The Circle

Community Discord

May 1991


         Nick sat on steps of his porch, hidden from the house just across the street by the small cinder block shed that stood just off to his left. The ground behind the shed rose sharply to the gravely road that didn't appear on any map, but the locals called Rear Center. From there the land rose smoothly for nearly two hundred yards until it reached Cunningham Drive, also a mostly gravel road, but this one would appear on a map. In the space between sprawled an open field, lined by trees on one side and the rising curl of Cunningham Drive on the other. Near the bottom, just across the little gravel road next to Nick's house stood the Ferier's home. The drab and dark little house appeared run down even by Cooley standards. As with every other house in the area, a silence hung about the place like a shroud. Every now and then we would be privy to an explosive spectacle that would resound outside the shingled siding. The Ferier's were not decent folk by most accounts, however they were extremely critical of their teenage daughter Helen. On this day, Nick had lit the fire again. I knew this as soon as I rounded the corner and saw the strangely satisfied look on his face. If there was one thing Nick enjoyed more than his infamy, it was spreading around the trouble for others.

         “Fuck man...What'd you do?” I said, a smile forming on my face. Nick's face lit up as I approached.

         “Ahh...sit my friend. Miss Helen Ferier just got caught with the dirty neighbor boy. Ooohh...and she got felt up somethin' fierce...”

         Nick could be frightening when witness to his own handiwork, and the more trouble he could cause, the more anxious he was to see the results. I sat next to him on the stoop as the next wave of screams came from the small brown house across the street. We stayed out of direct sight from the two dirty windows, safely hidden behind Nick's shed. The sound of crashing silverware was followed by more shouts. Nick grabbed onto my shirt, tugging at the sleeve. He rolled around in the domestic horror occurring not a hundred feet from us like a pig in slop.

         “Holy shit man, they're breakin' out the silverware. Knives!”

         “Jesus, Nick, what the hell did you do?”

         Nick put up a finger, staring down at the porch in anticipation as the next few shouts died out. There was silence for a few moments and Nick took a deep breath and turned to me.

         “Well, she came down again while I was getting the weed whacker out. So, I was like, come here Helen, you know. She came over and we just started talkin'...she's all into me and everything, trying to get me to say I like her or something.”

         In this I did not doubt him. Helen's infatuation with Nick had begun at some point last year and had endured beyond his every attempt at sabotage. He had soon found a new hobby in causing as much grief for the poor girl and her family as he could.

         He paused for a moment as another shout issued from the house, this time the voice clearly Helen's. Nick giggled again and then began where he left off.

         “So, I'm like startin' to lead her on and all, then her freakin' mother comes out and starts yellin' for her. So then I just shouted out as loud as I could...”

         Nick started giggling hard now, caught up in the story. I remembered when I could laugh at these ploys of Nick's, but those days were passing rapidly. I could find nothing funny about his latest achievement, but managed a big smile to throw him off.

         “I just said....'I already felt you up once Helen, I'm not doin' it again!'”

         Nick finished by slapping his knee and rolling to the side in laughter.

         “Ah my god, man. Why is that girl so stupid?”

         “I don't know....I just don't know...”

         Nick could barely finish his sentence, tears already forming in his eyes as he doubled over in laughter. It seemed so common, just another day, another one of Nick's usual stunts, however he enjoyed his torture more than a little too much. I shook my head and tried to feign some laughter. The shouts from the Ferier's had died out, leaving only Nick's laughter to echo across the breeze.

         Helen Ferier and her family had routinely gotten into shouting matches in the past, long before Nick had gotten involved. The most intense were between Helen and her mother Jessie. It was the friction between these two that Nick loved to play on. He loved to be the pebble that got the gears grinding. Helen was my age and had lived in Cooley all her life, yet she was not a member of the circle. She certainly qualified given her family, but Nick would not allow it. There was an unspoken dislike throughout the circle for her and her family. Nick had sown this hatred long before there was any real solidarity and he did his best year by year to make sure the prejudice endured. I never questioned this because when the group was involved, I usually gave in.

         I had spoken to Helen on several occasions about Nick and the I always came back to the same question of why. Why did she let Nick treat her the way he did? And why did she continue to seek his approval, his attention? I never got an answer that made any sense to me. Often, she would simply turn red and walk away. I knew that she had a thing for Nick, but I could not fathom at that point in my life how someone could take that much abuse from someone. The irony of this thought was of course lost on me at the time. Helen Ferier was a happy girl when Nick let her be. As with every other injustice I could not understand, I accepted it.

