The Truce

by Angie Smibert

  “Of course, he’s looking for the man’s wallet,” Bone whispered to Ruby. She’d seen that in detective movies.

  The sheriff tugged at something before carefully laying the tarp back across the body. He peered at the thing—and then gave it to Uncle Junior.

  Sun glinted off the silver disk in his hand, a bit of leather cord dangling free.

  A dog tag? The men who’d ridden the rails looking for work had often been veterans, Bone told herself. Lots of men wore dog tags.

  Junior stared at the tag for the longest time—before dropping to his knees like someone had shot him.

  MAMAW WAS AT UNCLE JUNIOR’S SIDE before Bone could even blink.

  The dog tag on a leather cord.

  Uncle Junior on his knees.

  She ran. The open ground between her and Uncle Junior and Mamaw yawned before Bone. The more she ran, the farther away they seemed to get.

  Will snagged her just before she reached them—and the body. She thrashed against his wiry arms.

  “You don’t wanna see this,” he whispered.

  Bone thrashed again and then surrendered. Will held her as they stood a few feet from the covered body.

  Mamaw rounded it and knelt beside Uncle Junior. She pulled up the tarp, holding it so Bone couldn’t see what they were seeing. Mamaw flinched and looked away. With a deep breath, she steeled herself to look again. “It ain’t him.” She lay the tarp over the man and tucked the edges under him.

  “That’s the only identification on him.” The sheriff pointed to the tag still in Uncle Junior’s hand. He gently pried Uncle Junior’s fingers open, revealing a tarnished round tag with SGT ASH REED stamped into it.

  “No!” Bone yelped. It was the same dog tag she’d seen often around Uncle Ash’s neck—and it had his name on it. Will held her tight. He smelled like sweat and dirt and sorrow.

  “Will.” Uncle Junior looked up. “Take Bone home.” He glanced toward the crowd. “Ruby, too.”

  Bone didn’t, couldn’t budge.

  “It ain’t him.” Mamaw was adamant. “Don’t you think I know my own son?’

  “Mama.” Junior pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the sheriff’s outstretched hand. Gently, he laid the dog tag in Mamaw’s palm.

  She let it fall through her fingers.

  “It’s just a bum, Al.” Mr. Matthews pushed in, yelling at the sheriff. “My people need to get back to work. The war effort won’t wait.”

  “It’s gonna have to.” The sheriff picked the dog tag up from the dirt and showed the inscription to Mr. Matthews.

  “What the Sam Hill—” he sputtered, backing away. “Ash Reed?” So many thoughts had gone across that man’s face in those few seconds, but Bone couldn’t figure what nary a one of them might have been.

  He cleared his throat. “Junior, I’m sorry. Of course, Sheriff, you do what you need to do.” Mr. Matthews motioned for everyone to go home. No one did. So he just kind of faded back through the crowd, and moments later the Cadillac peeled down the mine road.

  “It can’t be him,” Bone pleaded.

  “Will, please take her home,” Uncle Junior said once again, his voice breaking. He caught Bone’s eye and nodded ever so slightly.

  Her knees melted. It was Uncle Ash.

  She let Will lead her away. Slowly. Her world had collapsed upon her, the weight of it all making it hard to breathe, let alone walk.

  “It isn’t him,” Mamaw hollered after her.

  “Mama,” Junior said. “The tag has his name on it.”

  “I know my own son—and you should know your brother. That ain’t him!” Mamaw was still adamant.

  Bone’s legs solidified under her—and she shrugged off Will’s arm.

  She could breathe again. If Mamaw was sure, then it couldn’t be Uncle Ash. It couldn’t be.

  The sheriff said something that Bone couldn’t hear. And she didn’t want to look back.

  They walked down the gravel road toward the boardinghouse. The bare tree branches scraped against each other as a breeze passed over the woods on the side of the road. The 2:25 chugged along the river in the distance. And the only other sound was that of patent leather shoes running after them.

  “Is it true?” Ruby gasped as she caught up.

