The Tragic Events of September - Part I

Are you there Evelyn? Yes, of course I am I'm always here What's the matter, Evelyn? I'm frightened It's that time of year again isn't it Evelyn? Yes, it is that time of year again Evelyn Tell me once more how it all happened Evelyn Hush now, we don't talk about that Because it makes us sad Evelyn I won't be sad this time, I promise, please? Tell me again about the tragic events of September Evelyn The year is 1985, St. Elmo's Fire is at the top of the charts The wreckage of the Titanic has just been discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean And on a small farm on the Kansas-Colorado border A young mother is about to give birth The local doctor has predicted twins Which gladdens the hearts of the woman and her husband Who could certainly use the extra help around the farm But the birth does not go well The terrified father drives his screaming, hemorrhaging wife to the local clinic A poorly funded facility housed in a converted airstream trailer The presiding physician is Dr. Charlie von Coop A local denture maker of dubious training with eccentric religious beliefs The labor is long and painful and Louisa Neville A Mennonite girl who had given up a promising career as a legal assistant To join her first and only love on the run down farm That was his only inheritance (may her soul rest forever in peace) Is pronounced dead by the doctor at 11:23 A.M. on the eleventh day of September Precisely 12 minutes after the birth of her twin daughters The girls are Parapagus Tripus Dibrachius twins Conjoined at the side and sharing between them Three legs, two arms, two hearts, three lungs and a single liver Without hesitating, Dr. von Coop places the infants on the operating table Muttering biblical quotations of doubtful accuracy The doctor leaves that trailer and returns with a gas powered chainsaw The noise is deafening in the small space as he starts the engine And prepares for the grisly operation At this very moment, Sheriff Wilbur Owens Having noticed the Neville's car parked outside the clinic Steps inside to see if could be of assistance Seeing the crazed doctor hovering over the newborns The teeth of the chainsaw about to connect with their innocent flesh The valiant Sheriff draws his pistol and fires As the bullet pierces his heart, Dr. von Coop emits a cry And stumbles backwards Samuel Neville a timid, nervous man Who wanted nothing more than a quiet country life with many children Is still in a state of shock over the death of his young wife And the alarming physiology of his daughters When he is struck in the neck by the chainsaw blade Killing him instantly Distraught, the good Sheriff takes the crying infants to his car He radios back to the station where it is arranged for the twins to be admitted To the Bethany Center for Developmentally Disabled Youth in Topeka Sheriff Owens decides to deliver the twins to the Bethany Center personally Less than an hour into the drive an oncoming truck swerves Crosses the median and strikes the Sheriff's car The Sheriff is thrown into the windshield, knocking him unconscious He will die thirty minutes later from loss of blood Meanwhile the world has become a sea of feathers as the trucks cargo of live chickens Many among them now seriously injured or dead, spill into the road A small awkward man limps out of the trucks cab and cautiously approaches the Sheriff's vehicle The man's eyes focus on the twin girls calmly look up at him from the back seat Ignoring the dying sheriff, the truck driver lifts the infants into his arm And sets them in the cab of the damaged vehicle He unhitches the trailer and climbs into the cab Abandoning the defenseless chickens to their grim fate on Interstate 70 A smile forms on his lips as he puts the truck into gear And continues down the highway