The Truce Read online

  “Owl be glad when this train finally comes.”

  Clay groaned.

  Jake punched Will on the shoulder. “That was terrible, man.”

  Ruby covered her mouth. And Bone actually smiled. This was the best she’d felt in days.

  Will’s bad owl joke put her in mind of the one he’d told his daddy when he was little. He’d told the knock-knock joke into the jelly jar, the one his father had with him when he died. Will didn’t talk after that, not until Bone figured out how to free his voice from that jelly jar. As Uncle Ash would say, that was a whole ’nuther story.

  Will tapped his watch. The train was making its way around the bend, its brakes beginning to quietly squeal as it slowed down. The tipple whirled to life, lights flicking on and the conveyor motor grinding. It shook as it sorted and dropped coal into its hoppers, getting ready for the train.

  As it approached, a brakeman jumped out of the locomotive’s cab and waved the train under the tipple with his lantern. He signaled the outside man in the tipple, and then coal thundered down into one car. The train screeched forward. Another car filled. And then another. It took almost an hour to fill all the cars with coal.

  Jake, Clay, and Ruby fell asleep. Bone ran everything she’d seen in that dog tag over and over in her head. The rumble of the coal falling through the tipple chute matched what she’d heard.

  Finally, the brakeman hopped onto the back of the caboose as it pulled under the tipple. No doubt he’d hop off again in a few hundred yards to switch the train back to the main line. The coal train chugged east toward the port in Norfolk—and the war. The tipple shut down.

  Bone elbowed the others awake.

  No truck appeared.

  Nothing happened for several very long minutes.

  The barn owl screeched again.

  Then a large black dog the size of a yearling walked out of the shadows. The dog stood directly under the tipple. Its big saucer eyes glinted in the moonlight—and fixed themselves on Bone.

  One of the boys gulped hard, and someone whimpered.

  Bone stood up. She’d never seen a dog like that, black, muscular, with pointy ears, though there was something familiar about it. Was it like the dogs she’d seen in the tag?

  The others rose behind her. She took a step toward the dog—and it vanished.

  Ruby gasped.

  “I really am going to pee myself now,” Clay whispered.

  “It was a ghost dog,” Bone marveled. A real-life spirit dog just like in Uncle Ash’s stories. And the Swift’s Mine tale. She flicked on the flashlight and motioned for the others to follow.

  “More like a devil dog with them ears,” Clay said.

  “Do you think there’s some treasure buried here?” Jake asked.

  This time Ruby socked him in the arm.

  “Ow.”

  Bone walked to the very spot the dog had stood.

  “This is where we cleaned up that pile of coal last Monday morning,” Clay said, kicking at the spot. There wasn’t any loose coal this time.

  Will let out a low appreciative whistle.

  Uncle Ash always said spirit dogs could come as a warning, a harbinger of death, or a bringer of justice. Or it could be like that dog in the Swift’s Mine story, guarding something precious. Bone had the distinct feeling, though, this dog was trying to tell her something. “Whoever Will found in shaft twenty-seven had gotten himself killed right here where we’re standing,” Bone declared.

  No one argued with her.

  A real-life devil dog was guarding the spot. And it wasn’t one of Ash’s dogs, neither.

  * * *

  Bone and her friends walked back home down the mine road in the near silence, the only sounds being the river below and the train disappearing in the distance.

  “Y’all looking for that truck?” a voice called out of the darkness.

  “Dang it, I really am going to pee myself before the night is through,” Clay exclaimed.

  A figure stepped out into the moonlight, followed closely by a couple of hound dogs. It was Mr. Childress. His two dogs cowered behind him. “Fool dogs won’t go near that tipple no more.”

  “Truck?” Bone asked.

  “Didn’t come tonight.” Mr. Childress fell in beside them. He explained how Saturday for a month or more, a truck had come rattling along the road past his place after the last train. Mr. Childress lived a few houses down and was known to sit out on his porch every night, playing his fiddle. “Thought I’d walk the dogs a bit and see for myself what was going on.”

  Perhaps the truck didn’t come tonight because the driver or his accomplice was lying in a coffin at the funeral home.

