I Poked a Dead Squirrel With a Stick

by Wilkinson Riling

I was eight years old when an event took place that haunts me to this day like a ghost story from childhood or a bad dream long faded but not forgotten. At times the memory of it comes back to me in a mix of sensations; visual, audible, taste and smell, but most of all, devoid of fear.

It was a sluggish summer day. Humidity kept us indoors. Mother gave my older brother and I a cookie each, sending us outside and out from underfoot. It was a chewy oatmeal cookie half the size of your face. Mother understood the art of bribery, instead of the threat of a kick in the pants, which was Dad's go to; she hit us in our weak spot, our sweet tooth.

Out we went to sit on our front porch steps and enjoy our snack, surrendering to the wet warmth of a sultry August midday filled with the sound of chittering cicadas. I was a slow eater, a nibbler, whereas my brother finished his treat in three voracious bites.

He was dusting his hands getting ready to decide what we should do next when an ear piercing screech of a noise, followed by what I can only describe as a sonic thunderclap, broke the calm, silencing the cicadas. The sound itself felt as if it warped the very air where we sat. I felt the shockwave in my stomach.

It originated one street over. My brother shot to his feet. "Accident! C'mon!" A sound like that wasn't common, certainly not one that loud, but every suburban Philly neighborhood had it's share of fender benders. This was a big one. We were off running towards the sound's origin, joining a dozen other kids and neighbors coming out from their houses to investigate. I held my cookie tight while trying to keep up with my brother.

We scampered through well traveled shortcuts, over lawns and fences, through hedges, to reach the corner at the top of the street two blocks away from our house. There, we saw a large car stalled in the middle of the street. A growing crowd beginning to obscure it. My brother and I had a gift for squeezing through any crowd to get to the front for the best views. It included shoulder taps, side turns and mastering tight spaces to arrive at the head of the pack of gawkers.

What greeted me, quite frankly, was a sight too confusing for my eight year old brain to completely absorb. Two cars had plowed into each other. The bigger car, stopped dead in the center of the intersection, I learned was a Cadillac. A black man on the chunky side, with graying top and facial hair, was being assisted out of his driver's side with the help of two people from the crowd checking to see if he was alright. He looked stunned and confused. The front end of his car had a deep dent, the hood was crunched and raised just enough to allow the release of steam from the radiator. Oil pooled on the ground.

Most of the people had their attention focused on the much smaller vehicle and seemed afraid to move. The car itself was a bright yellow Volkswagen bug, I didn't know the year. Its whole front was accordioned flat against the Cadillac. The front tires raised an inch off the ground.

I can still see the driver in my mind's eye as if it were yesterday and I will never forget her. The driver side door was open. A young woman hung out of the car sideways and upside down with her legs hooked beneath the steering column, the rest of her stretched out on the asphalt. She was dressed all in white. The kind of white I'd see on the shirts Mother picks up at the dry cleaners. It was even brighter in the summer sun. The side of the lady's head was split open, part of her blonde hair soaked dark in a puddle of blood. A nurse's hat lay a few feet away. If you took away the blood, she looked like she was asleep dreaming. She was beautiful. Her face was as calm as a sleeping angel.

This was my first experience smelling blood. I remember the copper-like tinge to it and an underlying strange sweetness. Like the sweet smell that comes from dying flowers. Much different than my cookie, for sure, which bizarrely, I was still eating staring numbly at the grotesque scene. My brother tried to pull me behind him but I shrugged him off. I was trying to understand what was happening. I was completely intrigued by this angelic nurse lying unconscious before me. I heard whispers of adults saying she was dead. I didn't know what that meant exactly. I had just a rudimentary understanding of the concept "people die." I had never been this close to a dead person. In fact, other than playing dead in games of army, my experience with death up to that point was a couple of us kids poking a dead squirrel with a stick to see if it would move.

The EMT and cops arrived and the crowd was pushed back to the sidewalk. They gently wrapped her head with a bandage, carefully lifted her to a gurney and quickly wheeled her past me to the awaiting ambulance. I heard the men discuss what hospital they should take her to, Chestnut Hill being the closest, but because of her head trauma, they decided on Jefferson in Center City. I took that as a good sign she was still alive. I wanted the angel to live. I continued to stare mesmerized with a mouthful of oatmeal cookie as they loaded her in the ambulance wondering how would I ever know what would become of her?

My brother knocked the remainder of the cookie from my hand and ordered me home. The other kids waited around to watch the tow trucks go to work. but my brother had seen enough. We took the long way, not speaking much. As we got to our front stairs I asked him if he thought she'd be okay. He shrugged, "I guess so." was all he said.

That answer wasn't enough for me. That night I added the nurse to my bedtime prayers. The next day I woke early and ran to get the morning paper from the porch. I had learned to read by the time I was six thanks to the daily and Sunday Funnies but now I was searching for something more important than Steve Canyon. I turned the pages scanning for accident reports. Deep in the paper, halfway down the first column, there was a small headline. "Mt. Airy - Car Accident - Two Injured." It went on to describe the head-on accident in which both drivers were hospitalized. A man in his fifties was sent to Chestnut Hill for a heart attack suffered after the collision. A young woman of 24 suffered a brain injury. She was a nurse, at Jefferson of all places! They said she was in something called a coma.

Yes, I knew how to read, but I didn't know what that word meant. Mother would explain it to me later. She said a coma was like a deep sleep, like Sleeping Beauty. Mother was always honest with me. She told me sometimes they wake up, sometimes they don't. She said that's why we need to be thankful for everyday we do wake up. Mother then asked me who was I talking about. I said the newspaper didn't give her name, but I could've told them it was "Angel."

I scoured the morning paper for weeks after that article, but was never to learn what became of her. Throughout my life I fantasized that if she had passed on maybe she became my guardian angel. I don't know why? She didn't know me, I didn't know her, and despite the traumatic visual burned into my memory, she left a lasting impression on me about the fragility of life. One that you never get from poking a dead squirrel with a stick.