our condolences [pierre/vasco] mayors

Vasco Izar

Splitting pain came in at the temples, then navigated from the top of my forehead down through my sinuses.

“Mierda…” I rubbed my eyes with the flats of my palms and brushed the sleep out. I opened my them to see the splotched popcorn ceiling above. I retraced the previous evening in my mind. The bar with terrible music, and dancing. Birdie at the bar. Drinking. Loneliness. Leland. Leland’s fist, and my face.

My face.

I pressed a few fingers along the bridge of my nose and hissed. While some of what had happened was a blur, I could still see him towering over me, grabbing me from the stool. I’d tried to shove him off but then his fist met my face, and – well, that explained the blood on my shirt.

I turned on my side and came face to face with a purring cat. He twitched his tail and hopped up onto the couch, comfortably stepping across my stomach to claim his spot at the edge. I let out another sigh and turned over. The sun was coming bright through the windows, and I still needed time to adjust to the world coming alive. I could hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, and the soft footfall at the top of the stairs.

We’d come back after the bar, after we’d talked and I’d explained the hotel was a ways of a walk that I might not have been able to navigate on my own. We’d come back here, and I’d sat on the couch. And then –

Oh.

I put a hand over my mouth thinking of what Birdie had done, how I’d had to apologize. Why did some people mistake kindness for anything else? I struggled to sit up on the loveseat and put my feet on the floor. I glanced down at my watch and could feel the chill run down my spine.

“Hijo de tu puta madre!” I shot up onto my feet and hissed again, this time moving to put a hand on my knee, still stiff from having curled up on a too small couch. I had an hour until the start of one of the most important meetings of my life, and I was in a lonely woman’s house, still half-drunk from a the night before. I turned at the sound of feet at the bottom of the stairs, expecting Birdie, only to find a waifish young man staring me up and down.

‘Well. Birdie doesn’t usually let you all stay over.’ He placed a hand on the bannister and shook his head.

“You shouldn’t cast judgment on someone who’s seen what she has.” I shot back, headache now in full swing. I pressed my hand over my forehead and through my hair. Why was it that teenagers had a way of simultaneously standing on top of a pedestal while managing to crawl at the bottoms of the earth? Thank god Yani was still years away from being one. “Do you have some coffee? Maybe, uh, I don’t know – would your aunt have any clothes for…”

I motioned to the blood stain across my tee-shirt. The curly haired boy let out an exasperated sigh (that reminded me of a brooding Alfonso) and he turned to make his way up the stairs. Halfway he stopped and leaned down over the railing.

‘Leland and a few of the others have left odds and ends. I just did the laundry and was planning on taking them to the shelter. You can get some instant coffee in the cupboard over the sink and heat some water in the kettle. You know how to use a gas stove right? Ugh. Nevermind. Birdie! It’s Blackston… your little man is still here…”

District eight children were a strange breed. I hoped none of mine were ever that rude to a stranger. What with Birdie the way she was, I could understand why he’d turned out as he had. I’d have to pray for them later.

While the water boiled, I stripped off my shirt and started hosing myself down in the kitchen sink. Dish soap under my arms, on my face, and in my hair. I’d just finished toweling off with my spoiled tee when the kettle sounded, and Blackston stood in the doorframe. He handed me a button down shirt and then held out a paper for me to take.

‘The great and powerful above helps those who helps themselves.’ He said with a smile that lingered a little too long. A few drops of water slipped down my forehead and I took the paper and clothes with a nod.

What a strange little gay boy. I mused, looking over the literature before shoving it into my pocket.

I’d sprinted along the sidewalks, excusing myself, bobbing and darting through the folks in my way. A few called out as I passed, but it was too important for me to slow down. This meeting was my whole reason for coming to eight, and now more than ever I needed to talk to Mayor Hope. After four long years in my seat, with one year left – for who knew what the future held – I was running out of time to make a difference.

The apartment buildings and smaller homes gave way to larger estates, and before long the homes had gates and gardens, with stone paths leading to front doors with ornate knockers. I slowed, half from the cramp in my stomach, and at the sight of being in a neighborhood where a man like me – not anything like most of the folks who walked around eight – didn’t run. I staggered along the yards dotted with fountains until I came to the house of eight’s mayor.

I wiped my brow and paced back and forth. Estás listo! Just remember why you’re here. You got this! I hyped myself wandering back and forth, cooling down in the shade of shrubs in front of Pierre’s home. There was no reason to think someone like me, a boy who’d become a farmer, who’d come from nothing, who’d seen year after year of mishaps and tragedy as mayor couldn’t hold his own with the longest serving mayor of panem. I bet we had more in common than not, even outside of having lost our own children, our big families, that we were doing our best.

I closed my eyes and took a breath to center myself before knocking at the door.

Pierre opened the door and offered a hand, which I took with a smile.

‘Finally, it is great to have you here Mayor Izar. I hope they have been treating you well at the hotel.’ He wandered ahead into the hall, and I opened my mouth to answer (no, actually, I fell asleep in your sister’s house, while she cried in her room upstairs) but thought better of it.

“I am happy to be here, Mayor Hope. I managed to spend the evening out and I must admit, I think it got the better of me.” Flashes of Leland, strumming his guitar. Birdie screaming. A rooftop. “You have a lovely home.”

