The Truce Read online

  “That’s heathen nonsense, Mother.” Aunt Mattie pursed her lips.

  Bone bit hers. A truce, a Christmas truce, she’d promised Uncle Ash until he returned.

  The preacher’s wife didn’t approve of ghost stories and heathen ways at Halloween let alone Christmas. She’d even fought Uncle Henry about putting up Christmas trees. She’d always quote some verse in Isaiah or Jeremiah about the pagans nailing up a tree. And Uncle Henry would always point out they didn’t have Christmas back in those days. Then he and Ruby would chop down the biggest Virginia pine they could fit in the parsonage.

  Without Uncle Henry, Aunt Mattie would probably ban Christmas trees. This Christmas was going to be tough for Ruby.

  “We better get to school,” Bone told her cousin.

  They ran up the road, sliding into the classroom just in time for the bell.

  * * *

  Bone settled into her seat. It was in the open ground between where Ruby, Opal, Pearl, and Robbie sat—and where Jake and Clay hid out. Only they weren’t there yet. This time last year, when the war first started, the sixth- and seventh-grade rows were fuller. Will and the Linkous twins had gone down into the mines. Several others had left for other reasons, their parents finding jobs or getting drafted or killed. Now Ruby would be moving to Radford soon.

  Miss Johnson cleared her throat and started calling the roll. “Miss Albert…”

  Ruby raised her hand.

  Jake and Clay burst into the room, out of breath but with huge grins on their faces. “Sorry, Miss J.” Jake handed her a note as they both made their way to their usual seats on the back row.

  Miss Johnson tucked the note in her roll book. “Miss Croy?”

  “Here!”

  Bone tapped at her right cheek as Clay squeezed by. He had a streak of coal on his face, which he promptly wiped on his sleeve. “Wait till you hear what we were a-doing!” he whispered.

  A pencil jabbed Bone in the back. Jake held out his grubby hand, the lifeline of his palm still gray with coal dust. In it sat a shiny dime. “Daddy paid us one a piece just for an hour’s…”

  “Mr. Lilly,” Miss Johnson scolded.

  Clay giggled, and Jake snatched his prize back.

  Jake’s dad was the outside man at the Big Vein mine. He was in charge of running the tipple and the mantrip, among other things. What did he have the boys doing? A dime was a lot of money. When the boys had worked at the mine earlier this year, they were handloaders. It didn’t pay that much an hour. The miners only got $1.25 per carload. Bone wondered about that all through history, geography, and spelling.

  * * *

  At lunch, Jake and Clay finally got to spill the beans.

  “It’s a regular mystery!” Jake exclaimed as he laid out his lunch. A fried bologna sandwich wrapped in creased waxed paper. An apple. And a jelly jar of rice pudding. He handed the apple to Clay without remarking on it. “Daddy got me up at the crack of dark. Then we fetched Clay.” Mr. Whitaker was already at work, he explained.

  “He’s been at the mill since the accident,” Clay said between mouthfuls of ham biscuit. His father had gotten hurt when a mine shaft had caved in on him and the Linkous twins. Marvin Linkous escaped with a scratch. Garvin’s broken arm was healing fine, but Mr. Whitaker now walked with a limp. The mill was owned by the mine. Before the war, a dozen people chopped down trees and milled lumber for the mine. Now it was just Mr. Whitaker.

  Bone unwrapped her drumstick as she listened to the boys.

  “Daddy said he had a special job for us.” Jake bit into the neatly trimmed sandwich with not a hint of crust.

  “Someone’s been leaving a mess of coal under the tipple every Saturday night,” Clay added. The tipple loaded the coal onto the trains. And everyone knew the 8:15 was the last train. “For the past month or so.”

  “Mr. Matthews asked Daddy to get us in to clean it up.”

  “The big man asked for us by name!”

  Bone shushed Clay and nodded toward the tree. Robbie Matthews was leaning against it, peeling an orange, pretending not to listen, at least until his father’s name was mentioned. He tossed a rind on the ground and came toward them. He shook his head woefully before popping a juicy section of orange into his mouth.

  Bone inhaled the scent of Christmas morning. The only time she got oranges was in her stocking. Daddy made sure she got one every year, no matter how broke they were.

