Chapter 1: Redneck Country
Bobby Jean "Blight" Oakley District Seven Male
In the early morning of a District Seven summer a scraggly youth slept outside on an old lawn chair, head lolling to one side, an arm draped over a dusty-coloured dog dozing on his lap.
The shad flies buzzed drunkenly in the heat, from a basin of water left out from laundry a day ago to a clump of wildflowers half-wilted against the splotchy brown grass, then buzzing around the sleeping boy's face. He frowned and batted them away, continuing to sleep.
Blight dreamt. Of wide empty spaces and nothing in the distance. Dream-Blight rocked back and forth on a wooden rocking chair, pausing only to spit a wad of tobacco on the ground and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. He closed his eyes and sighed as he relaxed. It was quiet. Peaceful. There were no cares or worries in his dreams, it was like he was the only one in the-
A rusted door swung open with a screech and his mother poked her head outside. "Bobby Jean Oakley, get yer behind over here, I ain't keepin' yer breakfast warm forever," she hollered.
Blight opened one eye in irritation, annoyed at being jerked out of sound sleep and wrenched his body up from the broken lawn chair, dumping the dog to the ground.
Ruuuuuuu, the dog whined when his matted fur landed splat on the dirt.
"Aw don't give me that look Dusty, blame ma."
Blight ran a hand through his greasy hair and yawned.
"I'm comin' ma, keep yer voice down, they can probably hear you all the way in the Capitol," he hollered back. The one day I can sleep in and the darned woman wakes me up early, he thought angrily.
Before he climbed up the rickety steps to his family's trailer he made a sweeping glance around his home nicknamed 'the Sticks'. Lawn chairs were strewn outside under broken umbrellas in a desperate attempt for shade from the blistering sun metal spokes protruding and all, where older men and women were still dozing.
The outside air was preferable to the cramped and stuffy trailers that they called home, as long as they didn't mind the flies. The tiny buzzing shadflies hovered lazily amoung the smashed amber bottles tied to doorsteps with string like wind chimes, once in a while they would bump into a strip of fly paper that was completely covered in dead flies and bump right back off into the sleeping faces of those who strung them.
Blight slapped a fly away and squinted at the horizon. The Sun was pretty high in the sky actually, a lot higher than when he usually woke up at dusk.
Well, maybe his mother didn't wake him early.
He finally turned to to climb up the broken stairs to his family's trailer, stomping his feet as loudly and annoyingly as possible. As he swung open the door he scratched at the mosquito bite on the back of his knee absent-mindedly. When he fell asleep he was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a frayed shirt, his basic everyday outfit, plus his prized possession, an orange and white trucker cap which he kept on his head and almost never took off. He raised an arm and gave his armpit a furtive sniff. Only mildly pungent, not exactly eye-wateringly sour which meant he didn't have to change, he thought with satisfaction.
Blight wasn't exactly an ugly teen, but he wasn't anything close to handsome either. He was a tall, gangly boy who might have actually been decent looking if he was willing to put in the effort and clean himself up. Too bad he wasn't. His greasy, dirty-blond hair could use a good cut but he couldn't be bothered taking a pair of scissors to it when he could just blow his bangs out of his eyes. His face held the hint of a sparse beard and scraggly moustache but he didn't feel like shaving when it would just grow back the next day. His body smelled of someone who didn't bathe regularly, but it didn't raise an eyebrow in the Sticks where daily baths were seen as a waste of water.
He dropped down on a plastic lawn chair next to his brother and sisters in front of the dining table which was covered with a plastic checkerboard tablecloth that crackled when his mother set down a plate of warm tesserae biscuits in front of him.
The television was on at full volume, as usual, and Blight rubbed his forehead already feeling a headache coming on. "Can't you take that darned hat off for just one moment?" his mother, a large, buxom woman with rollers still in her hair snapped. "Today all those fancy shmancy Capitol cameramen are gonna be here and you should want to look a bit more y'know, sophistimacated," she sniffed, primping the bouquet of wildflowers in a boot that was the centerpiece of the table.
"Aw, leave the boy alone," his father, a stick-thin man that he bore a strong resemblance to, grunted. "Ain't nothin' wrong with wearin' darned a hat inside."
His mother whirled around, nostrils flaring and meaty hands on her ample hips. "Why y'all always be fightin' with me in front of the kids huh? Can't I say one thing without you havin' to pick a fight?" she demanded.
