Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

S tanley clung to the edge of the table and watched as Devon went into the kitchen and did something to what looked like a metal coffee pot plugged into the wall. Stanley couldn't understand why Devon didn't put the pot on the stove, which was right there. Only the pot began to rumble in under a minute, and Stanley didn't have time to explain that he didn't want coffee.

Coffee in the trenches tasted like watered-down tar. There never was enough sugar in the world to make it taste good, but most days it was the only warm thing. If you drank too much of it, then you'd spent a good half hour afterwards squatting over a hastily dug trench, hoping you could get your pants up before another shell exploded.

Devon took milk from a sleek-looking icebox that had an amazing wealth of food inside of it and brought it and the cup of coffee over to the table. He pushed a bowl of what looked like brown sugar and looked at Stanley, eyebrows raised, as if he expected him to take over.

"That's raw sugar," said Devon. "I was kind of on a health kick when I came to France and found that I liked it. Help yourself."

Stanley added sugar to the coffee and a splash of milk, just to be sociable. He needed to go along with it so that Devon wouldn't get angry and throw him out into the rain, which had started to come down pretty hard now, sheets of it falling outside the large, paned windows. But when he took a sip, the smoky smell of it hit him seconds before the taste did, and a warm sensation soothed his stomach, his insides.

"This is good," said Stanley, a little astonished. "But that's an understatement. This is really good coffee. I never used to drink coffee until I enlisted, and everybody drinks it, so I had to, you know? It tastes bad, and it smells bad, but usually it was the only thing that you could drink because something happened to the water rations, and if you went to the village to get water from one of their pumps, they'd stare at you, and—well, I drank a lot of bad coffee."

"You like my coffee?" asked Devon. Stanley was surprised to be asked that, as if Devon were truly worried rather than fishing for compliments. Plus, he'd managed to follow all of Stanley's nervous chatter and dismantle it to its essence.

"Yes, I like it, it's good," said Stanley. He took another large swallow and felt the energy moving through him. He leaned back a little in the wooden chair; it creaked beneath him in a homey way, though he knew he shouldn't be at ease. Until he knew what Devon was going to do next, he needed to be as alert as if he had been captured by the enemy.

"Hey, are you cold?" asked Devon. He took a step closer and looked about ready to place his palm across Stanley's forehead, as if to check to see if he had a fever.

"No," said Stanley with some defiance.

"You're shaking like a leaf," said Devon. "Listen, why don't you get out of those wet clothes—I mean, uniform. You can use the shower, and I can loan you some clothes until we find out where you're supposed to be. Okay?"

Stanley wanted to shout that it was not okay, that he was not okay, as Devon seemed to want him to be. It was bad enough to be stuck in a muddy trench with a radio that didn't work, realizing that he was the only one who wouldn't be missed if his suicide mission went sideways.

It was almost worse to be stuck in a warm kitchen looking at an icebox that was about ten times the size of the icebox back home, and a stove that looked like a stove on the top, but that had a bunch of lights and switches Stanley didn't recognize. There was a metal box on the kitchen counter that Stanley had no idea what it did, and another metal box below the counter that was currently growling and churning as if it were about to birth something from inside of it.

The whole of the interior of the cottage was filled with half familiar, half bizarre things. Stanley realized how out of place he felt, and that he was shaking and sweating beneath his armpits, and freezing where his uniform was stuck to him, which was pretty much everywhere.

"I don't belong here," said Stanley, his lips numb. He wrapped his arms around himself, clutching at his arms, and looked up at Devon.

"You don't, and that's a fact," said Devon with kind eyes. "But nothing bad's going to happen to you. I won't call anybody until we figure out where you do belong."

"You won't have me arrested?" asked Stanley. He needed to be clear before he let himself come completely apart. "You won't call les gendarmes ?"

