Remembering Randolf Powell
a story of life, death, and freedom
Randolf Powell was a hero. One of few winners of the Hunger Games originating from District 11, when he came home, he came home to everlasting glory.
Randolf Powell was kind. He brought his whole family to his new mansion, sparing them from the cruel Peacekeepers and the brutal harvest season that always seemed to be fast approaching.
Randolf Powell was handsome. Every girl in District 11, or in all of Panem, for that matter, was head over heels for his dark caramel skin, his black hair, and his big, brown eyes, though he, himself, had no female companions.
Randolf Powell did not sleep. At night, he slipped through the gates of the District 11 Winner's Courtyard and made his way to town square. He sat for hours, alone, beside the dry fountain filled with summer dust. He gathered giant handfuls of silt and sifted them through his hands. Rubbing his aching eyes, Randolf examined his hands for hours, looking for the traces of the blood they had spilt. As the moon slowly sunk in the sky, Randolf rose and shook his head violently, desperate to clear out his demons. They always managed to cling to his shoulders as he trudged back to his house.
Fin Blake was a boy with bruises. He worked in the orchards all day, small enough to slither up to the highest branches and drop the fruits down into the baskets below. His thin hands were always raw and bled most of the time, in constant, disorienting ooze.
Fin Blake lived with his father and his three siblings, Jane, West, and Friday. He used to have another sister besides Jane, called Yessir, but one day he saw his father carrying her broken body to the filthy alley beside their tiny apartment. He never saw her again, and he was never told why. When he asked Friday, the older boy told him to hush up, didn't he say enough without prying at things that could get him hurt.
Fin Blake did not remember his mother. She had died shortly after giving birth to him. His brother West said that she hadn't been sick at all. West and Friday and Jane always expected him to understand, but he didn't. When he saw the subtle twitches of their eyebrows and the way their cheeks pulled across their thin faces, he knew that they were trying to tell him something. But he could never discern what, exactly.
Fin Blake kept away from his apartment when he could. He knew he was bad, and that his father would punish him. When he came home from the orchards and forgot to close the door, his father told him in slurring tones, "Your stupid, boy. Your mother wasted her life giving birth to you." Then he would punish him. West and Friday were good most of the time, but they were bad enough to know that being around when Father dealt out punishment was not a good idea. Jane knew something was wrong with Fin, too, but she clung to Father's thick arms until he flung her away. Between sleep and waking, Fin could hear her cry, "He doesn't know, he just doesn't know, Father, let him be…" But then Father would punish her too, and she would curl into a ball and forget about Fin like his brothers did.
Randolf Powell saw the family with the thin faces and the perpetually threatened expressions and sighed. It pained him that his District was so corrupt. He watched them from his bedroom window as they walked to the orchards for work each day. None of the boys had shoes. The dark skin on their heads shone with sweat in the burning sun for they had no hair to shield them from it. Randolf supposed their father shaved it off.
Randolf Powell jumped in surprise when, one night, a door slammed loudly closed in the deserted town square. The sand spilled from his hands, and he pushed himself upright, out of the empty bed of the fountain. A small boy stumbled out of an apartment complex and scuttled across the square, his bare feet smacking the ground painfully. Randolf could see him shaking. "Are you all right?" he called out, and the boy froze like a hunted rabbit. When he looked up, Randolf could see the dark liquid running down his face, and ovular bruises spattering his throat and his shoulders and his arms. Tears dripped from his long eyelashes, mixing with the blood that showed near-black in the dim light. "I won't hurt you," Randolf said. The boy went to the fountain, trembling slightly as he entered Randolf's embrace. "Shh, it's okay. It's okay."
Randolf Powell never asked what had happened. He already knew. Instead, he told stories to comfort the child, spinning tales of freedom and rich, succulent foods. Though no one would have guessed, the infamous Randolf Powell was a magnificent storyteller. The boy's eyes shone as he drank in story after story inside the sand crusted fountain.
Randolf Powell remembered a very special story, a story that his father had heard from his father, who had heard it from his father, who had heard it from his. Throughout the years, it was told very few times, and only in times of utter caution and complete sanctuary, for if unwanted ears picked up on it, there would be blood spilt. Randolf remembered, and he told of freedom, of fighting, of bravery, and of selflessness. Randolf remembered through his great-great grandfather's eyes a day without the Capitol, a day when Panem was free. Then, with a heavy heart, Randolf remembered new imprisonment, and he remembered the last days of District 13 as the citizens fought to get their freedom back. And as Randolf remembered, the dawn shift of Peacekeepers listened from around the corner.
