Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

D evon made coffee using the French press. He did it as fast as he could, shoving the bowl of brown sugar in front of Stanley so he could have as much as he wanted. Then he took their damp jackets and rain-speckled knitted caps and hung them up. He did not let himself think about the next thing that he wanted to do, because he really should stop. He made himself sit across from Stanley at the kitchen table while the radiator oozed out warmth and the rain darkened the skies outside the windows and they drank their coffee.

"What I'd like to do," said Devon because he couldn't help himself, and maybe it would be okay. "I'd like to take pictures of you in your uniform to send to the history department at the university."

"Why?" asked Stanley, his eyebrows going up as he finished his coffee. "Why would you want to do that? Would that help them?"

Devon felt a pang in his heart because, of course, that would be Stanley's first concern. Not that it might make him uncomfortable, but that it might help somebody else. Which was why he'd volunteered, even though his friends had just been horribly killed and no other soldier had been brave enough to go on what turned out to be a suicide mission .

"Never mind," said Devon, shaking his head, and he meant it. Putting that uniform on was the last thing that Stanley needed, and the last thing Devon wanted to put him through. "I'll just take pictures of it on the floor. It'll be easier that way anyway, and I can get good close-ups."

"I'll put it on," said Stanley. "And maybe afterwards we can burn it?"

There was a jerk of hesitation deep in Devon's gut because the uniform could be invaluable in understanding the day-to-day life in the trenches. Except the world already knew enough about that, and they wouldn't miss this one uniform if Stanley wanted to destroy it. Except as Stanley went into the bedroom to change into it, Devon's heart began to race, for he knew it would be like seeing not just his work, his thesis, but his dream come to life.

As Stanley came out of the bedroom, Devon's heart almost stopped. There was mud on the uniform, and the sweater vest had holes where the moths had gotten to it. But the boots were tight, and the laces new. Stanley looked like he ought to look, the pure vision that had been in Devon's mind since he could remember. Except it was better because the image was overlaid with Stanley himself, his smile, the brightness in his eyes, the willingness with which he'd put the uniform on just so Devon could take pictures.

When Stanley bent to put on his puttees, Devon raced over to help him. Impulsively, he knelt at Stanley's feet to wrap the puttees around Stanley's boots with an anxious joy of feeling a live human being beneath his hands.

"There," he said, looking up at Stanley. "Is that better?"

"Yes," said Stanley. "But if you could hurry because there were a lot of lice in the trenches, and I think some of them came through time with me."

Devon couldn't tell whether Stanley was joking or not, but he got up, grabbed his cell phone, urged Stanley to stand in front of the fireplace, and took pictures.

There was no film to worry about, so he took pictures from each angle as it occurred to him, from the back, shoulder height, the front, the long view from the side. He even took close-ups of the buttons until he was sure that he'd used up almost all the space for photos on his phone.

Stanley's face began to grow pale beneath his shorn hair, his breathing becoming a bit sharp, and Devon knew he needed to stop.

He stood there with the phone in his hand, and realized how dark the room had gotten, as it was starting to rain harder.

"I'm going to use the flash for a few more," he said, thinking too late that Stanley wouldn't know what a flash was. "Then you can get out of that."

Stanley nodded. He stood there with his rifle gripped in one hand, held at his side, with the canteen looped crossways over his chest. Just like a soldier ready to march in step with his fellows, or to slam himself to the earth to shoot at the enemy, whatever was called for.

With his ID tag glinting in the hollow of his throat, Stanley looked so young. There was still such a trace of innocence in his eyes that Devon almost hated using the flash. He decided it would be the last picture, and the best way to capture the details of the uniform. He turned on the flash, focused the camera, and tapped the dot on the phone.

The room was lit up by the flash and sudden jagged streaks of lightning. There was a stutter of blackness against the white as Stanley shrank back, his arms in front of his face as though he was attempting to protect himself from a blow. Then the whole room went dark.

"Don't worry, Stanley, it's just a power outage," said Devon. "The lights'll come on soon."

The lights came on a moment later. Devon stared at the spot where Stanley had just been, but there was nobody there. There was no trace of Stanley in the room. There was only Devon, his mess of papers, and two coffee cups on the table. Those could have been from Devon himself, leftover in his rush to get his paper done. He must have made everything up in some sort of feverish haze. His desire to meet an American doughboy had become a reality in his mind, so maybe he was the one going crazy. Except —

"Stanley?" called Devon. " Stanley ?"