  “Father would’ve asked one of the n—” He stopped himself. “One of the Negroes to do it. But he thinks they’re responsible.”

  Bone bristled at what Robbie almost said. Clay and Jake glared at Robbie, too. She couldn’t tell if they were mad for the same reason she was.

  “That’s stupid,” Bone said to Robbie. “Why in the world would Mr. Sherman or Mr. Fears be leaving coal under the tipple?” They both worked the night shift, and Tiny Sherman had just been promoted to outside man. He ran the tipple at night.

  “Because, you dolt, they’re stealing it—and not clever enough to clean up after themselves.” Robbie spat orange pulp onto the ground.

  Bone went off oranges then and there.

  “Now hold on.” Jake wagged a finger at Robbie. “Don’t you be calling Bone names.”

  “And no one said anything about Tiny or Oscar being involved,” Clay added.

  “I heard Father say that the Sherman boy wasn’t to be trusted.” Robbie shrugged, looking pleased with himself.

  Tiny Sherman was no boy. He was a very nice man, about Daddy’s age, who’d pitched for the Negro Leagues back in the day. Mama had healed his arm when a bunch of white boys jumped him years ago, right before he was supposed to go off to play ball in Memphis. Bone’s Gift had told her that. Now he worked the mines and pitched for the Big Vein team.

  “Mr. Sherman is too trustworthy!” Bone shook a drumstick at Robbie Matthews.

  “You would say that. Him and your Uncle Ash are pals.”

  “So what?” Bone bit into the chicken leg. It was true. Uncle Ash and Mr. Sherman went fishing together. And Uncle Ash treated all the animals over in Sherman’s Forest, the black community just down the road. Most people liked Uncle Ash—and Tiny.

  “Well, everyone knows your uncle ain’t right ever since the Great War.” Robbie leaned in. “That’s what Daddy says anyways.”

  Chewing furiously, Bone slapped the drumstick against the wax paper and stood up. No one bad-mouthed her Uncle Ash, even if they might be right. She could feel Jake and Clay rise beside her. “Just shut up,” she spat out.

  “Who knows? Maybe they’re in on this thing together.” Robbie smirked. The smirk suddenly turned to a smile as Ruby walked up with Opal and Pearl—the Little Jewels. He’d always been sweet on Ruby, walking her and her friends everywhere, hanging on her every word. Only now she was leaving, and he seemed more determined—and spiteful—than ever. Bone didn’t understand either.

  “What’s this?” Ruby asked, glaring at Robbie.

  “Oh, nothing!” He whispered something in her ear and then said so everyone could hear, “Let’s go eat inside where it’s more civilized.” He took Ruby by the arm, and she reluctantly followed with Opal and Pearl in tow. Robbie shot a look at Bone that clearly said this was not over.

  “Aw, forget him!” Jake said loudly as he plopped back down on the bench to finish his lunch.

  “Yeah!” Clay followed suit. “How ’bout a story, Bone?”

  “A scary one,” Jake added. “Granddaddy says Christmas is really a time for ghost stories and such, since it comes at the darkest part of the year. They scare off the haints and bad luck.”

  Bone sighed and sank back down onto her seat. The chicken didn’t look so appealing anymore. She tore open a biscuit and slathered it with apple butter. Why would Mr. Matthews or Robbie say those things about Tiny—or Uncle Ash, for that matter? She wished Uncle Ash hadn’t left already. He�
�d only been gone two days but it felt like two weeks.

  “Bone?” Jake prodded her.

  “How about a ghost dog story?” she asked, finally. They were Uncle Ash’s favorite. He always said ghost or spirit or devil dogs could be an omen of death or a bringer of justice—or both. She scratched her head for one she hadn’t told the boys yet. “Y’all have heard of Swift’s Silver Mine, right?”

  Heads nodded eagerly. Jake beckoned over the rest of the kids eating outside. “Bone’s getting ready to tell a good one.” Half the upper classes huddled around Bone’s table.

  “Yes, that Swift fellow discovered a mother lode of silver in the mountains,” Clay said.

  “Before the Revolution…”

  “In Virginia…”

  “No, Granddaddy said Tennessee.”

  “Kentucky!” another voice threw in.

