Nina

NINA

Drawing by © Lonely Shell

   She sat next to me on the bus nearly every day, right next to me, against me. Sometimes her back was turned to me so she could talk with her girlfriends. Sometimes she sat aside me, facing front. Either way she sat, the narrow seats made it impossible to avoid contact with her warmth. Even when she chose to sit alone, because there happened to be empty seats, I felt her warmth drifting on the subtle faintness of her perfume. It felt like I was sitting near a radiant campfire, even through my winter clothes.
        It was her red hair that fascinated me most of all. She was thin, short, and her hair was shoulder length, a soft reddish brown color. The color was gentle, lacking the bright hardness of red without taking on the muddiness of brown. A perfect match to freckles peppered across her face which often displayed a dazzling smile. Like most redheads, her hair was somewhat coarse in texture, but the highlights and shine, the calmness of the color, masked anything typical.
        We were high school lab partners and nothing more. “We can never be more than good friends,” she told me. “I want you to deliver my children,” she told me. “You are very smart and will be a wonderful doctor.” I would rather she had said “I want to have your children.” I wanted to hear her say, “Let’s play doctor.”
        Nina and I were seniors in the honors chemistry course where independent study was allowed as long as you didn’t blow up the school or make LSD and sell it. There were many late afternoons in the laboratory after school, together, alone. Just her, me and her perfume, which I tried to duplicate as part of my project in Spring, near the end of the school term. I was hoping to manufacture a gallon or so for her, a lifetime supply, since we would be graduating soon and I knew that I would never see her again.

“Will you write to me?” I asked.

“What? Write what?”

“Letters, I would like us to keep in touch.”

“What? Whatever for?” She answered, wrinkling her nose in that cute way that melted my heart each time. I never tired of looking in those pale blue eyes, so filled with sparkle and life and happiness. Even when one of our experiments went wrong and released a cloud of foul smelling gas, the look of revulsion on her face was endearing to me. I thought she had never looked more beautiful than that moment when she wrinkled her nose and frowned at the same time

“I want to deliver your babies,” I answered. “I want to know how things are going with you. I want to keep in touch.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling that impish smile. “Oh, sure. I’ll write to you and you can write to me.”

        At that, my heart beat faster and a flush rosied my cheeks. I loved her, completely, innocently with every cell in my body, but I knew she could not love me, a fat, shy, quiet boy, who, on his best days, was utterly boring, and on his worst days, never said a word to anyone without turning a screaming hot red and sweating. But I had dreaded the arrival of Spring, because I knew it meant that I would never see her again. Duplicating her perfume and manufacturing a gallon of it would give me something that I could use to call up powerful memories of her, since I would keep some of it, and she would have something to remember me by.
        The formula was not complicated, but it was a little difficult finding all the ingredients, so I substituted whenever I ran into a problem. Nina and I had made soap the week prior to my perfume experiment and scented it with some oils she bought. Unfortunately for us, we left the soap ingredients cooking while we both walked to the library. It was one of those late nights at school when there was not a lot of student activity. The janitor took it upon himself to lock the lab door, then go home. We returned to see the beaker of soap ingredients cooking away merrily on top of the Bunsen Burner. The soap had turned a deep brown color until we located someone with a lab key. No amount of oils could hide the smell.
        I was determined to make sure this perfume would not suffer the same fate as the soap so I was very careful. I tested it on myself and sort of liked the results. I decided one day that it was close enough to the perfume she used so sparingly and effectively. Of course, it would mix with Nina’s body chemistry and have a different odor than if I wore it, so I wasn’t worried. And I had made a over a gallon of the stuff, so I kept a pint.

The day I gave it to her, a small perfume bottle with the gallon jug for refill, it was hot, sunny and unreasonably humid which made her own perfume even more noticeable. She took the little bottle, sniffed it, and then she smiled.

“Perfect! How did you do this?”

        “Just a little something I whipped up,” I said.

        “This is great! I love this scent. Thank you so much! I am going to try some right now.” And opened the bottle to apply some to the pulse point of her neck.

I expected that the perfume would cause a flaming hole to burn through her or cause her flesh to blister, but nothing of the sort happened. And the scent was very nearly identical to her favorite cologne. She smiled and gave my arm a squeeze.

“George, you are a genius!”

She told me that she liked my formula, my little concoction, much better than her regular perfume and splashed it on herself every morning. “It’s not as strong,” she said, “and it smells better! Thanks, George!” This made me very happy for the next few weeks.

