Sophomore Year

by Douglas Rees

  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 her yard. It was like she was whispering in my ear.

  There was another thing: Mercy Warrener had a broken heart. Every February 13 there would be the same note:

  __ yeares since my Beloved did fly from me. And the wound be yet as fresh as the day he left.

  Never anything else. Never any mention of the Beloved except for the one back in 1676. I wanted to know who that guy was. To go wherever he’d gone and tell him to get his fanged self back to New Sodom and the woman who loved him.

  The key rattled in the lock. Ms. Shadwell came in and saw what I had done with the books.

  “Goodness, Master Cody, you have developed an interest,” she said.

  Oops. Time for plan B. I didn’t want Ms. Shadwell to know what Mercy had told me about Crossfield. I had a feeling that, if Ms. Shadwell knew what I had come across, it wouldn’t be here the next time I wanted it.

  “Let me help you put these back,” I said, sliding Mercy’s journal onto one of the stacks.

  I put the book on the shelf where I’d found it, but I hid it at the back, behind all three volumes of Flora and Fauna of Gomorrah County, Massachusetts.

  “I hope you found something to get you started,” Ms. Shadwell said from the top of the ladder.

  “I might have,” I said. “Do you know what a rattlesnake colonel was?”

  Ms. Shadwell laughed.

  “Oh, yes. Back in colonial times rattlesnakes were quite a problem around here. And the settlers were terrified of them. There was nothing like them in England. Hardly any poison snakes at all there. Certainly nothing that lets you know it’s about to bite you. So the colonial assembly—”

  “The General Court,” I chirped.

  “The General Court,” Ms. Shadwell said. “The General Court passed a law that anyone who killed a rattlesnake could call himself colonel if he wanted to. It got to be quite a joke to call someone a rattlesnake colonel.”

  “Even if someone was just a kid?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. That was part of the joke. We had one young fellow in town, Nathan Warrener. He loved to hunt rattlesnakes. Took to calling himself colonel when he was younger than you. Folks laughed, but he didn’t care. He ended up with more than a hundred rattlesnake skins. You might ask Master Justin to show you the skins sometime. Last I heard, the family still had the collection.”

  You know how it is when you find out something new and you can’t stop thinking about it? That’s how it was with me and Mercy Warrener. It was almost like being a little kid and having an imaginary friend. But the thing was, Mercy Warrener hadn’t been imaginary. She had lived where I lived. Her descendant was my best friend. So when I went home that afternoon, it was almost like I had two sets of eyes. I saw everything twice.

  “Those are cars, Mercy,” I said in my head. “That big thing’s a bus. The trees on this street are awful old. Did you see them when they were young, or was this part of town not built yet? That’s First Congregational over there. I know you went there. Not the building you remember, though, right?”

  Dad noticed at dinner I wasn’t my usual charming self.

  “Is everything all right, Cody?” he asked. “You’re being quiet.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m thinking about this woman I sort of met today. A relative of Justin’s.”

  “Oh, ho. Does Ms. Antonescu have a rival, then?” Dad said.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “She died in 1820.”

  “Then I predict this relationship will go nowhere,” Dad said.

  “Hah,” I said. “Very funny.” And went on thinking about Mercy Warrener.

  As it would turn out, the joke was on Dad.

  That night, I dreamed about Crossfield burning, Mercy Warrener running for her life. I heard some notes of “Yankee Doodle” and saw a couple of rattlesnakes crawling together across a sunny rock. I dreamed a heck of a lot more than I could remember when I woke up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding. But I had the feeling that, at the end of the dream, Mercy had said something to me. I couldn’t remember the exact words. But they had been something like “I do long for it so.”

  Long for what, Mercy? In the dark, at three in the morning, it seemed like an important question.

  10

  I was seeing Ileana that night. We had a date to go to the library.

  This was not quite as b
ad as it sounds. The library had a small art gallery attached to it. It was open at night when there was an exhibition, which there was just then. And while I could have given it a pass, Ileana wanted to see it.

  That was okay with me. Ileana could look at the art and I could look at her. Win-win, right? But Mom couldn’t think of a nicer thing than for me to ask Turk to come along.