         Nick got up from his seat on the porch and turned the screen door.

         "Come on, I got some scooter crunches inside."

         I started to follow, but let the door slam shut behind him as he trotted off to the kitchen, petting Franny on top of the head as he passed the sleeping dog. I turned back to the Ferier home one last time. I could not swear to it, but I was almost positive I could hear sobbing coming across the wind from within those walls. I dropped my head to the porch and took a deep breath. For all its amazing little places and quiet beauty, Cooley had its pockets of misery. They seemed to lurk wherever there were four walls.



         Two years ago in the summer of '89, Nick and I had been sole witnesses to a rash of domestic disputes, most of which had ended badly. A full month before the Mason's moved away from Cooley, Nick and I had listened to a very loud argument between the two while playing catch in back of the Ferier's drab little abode. The fights had continued on an almost daily basis, ending when John Mason got into his pickup and left one Sunday afternoon. As far as we knew, he never returned. His wife, Ellen rented a U-Haul and moved out a week later. She had packed everything of any value into the truck and was gone in the span of a day.

         The house remained deserted until Christmas of the following year when an older couple, the Baker's took the house. The Mason's had been a staple of Cooley long before our time and though their departure was the most notable that summer, it was not to be the last. Several of the couples in and around Cooley would be caught up in fiery disputes. Nick, with or without me, was always sure to rush outside for a closer seat to the 'excitement' as he described it. In one particular instance, the entire circle had been silent witness to one of these spectacles. Rachel walked away before the argument could end. I followed and asked her what was wrong. She gave me an incredulous look, as if she found it hard to believe I could find amusement in such a thing. It was one of the few times I was truly ashamed of my behavior.  That was a turning point in which I no longer could find the same level of enjoyment in some of the activities Nick and I indulged in previously. I simply began to see them for what they were. That never stopped Nick from ringing what he could from any situation.

         Nick and I spent the first few hours of that early summer afternoon in his kitchen munching on ice cream and leftover ham his grandmother had brought over the previous night. Once or twice I thought to ask him where his mother was or at least why Jane wasn't home, but decided against it. Jane had been living with Nick and his mother for as long as I had known him. Nick detested her and never missed the opportunity to crack a joke at her expense. A few years back, I did not find it strange that Jane did not seem to have her own room, but instead slept with Nick's mother. The talk had started late last year and though I heard it, I never acknowledged any of it or spoke of it around Nick.

         The time and place we found ourselves in was changing. The circle was changing. There was a tension pulling from both inside and outside that had never been there before. No one wanted this change and no one could stop it. Only time would tell if we would survive it.

         Nick grabbed his bat and mitt from the living room sofa and headed downstairs. I sat down next to Franny on the sofa and pet the dog while it slept. I never felt comfortable in Nick's house, regardless of how many times I had been there. Though Nick had asked me many times to spend the night, I never did. There was a stale smell to the place, a smell of old wood and musty furniture. A sickly sweet smell lay on top, almost certainly from too many spills of tea and koolaid that were left for the dog to clean up. Nick presently appeared on the stairs with a dirty and scuffed baseball. As he reached the top of the steps, he spun and threw hard at the sofa. The ball slammed into the cushion just behind Franny and she gave a wild yelp and leapt from the sofa, tail wagging uncertainly between her legs.

         "That's good man. Kill the dog."

         I smiled in spite of myself and grabbed the ball. Franny trotted off and found another place to lie down. Nick stepped outside ahead of me and squinted into the bright evening sun. I shut the door behind me, but did not lock it. Nick never locked the door.

         We walked slowly down toward Center, sticking to the road from Nick's house rather than cutting through Martha's yard. Our sneakers beat a harsh rhythm on the road as we descended the hump of Center. Halfway down to lower Cooley, we paused and stood on our toes to see just over the rise of Jordan's driveway. Brickerville lay quiet and crowded with homes on the other side. There was never much activity from the elderly that inhabited that small patch of Cooley, especially in the late afternoon heat. Two years prior, Nick and I had given that quiet place quite a jolt near the end of a memorable summer.



         The summer heat was slowly eroding all patience and stirring tempers all over Cooley. Four of us walked into Brickerville that afternoon, three with a touch of anxiety, one with a sadistic smile on his face. Nick cut a swath through the high grass that arced around the north side of the patch of land behind Jordan's trailer. Jordan himself brought up the rear, swatting the grass with a branch picked up from his driveway. I followed Nick closely while Terry stayed some distance behind.