  Bone shook her head and dashed up to the boardinghouse where she’d lived with Daddy since Mama died. She sunk onto the steps. She’d thought about Daddy dying in the war. He was probably in Italy by now, fighting Nazis and fascists. But Uncle Ash? He’d survived the Great War, fighting in the trenches for longer than most Americans, and even been buried alive in a collapsed tunnel for days. This made no kind of sense. She’d never known Uncle Ash to go near the mines. He’d gone all white and shaky that time she’d just talked about what she saw when she touched Will Kincaid’s dinner bucket. Will’s father had died down in Big Vein—a lot like that fellow under the tarp. Bone had felt the blackness fall on him.

  Uncle Ash lived through that blackness for days. He’d never go into the mine.

  Will sat down next to her.

  “Is it?” Ruby looked from Bone to Will.

  “The dog tag says SGT ASH REED,” Will whispered.

  “Oh, Bone!” Ruby collapsed next to Bone. “Not Uncle Ash, too.”

  Bone put an arm around her cousin. “It’s not him.” Bone dried her tears on the sleeve of her butter-yellow sweater. She caught a glimpse of a younger Uncle Ash decked out in bank clothes dragging behind Uncle Junior and Papaw. Toward the mine. That couldn’t be right. Maybe the memory was from before the war.

  It was not Uncle Ash under that tarp.

  THE LITTLE BELL OVER the boardinghouse’s front door jangled as it opened and closed well into the evening. Dishes clattered onto the kitchen table. Voices murmured sympathy. With death, folks bring pecan pies, green bean casserole, and ham biscuits. They also bring pounds of sugar and pinto beans and coffee and such to get the family through their loss. Bone listened to it all as she stared at the spidery cracks in her bedroom ceiling, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems lying by her side.

  It wasn’t Uncle Ash. And why were folks bringing covered dishes to the boardinghouse? He didn’t live here. Uncle Junior did. She did. Uncle Ash lived up on Reed Mountain with Mamaw, who was, last Bone had seen her, stewing in the kitchen, muttering about needing to get home. Usually it was Uncle Ash who drove her.

  Bone sat up in bed.

  Where was his truck? And the dogs? If that was him—which it wasn’t, mind you—those dogs would be right there with him, wherever he went.

  She pulled Uncle Ash’s book up to her face and breathed in the pages. They smelled of peppermint and tobacco and motor oil, all the things he kept in his glove box. The waves crashed on the beach late at night, fish crackled over a fire, and the dogs snored softly beside Uncle Ash as he read under a starstruck sky. That’s where he was right now, sitting on the sands of Ocracoke or Hatteras.

  And he wouldn’t go down in that mine anyways.

  Would he? She stroked the sleeve of the butter-yellow sweater again. Did Uncle Ash go into the mines? The sweater showed her the same scene, a young Uncle Ash tagging along behind his brother and daddy. Mama wasn’t any help. That didn’t prove anything.

  It wasn’t him.

  The house was finally quiet.

  Bone peeled herself off the bed, tucked the book under her arm, and crept down the back stairs.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Price scrubbed at the sink with a fury. Ruby was opening and closing up cabinets. The table was full of covered dishes and a few pounding boxes. Ruby grabbed a tin of crackers from the closest box and shoved it into a crammed cabinet.

  “Bone!” Ruby hugged her. “Please eat something. There’s an awful lot of food.” She took a ham biscuit from a plate on the table and placed it in Bone’s hand. “Eat.” Ruby tore off a piece of
biscuit for herself.

  Bone put it in her mouth and chewed. It tasted like sawdust. She kept chewing so she didn’t need to talk.

  “Mother Reed and your mother can take a bunch of this,” Mrs. Price told Ruby as she surveyed the table. Her hands were raw from cleaning, and the normally spic-and-span kitchen downright sparkled. “Honey, have some milk, too.” She directed that at Bone.

  She kept chewing—and peeked into the parlor.

  Uncle Junior sat slumped in his chair, staring at the fire. Through the front window, Bone could see Will on the porch swing.

  “Where’s Mamaw?” Bone asked Ruby.

  “Mother ran her home.” Ruby stuffed a preacher cookie in her mouth. “Mamaw is plum losing her mind.”

  Mrs. Price clanked a dish down on the counter. “She’s just being a mother. Your children, no matter how old they are, aren’t supposed to die before you. First, Willow—” She cut herself off.

  Bone knew what she was going to say. First Bone’s mother and now Uncle Ash.