  I wanted her with us like I wanted a pet scorpion following me around, but I knew Ileana would agree that I should at least ask. “She is your cousin, blah, blah, blah.” And I was going to do the right thing.

  So I went up to her attic and I said, “There’s an art exhibit at the library tonight. Pretty lame. You probably don’t want to go, right?”

  And Turk said, “Sure. I’ll check it out. What time?”

  I told Ileana Turk was coming. She sighed and said, “Oh, good.” Pause. “We are doing the right thing, my darling.”

  “You might just as well ask Justin, too,” I said. “Darling.”

  It felt weird and good at the same time to say it.

  “Justin has a Mercians meeting,” Ileana said. “They always meet Fridays.”

  “You know, I was reading about those guys,” I said. “They used to be the jenti militia. What do they do now?”

  “You had better ask Justin about that,” Ileana said. “They keep very much to themselves. The rest of us know little about them.”

  “Well, he can tell me about the old days, anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll impress him with how much I already know.”

  “Perhaps,” Ileana said.

  About seven-thirty, Ileana, Turk, and I got out of Ileana’s limo in front of the library.

  The New Sodom Public Library was over a hundred years old. It had granite walls and marble steps that were slippery as grease when it rained or snowed. Which may have been why, instead of a couple of stone lions guarding the front entrance, there were two huge, coiled rattlesnakes.

  The snakes had their heads turned toward each other. Their mouths were open and their fangs were about a foot long. Under one were the words DON’T TREAD, and under the other it said ON ME. Officially, they were a tribute to New Sodom’s Revolutionary War heroes, but a lot of people thought it was a warning about the steps.

  The art gallery was a small wing off the main building. Inside, the walls were white and the floors were dark polished wood.

  Gadje and jenti were walking up and down, stopping in front of the paintings, which were mainly squares and oblongs of canvas that had been dipped in industrial sludge, I guess. They had titles like The Third Time I Become the Sea, and Mourning of the Aesir. Apart from Ileana, Turk, and me, everyone in the gallery was formally dressed, and at least forty years old.

  Ileana set the pace for us. She cruised down one side of the exhibition and up the other. Then she stood in the center of the room and slowly turned around. I could tell she was really interested in all that canvas.

  I was really interested in Ileana. But hand-holding was all we were going to be doing tonight. Still, her strong little hand gripped mine like our skins were fused.

  Turk didn’t seem to see the paintings at all. She was looking at everything else, checking out the height of the ceiling, measuring the walls with her eyes.

  “Who do you have to know to get an exhibit here?” she said finally.

  “Oh, there is a committee,” Ileana said. “My mother is on it.”

  “Great,” Turk said. “What are my chances of getting a show?”

  “I am afraid you would have to be famous, Turk,” Ileana said. “And it would be very helpful if you were dead. That is the sort of artist the committee prefers.”

  “Dead? I’ll work on it,” Turk said. But then she said, “Damn it. Isn’t there anyplace in this town to get my stuff up?”

  “There are a few private galleries,” Ileana said. “But this is the only public art space in New Sodom. It is too bad. It is such a small place for a town as large as New Sodom has become.”

  I remembered again what Mercy Warrener had longed for. She’d wanted a place where the two peoples of New Sodom could get together. And then it hit me. One of those old mills could be that place. It would be more than an art gallery. There could be space there for everything people wanted to do. Whatever Mercy Warrener would have wanted. Whatever Ileana might like. I smiled.

  “You know, Turk was talking about those old factories across the river,” I said. “Some towns have turned those kinds of places into art galleries.”

  “Yes. I am aware of that,” Ileana said.

  “I was thinking that a big building like that might be good for all sorts of things. You know, plays and stuff. Poetry readings, maybe.”

  Ileana didn’t say anything for a minute. Her beautiful face was like the sky on a day when the clouds are flying by, and the sun comes and goes behind them, and the light and shadows are changing every second.

  Finally, she said, “That would be very, very difficult here.”

  “Sure would be great, though,” I said. “It could be a place for the jenti to sort of—you know—show what they can do.”

