The Truce

by Angie Smibert

  The door swung open, and Miss Spencer stepped out.

  Will reached a hand down to help Uncle Ash to his feet. Ruby pulled Bone up—and then hugged Uncle Ash quick and tight.

  No sooner had Ruby let go than Aunt Mattie came steaming down the hill toward Uncle Ash. She wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve, reared back, and walloped him with her good Sunday- go-to-meeting handbag. It about knocked him off his feet again. She turned on her heel and marched toward the boardinghouse.

  Uncle Junior was on his knees, his head in his hands. Bone couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying—or both.

  “What the hell is going on around here?” Ash demanded as he yanked Junior to his feet.

  Junior first hugged Ash and then slapped him on the back. Hard. “This is your funeral, little brother.”

  Uncle Ash dropped his Lucky Strike again.

  Mamaw whirled around, pointing her finger at the sheriff. “I told you it weren’t him.”

  The sheriff hung his head. “I’m glad you were right, Mrs. Reed.” He looked up at Uncle Ash. “I still got some questions for you!”

  Bone had to admit she did, too. Like who was that man they were fixing to bury.

  BACK AT THE BOARDINGHOUSE, Mrs. Price plied Ash and Miss Spencer with funeral food and coffee as everyone filled them in on what had happened. About the body in the mine. About Tiny getting arrested.

  “What?” Uncle Ash leapt to his feet upon hearing that last part. “We got to get him out.”

  Uncle Junior calmed him down. “Al must’ve let him go by now.”

  Bone nodded. As the crowd had politely let the family shoo Uncle Ash and Miss Spencer away from his own funeral, Bone had spied Aunt Queenie cornering the sheriff. Surely, he couldn’t hold Mr. Sherman in jail for killing Uncle Ash when he was clearly very much alive.

  Uncle Ash sank back down beside Miss Spencer.

  Aunt Mattie was curiously silent as she sipped hot coffee perched on the settee, handbag by her side.

  “I told them you go to the beach every year,” Bone said quietly. “I know it’s supposed to be a secret.” She felt bad for betraying him, not so much for telling this on him but for doubting him for even a second.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Forever Girl.” He took Miss Spencer’s hand in his. “Why would anyone think that body in the mine was me?” He looked at his brother. “You know what happened last time I went down the mines.”

  “Yes, I told them,” Junior said.

  Bone and Mamaw both nodded. They’d told everyone who’d listen Ash would’ve never gone down there—on his own accord, at least.

  Uncle Ash threw up his hands. “Then why?”

  Bone opened up his poetry book, revealing the dog tag with a little bit of leather cord.

  Uncle Ash raised his eyebrow as he took the tag. He read it. He turned it over in his palm again and again. Then he pulled out a matching disk that hung around his neck on a similar leather cord. They were identical. Yet there was, just like Bone remembered, a larger, more oval disk attached to the same cord. He stared at both for the longest time, going a bit white. His hand started to shake.

  “Well?” Mattie demanded. She set her coffee cup down with a clatter.

  “I can see why you thought it was me,” he finally said, tucking his own dog tags back into his shirt.

  Then it all made sense to Bone. “You gave one of your tags to someone!”

  Everyone stared at her—and then at Ash and back at Bone.

  That someone wore the tag after the tunnel collapsed on him. And then the tag showed another person’s life. Someone who lived in the beautiful stone city nestled in snowcapped mountains. Someone who had a wife and children and strange black dogs. Someone who fought in the desert, in a tank maybe. “The German?” she added in a whisper. She could see a man wrapping the book in brown paper.

  Uncle Ash turned even whiter. He looked from her to the tag back to her, figuring out what she’d seen. “I told you to never touch these.”

  Mamaw gave Mrs. Price a look, and she shooed Miss Johnson and Miss Spencer into the kitchen for pie. “Family business,” she said by way of explanation. “We’ll get some more coffee.”

  Bone took a deep breath. “I had to know it wasn’t you.”

  “I asked her,” Uncle Junior admitted. “I shouldn’t have.”

