Chapter 5

I hated the expressways that we had to use to get to and from work, but Janice relished the challenge of driving on them, so I learned to keep my mouth shut. We were headed home one day on an expressway when we saw a car burst into flame. Of course, everybody was driving too damned fast for that much traffic, so there was a chain-reaction collision ahead of us. Janice proved that she was a superlative driver and managed to bring us to a stop without hitting any other cars or being hit.

It was obvious that this was a major accident and it was going to take a while for emergency vehicles to get to it. I jumped out of the car and yelled to Janice, "STAY WITH THE CAR!" I ran toward the burning car, figuring that was going to be the place where the worst injuries were. Two adult women were in the front seat, and they were both dead from major burns and tears to their flesh. However, on the back seat was an infant who seemed to have survived the accident. Nevertheless, the car was burning so freely that it would not be long before the flames reached the child.

This was a four-door car, so it would be easy to reach the child if the door would open. Well, it was bent and would not open. I grabbed the door handle and jerked on the door. It did open enough to let me get my fingers between the door and the body of the car. I grasped the door with both hands and placed one foot against the car body. I heaved as hard as I could, and the door was ripped from the car. I did not pause in getting the baby out of the car. I grabbed the straps holding the carrier in place and ripped them out by the roots.

The carrier holding the child was now free of restraint, so I pulled it out of the car and looked for a place to put the child. Traffic in the other direction was stalled, so I ran across the median strip and shoved the baby at the first woman in a car that I came to. I said, "Please take care of the baby until the firemen get here. I need to see if I can help anybody else." The woman nodded and I left her. I never again saw her or the baby.

I ran back across the median to look at the other cars in the accident. The second car in line had a man driver encased in deflated airbags. He looked okay to me, so I moved down the line to the next car. This one had four men who were obviously commuters headed home from a busy day. Here, too, were deflated airbags, and the men looked okay. However, the driver asked me to help him get his door open. One of the men in the back seat appeared to have a broken arm, and the driver was an instructor in first aid. That sounded like a good idea, so I pulled like I had on the first car and quickly had the door open. I helped the man get a rear door open before I went to the next car.

This one was a disaster! None of the occupants had been wearing seat belts, and the car was an old one with a minimum of airbags. The inside of the car was covered with blood, and everybody seemed to be dead. I left the doors open and looked at the next car. It had been stopped before it had collided with the next car in line, so there were no injuries here, just some very shook-up people.

This seemed to be the end of the damage, so I went back a few more cars to where Janice was stopped. She said, "Oh, Jimmy. I saw what you did, and you scared me to death, but I want you to know that I am so very proud of you. I'll show you how much tonight in bed!"

My God! I never expected to hear anything like that from Janice. It sounded to me like she had at last shaken the demons that had been with her since high school. We held hands and sat and talked until the authorities had cleaned up enough of the mess for us to get by. Somehow, I had managed to remain anonymous, though the newspapers were full of stories of "the hero of the Dan Ryan Expressway." A TV copter had managed to photograph a little of me in action, but the picture was always at such an angle that my face could not be seen. That was a relief, and I hoped that I never got any closer than that to being recognized.

The story of the accident was the talk of the shop the next day, and I admitted that Janice and I had been caught in the traffic jam, but I would never admit to being close enough to see anything of the hero. I didn't say anything else about the accident except that Janice and I held hands and talked while we waited for the mess to be cleaned up. That statement produced a few snickers, but it never went any farther than that.

Two weeks later, I was crossing a busy street when I was bumped by a truck. I thought nothing of it except that my pants leg was torn where I was hit by the heavy truck's bumper. It was a section of channel iron welded to the frame of the truck, so it was easy to see why the driver did not even know that he had hit me. I would have ignored the whole thing, except that I did look around to see what had hit me, and I saw a slight dent in the bumper. I couldn't be sure that the impact with my leg had put it there, but I did begin to wonder. Other than tearing my pants, the only effect the truck had on me was to push me aside. I attributed that to our differences in mass. I only mentioned this to Janice when I asked her to sew up the small tear.

Things finally came to a head in November. Bill normally did the job, but he was not able to navigate the light snowfall in his wheelchair; therefore, I was volunteered to take the week's receipts to the bank to deposit them in our account. We had a very good safe in Bill's office, so we did not feel the need to go to the bank every day, but none of us wanted to leave that much money in the safe over the weekend. Very few jobs came in on Friday, so I had the time to make the run to the bank.

The trip was only five blocks, but the damned weather was looking bad, so I decided to drive instead of walk. I parked in the bank parking lot and went inside. We had let ourselves run out of deposit slips, so I had to pick up some before our next deposit, though we did have enough for this deposit. However, since I had to go into the bank anyway, I figured to go up to a teller instead of using the night-deposit hatch. Besides, the weather was bad, and I was no masochist.

I stood in line and was about to be the next person called to a teller when the front door burst open and three men came in waving shotguns. "THIS IS A ROBBERY! EVERYBODY ON THE FLOOR!" I was not the least bit tempted to mix in at this point because it would be too easy for somebody to be seriously injured by a shotgun.

Unfortunately, it was obvious that I was carrying a bag of money for deposit, so one of the robbers bent over me and demanded that I give him my bag. Honestly, I am not sure exactly what happened at this point, but I kind of went crazy. We had worked hard for that money, and there was no way I was going to give it up.

The robbers shotgun was pointing toward the ceiling, so I was not directly in line for a shot. Maybe that was why I swung the heavy bag of money so that the crook was swept off his feet. He landed on his back and smashed his head against the marble floor. I caught a glimpse of blood under his head as I continued to spin around and rise to a standing position. I grabbed up his shotgun and fired at one of the crooks who was well away from any customers or bank staff.

I didn't know if I hit him at that time, but he dropped his shotgun as he dropped to the floor. I knew how to handle a pump-action shotgun, so I worked in a new shell and pointed my shotgun at the other robber. Again, I am not sure what went on at that moment, but that crook dropped his shotgun and held up his hands.

It was only a minute or so later that the cops arrived. One of the tellers had tripped the silent alarm. The cops showed up and pointed their guns at me, so I put down the shotgun and tried to explain what had happened. The cops relaxed when I put the shotgun down because everybody else in the bank was shouting that I was a good guy.