  “Not just jenti, Cuz,” Turk said. “I have to get my stuff up, too.”

  “Kind of like Illyria for real,” I said.

  I figured this would be my best point. Last year, Ileana and Justin and I had spent time in Justin’s basement building a private world we shared. We called it Illyria. We all had our own kingdoms. Ileana’s had been all about the arts. Her two favorite characters were a couple of guys named Vasco and Anaxander, who were poets. If Ileana thought there was a chance to have something like that in the real world, she’d probably be on my side.

  But Ileana shook her head.

  “The jenti would never accept such a thing. Especially not in that place,” she said.

  “Why not?” Turk said. “It’s perfect.”

  “And there’s this,” I said. “If you back it, a lot of people will come. I mean, let’s face it. You’re the princess around here.”

  “Let us go somewhere else,” Ileana said. “I have something to tell you.”

  The chauffeur looked surprised when Ileana told him to take us to Crossfield.

  “You must see something,” Ileana told me and Turk. “It will help you to understand.”

  So we headed away from downtown and across the river. The limo bumped and thudded over the worn pavement of the bridge, and there were a couple of glints of light on the river below. But everything was dark in Crossfield.

  “Stop here,” Ileana told the chauffeur, and opened the door.

  The chauffeur got out with us. He kept a few steps back, but there was no way he was going to let Ileana wander around by herself in Crossfield at night.

  She led us to an open area between two of the old mills.

  “One of these buildings would be right for your plan, I think,” Ileana said.

  “Yeah,” Turk said. “I had that one on the left picked out.”

  “Now look down,” Ileana said. “See where your feet are standing.”

  Her voice was funny. I didn’t know if she was going to scream or cry.

  We were standing on a bit of one of the narrow cobbled roads.

  “Count the crossroads you can see from here,” Ileana said.

  “Twenty-three,” I told her when I had done it.

  “Twenty-five,” Turk said.

  “There is a jenti under every one of them. In some cases, more than one,” Ileana said.

  Turk and I looked at each other.

  “The factories were built on top of these little roads,” Ileana said. “It is as if the gadje of New Sodom tried to wipe us out twice.”

  “Did they know?” I said.

  “Of course they knew,” Ileana said. “In New Sodom nothing is ever forgotten.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Turk said quietly.

  “Not for the jenti,” Ileana said. “Remember, we live a long time, when we are allowed to do so. Those who lie here might have been grandparents to ou
r oldest. If they had not been killed, and buried here at these little crossroads with stakes through their hearts.”

  The way she said it made me want to cry.

  “So now you know, dear Cody, why your beautiful idea is impossible,” Ileana said. “The town of New Sodom wants to let Crossfield return to the dust. For the gadje it is a place of shame. For the jenti it is one of grief.”

  Turk nodded. Then she did something I never would have thought she’d ever do. She went over to Ileana and put her arms around her.

  Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  And Ileana put her head on Turk’s shoulder and sobbed.

  I went over and put my arm across Ileana’s shoulders. But it wasn’t the same as holding her would have been.

  When Ileana stopped crying, she hugged Turk. Then she hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a second. Jenti strength. Ileana was so tiny it was easy to forget that she was made of steel.

  We got back into the limo and headed to New Sodom. The lights gleamed on its civilized, careful, historical streets.

  But Crossfield was history, too. Mercy Warrener was history. Maybe everybody in New Sodom wanted Crossfield to sink back into the rocky dirt, but something was going to grow out of that dirt, sooner or later. Something always did.

  11

  The right thing. You grow up thinking there’s always a right thing and a wrong thing. Then you start to realize that sometimes there’s no right thing. Or that something might be wrong or right, depending on how it works out. Or that there’s more than one right thing, and you have to make a choice. Like this time.

  How could I not just forget the whole idea, now that I knew why nobody talked about Crossfield, and what had happened there? Ileana wanted me to. Justin would agree. Nobody but Turk really wanted to go ahead with this thing. Which was a pretty good clue that it was a bad idea.

  But what good would leaving Crossfield alone do? It would always be a painful memory, no matter what else happened there. Wouldn’t it be better to try to make something good grow in that place? Something that could make Ileana smile?