        Graduation was 3 weeks away when Nina went missing. There was an investigation but it seemed like she disappeared, vanished without reason. The police suspected a kidnapping and her mother and stepfather were devastated. But there was no ransom note, no evidence of abduction at all, except that her school books were strewn along the path to her house.
        Her footprints testified that she walked half of the way along the wooded lane alone when the muddy impressions became mixed up with the prints of horse hooves. The hoof prints continued down the lane, across the front and rear of the house, then disappeared on rocky ground. The pouring rain had washed away all hope of finding anything more. The same prints reappeared every day for one week after her disappearance and never again after that.
        I was miserable too, of course. I began driving myself to school because I could not bear riding the bus without her.

        Summer came and, when it was half gone, I had a few extra dollars so I decided to buy a horse. I love horses and my parents had moved us to a small farm with a decent barn and nice grassy fields. Besides, my little brother and sister got horses and it looked like fun. I figured I may as well get in on the fun since I was doing most of the work anyway.
        Finding a horse was no problem. Finding a horse I liked and could afford was a challenge. But I kept at it and met a lot of people. Most were nice but some were not so nice and it showed in the way they treated their animals. I wanted to buy freedom for these poor, starving beasts, but college was right around the corner and I needed tuition money.
        I did find a horse with no name. The seller was a kindly old countrified woman who was more clever than she appeared, a good horse trader in other words. She also sold all the accessories like saddles, bridles, bits, boots and so on at good prices and had promised to keep an eye open for a horse for me.

“Why, I just got a nice mare in for you. She was broke to cut steers, or so they said” she said in her Dutch accent.

She took me out to the stable and walked me past several horses until we were at the end stall. It was dark in there after coming in from the bright sun, but light enough to see the shine of each animal’s freshly slicked coat.
The mare’s eyes widened as we approached her, giving her the appearance of a wild horse. She bobbed her head up and down excitedly and stamped her hooves on the concrete as if pleading to be let out so she could run and play. I got close enough to her to see that she was a brownish color, well muscled and perfectly sound. She was a tall girl, nearly 15 hands and had all the qualities of a good American Quarterhorse. She was a little to big for barrel racing or show, but seemed to have good legs, teeth and a satisfactory spirit, not too wild, not too gentle.

“We forgot this one’s name, but she has a brand on her. Came from a cattle ranch in Texas. Ain’t that right Roy?” she shouted over to her husband who was mucking out a stall.

Roy never heard our conversation, but agreed with her anyway. He seemed to agree to anything she said.

“Yup, she just showed up at the ranch, they said. Never heard of the brand either. Hey, look at that! She likes you already.”

The mare was playing with my shirt and pushed against my back with her nose several times. She used enough force to make me have to try hard to keep my balance.
I entered her stall and examined her legs, hooves, and teeth. For all I knew about horses at that time, she could have been ready to drop dead or win a steeplechase. I would not have known the difference. But to keep up my image as a great horseman, I pronounced her a perfect match for my skills and extolled her excellent health.

“Sold!” I said when she gave me a really good price.

“We will bring her out to you tomorrow,” she said. “Think of a good name.”

The next day the horse trailer, pulled along by a pickup truck with a sign that read “Lazy K Ranch” on its side, arrived at my Mom and Dad’s little farm. Roy got out of the truck and dropped the ramp to the trailer and backed the mare out.
In the fresh, bright morning sun I saw immediately that her color was nothing like I remembered in the dark stable. It took on a reddish cast, a soft reddish brown color that was neither a perfect red, nor a muddy brown. They had groomed her well before the ride over here, and her coat shined with luminous highlights and a softness that seemed familiar to me.

“Well now,” said Roy. “Why, have you thought of a name for her yet? I was thinking once that you could call her Reddy.” He laughed at his own cleverness. “She’s a red horse.”

I stared, unable to move my eyes from her, and walked up to take the lead rope from Roy. And just like the day before, she nodded her head up and down excitedly and nuzzled into me once I was within the reach of her head.

“Hey now, is she lookin’ you in the eyes?”

“I swear she is Roy. Hey, I never noticed that brand yesterday.”

“Yup, the Cirlce N ranch, I guess. I never heard of it, but there it is.” Roy turned to get back in his truck, but not without asking one more time, “So, what are you goning to call her?”

My mouth disconnected completely from my body and took on a life of its own. I had that feeling that you sometimes get when you are thinking something and suddenly you hear yourself speaking the thought without realizing that you said it out loud. It just popped out of me.

“Nina,” I said. “I’m naming her Nina.”

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