ABSTRACT

He had been missing for nearly 20 years. It wasn’t often that people

from the Town of Chadwick commented on the whereabouts of

their residents, and he was no exception. No one made reference

to his absence as he walked through the town, passing by familiar

landmarks and faces. The lack of responsiveness had nothing to

do with quaint New England stoicism or discretion, but plain old-

fashioned indifference to someone regarded as a stranger. The only

people who remained in “TC” (as the townies called it) past high

school graduationwere the peoplewho had nowhere else to go. They

had played too hard in school and had failed to gain admission to

the large state university (usually so forgiving of its native sons and

daughters), so they had nothing to look forward to but a life of hard,

dull, low-paying work in a town where the largest employers were

a large convenience chain and high-tech maximum security prison.

TC folks married their so-called high school sweethearts, had three

kids, one dog, and a mortgage they couldn’t pay off until they were

practically ready to retire from either work or life itself. Idle gossip

about residents in TC was a trade industry like movies in Hollywood

or politics in D.C., but it is said that only TC’s undertaker knows

where the real bodies and secrets are buried. TC has always been

that kind of dead-end town.