"Pa's right," Blight's sister Jessie-Ann chimed in as she shifted her baby to her other hip. "Y'all are always naggin' at us fer somethin' or 'nother. Lester's always tellin' me you couldn't hush up if Panem depended on it."
"Yer husband's the one who should be hushin' up now," his mother snapped. "That man's been in and out of jail more than times than you can shake a stick at for mouthin' off to some Peacekeeper. If y'all don't find better taste in men fast, you and baby Jakey's gonna be in some deep trouble, I'll tell you what." she warned.
"Ain't nothin' wrong with Lester!"
"Nothin wrong? That man's screwed 'round the head, I'll tell you what! What's he saying this time, that the President is some alien that came back in time from the future? That the Capitol has some machine that keeps spitting salt, so they throw it into the ocean and that's why it's salty?"
Jessie Ann flushed and shook her frazzled straw-coloured hair out of her eyes. "No ma, the Peacekeepers got mad at him for talkin' 'bout that," she nodded to the blaring black and white television at the head of the table.
"Just look at the resemblance!" Panem's favourite tabloid newscaster slammed down two photographs of what looked like the same boy down on the table. "Randall's scared that's what, why else would he keep denying to perform a paternity test and finally put this case to rest?"
"Well can you blame him? If he humours this one then every lying District bastard in Panem would be claiming some relation to a Capitolite, it would be impossible to deal with them all. Best if he ignores this boy and not waste his time," his co-host declared.
"Do we have word from young Isaac Paylor himself?"
The shot cut away to a handsome youth smothered by a media reporters and cameramen. In the background the stinking factories and pollution of District Eight fogged the cameras until Blight could almost taste the noxious fumes. He had to admit though, there there was something about his striking features, the way his blue eyes and blonde hair shone that looked out of place with his dirty clothing and the grim backdrop.
"Marcus Randall IS my father, and if that's not proof enough, then this is!" he spat in disgust. Isaac Paylor kicked open a briefcase at his feet, it sprang apart to reveal stacks upon stacks of bills bound tightly by rubber bands, more money than Blight had ever seen in his life.
There was an audible gasp from the paparazzi, followed by rapidly clicking cameras.
"He tried to pay me off and buy my silence but I'm not taking it! Tell him I'm not interested this chump change, I want my birthright!"
"Well if that was me I'd just take that money," Blight's mother remarked. She pinched baby Jakey's cheek and his pink mouth scowled in protest.
"Y'all think Jakey could grow up and look like some high-falutin' Capitolite and make us stinkin' rich?"
"Stop it, you're a terrible grandma!" Jessie Ann snapped and pulled her baby away.
Blight chewed his biscuit slowly as his mother and sister continued to argue and turned his attention to the other side of the table where his younger siblings were sitting, hoping in vain for quiet.
"Scared for your first Reaping Milly?" his younger brother Cody taunted and tugged on the end of his sister's dirty blonde pigtail. "Whatcha doing to do if you get picked?"
She kicked him under the table and stuck out her tongue. "Hope that you get picked too so I can finally kill you and no one can say boo about it," she replied primly.
"Y'all shut your mouth over there," Blight's mother hollered from across the table, making all three of them jump, "no one in this family's gettin' reaped." She said it firmly as if saying it strongly enough would make it true. She crossed her meaty arms over her chest and thrust out her chin in determination as if she would fight someone if any of her children actually did get reaped. Nobody said it but they knew it was an empty gesture, against the Capitol's Hunger Games there was nothing she could do.
"Aw, you don't know that," his father began.
"What did I tell you about fightin' me in front of the kids?" She howled and smacked him over the head with a frying pan, hard.
"Dammit woman, the pan's still hot," his father snapped and rubbed the back of his head which already beginning to swell.
The loud thunk caused baby Jakey to begin to cry, adding his high-pitched screams to the din. Everyone was too busy with their own arguments to pay attention to him and quiet him down so he screamed louder as if vying for attention.
Eventually, his shrieking reached a level that overpowered everyone else and the entire household was forced to stop arguing.
"I gotta pick up Lester from jail, can you look after Jakey for me?" Jessie-Ann hollered, passing the screaming baby to an annoyed Blight.
"Hell, it ain't my baby, it ain't my problem." He tried to pass him back to his sister but she pushed him into his arms.
"Please Blight? Nobody wants their son to have to see his daddy in jail," she begged.
Blight rubbed his forehead and sighed heavily. He debated back and forth in his head a bit and grudgingly accepted the baby. "Fine, but you owe me," he grumbled.