  “What about last Saturday?” Bone asked. “Did you see it then?”

  “Yes, about 9:30 or near to ten o’clock, a truck came tearing down the road—with no lights on.”

  “What kind of truck did you see, Uncle Nate?” Will asked. Mr. Childress was Will’s great-uncle on his mama’s side.

  Mr. Childress shook his head. “I cannot get over you talking, Will Kincaid. You sound just like your daddy.” He took a moment to light his pipe. “Oh, it were a big dumper truck like the ones the mine runs. Reckon that’s why I didn’t think much of it at first.”

  “Did you see who was driving?” Bone asked.

  “Nah, it weren’t your Uncle Ash or Tiny Sherman, though, that’s for damn sure.”

  “But you didn’t see the man,” Ruby said.

  Bone gave Ruby the stink eye, but she had to admit it was a good question.

  “No,” Mr. Childress finally allowed.

  Will started to say something.

  “It’s not him,” Bone said. It was not Uncle Ash. Not in the truck. Not in the coffin. Even if that dog tag belonged to him.

  Ruby, the boys, and Mr. Childress said their good nights, leaving Bone and Will to walk back to the boardinghouse in silence. He was itching to say something, she could tell, but she didn’t want to hear it.

  “You think it’s him, don’t you?” Bone finally asked, as she stood on the back steps.

  Will struggled to find the words. “The ghost dog,” Will managed. Then he got out his pencil and wrote something in his little notebook.

  He handed her the slip.

  Who else would leave it to warn us? To warn you?

  Will had her there. She didn’t think it worked that way. But if it did, Uncle Ash would certainly send her a ghost dog.

  UNCLE JUNIOR WAS WAITING for her on the front porch steps. And he was smoking, something he’d given up years ago. “Having one for Ash,” he said with a cough. “Don’t know how he still does it.” Junior stubbed out the cigarette on the step. “But it’s got something to do with this.” He had the dog tag in his other hand. His beat-up old guitar leaned against the railing. “Maybe if I’d served…”

  Uncle Junior had gotten turned away at the draft office. Flat feet.

  Bone held out her hand. “I need to see it again,” she demanded.

  “You sure?” He handed it to her without waiting for an answer.

  Bone clenched the tag in her hand, still mad at Will. It wasn’t him. There had to be another explanation. This time she got nothing. “Dang it!” The one time she actually wanted to see something. She plopped herself down on the step next to Uncle Junior.

  “What’s got you madder than a hornet?” Junior asked. “Will say something?”

  Bone didn’t answer.

  “Sometimes when I’m angry, my Gift don’t work either,” Junior said. “Take a deep breath—and tell me what he said.”

  Bone sucked in her breath and let it out. “He thinks it’s Uncle Ash.”

  “You still don’t?” Junior picked up his guitar and strummed a few soft chords. “Mama is still convinced it ain’t. And I don’t know what to think.” He ran his thumb over the strin
gs. “You know what? It does not matter. The law, the church, and your Aunt Mattie are fixing to bury Ash Reed on the weight of that one dog tag—no matter what we think.”

  Whatever she saw in the tag’s story wasn’t exactly proof the sheriff would believe.

  “Now that you’re home, I’m going to turn in…unless you want me to sit with you some.”

  Bone shook her head.

  Uncle Junior rose and pecked her on the forehead. “Don’t stay out here too late. We got to get to the church early in the morning…”

  Uncle Ash’s funeral was tomorrow.

  The night was nearly silent. The wind rustled through bare trees across the road, and the river murmured over its rocks in the distance.

  Was Will right? Is that why the ghost dog came?

  Bone closed her eyes and pictured the ghost dog, with its gleaming eyes, black coat, and pointy ears. Except for the eyes, it looked like the dogs she’d seen in the tag. It tingled in her hand. She opened her palm. Coal fell from the tipple. A shadowy figure swung a shovel. Blackness and falling. Then the man was being dragged, blackness again. He woke pinned in the darkness, blood pouring down his face. He was thinking of his boys and his wife, the white-capped mountains near his home, and his own dogs, the black ones, longing for one to come dig him out like one did so long ago—or at least to bring his killer to justice.

