Edited by Barney R. Further messed with by me. All errors are my fault.

I was walking the trails of my property on a fine late spring day when I heard a car speeding down our road. The road is a two-lane gravel road and while it is in a straight line about a mile and a quarter long, only about 200 yards are flat. This car must have been doing 70 miles an hour on a road that I drive every day at no more than thirty to thirty-five on.

Then it happened. Either a sound I made or the sound of the speeding car startled them and a big doe and two fawns jumped out of my property to run across the road.

I heard brakes squeal, and the sound of gravel hitting metal. Then I heard the thud and sounds of a car hitting something that didn’t move. I was about 30 yards from the road, but a fence and the undergrowth were big obstacles so it took at least a minute and maybe two to get to the road. What I saw was the speeding car had torn up the road as it had tried to stop. It had skidded sideways, and one or more of the tires must have blown or been ripped off the rim because I could see where the wheels had dug in and the car flipped over at least twice as near as I could tell from the damage to the road. The car was back at the correct stance, but tried to remove a 150 year old Black Oak tree at the ground.

The car was trashed, and I really did not think anyone would survive in it, the engine compartment was compressed to about 18 inches.

When I got to the car, I could see that the driver was dead. His head was at an unusual angle, and his chest looked like it had been hit by a boulder. The engine moving back had caused the dash and steering wheel to pin the driver to his seat. I smelled a strong whiskey smell, and I figured that he was drunk.

On the passenger side was a girl. Not a woman, but a girl; she looked to be maybe 16 or 17, and quite petite. The airbags and seat belt had obviously helped, because I could see she was breathing. She was also in sort of a cocoon of space as the dash on her side had not moved. She also was not bleeding from any major injuries. Nothing looked askew in her limbs that I could see. I was more than a little worried about her because besides her seat belt, she was tied tightly with rope over her hands and feet.

The girl started to come around. She moaned and her eyelids fluttered.

I tried to open the passenger side door. It wouldn’t budge. I had my cell phone with me, but had zero bars¹. I finally crawled through the back window and did what I could for the girl. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. I managed to scrape my back on the bent window frame. The girl had lapsed back to semi unconsciousness.

Once I got in the car, I turned the key off, and the doors unlocked. I got the girl out, untied her, and laid her down on one of the blankets that were in the back seat of the car. I covered her with another blanket and told her that I was going up to my house and calling emergency services. She nodded, but I was not sure how much she understood, she was still pretty much out of it.

When I reached the house I called 911 and got a dispatcher. I requested an ambulance, a sheriff’s officer, and a coroner. I explained that the driver was dead, and smelled strongly of alcohol.

The dispatcher asked that I stay on the line. I explained that the injured passenger was at the accident scene and was possibly in shock or concussed, so I was bringing a blanket to her to keep her warm.

I ended the call, and soon I was back covering the girl, I heard the first of the sirens. The first vehicle was our volunteer fire department rescue vehicle. Frank Carson was driving it. He was a neighbor down the road, and kept the rescue vehicle at his home.

He no sooner got stopped when two county sheriff’s cars arrived, and when the deputy got out, she turned and waved for the ambulance to pull along side of where I had the girl laying.

The first deputy was Sandy Godfrey, another neighbor. She was also a poker partner for our weekly games at my place. She was also a ‘shark’ when we played. We had a couple of fish in our game, some ‘break even’ people, I was one, but she was a constant winner.

Me, I am Jerry Haskell, and at the time of all the excitement, I was 25, and the lucky winner of a huge boatload of lottery money. So much that when I went for the thirty year payout I have a whole lot of spending money and a million plus a year to add to my trust fund. I used some of my first year’s winnings to buy a 640 acre piece of woods and swamp that a developer overextended himself on. He was planning on clear cutting a large part of the middle and building a small community on it with site condos. His big problem was location, location, location. He planned to build more than 10 miles from any town of any size. He needed to sell 10 lots before he could start and after a year of no sales, the bank took it over.

I then went and signed up for an online college as I didn’t think I wanted to spend four years sitting on my ass learning what the college wanted me to learn. I was taking a strong liberal arts curriculum and if there was a required discipline, I took the class that interested me most in that discipline

I do work, but it is an almost minimum wage job part-time for the local Hope Network. I teach the developmentally disabled young people how to cope in the world. I teach basic math (checkbook style) and the dangers of credit card debt. I also teach basic home maintenance so that the students could at least get a job as a maid, housekeeping, or janitor in the hospitality industry.

Back to the second deputy, Ralph Peters, he walked up to me and asked what happened. I explained; “I didn’t see what occurred, but I heard the car was tearing down the roadway too fast, and then one of the does from my acreage decided to cross the road with her brood. Then the car’s brakes squealed and I heard a loud crash of metal bending against an immovable object.”

I continued, “I got out of the woods and saw the wreck. I went to give what help I could, but the driver was dead, and smelled of alcohol. I would bet he was very drunk. The passenger was in a little cocoon of space, and was starting to moan. I couldn’t get in through the doors as the car was still in gear and the ignition was on. I climbed through the back window, unlocked the doors and got the girl out and treated her for potential shock. One thing you need to focus on was when I got to her, she was still in the seat, and her hands and feet were tied.”

As I was finishing my report to Ralph, one of the other deputies came over and asked if I knew the people in the car. It seems that neither of them had any identification on them. The deputy said the car’s title was in the glove box and was blank. The license plate was from a trailer, and did not belong to the car and probably not to the driver.

He then said that the girl was semiconscious and apparently had been drugged. They were taking her to the local hospital, but until she was fully conscious and able to answer any questions, they were going to list her as a Jane Doe.