  “Okay, okay.” Bone beckoned them to settle down around her. “Y’all are right. Nobody knows where that mine was—and Swift went blind and could never find it himself again. But there was this woman who thought she’d found it once. Her and her husband was searching through the hills. She saw this black dog, as big as a yearling, with eyes the size of saucers standing guard over the entrance of a cave.”

  “A ghost dog?”

  “Yep. The woman tried to get closer—and the dog stood his ground, eyes swirling at her—so she ran off to get her husband. As soon as she looked over her shoulder—that dog disappeared into thin air!”

  “Did they find the mine?”

  “Nope, they never could find that place—or the ghost dog—again,” Bone concluded.

  Miss Johnson rang the bell, calling an end to lunch.

  * * *

  Back inside, everyone was talking and some were still eating. Miss Johnson usually allowed them a few minutes to wash up and visit the johnny house before she started class back up.

  “Did I ever tell you Uncle Ash thought he saw a devil dog during the war?” Bone asked Jake and Clay as they slid into their seats at the back of the classroom.

  “No!” The boys scooted their desks closer.

  “He was in the trenches, and this big black dog started walking across no-man’s-land toward him and his dogs. Uncle Ash ran the messenger dogs for his battalion. He thought he was done for, and the ghost dog was there to tell him a mortar shell or gas attack was about to get him.” Bone paused for effect.

  “Well?”

  “Turns out it was one of the Germans’ dogs that had gotten lost.”

  The boys groaned.

  “He patched it up and sent it back to their lines.”

  Robbie Matthews snorted. “My daddy was a real hero in the Great War,” he told Ruby loud enough for everyone to hear. “He’s got a box of souvenirs to prove it.”

  “Nuts to him,” Jake replied.

  Miss Johnson cleared her throat and started lecturing about Charles Dickens.

  “Did your uncle ever see a real ghost dog?” Clay whispered.

  Bone nodded.

  Uncle Ash had seen a ghost dog outside Aunt Mattie’s house the day Mama died there.

  It was probably a good thing that lady didn’t see that ghost dog guarding Swift’s Mine ever again.

  BONE HAD ALREADY READ several of Mr. Dickens’s books, including the one Miss Johnson was assigning to the seventh graders. It was her favorite seeing as it was a Christmas ghost story. “Christmas almost died out as a holiday on both sides of the Atlantic—until A Christmas Carol came along,” Miss Johnson told the class. “Well, Dickens’s story wasn’t the only thing—”

  The mine whistle blew.

  It hadn’t done so since October when Mr. Whitaker and one of the Linkous twins got trapped after a shaft collapsed. Will had single-handedly rescued Garvin Linkous.

  Jake put a hand on Clay’s shoulder as they stood. Both of their daddies were safe, working outside the mine.

  Bone and Ruby exchanged a glance. Uncle Junior and Will were still down in Big Vein.

  Miss Johnson opened the classroom door. “Take your coats!” she called as Bone and Ruby scooted out, followed by the boys and the Little Jewels. Everyone had someone at the mine. Bone pulled her mother’s butter-yellow sweater tight around her as she ran. Woven in the very fabric of the yarn, she could see every time Mama had sprinted over this same ground, panicked that something had happened to Daddy, Junior, or Papaw.

  As usual when the whistle blew, the whole community turned up outside the mine entrance. The wind whipped through the hollow, and a tiny speck of snow fell. Bone and Ruby found Mamaw who’d run down from the parsonage. Alone. Jake and Clay ran to their fathers, both of them working up top. Mr. Whitaker limped over to the mine entrance, and Mr. Lilly threw the mantrip in gear. He exchanged a few words with the boys.

  Jake came tearing back toward Bone. “Daddy says they don’t know nothing. Garvin rang up to tell them to pull the whistle—and call the sheriff,” he panted.

  A murmur went through the crowd around them.

  “Sheriff?” Mamaw said to Mrs. Price. “They never done that before.”

  The mantrip emerged from the mine entrance with a rattle. One by one, men covered with coal dust and ash peeled themselves out of the little tram. A tall wiry man, who could only be Uncle Junior, unfolded himself and rounded the back of the trip. Another dusty form, almost as tall, met him there. Will.

  Mamaw let out a breath—and so did Bone. And Ruby.

