CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vernon Koenig was driving north out of Fond du Lac on his way to Appleton in his 1941 Ford half-ton pickup truck. He was the first on the scene, maybe two minutes behind Connie and Carl. He, himself, had almost become a part of the carnage and would have, had it not been for the fact that he was driving his pickup truck extremely slowly, taking care not to scratch its expensive cargo, a top of the line casket tied down in the bed of his truck. He was a student at Lawrence University in Appleton, working his way through college by making deliveries with his truck. At least once a month, he’d haul a new casket or two between the two mortuaries owned by the Krause Funeral Homes, one in Fond du Lac and one in Appleton.
His headlights instantly revealed what had happened—something awful, beyond anything his imagination could come up with. Vernon stopped twenty feet short of the twisted, smoking mass of obliterated metal frames, doors and fenders, and everything else that makes up a truck and a car. He didn’t know how it had happened, and he didn’t need to. It was evident to him that there had been a very bad collision, most likely a head on, he was thinking, because what he saw was two vehicles that were entirely merged, but it was hard to tell in that grotesquely twisted mass of metal. He knew there would be bodies in the mess, although he couldn’t see any from his truck. He jumped out of his truck and walked slowly, fearful of what he might see and not believing anyone could possibly have survived an accident like that.
As he walked, he saw another set of headlights coming his way from the north and was immediately fearful that they hadn’t yet seen the vehicles piled across the road. His fears quickly dissipated, as the oncoming vehicle slowed to a stop on the other side of the collision. He and the other people, a young couple named Alice and Eli, ran up to each other, all horrified by the scene in front of them, which was now illuminated on both sides by their headlights. Two more pairs of headlights were creeping up to the scene, and the danger of it getting worse seemed to be over.
Already shivering from the cold, the threesome immediately knew they needed to undertake the ghoulish task of finding the bodies, although Alice hung back, frozen more by fear of what they might find than by the rapidly descending temperature. Eli and Vernon spoke loudly to each other of their hope to find someone alive, but in their hearts, they couldn’t imagine that anyone could possibly have survived the impact that had occurred, and each quickly concluded that no one could have survived in that cold for very long, in any condition, especially injured. God Almighty, it was cold. Nonetheless, the two men quickly moved in because they could see bodies, or what looked like bodies. Discovery took less than a minute.
Eli was the first to call out: “Truck driver’s dead!” He saw that the driver was literally squished in the cab, which had collapsed like a crushed Dixie cup.
Vernon stopped a few feet short of the mangled steel of what was once the frontend of the car, looking as if it had tried to insert itself into the heavy steel underbelly of the truck. There wasn’t much left of either vehicle that could be identified as front or back or any particular piece. Then he saw two mangled bodies, almost side by side, their torsos wrapped in bloody coats. Blood was everywhere around them.
Eli stepped up to Vernon’s side, both less than five feet from the driver’s body, or what must have been the driver. The body was headless, and the head had ceased to exist in any shape that was recognizable as a head. Brains, or what looked like brains, were mixed everywhere with viscera spewing out of the neck. It was a big red mess that turned their stomachs. Eli turned around, buckled over, and emptied the contents of his stomach on the pavement.
Vernon stepped forward. He had seen injured dead bodies at the mortuaries, but that didn’t make it easy to accept what was in front of him. Moving his eyes slowly in the poor lighting over the other body, he took yet another step closer. It could be a woman, he thought to himself. He could see long, blood-soaked, blonde hair and a hand grotesquely entwined in the strands. Suddenly, the hand twitched.
Vernon nearly jumped out of his boots. He leaned forward and held his breath, willing himself to have a steady eye and praying that he would see some more movement, that it wasn’t just his imagination. The hand moved again, barely.
“Help!” he cried out. “Help! Someone’s alive! She’s alive!”
Ten minutes later, five men and two women had, by sheer strength and courage in the face of this nightmare, miraculously extricated Connie from the twisted cage of steel and glass. It wouldn’t have been possible without some light from a couple of flashlights and muscle-straining work with a crowbar and a pike.
“God Almighty!” Eli called out upon seeing her set on the ground. He gagged again, but with his stomach already emptied, nothing came up this time.
Vernon cried out to Connie’s mangled body at his feet, not believing it would do any good, but he couldn’t help himself—he had to try: “You’ll be all right, ma’am. You’ll be all right!” He could barely recognize her battered body as a person. It was a miracle he could find his voice; no one else could find theirs. The sight of her was not for the faint-hearted. Those who had pulled her from the wreckage stood around the amorphous body that was covered in blood, not believing it held onto life—yet it did—and not believing that there was any hope, believing that death must be only minutes away for this poor soul, mercifully.
Connie lay on the cold, hard ground, unconscious on a blanket that someone had thrown down. Not much light was getting to her from the headlights of the surrounding cars, but flashlights were in a couple of hands. Strangers whom tragedy had brought together, numbering six or seven, saw something shockingly sorrowful as Connie lay there, her life force ebbing.
Eli had regained his composure. Although still dizzy, he saw that her jaw had been torn away and was hanging on the side of her head, attached only because a tendon on that side hadn’t been severed. Alice saw an eyeball dangling down the other side of Connie’s face, if “face” is what you could call what was there. Pieces of glass from the windshield that were embedded in her face eerily sparkled when caught in the light of their flashlights. For a second, it looked to Vernon like a leg was missing, but it was there, under her, folded under her and connected only by a sleeve of skin. Both of her arms were akimbo with splintered bones blatantly protruding.
Blood was everywhere, and it kept flowing. Warm and sticky, it got on everyone who had lent a hand. Less than a minute had passed since they had set her down, and they had to do something fast. Everyone knew that every second could mean the difference between life and death, although no one imagined that any one of the people standing over Connie had any hope. That this mangled woman could survive an accident like this could only mean a miracle. No one believed a miracle was in the making. No one.
Vernon was the first to break the silence of shock and cut through the miasma of death and despair. “Get her up,” he yelled, “Lift her up in that blanket! Use it like a hammock. Get her up, I say—quickly!” He continued to yell, which was the only way he knew to conquer his fear. “I’ve got a casket in the bed of my truck. Let’s put her in it!” He took command but was still yelling, and it was all he could do to stop his shivering. Everyone else was shivering too. “C’mon, move, people! I’ll open the casket! You put her in, close it, and I’ll drive like hell to St. Agnes in Fond du Lac!” He ran to his truck twenty-five feet away, jumped up on the bed, and with his pocketknife, cut the rope around the protective canvas so that he could get to the casket and open it up. His hands were too cold to untie the knots.
Some other man, a latecomer to the scene, took charge of the group in an effort to carry Connie in the blanket up to the open casket. No one believed they could save her, but no one wanted to believe they couldn’t. Once she was in it, it registered with Vernon that she was bleeding all over the satin bed and side panels. He’d have to deal with Mr. Krause later. Vernon slammed the coffin lid down. He wasn’t worried about her not getting any air; he was more worried about the deathly frigid air getting her
. He prayed that she wouldn’t bleed out.
Vernon wasted no time. Upon making a u-turn and getting clear of the other cars, he put his foot to the gas pedal, and the Ford pickup’s V-8 lurched forward, as Vernon took it through all three gears as quickly as possible. Just a short time ago he was taking his time driving up to Appleton, and now he was about to drive like a bat out of hell back to Fond du Lac to get this dying woman to the hospital, maybe—maybe—in time to save her life. He left the scene, and everyone ran to their cars for heat. Most would wait for the police to show up, while providing a warning to other drivers so that no one else would get killed. There was safety in numbers. They could wait—Connie couldn’t.
∞