Fin Blake could never tell when people were joking with him. He took seriously everything anyone said. He could not tell a smirk from a smile, or anger from misplaced love. And these things made him more bad and more stupid in the eyes of his Father than he could ever have imagined.
Fin Blake did not cry when he was punished. He remembered Free Panem, instead. It was sick masochism, distracting himself from his pain with something that could surely never happen again, but it was the only thing that worked anymore. One day, Friday came home to tell Father that he had saved up enough money to pay his own rent. He told Father that he was done being beaten into submission. He said, "I am a man now. I am leaving." Father told Friday that he could leave his family only one way. Then he grabbed Friday's arm in his iron fist and dragged him out to the alley to visit Yessir.
Fin Blake was happy for Friday. Father let Friday go, in the end. West snuck outside to see how things were going, and came back with dusty tear tracks emaciated cheeks. His dreadlocks bounced slightly as he shook his head, "no." "Friday's gone, Jane," he said. "Friday's gone."
Fin Blake remembered his birthday. He remembered that twelve was the beginning of a very bad time for kids like him. He remembered his brothers and sisters holding their breath as a colorful woman on a stage pulled names out of two gleaming pots. Fin remembered the slow, aching disappointment as, over the course of several weeks, two cannons fired on the television screen. One time, he remembered, one time the cannon had only fired once for his District. He remembered Randolf Powell, and the tortured night in the square, and he smiled softly to himself.
Randolf Powell tried to kill the troop of Peacekeepers that came to his house. He heard the screams of his parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles. He charged through the house, looking for someone to blame. He found them, standing in his kitchen as if on a normal, routine visit. "Freedom has a price, Mr. Powell." Blood stained their hands.
Randolf Powell rode to the Capitol with his hands cuffed behind his back, a bag over his head, and weapon-toting guards holding him at every second. Food was forced under the rim of the bag once every few days, and water was splashed on his face at random intervals. He was not given the opportunity to relieve himself; mortified, he was forced to do it on himself, earning jeers and gut punches from the Peacekeepers. As he felt ribs crack under the blows, he gritted his teeth and remembered the Hunger Games. That, at least, had been worse. Or had it?
Randolf Powell nearly went blind when the hood was jerked off his face at last. Lights glared down at him from all angles. From the corners of his dazzled eyes, he could see the carefully groomed men of the Capitol. President Snow clucked under his breath and inspected Randolf with distaste. "Inciting rebellion, is that what it is?" asked the man in honey-tongued politeness, though the twist of his mouth revealed his hatred. "We just don't do that, Powell. Even if we are good enough to win the Games. We just don't." Randolf spat on the ground, the saliva mixed with blood from his lungs, and the guards beat him until President Snow raised a hand. "Take him away."
Randolf Powell was thrashed far past the point of reason before Snow deemed his "lesson learned." He rode the train home with only two guards, and no bag over his head. It was, after all, unnecessary. "Just in time for the Reaping," one Peacekeeper grunted, and Randolf flinched, keeping silent. "What a cheerful time of year." When Randolf's shaking hands unlocked the double doors at the front of his house, he felt no relief, only more poisoning fear. When he stepped in the front hall, he called out to his family. No one answered. Their bodies had been taken away during his stint at the Capitol. He sank to his knees, hollow. Freedom. He now knew the cost. Night had already fallen. The moon shone like a tiger's eye above the sleeping district. Randolf walked out of the Winner's Courtyard. He left the gates swinging wide and the door to his empty palace ajar. He strode to the square and laid himself to rest in the dusty fountain.
Fin Blake scrawled his own name over and over again. His Father had told him to. "Tesserae," the big man had said. "We need more, now that your selfish brother has abandoned us." Father seemed to punish him more than ever now that food rations were decreasing. Fin found his father every day slumped against the walls of the house, an empty tankard rolling in circles before him. Jane was very bad once, and Father took her into his bedroom and punished her. The next day, after he left, West rushed in and managed to get her calmed. Fin couldn't look at her. She was shrieking endlessly, but her throat was so sore already that she could barely make a noise. Fin figured it was because of the way her leg was bent the wrong way, her femur cracked clean in half. Fin helped her, but he was mostly glad that it wasn't his leg that was crooked like that.
