“I mean, you told me you went to college down south at UNH, got a degree in sociology, and then entered police work. With a good record and with a lot of departments in this state trying to hire more women, why come back to Boston Falls?”
She grinned at me. “Because it’s home, silly.”
Well, duh. “I know it’s home, but there has to be more than that.”
“Really? Jack, tell me more of how you became a reporter and how you ended up here. Without telling me the dark secret about your exile.”
I rubbed my thumb across the metal top of the can. “Not much to say. Grew up an only child in one of those northern suburbs of Boston. Majored in English at UMass Amherst, found out quickly that teaching English to kids more interested in dating or the Internet wasn’t my bag. Worked a few more years as a tech writer for a couple of companies, and found out that trying to turn engineering English into real English also wasn’t my bag. Then I thought I’d try my hand at newspaper work. Worked on a couple of weeklies and small dailies, and then ended up at the Granite Times. End of career story.”
“So,” she said, “how many places have you lived since college?”
I shrugged. “Eight, maybe nine.”
“Are your parents still in Massachusetts?”
“Both retired, living out in Arizona, enjoying their second or third childhood by now. I’ve lost count.” Then, I don’t know why I said it, but I did. Maybe it was her interrogatory skills. “Truth is, Connie, I think they’re quite glad that I’m out and about and on my own, and that they have no other children to care about. It’s like I was a mistake or something, or that after I came along, they decided parenthood wasn’t for them. In any event, we all seem quite content with the occasional postcard and letter, and phone calls on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Christmas.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, and a car sped by and her radar detector bleeped, but she didn’t bother looking at the numeral readout to see if the car had in fact been speeding. “Let me tell you my own story, for comparison’s sake, nothing else. I grew up here and knew the names and backgrounds of all my neighbors and relatives, including third cousins. I can go into High Point cemetery and find the graves of my ancestors who came here in the 1700’s. I could go to the Founder’s Day Festival and know the name and address of everyone there. That’s what it was like, growing up in Boston Falls.”
“Sounds claustrophobic.”
“Nope,” she said, tapping the can on her knee. “It was invigorating, knowing that I was bound into the fabric of this little place, that it would always be home, would always be a place I could call my own. That’s why I came back here. I couldn’t think of living or working anywhere else. Ever since I came back, I’m convinced I made the right call.”
“You don’t find that small towns equal small minds?”
“Not for a moment. We may be small, but we’re close-knit. We look out for each other.”
I decided to take a shot. “Does that mean keeping secret what once happened up on Shay’s Meadow?”
She kept on looking out the windshield, and now she was smiling. “Old Jack Spooner. Still looking for that big story.”
“Among other things,” I said. “Including a big date. How about this Sunday evening?”
The chief put the cruiser in drive. “How about I take you back to town?”
I wanted to protest, but I never get into a heated discussion with a woman who carries both a gun and handcuffs.
Late that night, I was in the spare bedroom of my apartment, which I had turned into a half-ass office. I guess if I had bothered to unpack my collection of books and other items, it would be a full-ass office. By the wall that had the only window in the room — which also offered a delightful view of the nearby junkyard — I had set up my desk and my PC. I looked at the glowing screen in the darkness of the room. I imagined the several thousand people out there in Boston Falls this evening, all of them related to each other and knowing each other, knowing not only names and addresses but histories. Background. Who married whom back in 1968. Who went off to the Merchant Marine in World War I. Who humiliated his family in 1862 by moving to Georgia and fighting for the South.
I remembered what the chief had said earlier. In the darkness of this little room, knowing that my small collection of relatives were scattered around New England and the rest of the country... Well, I could see why it would be comforting. The chief had made the right call.
Still, though. All of these people, knowing one another’s secrets. All of this knowledge. All of this moving around in the confines of a small town. Like an organization, a defense organization.
Then an outsider comes in. Asking embarrassing questions. Questions about something related to a mass killing, of twenty-four people.
What then? The group comes together. The group forms a defense. Questions go unanswered, phone calls go unreturned, and books disappear from library shelves.
The small town closes ranks, puts on a friendly face, and waits until the outsider leaves or quits asking questions.
I sighed, reached forward, and started tapping on my keyboard. Within a few moments I was deep on the World Wide Web, on the homepage of a New England used-book dealer who claimed a collection in the thousands and offered overnight delivery.
There. Boston Falls, 1700–1970: A History. A couple of clicks on the keyboard and the book was mine.
This outsider wasn’t planning to follow this town’s script.
Two days later, I left the office early and told Monty and Rita that I was heading over to the Superior Court building — a good half-hour drive away — but instead I made a shorter drive. I ended up at my apartment building and sat on the front stoop, waiting for the mail to show up.
I suppose I could have just picked up the mail when I got home at my usual hour, but the past few days had fed every reporter’s instinct for paranoia and conspiracies. Not that I believed the U.S. mail could be intercepted and packages made to disappear, but... Anyhow, I felt better waiting for the mail to arrive. I was beginning to believe that I was living in a town out of a Shirley Jackson short story, and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of any rock-throwing.
In the end, it was almost anticlimactic. A heavyset woman in a U.S. Postal Service uniform came up the cracked sidewalk, trundling her little mailbag. The package from the bookstore was left in my hands, and I tore open the heavy paper and took a look.
Typical small-town history book. Self-published and maybe a thousand copies. This one’s cover was soiled and the binding was cracked, but I didn’t care. I flipped the book open to the rear index and found three references to Shay’s Meadow. The first reference was for 1774, when the town’s militia drilled for a time on Shay’s Meadow. The second reference was to a great party and picnic held on Shay’s Meadow in 1900, to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the town’s founding.
The third reference was to something that took place in Shay’s Meadow in 1944. Something went ker-plunk in my chest as I read a page and a half of what was in Shay’s Meadow at the time, and what had happened there later that summer in 1944.
I went back to the newspaper office and puttered through the rest of the day, trying hard to be relaxed. The book was safely at home, in a box inside my bedroom closet. Monty did his usual phone work while Rita chatted with customers who came in to place classified ads announcing yard sales, lost pets, and church ham-and-bean dinners. When four P.M. came Monty announced that he was going out to see a couple of paperboys about their work habits, and when five P.M. rolled around, Rita said her day was through and asked me to lock up the office when I was done.