Herbert Circle

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4835-5942-1
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

'Written as a Memoir of adolescence an adulthood, as it's written Herbert's work tell the story of a group of young men who bond together in an 'us' against the 'world' friendship. Laughing together, fighting together, getting into trouble together, they come to moments of decision about the Vietnam war- and go.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Herbert, Daniel

Leseproben

Chapter One Introductions I remember when and where we all met. Louis has been my best friend since grade school. Even being a grade younger than me, and in my opinion he was the only one of us who truly didn’t fit the profile of The Circle. Then I met Jimmy, Louis’s older brother, at a sleep over. He truly was a nice guy, but man……. What a war freak. He could tell you anything about war, from who fought, to the battle tactics used during that altercation. Yet Jimmy probably didn’t even know who Babe Ruth was. I met Shawn Thompson surely through fate. You see, he was going to fight Louis for some reason. So I did what any kid does when he knows that his friend can’t fight. I challenged Shawn that day on the playground. He just smiled and said, “The name’s Shawn” as he extended his hand for mine. There are two things to always remember about Shawn, he was born with a short fuse and he’d do anything for a friend. Shawn always ran with two other guys. Anthony Parker, who we called Tony, and Erick Sanderson. Tony had to move when we all started high school and none of us, including Shawn, knew that much about Erick. All we knew was he was from Michigan and that he didn’t talk much. Finally there was Wud (wood). We were all in the grocery store when he got caught trying to steal a playboy, which of course explains his nickname. His given name was Steven Wilkins, but after Shawn started calling him Wood it just stuck. Instead of it making him mad, he wore his nickname like a badge of honor. He even shortened it to Wud after looking in the dictionary and deciding to go by the pronunciation. These are my friends, but I always knew we were much more. For some reason I was the leader of The Circle. Of course my mom would always tell me, “You always have the ability to lead or follow, so why not lead? At least if you’re leading, you get to choose.” Although I didn’t expect this great honor, I gladly accepted because the guys and I were family. I still don’t understand why anyone would want to follow me. But if anyone asked we all went no matter the consequences. Like when we started Gate Night. We were only about nine or ten years old at the time and we never really liked trick or treating. One Halloween I had an idea for a gag. Trick or treating was over around eight or nine o’clock. Then the small town that we lived in would gather at the church for a sermon. While the town was in prayer we would swipe my dad’s truck keys and go to the house’s with a screw driver, and pop out the hinges of the front gate and put the gate in back of the truck then drive two or three houses down and exchange their gate for someone else’s. We were almost confident that we wouldn’t get into too much trouble, because the nearest police station was approximately two small towns away. Not to mention that everyone knew we weren’t setting out to be malicious, we were just kids. The next day is when we got caught. Not because someone told on us or had seen us switching the gates. But simply because it was just too funny the next morning when people started noticing that their fences didn’t match their gates. I think the main thing that gave us away was when old man Clemons came flying around the corner in his Caddy screaming, “Where the Hell’s my damned gate?” he was sipping on his moonshine, or the white lighting as he called it. We just couldn’t stop laughing, out there on my porch. It was just so funny watching everyone ask, “Have you seen my gate?” Instead of the beatings that we thought we were going to get, it became a town tradition. Every Halloween the kids of our town would try to even harder to mix up the town’s gate. Though still to this day we don’t get recognition for starting this tradition. We all know that it was our will to challenge authority that started us off on our crazy adventures. My grandfather always told me, “You and your friends never like being told what you could or could not do. That was the way of it from the time you could walk and talk.” He died a few years later in an auto accident. After we buried Pops, Dad started thinking more and more about his life. He would always say, “My dad never lived, so I’m going to.” To which I would reply, “Go for it.” I never realized those few words would change my life forever. The next day dad quit his job that he had for the last seven years and decided to become a traveling salesman. He would always go on these long trips and return with a gift and a story to tell. He would tell me about the places he’d seen and tell me about the way people acted in the places he’d visited. Like when he told me about his trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday. Once he traveled as far as the capital of our nation, Washington D.C. I later discovered my dad’s trips and stories I had always enjoyed were just elaborated lies. All of it had been staged for my benefit, I can still remember that day like it was yesterday. The snow had really fallen hard and heavy the night before. This meant that the guys would be by sometime in the morning so that we could go sledding. Before Mom would let me go with the guys I had to help her decorate the house and the Christmas tree. After we decorated the house, Mom let me go out with the guys. They had been waiting on my porch for about an hour. I wasn’t really worried about them because Mom had supplied them with hot chocolate and cookies to hold them over. We headed to the steepest hill in town. We called it “Hells Run.” It was located about three blocks away from my house. It took about five minutes to walk there. Walking never really bothered us because we always had something to talk about. After we reached the hill, it took another five minutes to climb to the top of the steep hill. When we finally reached the top, there was already a group of kids up there. They were afraid to ride down the steep slope. The irony was, the time it took to climb to the top was nearly doubled ours because they had dragged an old Chevy hood up with them and then they chickened out. Which one of you is gonna ride this shit box? Shawn asked. Shawn always talked like that because that’s the way his father spoke when he was drunk, which was most of the time. Shawn was never a patient person, so when those guys didn’t answer him he got angry. “Well, do you guys speak English or are you deaf?” Shawn shouted. When there was no answer again, Shawn started fuming. Erick tried to intervene to avoid the fight that we all saw coming. But Shawn doesn’t calm down very easily. Not wanting to fight, I suggested that we show them how it was done, to which Shawn just nodded. Once Shawn agreed, all of the other guys just went along with the idea. We decided that five of us would ride down on the hood and the other guys would meet us at the bottom. The plan was that we would put the hood slightly off the edge of the slope, two guys on each side and the last guy to get on would slide from the back towards the front. The shifting of the weight would send us over the edge of the hill and start our decent. I volunteered to be the last man on the sled, so the plan was set. After the guys took their places, I took off running towards the hood, jumped on and we were off. And we were racing like a bat outta Hell. Somewhere towards the middle of the hill we suddenly hit a bump. The guys just bumped up and down, whereas I was ejected. My body tumbled wildly out of control, every bounce would leave a new bruise. Suddenly I was stopped by hitting a small mound of snow and ice. I laid there bruised and sore, probably my pride more than my body. Louis came running over to make sure I was ok. The second I returned to my feet, the guys began laughing. The rest of the day was spent sledding and making jokes about how funny I looked cart wheeling down the hill. Just before dark I told the guys I was heading for home. As I rounded the last corner to my street, I noticed my Dad’s car was out front of the house. I bolted towards my house, anxiously to hear another story from my father’s travels. But as I reached the front door I heard a ruckus and as I crept into the house, I heard a plate hit the kitchen wall. “How could you do this to me?” Mom asked. “What did I do wrong?” She repeatedly asked. I stood there unnoticed listening to them, not believing what I was hearing. My father wasn’t a business man. He had only told me that so I wouldn’t know that he was separated from mom. He wasn’t going on trips either. He was living with another woman in another county and he would be moving there because he loved her now and not us. Mom sank into the corner where the oven and sink met. She rocked back and forth with her head in her hands, resting on her knees. The whole time she kept asking “What did I do wrong?” “Nothing, it’s not you, blame me.” My father replied. So I did blame him. From that day forward, I would never claim him as my father. I turned upstairs towards my mother’s room. As I took each step, I could feel a rage building in me. So much rage that I couldn’t see straight. I opened Mom’s closet and began scanning through it until I found the two things I was looking for. His suitcase and our shotgun. After packing his stuff, I...