"Thanks a bunch Blight, there's a reason I made you his god-daddy." She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and dashed out, slamming the door behind her which only caused Jakey to cry harder.
Blight groaned and pressed a hand to his throbbing temple. He loved his family, he really did, but he also hated the noise and conflict that arose from too many people in a too small space. Between all the hollering, fighting, and screaming, he couldn't stand being in his own home sometimes.
With baby Jakey in tow, he grabbed his rifle near the door and opened the door again. "I'm gonna go out to shoot somethin'," he hollered, not caring if anyone heard him. Based on the arguments which had instantly resumed once the screaming baby was out the door, he doubted anyone would miss him.
He trudged along, bouncing baby Jakey gently up and down as his boots crunched on the crisp, dewy grass. As the sounds of his family's arguing became muted and Jakey stopped crying, Blight's tense shoulders relaxed.
He tied his now-quiet nephew to his back and jogged past the identical, rusted beaten-down trailers that made up his part of District Seven nicknamed the Sticks. Their neighbourhood was largely made up of tired men and women whose fair necks were sunburned an unfortunate shade of red from too much outdoor work, often poor, uneducated, and looked down on by the rest of District Seven.
The road was usually crowded with weary foresters in jeans or overalls with shovels slung over their backs, ready to replant saplings that would one day be felled by the lumberjacks when they matured, but today the dirt lanes were empty, shutters barely hanging on the hinges on the battered trailer windows were closed save for the occasional forgotten clothesline.
The reaping wasn't until noon so anybody of working age slept in, relishing the rare holiday. Blight passed a gaggle of children splashing in the mud, too young to understand what the Reaping was. They would probably be the only ones shrieking with genuine laughter today, he thought grimly.
When he reached the site of his family's assigned plot, Blight cleaned and loaded his rifle with a fresh magazine. He adjusted the brim of his hat and squinted at the feral vulture mutts circling lazily above the newly planted saplings.
Blight cocked his rifle back and pulled the trigger with a click.
Bang!
The brown-feathered cockatrice fell from the sky with a squawk, landing neatly at his feet. Cockatrice were a mutt developed during the rebellion to wreak havoc among the rebels. Part vulture, part eagle, their razor-sharp claws and beaks honed in on anything that moved, a deadly weapon against a rebellion. Even after the rebellion they would attack civilians if they weren't careful. They only had a single small weak spot too, a coin-sized area on their breast. Hit them elsewhere and bullets would just ping off the rest of their body.
He walked over to it's limp body and tossed it in his burlap sack. Terrifying as they were, they tasted pretty damn good fried in tessara oil.
In most parts of the districts owning any type of firearm was illegal, but the Sticks was an exception. Every household was required by law to possess at least one to defend themselves and their saplings. It wasn't as if they could arm themselves for a rebellion, their out-dated rifles couldn't hold a candle to the Peacekeepers' bulletproof uniforms and modern machine guns. Guns that could turn an entire block into a massacre in less than a minute.
Two more cockatrice came soaring by in the place of their fallen comrade. Blight sighed and shot two more times. According to his sister's husband, the Capitol could have easily exterminated the cockatrice after the rebellion, but left them alone to terrorize the populace as a reminder of the Capitol's power.
Blight rolled his eyes and shook his head at the thought of his brother-in-law. Blight had no idea how he came up with his conspiracy theories, but everyday he was spouting nonsense like the Peacekeepers were actually mutts cloned by District 2, and that District 13 was still out there and preparing to wage war against the Capitol.
Nobody except Jessie-Ann bothered to listen to his rambling. Everybody else simply ignored him except the Peacekeepers who treated him like a joke because he was probably the most entertaining thing in the Sticks. However they did throw him in jail for a few days at a time whenever they were bored or he said something they thought went too far.
Blight glanced up at the sky. No more cockatrice. He settled Jakey gently on the ground, stretched his hands behind his head and laid down next to a fallen log, watching the clouds go by. The only sound in the air was the occasional tweets and chirps of the forest wildlife. It was this rare peace and quiet that Blight cherished the most, and as he closed his eyes for a quick nap he could feel his frown easing into a smile and his dark mood fading away.
A/N So I caved and decided to start posting at least the first chapter. I've got almost half the story stockpiled and ready to go, the other part just needing to be edited. Just seeing how much interest there still is for minor Victors (I think the fandom is winding down though so...) I'm still not satisfied with the pacing, if anybody has tips I would be grateful. Last note: Credit goes to SFCBruce for the idea of Isaac "Ike" Paylor's side story. :)