  Aunt Mattie gawped from brother to brother, her gaze settling on Bone, but she didn’t say anything. Her eyes bored into Bone just like they had right before she’d tried to baptize the Gift out of her. Bone could taste the iron-cold bathwater again.

  “Ah, Forever Girl.” Uncle Ash squeezed Bone’s hand.

  “But it was you—and it wasn’t.” Bone glanced at Aunt Mattie. Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Um, the images were all jumbled up. And I couldn’t figure it out,” Bone explained. “Then the new preacher said you’d captured a German soldier in the tunnel.”

  “Beck,” Uncle Ash pulled out the oval disk tied to the leather strap. “Sergeant Rainer Beck. We were trapped in that tunnel together. He wasn’t my prisoner, though.”

  Aunt Mattie harrumphed as she picked up her coffee cup again. Mamaw shushed her.

  Uncle Ash quietly explained how they’d both gotten trapped in a mortar barrage. He’d been running messages with the dogs near the German line—and Beck had been doing some scouting along Allied lines. Ash dove into the tunnel, pulling the dogs after him, only to find Beck already there, hurt. Bad. Then the tunnel collapsed. “We were both cut off from our platoons.” Uncle Ash’s voice was steady but his hand shook so much he couldn’t light his smoke. He pitched it in the fireplace and started pacing as he talked.

  “How’d you get out?” Ruby asked.

  Aunt Mattie sipped her coffee, watching her brother wear a hole in the carpet; her hand shook too as she held the cup.

  Ash smiled. “The dogs, of course. One of them at least. The other didn’t make it. Ghost was this lovely gray Alsatian. She looked muddy-brown in the trenches. She helped me and Beck dig out just enough for her to squeeze through and run a message back to my platoon.”

  Mattie slammed down her cup, this time cracking the saucer. “That was a German soldier down in Big Vein?”

  “Appears so.” Ash tucked his and Beck’s dog tags back into his flannel shirt. He slipped the other one, the one found on Beck’s body, into his pocket.

  “What happened to Beck?” Bone asked, ignoring Mattie’s glare.

  “My people found us before his did. We were both taken to the army field hospital. He and I exchanged tags. I went back to the lines, and he went to a POW camp, I think.” He lit another Lucky Strike, this time without shaking. “I sure could use some of that pie and coffee.”

  “Hold on a cotton-picking minute!” Aunt Mattie jumped to her feet. “There was a German soldier in Big Vein. The same Germans who killed my Henry?” She trembled with rage as she glowered at Uncle Ash. “And you knew him! How could you put me through all this? Again! Henry just died!”

  “Mattie, honey.” Mamaw gently took Aunt Mattie’s arm, but she wasn’t having it. Mattie broke away and stepped in front of Uncle Ash.

  “It was a different war, Mattie,” Uncle Ash told his sister. He didn’t look at her, though. “A long time ago,” he added softly.

  Miss Spencer appeared by Uncle Ash’s side and quietly took his hand, intertwining her fingers with his.

  Aunt Mattie stiffened and stalked past them, out through the kitchen, slamming the screen door after her. Ruby sprang up and started to follow her mother out. She dashed back to hug Uncle Ash and then she was out the door, too.

  It was little wonder Aunt Mattie was furious. She’d almost buried a German soldier. In Big Vein. Near Uncle Henry. There was a bigger mystery at work here than anybody had suspected. But right now, Bone didn’t care. Uncle Ash was home—and he wasn’t dead.

  Mrs. P
rice and Miss Johnson came bustling in with fresh coffee and pecan pie.

  It was the best damn pie Bone ever tasted.

  BONE’S PIE-FILLED HAPPINESS lasted well into the evening. Miss Spencer told everyone how Uncle Ash surprised her at the college, just as she was editing the final draft of the stories she’d collected.

  “I stayed at the motor court near the college,” Uncle Ash answered Mrs. Price’s disapproving glare. “Anyways, several of the filling stations in Roanoke were low on fuel, so I figured I might not have enough gas to get all the way to the Outer Banks this year.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t chance it.” Mamaw downed the last of her coffee as she rose. “I knew it weren’t you.” She leaned over to kiss Ash on the forehead. “And you ended up just where you needed to be.” She winked at Miss Spencer. “Now, I best go check on your sister.” Mamaw gathered up her empty plate and fork and disappeared into the kitchen and out the back door.

