—SIR JOHN VANBRUGH THE FIRST time I saw Charles I was in ninth grade. As I boarded the school bus that day, I was struck by the handsome driver with the sharp blue eyes and easy, wide smile. In fact, I was smitten. Now I had a whole new subject to study on the way to and from school. The regular driver, Charles’s father, had found full-time carpentry work, and so Charles, a high school senior, replaced him, driving the bus for the rest of the year. Since my stop was the first on Charles’s route, I was always the first on the bus. Once those doors closed behind me, I wouldn’t even sit down. I’d drape myself over the metal bar next to Charles and start talking. As we bounced over the rocky dirt road in the early morning, I’d often interrupt our conversation with a playful “Watch out for the pothole!” Charles always said that he’d noticed me several months beforehand when for the first time I walked into Asberry Baptist Church one day wearing my red sling-back shoes. My family didn’t attend church, but I’d convinced my mother to let me go to the closest church in our community.
