The Truce
Page 13
Uncle Ash brushed the pine needles off his pants. He reached into his coat pocket and produced the packet of peppermint sticks, offering one to Mattie. “That’s quite a brave thing you did standing up to Matthews—and a ghost dog.”
Aunt Mattie harrumphed, but she took a peppermint stick. “Not sure which was worse.”
Brother and sister stood there for a moment, each savoring the candy. Bone and Will exchanged a glance. She shrugged, and he started sawing ever so slowly.
Mattie finally spoke. “I couldn’t bear to lose someone else I love,” she said.
Will stopped sawing. Bone gulped. Mattie loved her.
“It don’t make up for what I did to her.” Aunt Mattie’s voice caught.
Uncle Ash put an arm around her shoulder. “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
“I’m glad we didn’t lose you neither,” she added quietly.
“I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in forty-seven years.” Uncle Ash laughed.
“Don’t get used to it!” Aunt Mattie squirmed out from under his arm. “Might take me forty-seven more years to think of another nice thing to say.”
Will sawed through the last bit of the treetop. “Timber!” he warned as it slipped out of his hand and tumbled toward the foyer floor. Uncle Ash gently pushed Mattie aside, but the foot of pine still narrowly missed her.
Bone braced herself as Aunt Mattie looked up at them, a flash of fury in her eyes. It soon gave way, though, to a hearty laugh. “This will look nice on our kitchen table.” She scooped up the miniature tree and headed into the parlor without a backward glance.
“Well, don’t that beat all?” Uncle Ash mumbled, more to himself than anyone, before he stepped out onto the front porch.
“Maybe old dogs can learn new tricks,” Bone wondered aloud.
Will snorted. “Best not let her hear you say that.”
As he held her steady, Bone leaned over the railing to place the star on top of the Christmas tree. The choir began singing “O Holy Night” over at the church.
And thus began the Christmas truce of 1942.
* * *
For the rest of Christmas Eve, the boardinghouse bustled with people and dogs of the living variety. The smells of baking ash bread and simmering shuck beans with pork and the sounds of Bing Crosby on the radio filled the house. Ruby served the apple stack cake she’d whipped up. Mamaw hung stockings for all the grands with one orange in each. Bone regaled her audience with the ghost dog story by the bonfire. Uncle Ash told the one about the haunted mirror over in Radford. Mamaw told one about a shack haunted by a skeleton cat. Then they clanged pots and pans together at midnight to ward off the dead.
No animals talked. The dogs didn’t kneel—except for Corolla, who Uncle Ash had taught to beg for Christmas cookies. But the elder bush did bloom by the front door.
And Uncle Ash got a letter from a dead man. The worn envelope bore the postmarks of its long journey from Catawba to New York and back to Big Vein. Uncle Ash explained that the army had to read and censor every POW’s mail. Inside, the letter bore a censor stamp, but nothing was blacked out. It simply said, “You were right. I should’ve followed my own lights.”
THE COLD, WINDY DAY was perfect for a cleansing, Mamaw said, as she handed Bone the box of white vinegar, rags, and newspapers. Bone knocked on the front door of the parsonage, box in hand. The sound echoed inside. Uncle Ash and Junior had loaded up the last of the furniture this morning and were moving it into Mattie’s new place in Radford. Ruby was supervising.
“Come in, Mama,” Aunt Mattie yelled from the back.
Bone pushed the door open and set the supplies on the kitchen counter. The place looked hollowed out. “It’s me,” she called.
Aunt Mattie emerged from the bedroom, broom in hand. Her hair was up in a kerchief and she was wearing an old shirt and rolled-up trousers. She looked down at herself and laughed. “They were Henry’s. I couldn’t throw everything of his away. Is Mama coming?”
“Nope. I’m here to help you clean.”
Aunt Mattie cracked a smile. “Okay, then.” She handed Bone the broom. Mattie grabbed a bottle of vinegar and a stack of newspapers from the box. “I’ll do the windows.” She started toward the front room and paused. “I hear Tiny finally got out.”
Bone nodded. “Yesterday.” Mr. Hill, it turned out, was a very good lawyer. It still made Bone furious, though, that the sheriff and judge had to be convinced Tiny was innocent—even after Mr. Matthews confessed and the army charged him with profiteering.
“Good,” Aunt Mattie said. “He’s a good man.”
Bone started at the back of the house. In Uncle Henry’s study, with the dust and dirt, she swept out the memories of him reading his dime-store novels instead of writing his sermon. Of her lying awake on the cot, telling Ruby about Ashpet while Mattie and Henry fought over him going off to war.
In the hallway, she scrubbed away the memory of finding Mama’s sweater hidden in the shed. Of standing up to Mattie, and her ripping the sweater off and dragging her down the hall to the bathroom. In there, Bone studied the clean tub, still able to taste the iron-cold bathwater as Mattie held her head under. Bone swept every speck of dust from the black-and-white tiles.
In the big bedroom, Bone could still see Mattie asleep in the bed, the butter-yellow sweater draped over her, and Mama slumped in the chair. Dead. Uncle Ash crying at her feet.
Bone swept with a fury, fighting back the tears. She swept out the hurtful memories. The unkind remarks. The loss.
Aunt Mattie crept into the room, newspapers and vinegar in hand. Bone whipped the pine boards with the broom. Mattie scrubbed the big window until it squeaked and the smell of vinegar filled the air. Then she flung the window open. Bone wiped her eyes on the sleeve of Mama’s sweater. She’d come to this house back in September, ready to tell Aunt Mattie the sweater’s story, really the story of Mama and the sister she saved. Aunt Mattie wasn’t ready to hear it then. Bone watched her aunt’s shoulders tremble as she stood in the fresh air.