"I wouldn't call them to arrest you," said Devon. "Look, I won't call them at all, okay? I'll call the local clinic and ask them if they know of anybody who's escaped the local loony bin, I mean—"

"I'm not crazy!" Stanley stood up and knew he had shouted at Devon. His fists were clenched, and he was probably pissing off the one person who had offered to help him. But he couldn't help it.

"I'm not crazy, damn it! I've just been in a trench watching my lieutenant trying to fix a radio that couldn't possibly work on account of the fact that it had been hit by a shell. I was up to my knees in mud and the blood and brains of my friends who had been torn to pieces only this morning and who are now very dead. The whole battalion is going to die and I can't help them because I got hit with mustard gas. So nothing is okay, do you get that?"

Devon was silent for a long moment, and he looked at Stanley in a way that seemed to suggest he might be starting to take Stanley very seriously .

"You honestly think you're in a war," said Devon. "Don't you."

Stanley nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin.

"And what year do you think it is?" asked Devon. "The 44 th Battalion was wiped out in early November 1917. And you think you're back then?"

"I am back then," said Stanley. "I mean, that's now, right now. It's November 10 th , 1917. I was talking with my lieutenant about our ruined radio. Then I was in the bottom of a trench, trying to get to the top of it, when the mustard gas hit me. And now I'm here."

There was sympathy in Devon's eyes, as though he'd heard every word Stanley had just said and felt the tragedy of Stanley's story keenly in his heart. Devon opened his mouth like he was about to ask Stanley more questions to get more details about the battle, but he held up his hands, as if resisting the urge.

"Hot shower and dry clothes," said Devon, pointing at Stanley. "Then food, then we'll talk. I have something you can wear, okay?"

"A shower?" asked Stanley. He stood up, thinking that Devon must be wealthy to have such a contraption and share it so freely. Back home, most people in his neighborhood had tubs. Coming into the army, Stanley had taken showers with the rest of the men upon enlisting, but it had been a long time since he'd had warm water to wash with.

"Oh," said Devon. His smile was genuine and his eyes lit up. "If it's 1917, most people didn't have showers, did they."

He seemed to want to go on with this discussion, and Stanley could see that for some reason Devon was really knowledgeable about the year 1917, but was keeping himself from asking any more questions. Instead, he gestured towards a closed door that was just past the kitchen.

"Feel free to use all the hot water you want, and I'll get you some clothes. But could I look at your uniform while you shower?"

"You want to look at my uniform?" asked Stanley, thinking that it was nice to have someone on his side in this. Devon's eyes were kind when he looked at Stanley, and wanting to look at Stanley's uniform wasn't too much to ask, was it ?

"It's for my master's thesis," said Devon. He dipped his head and looked up at Stanley like a little kid. "I'm close to finishing up, but I'd really like to take a look to see how close the stitching is and whether the buttons are really sometimes made of wood wrapped in leather."

"They used to be," said Stanley before he could stop himself. "Now they're just made of wood because leather is hard to come by. My helmet used to have a leather strap, but the rats ate it, so now it's a strip of canvas. But then my helmet shattered."

"When the shell hit you and your buddies," said Devon. He nodded as though he was remembering that Stanley had told him something that was a fact, rather than something that Stanley had fabricated. "Okay, okay. Let me get those clothes."

Devon went through a door that was off the area where the table was, and soon came back with a folded bundle in his hands. Then he pointed to the bathroom where the shower presumably was and handed Stanley the clothes.

"Give your uniform to me and I'll hang it up so it can dry," said Devon.

Stanley could see by the look in his eye that Devon was looking forward to going over the uniform with a fine-toothed comb.

"You going to take that off, too?" asked Devon. He pointed at the ID tag that sat in the hollow of Stanley's throat, looking a little eager, as though he wanted to examine it up close, pleased at having found such a fine specimen to write about in his thesis.

"No," said Stanley. His hand clutched impulsively around it, the cold metal cutting into his palm. "I never take it off. It'll identify me when I die."