         Terry Johnson was something of a puzzle. I had only recently gotten more than two words from him. He would talk to Nick or me at the bus stop in the morning, but it was rare that we got him to join us for something like this. Since school had let out for the summer, he may have simply missed talking to someone everyday. I ran into him on my way to Nick's earlier that afternoon. After leaving the house, I had gone straight to Rachel's, but she wouldn't answer the door, so I left and headed back into town, cutting through Andy's yard and straight on through the Johnson's small patch of land. Terry had been sitting on the porch as usual and on a whim, I asked him to come with us. To my surprise, he simply stood, turned and shut his front door, then followed me up to the house on the hill. After rousing Nick from an afternoon nap, we cut over to Jordan's place. The double wide trailer he and his family crowded into was also widely known as the back entrance to the patch known as Brickerville.

         I turned to Terry after we had made our way in from the north. Ahead of us, Nick crouched down in the grass and set his eyes on the first house one would run across after leaving Jordan's back yard. The rectangular one story dwelling was similar to many other homes in the area, designed more for the basic needs of one or two rather than an entire family. The siding was the same layered shingle that was found on the oldest homes in Cooley.

         "Don't ask me what he's got in mind...but, I betcha' a quarter it's gonna be trouble."

         Terry smiled, his incredibly white teeth seeming to float from his dark features.

         "Only a quarter?"

         "That's all I got."

         Terry smiled again and dropped his head. My eyes snapped back to Jordan, who still stood swatting the grass with his branch. The look of concentration on his face gave the impression that he was searching for something in the high grass, perhaps something that was lost a few days or a few years back.

         "Jordan! Get down, god dammit! Doncha' see we're in formation here!"

         Nick smirked and shook his head. Jordan's face turned slightly red and he crouched down with the rest of us. His eyes still remained on the ground and his hands resumed his search of the grass around him.

         "Well Jaybird?"

         "Well what?" Nick shrugged and began picking at the grass.

         "What the fuck are we doin' over here? That's what."

         Nick gestured over toward the small house at the border of Jordan's back yard. The house that had kept his complete attention since crossing Jordan's driveway.

         "Mabel's son and his wife are staying with 'er over there. They were fightin' last night. I think the son's cheatin' on his wife or somethin'."

         I was a bit confused at this point. I wasn't sure if Nick wanted to stay here and wait for a fight or not, but I sure as hell wasn't wasting the  rest of my afternoon here in the grass. Brickerville was the quietest and therefore the least exciting pocket of Cooley. Today was no exception. Not one adult, child, lawnmower, or even a bird broke the stillness.

         "Nick, man, I'm not hanging out here until after dark waitin' for something that probably won't even happen."

         Nick turned and smiled, licking the corner of his lips. That smile was filled with a cunning and malice that went beyond simple childish pranks. I would remember that smile and see it again and again in the short time Nick and I spent in Cooley.

         "Oh, it'll happen."

         He presently pulled a pair of red silk panties from his back pocket and tossed them to me. They were large, or seemed that way to me at the time. Laces ran along the sides and around the band at the top. I looked up at Nick after examining them.

         "What the hell?"

         "They're Jane's."

         I cried out in revulsion and tossed them off into the grass, wiping my hands furiously against my jeans.

         "Come on, man! Jesus Christ!"

         Nick was already on the ground, rolling from side to side with laughter. Terry fueled the fires by asking how she fit into that size of underwear. With tears in my eyes, I tried to answer him.

         "I don't know man, seriously. I'm not pickin' those damn things up."

         Nick scooped them off the grass and crammed them back into the rear pocket of his jeans. He kept his eyes keenly on the house and driveway, still seemingly waiting for something to occur.

         “Nick! Seriously, let's just go...” I was starting to feel as if time was slowing down. I hated that feeling and the look on Nick's face as he glared back at me should have been enough of a signal to leave, just leave and have no part in this game. I stayed against my better judgment.

         “Wait...” Nick motioned for all of us to get down below the grass line. I instantly dropped down and looked back to see Terry grab Jordan and disappear into the high grass. We lay in wait as a depressing dark blue Ford F1-50 grumbled up the single gravel road running through Brickerville and pulled into small drive next to Mabel Bricker's house.



To be continued....