Town of Ivers, Vermont Police Department
To Protect and Serve
Dear Fellow Ivers Citizens:
To the citizens of both Ivers Village and Ivers Proper, the following came to our attention more than a year ago. It arrived on July 5th of 2008 by regular U.S. mail from a former Ivers citizen.
As a police force, and as servants to the township, we faced many obstacles, legal and moral, before we felt confident we could release this “document” to you, as we feel is our duty. Said document was, after all, addressed to you, The Town.
After verifying the authenticity of the document, which was a considerable effort, we are now able to release copies of the original to you. The original will be held on file at the Town Clerk’s Office. You may, as usual with public records, ask May Hitchcock at the desk to see it. She will glad to accommodate you.
Some town members, those mentioned in the document who are still living and who could be contacted, have seen the document previously, in confidence. In some cases, per their request, their names, as you will see, have been redacted (blocked out). Because of the sensitive and disturbing nature of the document, those citizens approached were asked not to divulge to anyone, including spouses and children, their knowledge of the document until all those included in it could be notified and the document itself verified. We hope you appreciate our need of confidentiality at the time and show them understanding.
Attached with the document is a Xerox of the handwritten letter to you.
We hope you understand our delay in getting this to you and our need for the strict confidence of those we had read it earlier.
Most Respectfully,
James Burke
Police Chief
Ivers Police Department
Ivers, Vermont
****
Memory is a devil that wears many disguises.
Those of you who remember me at all will remember the shy slight discomfited fatherless soul known to every little nothing shittown; the ghost boy in the corner peering out from under long lashes with sleepy eyes, sitting in the front of the bus biting at his lip and clutching his beloved books to his chest as though clutching the side of a lifeboat.
Teachers, you adored me. Pitied me.
The Quiet One.
Polite smart poor dirty deserted and adrift. I was all that. And more. We are all so much more.
Can you guess what else The Quite One was?
It’s not so hard really.
a) a nest of seething hornets
b) a pot of boiling grease
c) a loaded revolver, pointed straight at your head
d) all of the fucking above
See.
Not so hard.
The truth is, most of you don’t remember me. My face is forgettable. And who ever remembers The Quiet One born halfway down the cracks between which he is destined to slip?
As much as I’ll wager you don’t remember me, I’ll wager twice again that you remember The Pratt Manor burning to the ground out on the Pratt Estate that sultry summer night. That wild inferno that left the dark westward sky throbbing orange and spread its ashes across town as an angelic black snow. I’ll wager you recall how Boyd Pratt went mad. How Dale Pratt III vanished. And how Dale II killed himself in that ugly ugly way. I’ll wager again that you know exactly what you were doing when you heard the news that the town’s outwardly beloved and secretly despised Royal Fucking Family had crumbled in one long night of misery and madness. Were you pumping unleaded gas into your Plymouth Fury at Ray’s Citgo? Grabbing a greasy Barnburner Burger at the Lucky Spot? Putting the pipe to your neighbor’s wife? Sucking your boyfriend’s cock in the backseat of his fucking Firebird? Screaming at your kids to get the fuck to sleep while you waited with fifteen million others to see who the fuck shot JR? Knocking back your fifth Schlitz at Lake Lanes Ten Pin while you waited to roll your next frame? Whatever you were up to that night of The Inferno, I bet the memory of it is as burned into your little fucked brains as surely as the Pratt Manor’s foundation is charred into the hillside that overlooks Lake Champlain.
But.
There’s always a but.
When I tell you what I am about to tell you, you will suddenly, vividly, eagerly “remember” me.
Yes! I remember him. Odd duck. That one. He:
a) rode my bus
b) sat beside me in class
c) sent me a love note (which I mocked)
d) cooked my steak at the Bee Hive Diner
I always had him pegged.
But you couldn’t have.
If you had, you’d have done something. Told someone.
You’d have stopped me.