  The radio played the war news while everyone else had another slice of pie. The CBS radioman, Mr. Murrow, was talking about how the Germans were killing millions of Jews. Millions? How could that be, Bone wondered.

  Uncle Ash worried the dog tag, rolling it around in his hand. Bone caught him looking at her once or twice. Then he stuffed the tag back in his pocket. Uncle Junior got out their war map and marked a battle in Tunisia where the German tanks had retreated.

  * * *

  The sheriff knocked on the door about 8:30 in the evening.

  “So, Ash, why did this fellow have nothing but your dog tag on him?” the sheriff asked over a slice of pie.

  “Nothing?” Ash asked, his eyebrow climbing.

  “You know what I mean.” He stuffed the last bite in his mouth and waited. “Who was he? And how’d he get down there?”

  Uncle Ash stood up and fished out a pack of Luckies from his shirt pocket. He offered one to the sheriff, who stuck it behind his ear, and gulped down black coffee. Ash took his time lighting his, but not taking his eye off the sheriff either, like he was deciding what to tell him. “Rainer Beck. I don’t know how in the world he got here or who would kill him.” Uncle Ash took out his own dog tags. He showed the sheriff both the matching dog tag and the tarnished disk that said RAINER BECK across the top. The other two lines, Ash explained, were the infantry unit and identification numbers.

  The sheriff peered at the tags, leaning back in his seat, clearly puzzled.

  “I saved his life—and he kept me sane—in that tunnel.” Uncle Ash tucked his tags back into his shirt. Ash explained what had happened during the war.

  “We ran into those tunnels at the Somme in ’18.” The sheriff shook his head. “Nasty business.” Uncle Ash and the sheriff compared notes on their war experience. The Brits, French, and Germans had dug tunnels throughout France and Belgium trying to get at each other. They even put explosives in the tunnels, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of men when they blew.

  “When was the last time you saw the Jerrie?” The sheriff pulled out a little notebook and jotted down the name.

  “December 8, 1917, in a field hospital in Cambrai, France.” Uncle Ash flicked his cigarette butt into the fireplace. “He was being taken to a POW camp.”

  “So you exchanged tags?”

  “Yep.”

  “And that’s the last you saw him?”

  “Yep.”

  The sheriff scratched his head. “So where have you been?”

  “I started off for the shore as usual this time a year.” Uncle Ash stopped to light a smoke, his hand shaking.

  The sheriff flicked through his notebook. “Cambrai was about now, right?”

  “Yes.” Uncle Ash shivered ever so slightly. “The first snap of cold brings it back…I head to where it’s a bit warmer.” Uncle Ash glanced at Miss Spencer with a smile. “But I only got as far as Roanoke this time.”

  Miss Spencer stood and took Uncle Ash’s hand. “I can vouch for his whereabouts.”

  Uncle Ash made the introductions, explaining that she was a professor at the women’s college. “We drove back this morning.”

  “The faculty Christmas party was last night,” she added.

  Bone stifled a giggle. She couldn’t imagine Uncle Ash at a party with a bunch of college professors.

  “Your uncle charmed my dean quite nicely,” Miss Spencer told Bone.

  “Where were you last Saturday night?” the sheriff asked Ash.

  “Let’s see, I was in Whitethorne birthing Sy Long’s calf until late into the wee hours. It got stuck. Him and Cassie fed me breakfast after.”

  That’s exactly what she’d seen.

  “This case makes less and less sense every minute. Maybe this fella Beck moved to the States after the first war. My cousin Adele’s husband’s family did. But that still don’t explain how he got into shaft twenty-seven. Dead.” The sheriff shook Uncle Ash’s hand as he was headed out the door. “Glad it wasn’t you, Ash, but somehow you’re involved in this. Don’t go nowhere.”

  “It wasn’t me—or Tiny. You let Tiny go, right?” Uncle Ash asked.

  The sheriff shook his head.

  “Al, you know Tiny didn’t kill Beck.” Uncle Ash squared up with the sheriff.

