The White Horse

      You don’t want to tell every story.  I remember one such story from my days as a referee.

     As part of being a registered referee, we had to attend two or three meetings for referees held during the season.  They held meetings twice a month or so, but we only had to attend two or three during the season.  The one we had to attend was the rules meeting held before the season started.

     The coaches also had to attend the rules meeting, so four or five of us loaded up and went.  When all the rules had been discussed and we departed, we made the mandatory visit to a local watering hole.  An hour or so later, in a much better mood, we started for home. 

      We were laughing and having a good time when a bright light zoomed across the sky seemingly right in our path.  There was a brief silence.  “Did you see that?” we all said. 

     We had had a drink or two.  Could we all be hallucinating the same hallucination?  Before we reached the lot where we had parked our cars a few hours before, we agreed not to say anything about what we saw.

     We abandoned our vows of silence a few short hours later.  Many folks had seen the same thing and were comparing notes the next morning at work.  The story even made the local news.  A piece of space junk burning up as it returned to earth’s atmosphere.  No need for us to keep mum.

     The white horse was seen by only one person, Uncle Ricky.  He wasn’t “Uncle” then.  He was my oldest brother.

     He was coming home late one night.  As usual, he was going hell-bent-for-election.  It must have been ’58 or’59.  He was driving his ’50 Ford with its three speed on the column and the overdrive lever below the dash on the left side.  It would go fast.  And usually did.

       He came up a rise in the road near an old homestead site, the only remnants being a few  bushes along the side of the road.  Suddenly, a white horse dashed out of the bushes and into the road in front of him.

     He hit the brakes and went into a skid.  He missed the horse and began to deal with straightening out the skid.  As he whizzed past, the horse turned into a woman wearing a white nightgown.

     As soon as he could divert his attention from avoiding a one-car accident, he looked back.  Nothing.

     I don’t remember when he told me the story.  The next day?  A few days later?  I just remember that he did tell me the story.  Who else did he tell?  I don’t know.

      Years past.  Somehow, at a family gathering, that incident came up in the presence of Uncle Walter.  When Ricky said the horse turned into a woman in a white nightgown, Uncle said, immediately, “Maria Ange”(MAW-rrree-uh) (AN-gee).  “Going across the road to do chores.”

      Uncle went on to reminisce about the Ange family, who would have been their close neighbors in the olden homestead days.  Otto, he said, would have been a good politician, worked hard for the Republican Party, but couldn’t run for office because he didn’t speak English well.  What else did he say that I don’t remember?

      I don’t remember the story ever coming up again after that gathering.  But something set me to thinking about it lately.

      Some stories are built, like a snowball, with a small nucleus that gets expanded layer by layer.  The time gap between layers of this story span years.  I can’t help but feel that there are more layers to be added.

      Why would Maria haunt the abandoned homestead site?  What would bring her back to a lonely place with only bushes to indicate that humans once lived there?  What was her story?  Why, after many years, would I think of this incident?