  And Mamaw had soft spots for Mama and Ash. Yes, she loved all her children, but these two both had the strong Gifts, Mamaw had told Bone, just like her and Bone. Mrs. Price didn’t know about that part. Folks outside the family didn’t know about the Gifts. People just assumed Uncle Ash had a way with animals, Mama was a natural nurse, and Mamaw had learned everything from her mother. At least all of their Gifts were useful.

  “Well, it’s hard to accept, especially if it comes sudden.” Mrs. Price wiped her eyes on her apron. One of her boys, Bone suddenly remembered, had died in the last war.

  Death was always hard to accept, Bone thought. But this wasn’t right. It wasn’t Uncle Ash. It couldn’t be. Bone bit into the cookie Ruby offered her. It tasted like ashes, sickly sweet ashes.

  * * *

  A rap came from the back door. Mrs. Price ushered in Mr. Sherman and his Aunt Queenie.

  Bone tucked Uncle Ash’s book into her back pocket.

  “Come here, child.” She crossed the kitchen and wrapped Bone in a hug. Ruby stepped back, but Queenie reached for her, too, folding her and Bone both into her strong arms.

  Mr. Sherman clutched his Sunday hat in front of him. Most days he wore his Memphis Red Sox cap, even at the mine. “Miss Bone, I’m real sorry about Ash.” The words caught in his throat. “He was a good ’un, just like your mama.”

  The sweater showed Bone a much younger Tiny and Ash sitting on Queenie’s porch. Mama carefully stitched a cut over Tiny’s eye as Ash held a cloth to his own bleeding lip. They weren’t much older than Will. Tiny winced as Mama snipped the end of the catgut. Ash elbowed him. “Them Matthews boys look worse than us,” he said with a stupid grin on his face. Mama glared at him. “They jumped us.” Ash pouted. Bone cracked a teeny, tiny smile.

  “Junior here?” Mr. Sherman asked.

  “In the parlor,” Mrs. Price answered. “Why don’t you all go in and I’ll fetch some coffee.” She nodded toward Ruby. “And a bite to eat.”

  Ruby sprang into action, obviously relieved to make herself useful.

  Aunt Queenie fussed about them making a fuss.

  “No, I need something to do, and I’m sure Junior will want to talk to you. And Mother Reed’ll be back soon.”

  “Mother took her home to get some things,” Ruby explained as she laid out some cookies on a chipped plate. Mrs. Price swapped the damaged one out for a clean one from the dish rack.

  * * *

  In the parlor, Junior stirred himself and stood to shake Tiny Sherman’s hand. He motioned for them all to sit down. Will appeared from the front porch and nodded to the Shermans. The three men played on the mine baseball team together. Tiny pitched, Junior caught, and Will played shortstop. But, as Robbie Matthews pointed out, it was Tiny and Uncle Ash who were the real friends.

  Mr. Sherman explained how the sheriff had stopped the night shift at the change house and made them go home. “It was a crime scene, he said.” Tiny shook his head. “Mr. Matthews was fuming about the quota.”

  “Bet he was,” Junior said flatly.

  “Was the body really found down in the mine?” Mr. Sherman asked Uncle Junior.

  The body. Mr. Sherman didn’t say it was Uncle Ash.

  Junior nodded. “Will found him.”

  A bolt went through Bone. She hadn’t thought about who’d actually run across the body. Poor Will. She motioned for him to come sit beside her on the hearth.

  “Shaft twenty-seven.” Will didn’t move.

  “That’s real peculiar,” Tiny said after a moment. “Twenty-seven, you say?”

  Will nodded. “Under a beam. Covered with lime.”

  Tiny cocked his head. “Lime?”

  Mrs. Price swept into the parlor and set down a tray on the coffee table.

  “This whole thing makes no sense.” Junior took a cup of coffee from Mrs. Price.

  She handed everyone else except Bone a cup. Ruby offered up the chocolate chip cookies. Nobody was much hungry.

  “Oscar and his crew was down in twenty-seven Saturday night taking out beams so y’all could use them for the new branch,” Tiny explained. Even with the mill running, the mine never had enough timber to brace the shafts. So the miners often took them out of old shafts, like twenty-seven. “Never saw nothing—or no one—who shouldn’t be there.”

  Junior took a long sip of his coffee.