  Uncle Junior spoke to Mr. Whitaker, who then hobbled around with a clipboard calling out names: Albert Price! Marvin Linkous! Garvin Linkous! Will Kincaid! He ticked off the names of everyone on day shift—which wasn’t that many anymore.

  A murmur went around the crowd again.

  Everyone seemed to be there. Instead of heading toward their families, the men walled off Junior and Will as they emerged from the back of the trip carrying something—or someone—covered by a tarp. They laid it gently on the cold ground.

  Uncle Junior took the clipboard—and flipped through it. With a shake of his head, he handed it back to Mr. Whitaker.

  Slowly, the men of Big Vein’s day shift drifted toward their families and loved ones.

  “Must be someone from the night shift,” Mamaw murmured.

  Uncle Junior stood there dazed for a moment, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. Then he saw Mamaw, Bone, and Ruby. He pulled the brim of his cap down tight, his face still streaked with sweat and coal dust, and walked across the gravel to them.

  “Who is it?” Mamaw asked gently. She took the kerchief from her hair and handed it to Junior.

  “Danged if I know!” He wiped at his face, making it more gray than anything. “And I should know!” He scanned the crowd. “Everyone, day and night shift, is accounted for.” Uncle Junior was the day shift supervisor now that Daddy had been drafted.

  “Could the night shift have missed someone?” Mamaw asked. She stuffed the blackened kerchief into her pocket.

  “They checked off everyone on the list.” Uncle Junior put his mining hat back on. “Besides, that was Saturday night. Someone would have noticed anyone missing come Sunday.”

  “What’d he look like?” Bone asked. Everybody knew everybody around Big Vein, even if they didn’t work in the mine anymore.

  “That’s the thing.” Uncle Junior avoided looking at Bone. “It’s kind of hard to tell. The body was covered in debris. A beam must’ve…”

  “Oh,” Mamaw said quietly.

  Bone didn’t get it, but she let it go.

  “Maybe he’s indigent,” Aunt Mattie said, suddenly appearing at his shoulder. She’d taken her sweet time coming down to the mine. No longer in a kerchief, her hair was neatly done, and she’d shed her apron. “Remember the man Daddy found?” she asked her brother.

  Uncle Junior nodded. “The fellow died in his sleep. Didn’t know the ventilation wa
sn’t running.”

  Bone did understand this. Men used to come looking for work all the time during the Depression. Daddy would invite them home. Mama—and later Mrs. Price—would feed them a good meal for the price of a story and send them on their way. Sometimes they’d sneak into the mine if the weather was bad. The Superior Anthracite Company didn’t pay to have the fans running when the miners weren’t mining. A man could suffocate, Daddy always said, if the air wasn’t circulating.

  “We haven’t found one like that in years, but you never know.” Junior walked back to Mr. Whitaker and checked the clipboard one more time. They fell into a heated discussion.

  While Junior and the other miners debated who it could be, Mr. Matthews pulled up in his Cadillac. He parked it in front of the store.

  “That’s new, too,” Mamaw remarked.

  Bone didn’t recall seeing him at the accident in September.

  “If it’s a bum, Robinson Matthews will want them to get right back to work,” Mattie said to no one in particular.

  Mamaw gave her the stink eye.

  Mr. Matthews was taking his sweet time. He was still in his Cadillac.

  * * *

  Next, the sheriff’s car parted the crowd and parked right by the mine entrance. Sheriff Alfred Taylor hopped out and shooed everyone away from the body. Uncle Junior quickly filled him in and showed him the clipboard, listing the names of who it wasn’t.

  Mr. Matthews muscled his way through the crowd and collared Uncle Junior. He stiffened as his boss laid into him. Bone could only hear a few words. Bum. Army. Quota.

  Aunt Mattie looked smug.

  Christmas truce, Bone reminded herself. At least until Uncle Ash gets back.

  Mr. Matthews stomped off to lay into Mr. Lilly next.

  The sheriff knelt down. His face went white as he pulled up the tarp. Dropping it, he turned his head away for a moment. Then taking a deep breath, he lifted the tarp again. Bone understood now why they couldn’t tell who it was. A beam must’ve crushed the man’s face. This time the sheriff felt around the man’s body.