe Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.
Back then, the big event of the year onsored by the Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to know-in jun with the local high school. Every year they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort Playhouse, which was actually a play that had been written by Hegbert Sullivan, a minister whod been with the church since Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasnt that old, but he was old enough that you could almost see through the guys skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and translut-kids would swear they actually saw the blood flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see iores arouer.
Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel, because he didnt want to keep on perf that old Charles Dis classic A Christmas Carol. In his mind Scrooge was a heathen, who came to his redemption only because he saw ghosts, not angels-and who was to say whether theyd bee by God, anyway? And who was to say he would to his sinful ways if they hadnt bee directly from heaven? The play didly tell you in the end-it sort of plays into faith and all-but Hegbert didnt trust ghosts if they werent actually sent by God, which wasnt explained in plain language, and this was his big problem with it. A few years back hed ged the end of the play-sort of followed it up with his own version, plete with old man Scrooge being a preacher and all, heading off to Jerusalem to find the place where Jesus oaught the scribes. It didnt fly too well-not even to the gregation, who sat in the audiearing wide-eyed at the spectacle-and the neer said things like "Though it was certainly iing, it wasly the play weve all e to know and love. . . ."
So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own play. Hed written his own sermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actually iing, especially whealked about the "wrath of God ing down on the fornicators" and all that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling, Ill tell you, whealked about the fornicators. That was hi