Vampire High Sophomore Year - By Douglas Rees Page 0,20

by our men. I knew nothing of this until today, for I have been ill with the flux, and had my own war a-raging in my innards. Better today.

It is a terrible thing to be at war again, but this time all the folk of New Sodom do be of one heart. Our company be divided into one platoon of them and one of us. We hope they may do much good, and come home soon.

Then she had something about buying a calf and naming her Rose. But then came:

May 1, 1775

The flag I have been charged with making for the militia company be finished. I think it most handsome and fitting. No more will we see the Angel of New Sodom of the gadje nor the silver eagle of the Mercians. They be put away, it may be forever. One new flag for all. There be two rattlesnakes twined together about an Angel of Liberty and the words “Don’t Tread On Me” about them, all on a field of red. At the top of our banner in gold letters I have worked “New Sodom Combined Militia Company.”

I had thought to put the words “Death to Tyrants” or “An Appeal to Heaven” about the snakes instead of what I have writ. It was young Nathan who did persuade me otherwise.

“Ancestress,” he did say. “They are fine-looking snakes ye have made and I tell ye, ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ is good advice and the Britishers should take it.”

“I will do as you ask, descendant,” I told him, “if ye will promise me to hunt no more rattlesnakes, but just to kill the ones that God may send ye.” For he is fond of killing rattlesnakes and takes great pride in being called colonel though he is yet not thirteen.

“All right, then, ancestress,” Nathan did say. “But only if ye will let me go to Boston with ye when ye present the new flag.”

There was nothing in the journal about whether Nathan the rattlesnake killer (and colonel—what was that about?) had gone along to deliver the flag or not. But in April 1776 there was this:

April 18, 1776

The Company are home today. They came marching back from our freed Boston following the flag I had made for them. Captain Mathers did let Nathan carry it into the town hall, where it is to hang until wanted again. God grant that be not soon, but Captain Mathers believes the war is not over yet.

Fife and drum played “Yankee Doodle.” ’Tis a song I have never liked. An Englishman wrote it some years back to mock our militia. But now our men have taken it and made it ours. The joke is on the English, for they are fled from Boston and Massachusetts is free of them. Now I do love that song.

It was wonderful in my eyes to see our two folk marching home in ranks, one people under the flag I had made. It is the first time ever that we have truly been as one. It is my heart’s wish that we may remain so. I do wish that there were some place where all of New Sodom might gather to share songs and stories and where the women might work quilts and the men carve furniture or do other work of the hands together. Then we might always be bonded, in peace as well as war. But I fear that, old as I am, I shall not live to see it.

And she hadn’t. And she didn’t ever mention it again. But I had the feeling it was on her mind from time to time. She wrote with such pleasure about doing things with her hands. She was so proud of Nathan for his beautiful singing voice. I was sure that her idea of bringing New Sodom together for what she called “play parties and work” had come back to her over and over.

And, by the end of that afternoon, I knew Mercy Warrener’s mind better than anyone had in almost two hundred years. You couldn’t not know somebody when they told you so much about the odds and ends of their life. When you have somebody’s recipe for robin pie, and how many children they had, and the names of their cows, they become real to you in a way. I could hear her flat, soft voice, like Justin’s but higher. I imagined her small, brown-haired, quiet, and strong, wearing a simple gray dress, and wooden shoes for working in