  Uncle Junior laid a quiet hand on his brother’s shoulder. Ash shrugged it off.

  “Some evidence still points to him,” the sheriff replied, looking Uncle Ash in the eye.

  The ball cap.

  “But he could’ve easily left his cap when he was working in the shaft,” Junior said.

  “Yeah, but someone was stealing coal—and I still got a body.”

  “Tiny ain’t responsible for either.” Ash crossed his arms.

  Somebody attacked that German man under the tipple and dragged him down into Big Vein to die.

  And there was the ghost dog. Bone didn’t think the sheriff wanted to hear about it. Uncle Ash would, though.

  COME MONDAY MORNING, practically the whole seventh grade was waiting to walk Bone and Ruby to school. Even Robbie Matthews was there, standing in the road with his sack lunch and books. Bone suspected, though, he was more interested in impressing Ruby than hearing about Uncle Ash.

  “Well?” Jake asked after they’d passed the parsonage.

  “Well what?” Bone pretended not to know what he was talking about.

  “What did the sheriff say last night?” Clay prodded. Everyone knew everyone’s business in Big Vein.

  “Yeah, whose body was that we almost buried yesterday?” Jake asked.

  Bone hesitated. She’d almost blurted it out, but Ruby raised an eyebrow and ever so slightly tilted her head toward Robbie. Bone trusted Jake and Clay—and maybe even the Little Jewels—but not the son of the mine superintendent. And Robbie Matthews was all ears.

  LOOSE LIPS MIGHT SINK SHIPS, the war poster in the store said. They’d already had too many sunk ships.

  Bone shrugged. “The sheriff just wanted to know where Uncle Ash was.”

  Clay started to say something but Jake punched him, nodding toward Robbie. He was oblivious.

  “Father always said it was a bum off the train. Knew it as soon as the call came, he said,” Robbie relayed with great assurance. “I brought something to show you,” he told Ruby, patting his coat pocket.

  Ruby rolled her eyes, but only so Bone could see it.

  Jake and Clay moved the conversation along to football. The Little Jewels talked about the dance.

  Bone’s breath hung cloud-like in the crisp, still air as she walked. Did Rainer Beck move to the States, like the sheriff thought? With his family and those black dogs? The mountains and town didn’t look like anything she’d seen. But she hadn’t seen a lot. Was he coming to see Uncle Ash? Who would kill him? Was it on account of him being German? Another reason not to say anything about it.

  These thoughts haunted Bone throughout the m
orning.

  School wore on, meandering through history, math, and geography, all like nothing happened last week, like there was no German soldier murdered two hundred feet from the school. Like they hadn’t seen a ghost dog hovering over that very spot.

  Bone leaned back in her chair and whispered to the boys, “We need to go back to the tipple at night—and take Uncle Ash with us.”

  “Hot damn,” Jake whispered back.

  Clay nodded solemnly. “Then you can tell us who really got himself killed there.”

  Bone didn’t answer.

  “Then you owe us another devil dog story at lunch,” Jake said.

  “Deal,” Bone agreed. She’d fill them and Will in later when she had more of the picture.

  “Would you three like to clean the erasers after school?” Miss Johnson appeared in front of them.

  “No ma’am,” they said in unison.

  * * *

  At lunch, Bone told the boys—and most of the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades—another ghost dog tale. “Many years ago, a man followed his wife up the road to a great sycamore tree,” Bone began. “She was meeting another fella there. The husband killed them both on the spot. Fifty years later, a man and a couple of ladies were walking up that road on the way to a church social. Pretty soon, they saw a big black dog was a-following them. It had eyes of burning coal.” Bone paused for effect.

  Most of the class had their eyes on Bone—except Robbie Matthews. He was pulling something out of his pocket to show Ruby.

  “Well?” Jake asked.

  Clay nodded. “You just love leaving us in the dark.”

  “The man threw a rock at the dog—and the rock went clean through it. They started walking right fast up the road toward the church, hoping to lose it. As soon as they passed that sycamore tree, the dog disappeared into thin air. Plum on the spot those two people died.”