Fin Blake snuck out of the apartment one night. His father and West were arguing again, and he knew that if Father got too angry with West, Fin might end up in the way, and become fair game for punishment. Fin crept across the desecrated square and leapt up onto the edge of the fountain, balancing himself atop the ancient stone. He saw a person in the fountain, a person with two blacked eyes and a swollen face. Fin recognized him. Fin knew the people in the orchard had been talking about the Powells lately, talking about them and even crying a little. They had moved on, he guessed, for no one would say straight out what had happened. Fin wondered why they had left Randolf behind. Randolf, curled into the base of the empty fountain, his mouth full of sand, and his heart still as a stone.
Fin Blake figured that Yessir and Friday must have taken Randolf with them because he wasn't up on the platform where he should have been that day. The colorful Capitol people perched up on that stage like vain peacocks and gave speeches about the history of the Hunger Games. The mouths of the District 11 adults were set in straight, hard lines, and the children standing in front of the stage were jittery and fearful. Fin knew he should be afraid, but he wasn't. He was hurting too much to be afraid of anything. Father had been angry that morning. Other parents in the crowd eyed the cowering, battered Blake children and their eyes got sad. "Rena should never have married that awful man," they whispered. The woman in front of the two brass pots smiled and winked at the crowd, reaching her hand into the first pot and pulling out a slip of paper. She leaned into the microphone and said a name. A sobbing teenage girl stumbled onto the stage, crying for mercy. Her hand was clutched by the other Capitol birds, and she hushed. The woman tittered senselessly for a few moments, the words passing over Fin's head. Then, she drew another name. "Fin Blake," she said. The words made perfect sense.
Fin Blake was not volunteered for. In his last hours in his home district, no one came to see him. The Capitol people smiled and said how lovely these Games would be, but he knew the murdering that happened in the Arena, and he also knew that he would never punish anyone. His father had taught him that much. Fin saw, in his mind's eye, Randolf Powell, drowned in the empty fountain, and shuddered. The only thing worse than dying in the Games was surviving them. When Fin was finally left alone, he desperately thought of everything he had to live for. "If I win," he thought, "I could come home to Father and West and Jane and they would be proud of me." But the thought seemed impossible even to him. People were mysteries to him, and he knew he could never make them proud. Fin sat on his bunk in the shuddering train, remembering Randolf Powell, and realized that he did not want anything, anymore. Randolf Powell had given him the best gift of all times, but Randolf had left him just like his mother and Yessir and Friday. Randolf had been a glorious, beautiful person, but it hadn't been enough. Fin saw himself bare, a bruised, dark-skinned child with hollow eyes and a hollow heart. Fin rose silently, and walked to the last supper before the train stopped at the Capitol.
The dinner was too rich for him. Nothing he ate stayed inside. He was silent throughout the meal. The steak, shining in gravy and mashed potatoes, was good for only one thing: the knives used to eat it. He picked one up and examined it carefully, tucking it in the long sleeve of his shirt before any of the Capitol birds noticed. The meal passed in awkward grief, the female tribute sniffling and shuddering and moaning. He supposed he was not so devastated as she. Maybe that girl had something to win for. He certainly hoped so. No one deserved to go home to punishment every day, he realized as he observed her. Maybe that was why Friday left.
He got up from the table, then sat back down quickly as a Capitol bird tsked. "You must ask to be excused, young man," she said. He asked, and she told him to go get some rest. He smiled; how could she know what he wanted?
He reached his personal compartment and slid the knife back out of his sleeve. The blade glinted in the moonlight like Randolf's eyes as he finished his story of Freedom. Maybe that was how he should be. Free, like Friday and Yessir and Ma and Randolf and the rest of the Powells. The more he thought about it, the more he agreed. He had nothing worth fighting for, except the stories he knew Randolf would tell him one day. He tested the edge of the knife with his thumb, watching the droplets of blood swell and burst with morbid pleasure. Each drop that flowed down his hand brought him closer to freedom.
He could not wait any longer. The Hunger Games spelled death for him in every outcome. Frightened tears blossomed under his eyelids and he shook them away; now was no time for the fear that had caged him his whole life. He grasped the knife in sweating palms, and cut away the bonds holding him to the world.
Fin died free.