The Truce

by Angie Smibert

  Text copyright © 2020 by Angie Smibert

  All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact permissions@bmkbooks.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Boyds Mills Press

  An Imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane

  boydsmillspress.com

  ISBN 9781629798523

  Ebook ISBN 9781635923643

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019950728

  First edition

  Book design by T. L. Bonaddio, adapted for ebook

  a_prh_5.5.0_c0_r1

  To all the Forever Girls—and Forever Boys—out there

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  December 1942

  BIG VEIN, VIRGINIA

  THE FADED YELLOW PICKUP, its paint now almost white as sand, puttered up the mine road to the boardinghouse. Small wet flakes of snow melted on Bone’s tongue as she sat on the front steps, watching the truck’s progress. The snow barely left a skift of cover before it melted into the brown grass. Up the road at the church, the choir practiced “O Holy Night.”

  Bone Phillips pulled her mama’s butter-yellow sweater tight around her. As her fingers dug into the yarn, it showed her mother unwrapping a sparkly pink ornament. She handed it to her sister while a very young Bone and her cousin played nearby. Daddy and Uncle Ash dragged an enormous Virginia pine into the parlor of their old house. Mama inhaled the scent. Pine tar and damp earth mingled with fresh-baked sugar cookies, filling the tiny room. The men raised the tree up in the corner, only to find the poor thing a foot too tall. Mama laughed, and Bone felt her pure joy in the moment.

  “Stop it, Mama,” Bone whispered as she pushed the vision away. Mama might have been dead for six years, but she wasn’t above nudging Bone out of a mood.

  This Christmas wasn’t going to be joyous—or peaceful. How could it be? Daddy was off to war, fighting Nazis somewhere in North Africa. Uncle Henry’s ship went down not two months ago in the Atlantic. Ruby was moving to Radford. And it was that time of the year, the time when Uncle Ash disappeared, if only for a week or two.

  The hand brake protested as Uncle Ash yanked it into place. Corolla, his plump white fox terrier, leapt out of the driver’s-side door as it opened and barreled toward Bone. She scooped up the little dog and walked slowly toward the truck. The other dogs, Kiaweh and Kitty Hawk, hung their heads out of the passenger side, their tails thunking against the dash. Uncle Ash tugged at the tarp covering the bed of the truck, retying one corner. Underneath it, Bone knew he had his army-issue camping gear, fishing rods, and an extra gas can.

  Bone laid her hand on the warm hood of the truck. Once again she saw Uncle Ash and the dogs driving along a long white strip of beach, their heads lolling out the windows, Uncle Ash’s included, relishing the warm spray of salt water against their faces. She could feel something lifting in him, something to do with the Great War, as he breathed in the sea air and wide-open spaces. Bone had discovered his little secret back around Halloween. In early December every year, he escaped to the Outer Banks or some other beach in the Carolinas. She should’ve known since all his dogs were named after those places.

  “Where are you going this time?” Bone asked.

  “As far as the gas rationing will take me.” He unrolled what was left of his Lucky Strike cigarette, letting the ashes fall to the ground and grinding them out with his boot. Then he slipped the paper into his pocket. He called this fieldstripping; it was something the army had taught him in the Great War. “But I’ll be back for Christmas.”

  A black Ford crawled by without stopping. Ruby waved, but Aunt Mattie didn’t even look their way. The back seat was full of boxes.

  “Are you and Mattie talking yet?” He watched his sister pull up to the parsonage.

  “Are you?” She’d tried to forgive her aunt for almost drowning her, trying to baptize the Gift right out of her, but Mattie had done everything in her power to make that nigh on impossible.

  Uncle Ash laughed. “That’s a whole ’nuther story. Let’s declare a truce for Christmas. With Mattie. With everyone.” He fished the packet of Luckies out of his coat pocket. “With ourselves.” He got that faraway look in his eye. Sometimes Uncle Ash disappeared without leaving. “A Christmas truce.”

  Bone groaned. “That’s easy for you to do, seeing as you’re retreating to the beach.” She instantly regretted it.

  Uncle Ash flinched. He tossed the packet into the truck, checked the other tie-downs, and then reached across the big dogs to pull something out of the glove box.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Bone said as he rounded the front of the truck and kicked a tire. He was the last person on earth Bone wanted to hurt.

  “Forever Girl, did I ever tell you about the Christmas Truce of 1914?” He took out two peppermint sticks from the little paper sack in his hand and handed Bone one. Sticking a slim book in his coat pocket, he motioned for her to sit on the running board with him. She happily obliged.

  “The war had been going on for six months or so. The Brits, French, and Germans were all dug in in Flanders.” It was a part of Belgium, he explained. He was still in Canada at the time, training with the Expeditionary, and they didn’t get to the trenches until months later. But he’d met men who’d been there that Christmas. Uncle Ash sucked on a peppermint stick for a long moment. “Our trenches were only a few hundred yards from the Germans’. In between, there was this barren ground called a no-man’s-land, marked off with razor wire. On Christmas Eve, the Brits heard the Germans singing.” As the church choir started up with the same hymn again, Uncle Ash paused to listen. He smiled. “They were singing this song, ‘O Holy Night,’ only in German. The Brits joined in. After the singing died down, one of the Jerries yelled, ‘Tomorrow, we no shoot, you no shoot.’ ”

  “Did they?” Bone bit into her peppermint stick. “Not shoot, I mean.”

