PRELUDE ─────
to kill a mockingbird

OPEN YOUR MOUTH

AND SCREAM

BLOOD IS VERY HARD TO WASH AWAY. Especially when it is not your own. It knows a guilty hand when it sees it.

WE START HERE: The Beginning of Kaz Alekseev.

─── THE HUNTER AND THE FOOL

His father was a hunter. We will call him Hunter. He was leaving to go hunt when his mother went into labor. We will picture him standing in the open doorway, puffy in camo jackets, arms full of guns and bullets. We will try not to picture his frustration.

There were no hospitals nearby. You had to cross the river to the banks on the other side to get assistance. But all those plans were foiled as they came. First, they were only a few in the weeks before ─ thought to be tourists and adventurers in need of rest, shelter, and food. The village had been happy to help. Then they came in hordes, masses of men wielding weapons and threats ─ holding the string of fate and life of the whole village in their hands. Twisted and knotted in their fingers were the strings of the lives of Maria Alekseev and her unborn son. 

They shot her neighbors first. It was a threat and a warning to everyone else: try to run and you will die.

We will try to imagine the incomparable interest of these men in Maria's unborn child. A soldier to be bred ─ a wolf to be born and raised.

Maria tried to run. She tried. She would have loved to live to tell her son that she tried. Two hours into labor and she was running barefoot, crossing the dense forest and fleeing towards safety. She forgot how long she'd been running, bare feet sinking into the damp forest soil. Blood running down her legs ─ First Blood, twisting around her thigh and pale skin like painful scarlet vines ─ the sign of exhaustion and the bestial nature of the life supposed to enter this world any moment. Every step through the winding tree labyrinth was as heavy as lifting a cement foot and every breath of the air was like a fire raging in her lungs ─ running, running, still running.

Stop. She hid. Footfalls of enemies drew closer, seeking her out, sieving the forest for her. The edges of her clothes were filth-covered, rubbed against the dead and decay of the forest. The skin of her leg felt sticky and the bloodhounds picked up the smell ─ a predator drawing closer to its prey.

She took off running again. There, up there, she told her son, see, the river. And she ran. Blood trailed her, marked the path after her, footprints of blood. She was here, she walked here, she sacrificed here. The bloodhounds followed. Mark this forest. She tripped, her hands reached out and she hoisted herself up. No time to waste. She ran again. This will be a place of sacred worship. The river roared, it gushed in serenity and sang a twinkling tone. No boat to catch. No hand to hold, no epidural, no medical care of any kind, no electricity. No hope of escaping before her son came into the world. This will be the place of a woman's sacrifice and her strength, her power, and her vulnerability.

Maria slipped into the freezing water. The blood spilled. Red swelled, bloomed up like a flower unfurling at the stroke of the midnight hour. Gunshots rang and the screams erupted. The world stood still listening to the horrifying guttural call of a mother for her child. The river rushed, the mother never moved. She wailed, waiting for her child standing in the middle of swift-moving waters. Onlookers watched in awe and sadistic glory at the miracle of birth.

The mother kept on screaming, kept on going with this limping and mutilated story because she wanted her son to hear it. Even if the only sound he ever heard from her was a scream ─ the forest floor shook.

HERE COMES THE MOMENT:

With a terrible twist in her chest, a pricking of guilt, and the fist of sadness thumping against the door of her motherhood ─ she brought this squirming, screaming creature into a cruel, cruel world. Holding him in one hand, she raised him heavenwards as the water took her. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and remained open, the exhaustion becoming her poison in the end. The men crowed around like hungry vultures around fresh dead meat. They lunged. They thought they were saving this child from a deranged mother who thought by giving birth underwater she could protect him.

Fool. They pluck him out, hands pinching new skin ─ hands, untrained hands, bloody murder scarred hands picked him up and held him up. The First Child of the Invasion. 

They let her go, the mother. Fool. Her arm was still outstretched above her head, cradling air in her son's absence. The river took her, far away, far away.

They baptized the boy ─ in his mother's blood (fool) and forest's soil and insatiable hunger for vengeance. There goes the boy, look, the village whispered as they brought him back, look, the Son of Maria.

Folklores.

The story became a tale to be passed from generation to generation. The ground-shaking screams of The Woman of The Woods. The men racing to save the baby of the mad, mad woman. Wretched women ─ women are always wretched, always mad, always hungry, and wanting more. But the intruders, you might think to protest. We'll overlook them.

Because the story became of those who told them.

This one, here, was told by the men. They would never understand women.

THE TRAGEDY HAPPENS NOW:

The men hand the squirming child, already looking for his mother to the Hunter who doesn't know how to form a cradle with his arms. He was a hunter, you see. He had gone shooting and shed animal blood. When he looked at the fuchsia-colored abomination in his arms, he thought, This body is not deemed worthy to end a life. But he had shed enough blood for both of them. Maybe this was repentance. 

The boy was born at the start of deer season, the fathers will tell their children when they recite the folklore. And the children listening will think about all the guns in their father's bedroom. They will try not to think about how thin the conjoined walls of their rooms are.

The Hunter holding horror in his arms seemed to flinch back. He looked up at the men. They wanted him to take care of the child, they wanted him to bring him up like the son he was. The Hunter hesitated. He had never wanted a son. He had wanted a Son but never a son. This boy in his arms was a disgrace, the blood of a maddened woman. For a moment, just a moment, he let go. The child fell ─ almost crashed against the rocky surface.

But a new pair of arms wound around him, catching, saving. A shot rang. The Hunter laid on the rocky floor he had just thrown his child on. He bled. The blood is sacred. The men leaned down and dipped their fingers in the caved abrasion of the gunshot wound to the head. One of them leaned towards the child and swiped his blood-soaked fingers across his forehead ─ the softness of new skin, the starkness of war paint.

THESE NEW PAIR OF ARMS, LET'S CALL HIM FATHER.

The men looked at Father next, to solve their problem. They were invaders, soldiers, hunters, and killers ─ raising a child so soft was against their nature. Father, in the wake of Hunter's death, cradled the child to his chest. His breathing was like sweet music to new ears ─ squirming, the child reached and fisted his fingers around Father's, pulling on them ─ a deathly, unshakeable grip. Father fell deeper into peril: He couldn't give the child up. Neither could he raise him like a lamb for slaughter. Not a lamb, a wolf ─ a hungry wolf for hunt.

But, he will.

This will become his new duty to the nation ─ a new nation that has just been formed by the men, the invaders.

No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . .

And?

No damn cat, and no damn cradle.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

A/N:

The first paragraph and the italicized lines in other paragraphs are lines from the poem "They Were Going To Name Me 'Hunter'" by Helena S. I do not take credit for her work. The "Hunter" part is all her idea and belongs to her only.