1957, Nebraska

By Anonymous

In the village where I was born, folks referred to it as “the incident.” To the best of my knowledge, it has never been discussed with outsiders.

In 1957, three of our youngest villagers suddenly disappeared; boys, 8 years old and younger. At that time and place, this sort of thing just didn’t happen.

Our sheriff, a dedicated, respected official - who was probably the physically strongest man in the county - took the disappearances hard. Took it even harder when the battered bodies of those three little boys were subsequently found buried in the deep woods.

A child myself, I was witness to that discovery. I’ll never forget the look on the faces of the sheriff and his men as they emerged from among the trees; seemingly, somehow embarrassed that they were carrying three blood-splattered bundles. To this day, I have seen nothing more terrible, nothing more soul-wrenching.

After that, they say the sheriff went a little crazy. He practically stopped sleeping. When he wasn’t examining clues, following leads or interviewing possible witnesses, he was seen prowling the woods - often at night, gun drawn.

Clearly overwraught, the besieged lawman was often heard to mutter - over and over again - “Bad things are happening to good people!”

Eventually, a man’s body was found near the very spot were the children had been uncovered. He was a huge, unkempt ex-lumberjack who’d recently been seen skulking around the school playground. The stranger’s thick, scruffy neck had been broken.

No child in those parts turned up missing ever again.

Years later, I asked the sheriff about that stranger, whose killer - or killers - had never been found.

The weathered officer smiled a mirthless smile, looked me straight in the eye, and said: “You know, son, sometimes good people happen to bad things.”

The writer is an almost life-long resident of upstate New York, and has published more than 50 poems under various pseudonyms.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, November 13th, 2006 | Email This Post

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