  “Sure enough, come Christmas morning, the line was as quiet as church on Saturday night.” Uncle Ash caught a white flake on his tongue. “Soldiers on both sides started popping their heads up over the trenches. Brits and Germans alike wandered out into no-man’s-land. Men were soon swapping liquor and cigarettes and chocolate bars with each other. They laughed and showed each other photos of their wives and children. They sang more Christmas carols. Each side buried their dead. In some places, I heard, they even kicked a ball around.”

  �
�Was it the whole army?” She had a hard time picturing the soldiers setting aside their guns, even for Christmas.

  “No,” Uncle Ash said. “The brass, the generals and officers, didn’t like it one bit. They even took potshots at the Jerries, trying to break the truce.” He stood up and brushed off his dungarees. “And peace didn’t break out again, leastwise not until November 11, 1918.”

  He stroked his dog tags as he talked. She’d seen them before many times. He had two silver disks tied to an old leather cord around his neck. One of the disks was a bit bigger and a different shape, an oval really. They’d seen a lot since 1914. Ash raised an eyebrow at her and quickly tucked them back into his red flannel shirt. “Remember what I said about these.”

  He’d told her never to touch them.

  And Bone had no desire to. She didn’t want to see a war that still left Uncle Ash shaken nearly twenty-five years later. “Why didn’t they never have a Christmas truce again?” she asked.

  Uncle Ash took a long drag on his peppermint stick and then flicked it to the ground, grinding it under his boot heel like a cigarette. “Sometimes peace takes more courage than war,” he finally said. He looked up into the sky for a moment, letting a few flakes fall on his face, before buttoning up his coat. “So let’s all us foot soldiers declare a truce for the season.” He held out his hand to shake on it. “Including with Mattie.”

  “She’s no foot solider.” Aunt Mattie was more like those generals, always taking potshots at folks, especially Bone. Except lately, it was more like there was a no-man’s-land full of razor wire between them.

  “Isn’t she?”

  Bone shook his hand. She could hold out just fine, truce-wise, at least until Uncle Ash got back. She and Mattie would keep not talking to each other. That counted as a truce, right?

  Uncle Ash pulled her in for a hug. “Forever Girl, I know it’s hard with your daddy being Lord knows where and all. But I’ll be back in plenty of time to cut us a Christmas tree and we can do up a big bonfire and tell stories…”

  “Scary ones?” Christmas was a time of ghosts and ghost stories, Mamaw always said. It was an Old Christmas tradition.

  “Of course, I’ll dig up a couple new spirit dog stories.” Those were Uncle Ash’s favorites. “Tell you what, Forever Girl,” Ash said as he pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it to her. “While I’m gone, why don’t you practice your Gift on this?” It was a book of poems by this fellow McCrae who’d been in the same regiment as Uncle Ash. He’d had her practice on this object a time or two before.

  The little leather book was warm in her hand. She could see Uncle Ash sitting in the back of his truck on a windswept beach, reading the poem about Flanders. As he read, the words and the crashing waves drowned out the sound of guns pounding in his head. “Don’t you need this?” Bone asked.

  “If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields,” he recited. “I know it by heart by now. Hold on.” He took the book back quickly, removed some letters, and handed it to Bone again.

  She grinned. The first time she’d used her Gift on the book, she’d discovered love letters from Miss Spencer tucked into the pages. Uncle Ash and her had been writing each other since she left Big Vein a couple months ago. She’d been here collecting stories for the government writers’ project. Normally, she taught at the women’s college in Roanoke.

  Uncle Ash blushed as he stuffed the letters in his pocket. “After the war, the Belgians planted poppies to commemorate those who died there, fields and fields of red poppies.” He gazed off toward the river, not quite disappearing this time.

  “I’d like to see that,” Bone said. Poppies were a real pretty flower. Why had no one in the family been named after that particular plant? Almost everyone in the Reed and Phillips families was named after some tree, flower, or shrub. Laurel. Willow. Ash. Acacia. Hawthorne. Even Mattie’s real name was Amarantha.

  “Me, too, Forever Girl.” Uncle Ash patted his pockets for his pack of Luckies. “The only time Flanders was even remotely pretty was when it was covered in a thick blanket of snow.” He shivered. “And it never stayed white for long.”

  Bone imagined the ghosts of all those soldiers rising up around this time of year to enjoy their truce, only to find folks fighting another war to end all wars in the snow above them.

  “All right, dogs.” Uncle Ash motioned for them to jump back in the truck. They dutifully piled into the cab, though the bigger ones usually rode in the back. Corolla staked out the driver’s side.

  “I promise to be back by Christmas,” Uncle Ash said as he hugged Bone. “See if you can find out who sent me that book,” he added, tapping its cover. Then he slid into the driver’s seat, scooting the fox terrier over to the middle.