  The devil dog came when he called. Whoever he was.

  It was not Uncle Ash.

  Relief washed over Bone like a cool breeze. She squeezed the dog tag tight in her palm, silently thanking her Gift.

  THE WORLD SWIRLED AROUND BONE as the pallbearers carried the coffin slowly up to the front of the church. Mamaw grabbed her elbow in a viselike grip. She stood straight as a poplar tree, only swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. Bone felt instantly grounded. She clutched the poetry book in front of her, the dog tag pressed between its pages like a flower. Even through her white gloves, she could feel the turmoil in the objects.

  “It ain’t him,” Bone whispered to Mamaw.

  Mamaw gave her elbow a tiny squeeze and let her go. “You saw something else?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  Bone nodded. “It doesn’t all make sense, though.” She’d lain awake trying to fit the puzzle pieces together—and not all of them fit. Uncle Ash had worn that dog tag—at least up to some point in the Great War. Then the memories became different. She’d seen the woman, the black dogs, one baby, and then another. She’d seen him hunched over a table, pen in one hand, T-shaped ruler in the other, losing himself in sketching plans for a thirty-story building. Definitely not Uncle Ash. Bone still couldn’t untangle all of the memories—or make sense of the very last ones, except to be sure the man wearing the tags had gotten clobbered under the tipple. Right on that spot the devil dog appeared. And then he was dragged down into the mine. Alive. And he was trapped, like he had been all those years ago, drowning in the darkness.

  Bone shuddered. It was closing in on her, too, fixing to squeeze the life out of her.

  The pallbearers gently set the box down in front of the pulpit. Uncle Junior, Uncle Henry’s brother, cousin Ivy’s husband, and several of Uncle Ash’s friends and customers returned to their seats, heads bowed. They filed past, caps in hand, nodding to Mamaw and Bone. Uncle Junior straightened the coffin, and then slipped into the pew next to Bone. Ruby and Mattie, Bone finally noticed, were sitting on the opposite side of the aisle—with the Matthews family.

  Bone nudged Mamaw and glared in Aunt Mattie’s direction. Mamaw arched an eyebrow at her daughter but didn’t say a word.

  The service went by in a blur. The new preacher, Mr. Stewart, said some words about Uncle Ash’s service in the Great War. The new man had come in early to perform the service. His family was still back in Norfolk packing up their belongings to move into the parsonage next month.

  “I wrote to the army to get Mr. Reed’s service record,” the preacher said. He pulled out a letter and began reading from it. “ ‘Sergeant Ash Reed volunteered in 1914, enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. He served with distinction in the Ninety-Seventh battalion in France and Belgium. When the US entered the war in 1917, the battalion was transferred to General “Black Jack” Pershing’s forces. Sergeant Reed was cited for bravery under fire on no less than three occasions, including a silver star when he was wounded in the Battle of Cambrai—where he was trapped in a collapsed tunnel for three days with a German soldier he’d captured.’ ”

  A German soldier? Captured? Bone felt her eyes going as big as that ghost dog’s. Uncle Junior turned to her. She just shook her head. Uncle Ash hadn’t told anyone that part. The book practically vibrated in her hands.

  The preacher was going on about how he too had run off to join up with the Expeditionary in the Great War. “Maybe we served in some of the same trenches, saw some of the same horrors.” The preacher shivered. “What I saw made me turn to ministering to suffering souls. Sergeant Ash Reed, I think, turned to ministering to suffering animals. Each of us was changed by that awful war. May Sergeant Reed know some peace now.”

  “Amen.”

  Bone felt oddly steadier knowing that the new preacher understood Uncle Ash, even if they’d never met. Maybe some folks would shut up about the war changing him like it was a bad thing.

  During one last hymn, Bone couldn’t help thinking of herself, Ash, and Corolla singing along with a song on the radio, trying to out-awful one another. The tears came, and Uncle Junior put a wiry arm around her while Mamaw patted her hair. Bone wiped her tears on her sleeve. Why was she crying? It wasn’t Uncle Ash in that coffin. She couldn’t help herself, though. What if it were him? Why’d he have to go away? She was so tired of people all the time leaving her behind.

