Vladimir Kyrilytch

The original "V.K." from whom the narrative's V.K. Ratliff gets his first two names (but not his last one; as Ratliff tells Gavin, "we dont know what his last name was," 180). He came to the new world during the Revolutionary War, to fight for the British as "a mercenary Hessian soldier" (198), though as a Russian he "maybe couldn't even speak German, let alone American" (198). He was captured after General Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga and sent to Virginia as a prisoner of war; after six years he escaped and was shelted by a farm girl named Ratcliffe, whom he married.