  “White Christmas” played on the truck radio as Uncle Ash whipped the Chevy around and headed back down the gravel road to the river and the main road.

  Bone ached to see him go, but she knew he needed to quiet the war still raging inside his head. She tucked the book into her butter-yellow sweater, the one that had been Mama’s before she left too. Bone pulled the sweater tight around her again. It showed her a young Ash getting on a bus to go north, to go off to war. Mama’s heart had been as low as Bone’s was now.

  But he came back. He always did.

  U-BOAT STRIKES BRIT TROOP SHIP, KILLING 654, the headline screamed in capital letters across the Monday morning newspaper. Bone read the story over Mamaw’s shoulder as she cleared the breakfast plates. Nurses and kids were among the dead. The same thing had happened to Uncle Henry’s ship. A preacher, he’d given up his life jacket to save some soldier.

  “Anything about Italy?” Bone asked. Daddy was headed there next, or at least that’s what she and Uncle Junior figured. Daddy couldn’t say, of course, in his last letter, only that he would be glad to see the end of the sand.

  Mamaw flipped through the pages and stopped on a little story. “Says here the Royal Air Force is bombing railways in northern Italy.”

  “That’s okay then,” Bone said, relieved. She and Uncle Junior studied the maps when they listened to the war news every night. He reckoned the army might cross the Mediterranean from the deserts of North Africa to fight Mussolini in southern Italy. How different had Uncle Ash’s war been, she wondered. Tonight she’d check the maps to see where Flanders was.

  “Hard to believe this war has been going on for a whole year.” Mamaw sipped her coffee, glancing up at the electric clock over the back door. “Law, is that the time? School’s fixing to start and Mattie’ll be waiting on me.” She gulped down the rest of her coffee and headed toward the door.

  Bone grabbed her sack lunch, books, and coat—and hustled to keep up. Acacia Reed did not dillydally.

  Ruby was sitting on the front steps of the parsonage. She wiped her eyes as Mamaw opened the front gate. “She’s been at it for hours already.” Ruby sniffed. “Can’t wait to get out of this hick town, she says.”

  Mamaw pecked Ruby on the check. “It’ll all work out, honey,” she told Ruby. “Radford ain’t that far away.”

  “Might as well be France.” Ruby snorted. Mamaw hugged her.

  Bone leaned on the gate as Ruby gathered up her books. The parsonage, freshly painted snow white, glistened in the sun. This house and the church next door were the only truly white buildings in a “hick town” of clapboard gray and coal black. The new preacher would be moving his family in after New Year’s.

  “I tell you what, girls.” Mamaw sat down on the step next to Ruby and motioned Bone over. “We’re going to have a proper old-fashioned Christmas—plum through to Old Christmas.”

  Old Christmas was the day folks used to celebrate Christmas long ago. January 6. Twelfth Night. Some, like Great-grandma Daisy, had still celebrated it when Mamaw was young.

  Bone loved hearing about Old Christmas. Folks believed ghosts walk
ed the earth in the darkest part of the year and miracles happened, like talking animals and blooming elder bushes. Those were her kind of stories.

  The lace curtain in the window moved, and the door cracked open.

  “About time you got here, Mother,” Aunt Mattie said, box in hand. Her hair was tied up in a kerchief and she wore an apron over her dress. She didn’t look in Bone’s direction. “Ruby, stand up, young lady! You’ll ruin your dress.”

  Ruby obliged.

  Aunt Mattie glanced at Bone, running her eyes over Bone’s dungarees, boots, and coat. Then she turned back to Ruby. Aunt Mattie always looked at Bone like she was something that needed fixing. While Bone was living at the parsonage, Aunt Mattie tried fixing her, with Ruby’s castoffs and rules about who she could see. Now, Aunt Mattie didn’t bother. Bone wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Mattie fussed over Ruby’s hair and smoothed out her dress. “You don’t want to look a mess when Robbie Matthews asks you to the Christmas dance.”

  “Mother.” Ruby rolled her eyes.

  Bone ignored them. “Uncle Ash said we can tell ghost stories around the bonfire.” The Christmas after Mama died they’d had a bonfire up on Reed Mountain, her and Mamaw and Uncle Ash. That was the first time he’d told her about spirit dogs. He told many such tales that night. In her favorite one, the dog appeared to protect a little girl whose family had been treating her awful. She couldn’t see the ghost herself. The dog only showed himself to those who were mean to her. The crackling fire and the scary stories had been just what Bone needed to chase the ghosts and sadness away, if just for an hour or two. Bone sighed. Uncle Ash better get himself home by Christmas.

  Mamaw stretched herself up. “Of course! And we’ll make a racket to scare off any haints.” She smiled at Aunt Mattie as she brushed by her into the house.

  “Mother, that is wholly inappropriate!” Aunt Mattie yelled after her.

  “It is not,” Mamaw said. “The Yuletide is the dark part of the year, and you’ve got to tell spooky stories on Christmas Eve or Twelfth Night.”