He rushed into the bathroom where there was no trace that anybody had been in there other than Devon. There was a pile of clothes neatly folded on the counter, Devon's own blue jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt, socks, underwear—all his. He went into the bedroom and opened the closet door, and when he saw the empty hangers, he reached up to touch them, his heart pounding. The hangers could have been used for anything, and were utterly still, giving evidence of nothing. Had he imagined the entire encounter?

No, he had not. He remembered the warmth of Stanley's hand, the impulse to hug him, how much more pleasant it had been to work on his paper with Stanley sleeping on the couch. How the dream of the American doughboy had given way to the reality of Stanley, the way he would smile at Devon, as though he wasn't sure that it was okay to smile. How his eyes were the color of whiskey, and that detail, so sharp now in Devon's mind, wasn't anything that he could have seen in a sepia-toned photograph. All soldiers had black eyes in those, except for the ones with blue eyes, and they looked like ghosts. All of them were ghosts now, only—

Devon went to the corner where he'd leaned the rifle to keep it out of the way. There in the plaster was the small gouge from the bayonet. Of course, the gouge could have been from anything, a past occupant of the cottage, say. But this mark, this cut in the plaster, was at exactly the height of the blade of a World War I bayonet on the end of a Winchester 1912 rifle.

The angle was such that only a thin object could have made that mark so close to the corner where the walls met. Devon traced it with his fingers, dug in with his fingernails, and watched the plaster sift over the coat of paint.

"You were here, Stanley," said Devon. "I remember you."

He wanted to cry, and then he wanted to puke. He knew in his heart that Stanley had disappeared right before his very eyes. Except time travel was impossible, so Stanley could not have vanished into the past, but had instead run off into the night and probably needed help staying in touch with reality. It was crazy, but it was better to imagine that Stanley was a liar. Otherwise, Devon would never be able to find him because he couldn't reach back to the year 1917 and bring Stanley home.

It was dark, and it was raining, and Stanley needed his help. Whatever the truth was, Devon knew he loved Stanley, and all he wanted was Stanley, safe and sound, with Devon.

He went to call les gendarmes .

Les gendarmes arrived promptly within the hour as the rain began to trail off. They arrived in their Peugeot automobile. On the passenger door, shining in the porch light, was emblazoned the emblem of the local village. Devon could see the light glinting off the usual gear for all police officers, the radio, the gun rack, the grill between the front seat and the back.

With great efficiency, the two officers, one young and one old, checked Devon's papers and listened patiently to his story about a young man, dressed as a World War I soldier, who had appeared and then disappeared.

"Were you the American who called the council asking for reports of any mentally unstable persons in the area, monsieur ?" asked the older officer, giving Devon the idea that everybody in the village knew everybody else, and that Devon's recent phone call was the talk around every coffee table.

"Yes, that was me," said Devon. "I wasn't sure who he was and thought I'd check."

"There have been no reports, monsieur ," said the younger officer. "But we will investigate."

As they began to look around the cottage, Devon felt a rising sense of panic that they might think he'd either made the whole thing up or been involved in Stanley's demise. Either one of which would bring him under legal scrutiny of a most unpleasant kind. But what did that matter if they found Stanley?

In spite of the fact that they couldn't find him because he'd gone back to 1917, it was easier to believe that Stanley had just run out into the rain because the phone's flash had startled him.

Les gendarmes went outside to search the grounds. They did not allow Devon to come with them, in case Devon was complicit in some way, he guessed. While he appreciated them being quite thorough about the whole thing, he was beginning to think he'd have been better off not calling them.

When les gendarmes came back from their search in and around the trenches, they gave Devon their conclusion.

"We have found nothing out of the ordinary, monsieur ," said the older officer as he closed his tablet. "Only your tracks in the mud we could see."

Which meant that the rain had washed away Stanley's footprints and left Devon's behind. Or not, because the footprints les gendarmes found had been the only ones to be found. Had Devon gone a little crazy? Had he been driven over the edge by his isolation, his focus on his paper, and the fact that he was so far from home without any friends that he'd imagined the whole encounter?

"Sign here," said the young officer as he held out an old-fashioned clipboard and a pen.

Devon did as they asked, his fingers numb.

"Call us if you need anything else, monsieur ," said both officers at the same time, and with that, they tipped their French police hats, got back into their Peugeot, and drove away, splashing rainwater with their tires as they went.

For a long moment, Devon stared at the car until it disappeared into the copse of trees along the road that led to the village.