Roy and his friend Jimmy Boyle were walking to school on a rainy morning when a car passed them going too fast and went out of control, skidding on its two right side wheels before crashing into a telephone pole. The woman who had been driving was thrown from the car and was lying in the street. Roy and Jimmy ran over to see if she was all right. She was on her back with her eyes closed and her mouth open but she was not bleeding. The driver was young, in her late teens or early twenties, and her dress was up around her waist exposing her bare legs and underwear. A few cars passed by without stopping.
“We should call an ambulance,” said Jimmy.
A man wearing denim overalls came out of an apartment building and looked at the girl.
“I heard noise,” he said. “I’m janitor here.”
“Call an ambulance,” said Roy.
“I call cops, too.”
The man went back into the building. The girl was not moving. She had fluffy, medium-length brown hair, high cheekbones, a short, straight nose and full red lips.
“She’s really pretty,” Roy said.
“You think we should pull down her dress?” asked Jimmy. “Cover her up?”
“Probably better not to touch her before the ambulance comes.”
“Think she’s dead?”
“She’s breathing. See? Her chest is going up and down.”
Rain was still falling lightly when two police cars arrived, followed a few seconds later by an ambulance. By this time a few passersby and residents of nearby houses were gathered on the sidewalk.
“Anybody see how this happened?” asked one of the cops.
“We did,” said Jimmy Boyle. “Roy and I were walkin’ to school and we seen the car skid and smash into the pole. It’s a ’56 Chevy.”
“Were there other cars on the road? Maybe coming toward her?”
“No,” said Roy, “just this one.”
He and Jimmy watched as the ambulance attendants tucked a blanket around the unconscious girl from the neck down and lifted her onto a gurney then loaded it into the wagon.
“She have any passengers?” the cop asked. “Anybody walk away from the vehicle after the collision?”
Both Roy and Jimmy shook their heads.
The janitor, who had come back out and was standing next to the boys, said, “I call ambulance. Nobody run.”
A tow truck arrived and one of the cops told the spectators to move away from the wrecked car. The ambulance drove off, its siren blaring.
“Okay, boys,” said the cop who’d been asking questions, “you’d better go on to school.”
Another cop came over and said, “Let’s go, Lou. Eisenhower’ll be at the Palmer House quarter to ten.”
“We’re late,” Jimmy said to the first cop. “Can you give us a note?”
He removed from one of his pockets a pad of traffic tickets, scribbled on it, ripped out the page and handed it to Jimmy.
“When you boys are old enough to drive remember not to speed on a wet street.”
Roy and Jimmy watched the tow truck guys attach cables to the car and signal to the winch operator to pull the car right side up. After that was done they hooked up the front bumper and hauled it away. The cops got back into their cars and headed for The Loop.
“I didn’t know the president was comin’ to Chicago today,” said Jimmy.
“What did the cop write?” Roy asked him.
Jimmy showed the yellow ticket page to Roy, who read it out loud.
“These two boys witnessed a traffic accident this A.M. Car hit pole corner Granville and Washtenaw approx. 8:45. Please excuse them being late. Ofc. P. Madigan, Badge 882.”
“Look at this,” said Jimmy.
Lying next to the curb where the car had been on its side was a pink make-up compact with a cracked cover. Jimmy picked it up.
“Maybe she was puttin’ on make-up while she drove,” he said, and put the compact into his right jacket pocket.
“You gonna keep it?”
“Yeah. If the cops come back to inspect the scene I don’t want her to get in trouble.”
The janitor and the other observers had all gone back into their houses and the boys began walking toward the school.
“You’re right,” Jimmy said.
“About what?”
“She was pretty. Her legs and everything.”
“I felt bad,” said Roy, “lookin’ at her that way. Part naked, I mean. I hope her neck’s not broken.”
“Me, too. I couldn’t stop lookin’ either.”
That afternoon in American History Roy was reading about the war with the Apache Indians on the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1870s when he thought about the girl. He wondered if Apaches came across a white woman lying alone and unconscious on a desert trail, maybe thrown from a horse, would they have stopped to help her or leave her to burn in the sun and be nibbled by insects and torn apart by coyotes. He knew that the Apaches did not take scalps but they did bury living enemies up to their necks in the ground and lather their faces with tiswin—corn liquor—in order to attract killer ants that ate out their eyeballs and invaded their noses and ears.
After school Roy asked Jimmy Boyle what he thought the Apaches would have done and Jimmy said, “Are you kiddin’? Those young bucks wouldn’t leave a pretty girl to rot. Not once they seen her legs.”