  “It’s mighty peculiar. Your brother never would go down there.” Mr. Sherman leaned in. “Leastwise not of his own accord,” he added in a hushed voice.

  Junior nodded slowly. “I’ve been thinking just that…”

  Bone shot a look at Will. Uncle Ash would never have gone down in the mine—unless someone made him. Or worse. “Do you mean someone dragged—,” Bone started to ask.

  “Where’s Acacia at?” Aunt Queenie interrupted. Ruby had told her, but Queenie was eyeing first Uncle Junior and Mr. Sherman and then Bone and Ruby. The menfolk took the hint, both turning their full attention to their coffee.

  Bone crossed her arms and stared at Queenie. She hated when the grown-ups decided something wasn’t fit for twelve-year-olds to hear.

  Queenie and Mamaw were friends—and professional colleagues, as Mamaw liked to say. Aunt Queenie birthed babies and saw to children and women in Sherman’s Forest. Mother Reed supplied the herbal teas, salves, and tinctures.

  “Mama said something about proof and made Mattie drive her back up the mountain.” With a glance at the clock on the mantel, Uncle Junior got up and turned the radio on low. “Mind if we listen to the war news?”

  Nobody objected. Everyone had somebody over there—or soon would. Aunt Queenie’s youngest was in a tank battalion training at some camp in Louisiana.

  “She doesn’t think it’s Ash,” Bone whispered.

  “She would know, wouldn’t she?” Queenie whispered back.

  Everyone else had insisted Mamaw was wrong. “Thank you,” Bone mouthed.

  * * *

  When the war news came on the radio, Uncle Junior handed Bone their map from the mantel. Reluctantly she rolled it out on the floor in front of the fire. The Brits began raiding ships in the French port of Bordeaux. A U-boat sunk off Greenland. Another U-boat torpedoed a British ocean liner west of the Azores. Bone found them off the coast of Portugal. And the Germans in North Africa were continuing to withdraw west toward Tunisia.

  “Where’s Flanders?” she asked Uncle Junior.

  He didn’t answer.

  The screen door flew open, and the unmistakable sound of Mamaw’s boots tromped across the kitchen.

  “Mother, you’ve got to listen to reason,” Aunt Mattie’s voice trailed after her.

  “I will when I hear some.” Mamaw strode into the parlor waving a blue flannel shirt.

  Uncle Ash’s.

  “That poor man we saw today was wearing one like this.�
� She threw it at Uncle Junior. Mamaw crossed her arms and stared at Junior like he was supposed to get it.

  The shirt wafted to the floor across Bone’s map.

  She scooped up the shirt and hugged it to her. It smelled of tobacco, peppermint sticks, Ivory soap, dogs, and a whiff of something else. It was Uncle Ash’s shirt, no doubt. She saw a flash of him cleaning a stone out of a bay gelding’s hoof.

  “Your brother only has one of them this color—and it’s right there.”

  Uncle Junior rose to his feet.

  “Oh Mother,” Aunt Mattie clucked. “Surely, Ash has got more than one blue shirt. Maybe he bought himself another on one of his little trips.”

  The way she said “little trips” got Bone’s dander up. Truce. A Christmas truce, at least until Uncle Ash got back. And he would be back.

  Mamaw wheeled around on her daughter. “Honestly, Mattie, who do you think washes and sews your brother’s clothes?” She had evidently not declared a cease-fire.

  Mr. Sherman and Aunt Queenie rose from the settee.

  “Mother, Junior has…guests.” Aunt Mattie stumbled over the last words.

  “I’m not blind, Amarantha,” Mamaw said. “Or crazy.” She hugged Queenie. “Ester, I’m glad you’re here; you, too, Tiny.”

  “Acacia, what can we do—”

  Aunt Queenie was cut off by a loud insistent knock at the front door.

  “Law, who could that be?” Mrs. Price hurried to answer. Folk usually just walked into the boardinghouse, the front of it at least.

  “Might be the man from the funeral parlor,” Aunt Mattie said. “I called him this afternoon.”

  “You did not!” Mamaw whirled on Mattie. “Who gave you the right?”

  Bone leapt to her feet and stood beside Mamaw. How dare Aunt Mattie start planning the funeral—without Mamaw and without even knowing if it was Uncle Ash. Which it wasn’t!