Prologue:
His name was Francis, he was raised by his two parents who grew up in middle america, like himself. He had a great childhood, one that most kids in his small town of Gary, Indiana did not know of themselves. His father worked in the steel industry for US Steel until he he retired in the late 60s. His father had made wise investments in his twenties and was able to retire at the age of 45 and open a business of his own, a small soda shop in downtown Gary. I speak of Francis's father so much because it is an essential part of explaining the nature of his son, Francis Witherby Schmoit. Francis was born in 1980. born to parents in their early 60s at the time and they wanted nothing but the best for their youngest son. They gave him a traditional catholic upbringing that they themselves had, with the traditional values of a bygone era.
As Francis grew he realized that his family was unlike any of his classmates. It was a rare thing to have your father around, much less have elderly parents. They did everything in their power to give Francis an exceptional childhood. it was not unlike one of those black and white tv shows you could watch on Nick at night at the time. Looking back, his family dynamic seemed a lot more like Leave it to Beaver or Lassie than the constant fighting and screaming matches his neighbors would get into all of the time.
Even at a young age Francis wondered why his neighbors mother would always have over different men of all hours of the night in their small suburban town. He once asked his father why she had so many late visitors, and his father just told him that we did not need to pay them any attention, and that we could just use our own family to lead by example.
Francis had every need fulfilled as a child, church every sunday, catholic school during the week. No one knows what got to him, what it was about Francis that made him turn the way that he did. The same people will look at Francis and calculate his home environment growing up will talk about things like "Nature vs Nurture" with other children, other "bad eggs" and come up clueless in Francis's case. There is no one moment you could pinpoint that made Francis turn,
Francis's mother and father were not necessarily strict, they had boundaries set for him, but not so many that it didn't leave him any room to grow.
In the beginning the trouble started out small, some wouldn't even say that it registered at all to most parents. Francis would come home a little bit later and later when he would go out to hang out with his friends. He would have a curfew and miss it by minutes at first. His father would scold him, and tell him the importance of being on time. Everything Francis did wrong there was a valuable lesson to be learned for violating his parents trust.
His father would say "No Schmoit would ever be late for curfew."
If Francis went to the store on an errand and brought back the wrong change his father would say "A Schmoit is very thorough and careful with money."
If Francis was out of line in any way there would be a lesson on what a Schmoit ought to be.
One day, shortly after Francis's 17th birthday he had come home past midnight on a school night. His father was up all night worrying. His father was very upset with his son's breach of his trust... he had had enough. He had missed taking out the trash the last week, and forgot to fill the car up after he had borrowed it the week before that. Francis and his father got in one last argument. His father was explaining how no Catholic boy would be caught out so late on a school night, and certainly nothing decent happens after midnight. His father started to exclaim that "no Schmoit would ever..."
His son cut him off "God damn it dad, I am not a Schmoit" he exclaimed!
Oh, Francis was a Schmoit in every biological sense of the word. That was his father, the steel worker who retired early so he could start a family business for his son. Francis was tired of his identity, tired of fulfilling someone elses status quo. He was his own man, and the seed of rebellion had starting growing in him before he had even realized it.
Francis never referred to himself as Francis, Frank, for Fran ever again. He had left his childhood home and moved out onto the streets with some new friends that he had made a few years back.
He couch surfed a while until he had met a man named Ballard, who was supplying him with drugs to sell on the streets of Gary. He didn't know it was Ballard who had been his dealers supplier, but when Francis started to take over all of the drug trade in the rustbelt known as Gary Indiana, Ballard knew he had to meet him.
NEXT Chapter: The Embrace
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