She called me James rather than Jimmy like everyone else. James, it was always James; I called her Nance and listened to her dreams of owning horse ranches or going to Kentucky where she would raise thoroughbreds. We rode the same school bus for ten years, good old 48. She had long, flaxen hair and blue eyes with a little hard glint, as if she had seen too much. She had started filling out in the sixth grade, and by eighth began to attract attention from older boys.
"This is my horse, James; I call him Starlight because I only get to ride him at night. You know, James, in my dreams. I ride Star in my dreams." We followed her horse-which was really Clyde Ferguson's stallion--along a small creek into a long copse of trees into the balmy June afternoon.
I suppose I thought she was beautiful in the shy, retiring way of a boy in the hazy dream of childhood. I was probably more fascinated with her love of horses in those days. I have never met anyone before or since so obsessed with horses.
We were different in most ways. I was a studious overachiever wrapped up in astronomy books and chemistry sets. She was not a very good student. Of course; I don't think that she ever studied. She had the brains, and she was exceptional at times in language and literature, but she never tried very hard except when a horse was involved. She drew wonderful pictures of horses in various media, though charcoal was her favorite. She also wrote powerful poems about her horses, almost gifted poems for one so young.
"He comes to visit me every night," James, "My coal-black horse, covered with moons and stars, he's magic my quick, black stallion, beating in my heart."
I still remember Mrs. Davis, our ninth grade teacher, holding up a charcoal drawing of that black stallion that had won a blue ribbon in the Virginia Junior High School Art Contest. Nancy had written a poem about this horse too; she gave me a copy, which I still have after all these years.
I keep it folded up in a box with a few other treasures of childhood: My Ryne Duren (Yankees) baseball card, a few yet unapprised comic books (Superman #56, Lone Ranger #86), a QSL card with a picture of a mountain peak and the words "Three Watts from Ecuador" printed across it. My father was an amateur radio operator, and the "Hams" exchanged QSL cards with each other to verify their radio contacts; I have forgotten what the letters actually stand for.
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