"Got it," said Devon, putting his hands up. "Why don't you just take that shower. It'll get you warm, and then you'll feel better."

That was never going to happen because he was in a strange place where there was no war. He was in the future, or at least he seemed to be, though he didn't know what year it was. He was also far enough away from the year 1917 that the war he'd just been in was a faraway notion, worthy of study and nothing more. Nothing to fear, nothing to be concerned about. Besides, the air in the cottage was warm, and Devon seemed to have plenty of everything.

"Here," said Devon.

He opened the door to the bathroom, which looked different from the rest of the cottage; there was no trace of old stone walls or a time-worn wooden floor. Instead, there were shiny tiles, white alternating with blue, and a shiny white toilet, and an enormous shiny white tub. The fixtures, the taps and the drains both, were silver and were also very shiny.

Devon flipped on a switch as they both went in, and everything gleamed so brightly that Stanley had to blink.

"You know how to use a faucet?" asked Devon.

"It's 1917, not the dark ages," said Stanley. "We have bathrooms, same as you."

"Just checking," said Devon with a smile, seemingly unaffected by Stanley's rebuke. "Hot water's on the left, cold is on the right. Soap's there, and the shampoo and everything; towels and washcloths hanging there. Holler if you need anything, and don't forget to give me your uniform, and be careful when you unwrap your puttees, okay? Don't tear them."

"I'm not going to tear them," said Stanley, which was only the truth, as the leg wraps were the only part of the uniform that were sturdy enough to withstand rough handling. Devon seemed obsessed, though if that was the price Stanley had to pay for a bit of food and shelter, then so be it.

Devon went out of the bathroom, leaving Stanley alone for the first time that morning. He quickly shut the door and pressed his forehead against the door, trying to breathe slow breaths to calm himself.

Finally, the draw of having a hot shower was too much to resist, so he got out of his uniform. He took special care when he unwrapped his puttees and placed everything in a neat pile outside the door. Then, stark naked, he figured out how the hot and cold water worked, and that the curtain needed to be inside the tub. Grabbing a clean washcloth, he stepped into the stream of deliciously hot water .

He hadn't had access to hot water since the summer, and had made do with a basin of cold water with a thin sliver of soap, no washcloth, and only a flap of canvas to dry himself with. He and Isaac and the rest had made jokes, as if the whole thing was a lark, and that had made it better. Having friends had made everything better, and until that morning, he'd actually thought they might all make it out alive.

Only Devon had told him that everybody had died, and the white crosses row by row on the green grass attested to that. It might be true they had all died, which meant that Isaac was buried beneath one of those crosses. And if that was true, was Stanley really in the future? Had he left the war behind? Had he died, or was he still alive, and this was all just some trick of his brain?

It wasn't good; the questions slammed into him as though the Germans were aiming their guns at his head. He needed to focus on where he was, and not on the bizarre things happening all around him, or he would go crazy, just like Devon thought he was.

Except, even if Devon thought he was crazy, he was trying to help. He'd been nice to Stanley, and his movements were slow and careful. Devon's hands were warm and his eyes were the most beautiful green color that Stanley had ever seen in a man. He had long dark eyelashes, and a strong jaw, and whiter teeth than anybody back home.

Was this all it took to get Stanley to trust him? To get Stanley to feel a pull on his heart, his soul? Maybe it was. Devon was not flashy and vibrant in a way that Isaac had been, but he was steady, and he made Stanley feel safe in a way he'd not felt since the war began. Since his Pa died. Since forever.

Stanley closed his eyes and put his head beneath the stream of hot water, and scrubbed himself hard all over. His hip and ribs on one side felt bruised from when he'd fallen, and there were traces of the bitter mustard gas in the back of his throat. Stanley washed the bruised places gently and gargled with the hot water to wash the taste away. Maybe Devon would give him more coffee and, if Stanley asked nicely, maybe Devon would give him an orange for his very own.