  The church filed out, a warm mass of sniffling people buoying Bone and her family along into the crisp wintery air. She could breathe again.

  Outside, Aunt Queenie, Oscar Fears, Poppy, and about twenty other folks from Sherman’s Forest stood in their Sunday best wiping their eyes. The men took off their hats as Mamaw hugged Queenie.

  “Why didn’t y’all come in?” Mamaw asked her.

  Queenie nodded toward the sheriff leaning against his patrol car.

  “Alfred, why in the world would you keep my son’s friends from his funeral?”

  “Some folks thought there’d be trouble on account of Tiny being arrested for Ash’s death.” The sheriff nodded in Mr. Matthews and Aunt Mattie’s direction.

  “No one in this family is stupid enough to think Tiny is responsible for that.”

  No one except Aunt Mattie. She probably told the sheriff to do this. Bone turned to glare at her again. She wouldn’t meet Bone’s eye.

  Aunt Mattie didn’t deserve a truce.

  Mr. Matthews pushed his way through the crowd. The new preacher wasn’t far behind.

  “I asked the sheriff to—,” Mr. Matthews started to say. “Mrs. Albert and her family have been through enough and shouldn’t have to deal with—” He stopped himself and then plastered on a smile. “The kin of the man accused of murdering her brother.”

  “Hold on now,” the new preacher interrupted. He rounded on the mine superintendent. “Everyone is welcome in this church. Everyone.”

  “Well, I might have to start coming to church, then,” Mamaw said to no one in particular.

  Mr. Matthews was not about to shut up, though, and Aunt Mattie was at his shoulder. “Mr. Stewart, there’s something you need to understand—”

  Several other white folks jumped into the argument.

  The sheriff threw up his hands and turned to Queenie. “I think y’all better leave now before you cause any more trouble.”

  Aunt Queenie crossed her arms and stood her ground. Mamaw and the new preacher joined her. “All we want to do is pay our respects.”

  “Al, let them go in now.” Uncle Junior stepped into th
e fray. “Ash wouldn’t have wanted all this fuss on his account.”

  “That boy killed your brother!” someone yelled from the back of the crowd.

  “He did no such thing!” someone else shouted.

  “It’s not him!” Bone cried out, exasperated, but her voice was lost in the din of voices. She suddenly found herself surrounded by Will, Ruby, and the boys.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ruby whispered.

  Bone nodded.

  “This could get ugly,” Jake added, motioning to the crowd.

  Will dug out a nickel.

  “The pop’s on Will,” Clay said.

  As they walked up to the road to the store, Bone heard the familiar rattle of a truck coming up the road from the river. She turned to see a faded yellow 1928 Chevy pickup puttering toward them. The world began to swirl again. She blinked hard several times to make sure she was seeing what she was seeing. The adults were all busy yelling at Mr. Matthews or Queenie or the new preacher or Mamaw and Uncle Junior.

  “Is that…?” Ruby grabbed Bone’s arm, her fingernails digging into her skin.

  The truck stopped at the boardinghouse—and then started up the road toward them.

  “Yes!” Bone took off running as the truck pulled to a stop in front of the church. Ruby, Will, and the boys weren’t far behind her.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered!” Clay exclaimed.

  “Hot damn!” Jake added.

  The crowd at the church parted and gawped as Uncle Ash eased himself out of the driver’s side.

  Corolla hung his head out the passenger’s side and yipped. Kiawah and Kitty Hawk stood, front paws on the sides of the truck bed.

  There was the truck. There were the dogs. And there was her Uncle Ash. Not dead.

  At his own funeral.

  “What are y’all doing up here?” he called.

  He managed to pull a Lucky Strike out of the packet before Bone tackled him to the ground.

  “Whoa, there, Forever Girl,” Uncle Ash sputtered as Bone pinned him down. The dogs barked and tried to join in the roughhousing. “Everybody off,” Ash commanded. The dogs obliged, and Bone rolled onto her back laughing. It was the best she’d ever felt. “I told you I’d be back before Christmas,” he said, picking up the crumpled cigarette. “And I brought you a present!” He motioned toward the passenger’s side of the truck.