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The Nome Man

By Raymond J. Howlett

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Raymond J. Howlett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-0808-6

Chapter One

I find myself standing here at the edge of a deep, dark, icy, seemingly bottomless abyss. Deciding whether I want to turn around and continue to try to deal with the problem at hand, or whether I should just step off the edge, and end it all right here and now. While I contemplate this, as being possibly the last step in my life; I start to ponder about how this all began, and how I ended up here in this dilemma in the first place.

I guess if I look back at where it all began, I would have to start at when I was born. No, no, I take that back! I think I would have to go back even further than that. Not that I'm blaming him for any of this, because it was not his fault, nor the fault of anyone else. It was just a sequence of events, at the times and the places, which led up to this point. I would have to say it started with my father, back when he was young, and just beginning to grow up himself. It was not something that he could have ever foreseen, or ever realized that it would have happened to him. It was actually, an aspect of an element, which at the time, was just starting to be explored itself. So, in reality, nobody ever could have known; that in time, this would have happened to me.

While I try to decipher all of the thoughts that are rushing through my mind at this moment; let me see if I can put this problem that I have, into a perspective that will explain this whole mess.

First off, my name is Eric Razorman, and I must say, that I am in quite a predicament. Like I said, it was not of any fault of his own, but it started back when my father was around ten years old.

He was born on August 21, 1931, his name was Maximillian Razorman, and he grew up in the time during the great depression era of America. At that time, his father, whose name is Ben, was working as a laborer in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Ben stood 5'11" tall and weighed about 275 pounds. He was about average height, but he was a stocky man. He had a wide chest and broad shoulders, but a small beer belly to go with them. With the exception of a small portion of fat on his frame, most of his body weight was of muscle.

Max's mother, Loretta was a petite 5'5" woman that weighed in at about 115 to 120 pounds. She worked as a cleaning lady in a hotel until she became pregnant with Max, her first child.

After Max was born, his mother stayed at home to raise him.

She had two more children after Max. The next child was born two years apart from Max, and his name was Stanley. The last child was born a year and a half after Stanley, and his name was Matthew. When the time came for Matthew to start school, Loretta decided to go back to work as a seamstress in a sewing factory. At this time, Max was in the fourth grade at the age of ten years old.

While the two parents were both working during the day to make ends meet; the children were in school learning about reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Max had light brown hair and baby blue eyes. At the age of ten, he stood about four foot three inches tall and weighed around 95 to 100 pounds. He was pretty much the size of an average boy his age. He was reasonably mild tempered, and it would usually take a lot of pushing him around before he would get angry.

His clothes were usually hand-me-downs; and if he did get any new clothes, it was because some of the clothes that he had worn were so worn out, that they were falling apart from being so old. He always wore a pair of black cowboy boots every where he went. They were his favorite shoes, and the only time he didn't wear them was when he either went swimming, or he had to put a dress pair of shoes on to go to some special occasion that his parents took him to.

Sometimes when his father came home from work, he would go back out to a local bar with some of his friends or work buddies. At times, his father would stay out until two or three in the morning, and then come home drunk. Depending on what mood he was in when he came home, he would either, go right to bed, or he would get angry about something, and wake everyone up. There were even times when he came home drunk, he and his wife would get into an argument, and he would slap her across the face. He never hurt her bad enough to put her in the hospital; but sometimes he would put enough bruises on her, to make her wonder why she was even staying in the same house with him. It was getting to a point in his life, where this was becoming a routine habit. He would go to work in the morning, after work he would go right to the bar, and then come home from the bar to abuse his family.

On the weekends, since he didn't have to work, he would get up in the morning, drink a couple cups of coffee, sit in his rocking chair, and listen to the radio most of the day. Then after he ate supper, he would go out to the bar and drink until 2:30 in the morning. Of course, when he came home from the bar, he would either go right to bed, or cause a ruckus with the family.

One day while Max was in school, he walked into the classroom, and sat down in his chair to start preparing for the class. Another boy, named Jason, was one of the bullies in the class, and he started harassing Max. Max tried to ignore him throughout the class, but Jason continued to badger him. When the class was over, the teacher told the class that he was going over to the principal's office during their recess time, and if he wasn't back by the time they were done with recess, then they should come in the classroom, sit down, and start working on the homework that he gave them from the earlier class. The children were dismissed from the classroom at that time, so they could go out for recess. While they were out playing at recess time, Jason and two other boys tracked down Max and started harassing him again. At one point, Jason and the boys got distracted by a couple of girls on the playground, and Max was able to get away from them for the remainder of the recess time. After recess was over, the children went back into the classroom, sat down in their seats, and most of them began working on their homework. Max was one of those kids that sat down and started working on his homework. He wanted to try to finish it in class, so that he wouldn't have to do it at home. If he finished it in class, he would be able to go out and play when he got home, instead of staying in the house and finishing up the homework.

While the children were working on their homework, the teacher was still over in the principal's office talking to him about some of the curriculum. While Max was sitting at his desk, Jason walked up behind him and cuffed him in the back of the head for no apparent reason. Max was tired of being harassed, and he figured that evidently ignoring the bully was not working, so he stood up from his seat, turned around, and walked over to the kid.

As the boy turned around, he said to him, "Why did you do that?"

The boy then replied in an arrogant voice, "Because I felt like it."

Max looked at him for another second and then he punched the kid right in the eye. Jason staggered back a step and stood there for a few seconds. He was caught in complete amazement of the fact that Max hit him in the face. Then Jason came back at Max swinging his fists. Max ducked down, charged at him, grabbed him around his waist, and wrestled him to the ground. As the two boys were scuffling in the back of the room, the teacher walked into the room and saw the two boys fighting. The...