I’d not considered the type of wealth other districts may have had. Not there weren’t a few nicer spaces in eleven, closer to the square. I’d just not grown up around anyone who had money. Never seen a house like this inside. Most of my suits were second hand, and my money went to making sure the rest of the Izars kept themselves fed and out of trouble.

Pierre offered a glass of sparkling wine and I took it, thirsty for a drink. The long table had been set for two, with heaps of sandwiches and goodies plated. My empty stomach gurgled, and I looked from the good mayor to the food. Any man that could put out a spread like this for someone like me couldn’t be so bad, could he?

Make yourself comfy, take what you like from the table. There is a lot to talk about this afternoon.’ Pierre took the head seat and began to fill his plate. I followed, stacking the little sandwiches on my plate in a similar fashion. I was holding one up to my face when he’d offered condolences, trying to determine what the little paste inside could have been (fish? It smelled like fish).

“Oh.” I set down the sandwich and wiped my hands across a napkin. “Well, it means a lot to me, Mayor Hope. I’ve had some time to heal, but it still hurts, deep inside. My family has been through so much… a man such as yourself must know how hard it is.” I stopped, looking from him to my plate. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bring up things you might not want to talk about. I’ve always admired you for how you’ve handled it all, if I may say so.”

I took a long swallow of my drink.

“Sometimes I think about how we’ve been treated, what we’ve given to our districts. And panem.” I started slow, my heart beating a little faster. “I think about what it would take for your people and my people to have better lives. There’s just not enough any one man can do about it though, or one district. Don’t you think?”

Would it have been better if I could have separated out the work from how I felt? I wanted to admire Pierre for the thought, but I don’t know if I’d ever be able to do the same.

Eleven had taught me that we may have planted seeds and tilled the soil, but hard work and patience would be the things that brought a good harvest. If we didn’t put a piece of ourselves in our work, we’d miss all the little signs to a bad crop: weevils that fester, how the rains have spread out better or worse across acres, or missing topsoil. The work was more than just a means to an end, it was life – it was us.

Maybe that was why it hurt so badly when no matter what I could have done, the results wound up the same. A blighted crop questioned whether what I did served any purpose at all. Time was supposed to heal the wound, but it wouldn’t ever bring them back to us.

‘A whole lot needs to change for anyone in Eight or Eleven to have a better life. Yes no one District can do anything about it except y’know, the one in the middle of them all. The Capitol makes every decision, even as mayors we have to do as we are told and accept whatever they command of us…’

I see how he’s been a politician for ten years, and likely would be for more if he chose to. The tactical, centered position that kept a man out of trouble. One that the bugs inside his home would record and set off no alarms.

‘What can Eight and Eleven really do? There have been some small demonstrations here in the past and the peacekeepers have not let them last past the hour. They are so good at ushering them away that any talk of them ever happening, never gets past my office.’

We’re relics. Sitting here in a house that would’ve been big enough for three families in Eleven, eating prepared sandwiches and drinking sparkling wine.

Men raised under the height of the capitol’s power, both of us had seen what their cruelty could do. I remembered the demonstrations of the late 50s, and the disappearances. I’d kept my head down afterward for Emma, my children, and for the rest of the Izars. We didn’t have the luxury of not working the fields and marching against the peacekeepers without starvation or a hanging. Promises of a better life always seemed imaginary; especially when our family looked out for one another. We kept a quiet dignity that celebrated small victories, and kept our hope alive.

But this hadn’t stopped them from taking Benat. Iago. Levi. Salome, Raquel, or Gabe. Alfonso. Sarina.

‘The morale is dropping though, since our last victor I can tell there is no joy left in anyone, even after the Ratmas market. It just did not last long enough. Is that the same in Eleven? What is the morale like there right now?

“We’re resilient in Eleven. Kass coming home should have been no surprise; our children know hardship and have a strength that the capitol seems to have forgotten.”

I finished off another one of the sandwiches and moved to wipe my mouth with the edge of the cloth napkin.

“Mayor Hope, I grew up in that soil back in eleven. We were lucky to have a meal some days, luckier still to be surrounded by folks that showed me the best side of human nature. And I guess I grew up with a piece of my heart stuck in that soil, too. Until now I’d been like you, thinking how there’s only so much we can give to our people.”

I could feel my heart beating, and the sweat collecting underneath my arms as I spoke. Ten years ago, I’d have never have spoken this way.

“And hard as these last four years have been, I’m thankful to have had the friends, and family I’ve had. Because they’ve helped me heal, and they’ve made that little piece of soil resilient in a way I’d never thought it could be.”

We had our traditions back in Eleven.

Quiet pieces of dignity patched together that made us who we were. A way of life that came from generations stretching back, hands that had prepared paella and prayed over beads, had seen to teaching about death as a part of life to be celebrated, and a language that sang so that each word rang out with meaning.

“There are people that think power makes life worth living that will do anything for it, and to hold onto it, too. Well – I’ve tasted what power does and I don’t want it, and doubt I’ll hold onto it. But I’ll be damned if I don’t use it to do what’s best, not just for eleven, but for everyone.”

What the capitol had done was enough to take a man who believed and hoped, who prayed and worried over his family, and ignite the sort of fire to end this cycle or die trying.

“Is it that they are joyless, here in eight, or hungry for something new? Because Eleven could help to feed them, my friend. But do you think they would welcome someone like me offering a hand?”