“I’m ready to hear that story now,” Aunt Mattie whispered.
It came bursting out of Bone like a gale-force wind.
As it poured out, Aunt Mattie threw open the rest of the windows in the room. Cold gusts carried off the lingering ghosts, leaving the parsonage and more New Year’s fresh and clean.
Aunt Mattie wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve and held her arms out to Bone.
Maybe this truce would last. Maybe it would become a peace, at least until the next war started.
Author’s Note:
Just like the other stories in the Ghosts of Ordinary Objects series, The Truce relies on a mixture of history and folklore and/or ghost stories. Though I’m not a historian, I do try my best to get the history (and folklore!) right. Here’s a little backstory on some of the history and stories used in this book.
LOCAL POW CAMPS
Just as Ash explained to Bone, the US agreed to house POWs in America starting in 1942. The first POWs came from Rommel’s Afrika Korps, elite German tank battalions fighting in North Africa. POW camps were quietly spread across our country, and the prisoners helped make up for a shortage of labor on the home front. They picked fruit, built buildings, farmed, and so forth. Approximately 425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps spread throughout the United States during the war.
One of those camps was located in Mason’s Cove near what’s now called Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia; today, the camp is called Ward Haven Camp and Retreat. In the 1930s, the camp was originally built for the Civilian Conservation Corps. In 1941, the army used it as a mechanical training school where soldiers learned to work on trucks and other vehicles. In 1942, it welcomed its first German POWs. The camp housed around 150 prisoners until 1945.
I always seem to find out the really interesting stuff after I write th
e first draft. Evidently, my uncle’s cousin actually encountered a runaway German POW from the Mason’s Cove camp. Having walked off a work detail, the POW knocked on this cousin’s door, looking for food. The cousin, naturally, called the police, and the POW was returned to the camp. No German POWs, to my knowledge, made it as far as McCoy (the real Big Vein). But they could’ve since the whole area is connected by coal and freight train tracks.
In fact, not many German POWs tried to escape, and those that did, didn’t get far. Per the Geneva Convention, prisoners were given similar quarters to our military and paid for their labor. By many reports, the average German soldier had it better in an American POW camp than they did at home or in their own army. Many of the POW camps out west even offered college degrees. Some more militant Nazis did try to make trouble for their fellow prisoners whom they saw as collaborating with the enemy. These prisoners were sent to more secure facilities.
WYTHEVILLE LYNCHING
The lynching case Mamaw refers to really did happen. In 1926, Raymond Byrd was lynched in Wytheville, Virginia, which is approximately fifty miles from where this book is set. Mr. Byrd was accused of rape, though the alleged victim denied it, and was arrested. A mob of white men shot Raymond Byrd in his jail cell and then dragged him through town and out to the farm of the woman he supposedly raped. There, he was hanged from a tree. The last “documented” lynching in Virginia, Raymond Byrd’s case spurred the state’s 1928 anti-lynching law—as well as the flight north for many black people in Wythe County.
OLIVER HILL
Oliver Hill was a noted African American civil rights attorney from Richmond, Virginia. He began practicing law in Roanoke during the Great Depression. By the early 1940s, he’d established his own law firm with two other prominent African American lawyers in Richmond. Hill did work with the NAACP during this time period, but, to my knowledge, he didn’t take criminal cases. His legal career focused on ending “separate but equal.” Hill worked for equal pay, voting rights, access to education and transportation, among other things. One of his cases—Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County—became one of the five cases decided by the US Supreme Court under Brown v. Board of Education. This landmark ruling established that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. Mr. Hill continued to practice law and work for civil rights for many decades after that. He won numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died in 2007. Several courthouses, buildings, and streets are named after him.
GHOST DOG STORIES
All of the ghost stories used in this book—except for the Greenbrier ghost—came from sources such as Virginia Folk Legends, the book of stories compiled by Works Progress Administration workers in Virginia. However, many more ghost dog tales are told throughout the Appalachian South. An excellent source is Ghost Dogs of the South by husband and wife folklorists Randy Russell and Janet Barnett.
GREENBRIER GHOST
The Greenbrier ghost story is a famous (and true) case that has been the subject of many books. Her story is even on a state highway marker. On January 23, 1897, Elva Zona Heaster Shue was found dead by a neighbor boy at the bottom of the stairs in her home in Lewisburg, West Virginia. Her death was thought to have been from natural causes—until Zona’s ghost appeared to her mother. The ghost described how she’d been killed by her husband. The mother got her daughter’s body exhumed and the autopsy corroborated Zona’s story. It’s still the only case in our judicial system where a ghost helped solve her own murder. Her husband was convicted and sent to prison, where he died.
ANGIE SMIBERT is the author of the Ghosts of Ordinary Objects trilogy and the Memento Nora series, which Booklist called “a gift for both reluctant and regular readers.” She grew up in Blacksburg, a sleepy college town in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Her mother’s family once worked in the long-closed coal mines along the New River. Angie always had stories in her head. Eventually, after a few degrees and a few cool jobs—including a ten-year stint at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center—she wrote some of those stories down. She now lives in Roanoke, Virginia. Visit angiesmibert.com.
DON’T MISS:
Bone’s Gift
“This mystical mystery…[will] snag even history-resistant readers. Readers will definitely invest in Bone’s journey with her mama’s butter-yellow sweater, trusting that it will lead her to the answers she desires—a truth that’ll change just about everything.”
—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review
“Smibert’s language…feels real and down-to-earth, like her characters…. An intriguing blend of history and magic.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Lingering Echoes
“Smibert’s writing is as smooth and evocative as in the first volume…”
—Kirkus Reviews