Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

J ust when was it exactly that Devon decided he believed Stanley? He hadn't, not really, mostly because it was impossible. Except he had decided to believe, in a way, because nothing Stanley had yet done or said jarred with what Devon knew about the era, and nobody knew more about it than Devon.

"And this," said Devon with a slight cough, "is a microwave."

He opened the door to the microwave, trying to see it through Stanley's eyes: a metal box with a window with a grid pattern in the door and a circular glass tray that turned on little rubber wheels.

"A micro wave ?" asked Stanley, peering at it. "What does it do?"

"Well, it's mostly good for heating things up. Like an oven. You have ovens, right?"

Devon waited for Stanley to nod, though he didn't really need the confirmation; ovens had been around since forever, he just wanted to be sure that Stanley was following what he was saying. He thought, in the back of his mind, that this was Stanley's own attempt to distract himself from the bigger problem that neither of them had brought up. Which was, if time had pulled Stanley to the present at a whim, as it seemed, could it then yank Stanley back to the past any time it wanted to ?

This troubling thought was not what Devon wanted to be focusing on right now, so he grabbed a glass, filled it with water at the sink, and held it out to Stanley.

"Take a sip, cold water, right?"

"Yes," said Stanley. "Tastes metallic."

"That's because it's from a well, and then is filtered, here—watch this."

Devon put the glass in the microwave and turned it on for a minute, then when it beeped, pulled the door open.

"Now taste, but be careful, it's hot."

As Stanley took a sip, his eyes widened, and while Devon had thought that Stanley might freak out, instead, he seemed pleased.

"How does it work?" Stanley asked as he put the glass down to peer into the microwave. He stuck his hand inside and felt around, then pulled it out. "It's cool to the touch. How did it do that?"

"Microwaves," said Devon, waving his hands in little circles as if that would explain it. "They move really fast, and get hot, and so heat up things around them? Something like that. It's not much good except to heat; we used to think we could cook with it, but you can't make the same crisp outside, you see? You can melt cheese, heat up cold coffee, melt butter, and stuff like that. Oh, and hot dogs, it's really good for cooking hot dogs."

"Hot dogs?" asked Stanley.

"I think it was called a frankfurter in your day," said Devon with a smile. Almost instantly, he remembered the faded photograph of soldiers just returned from the war enjoying hot dogs at Coney Island. Stanley could have fit so easily into that photograph—but it was wrong to let himself be drawn into a mere image when Stanley was standing right in front of him. Right now .

"I've had those," said Stanley, smiling back.

"We can also cook hot dogs by boiling them in water or grilling in a pan on the stove, which I'm sure you recognize."

Devon demonstrated how quickly the gas could be turned on and how big the oven was, thinking how different this must be for Stanley, how sleek everything was, how much of everything there was. As he showed Stanley the rest of the cottage, Stanley stuck right to his side, interested and focused on everything that Devon pointed out, the lights, the radiators, the doorbell, the porch light.

The fun really started when he showed Stanley his phone.

"That's not a telephone," said Stanley. "Telephones are tall with a little cone that you put to your ear." He gripped an imaginary phone that Devon realized must have been one of the old-fashioned candlestick types, and put the invisible receiver to his ear.

"Yes, they used to be," said Devon. "But over time, they changed."

It occurred to him that he could pull up YouTube on his laptop and find a video about the evolution of phones, but would that be too much? Wasn't everything too much? Stanley didn't seem very interested in the phone, but then, why would he be when it looked like a slim metal box, so small and thin that there didn't seem to be anything you could do with it.

"Maybe we'll take pictures with it tomorrow," said Devon. "Like pics of you in your uniform that I can send to my professor for extra credit." This joke made him laugh to think of it. Stanley only cocked his head to the side, and it was easy to see that he didn't get it. Which stopped Devon from laughing.

"Okay, how about this? It's a laptop, a portable machine. There are different kinds, of course, but here." Devon opened the laptop, which sprang into life, the window instantly displaying a large mountain, sheared in half on one side. "I'm not up to date because I don't have time for updates, but what you could do on it—"

"What is it?" asked Stanley. His fingers twitched as though he wanted to touch it, so Devon pushed it toward him and watched Stanley trace the edge of it with his fingers.

"It's a computer—never mind. You type on it like a typewriter, and you can send messages with it, you can do research on it—"

It occurred to Devon that he could pull up all the pages he'd bookmarked about World War I and show Stanley how it had all turned out. Then he could show him sepia-toned photographs of soldiers in the trenches, in bunkers, standing in a row, beaming at the camera before they got shipped out. But that might overload Stanley's brain and his ability to get used to the present, not to mention some pretty graphic images could also come up, so Devon sat down at the table, and patted the chair next to him.

When Stanley sat down, Devon pulled up Google and entered cute kittens. Within seconds, ten webpages were displayed. He clicked on Images , and hundreds of images of the cutest kittens anybody had ever seen showed up.

"Voila," said Devon with a wave. "Cute kittens, some of which are wearing spectacles." He typed with spectacles , and in an instant, all of the kittens were wearing glasses.

Fully drawn into the moment, Stanley smiled. He reached out to touch the screen, his fingers gripping the edges as though he was judging the width.

"Where do they all come from?" asked Stanley.

"People upload them," said Devon. The explanation might not be enough, but any gulf between him and Stanley seemed to vanish as they explored the internet together. "Tons and tons every day—"

"Yes, but where—how did they get here ?" Stanley pointed at the screen and traced the edge of an adorable gray kitten wearing very serious black glasses.

"On the screen?" asked Devon, scratching his head. "I used to know this a bit better, but technology keeps changing, so this is what I know. You take a picture with your phone, or scan any image on a scanner, and then upload to a server, and then the server has it and you can look at what the server has. That's what I know."

"Okay," said Stanley. "I guess." He looked distraught, which maybe was because Devon was terrible at explaining or because he didn't understand any of what Devon had just said. Either was possible, but Devon didn't know.

"Listen, why don't we eat, and we can watch a bit of—" said Devon, then he stopped. If pictures of cute kittens were too much, then reruns of The X Files were way too much, not to mention the news, regardless of the source, or Facebook feeds, or any social media. Devon had stopped using most of them since coming to France, not because France didn't have them, but because he had so much work to do.

"We can eat and have an early night?" asked Devon. "Tomorrow, maybe, if you're willing, we could walk around the trenches and you could show me what you know. If that's okay."

"Okay," said Stanley.

Stanley didn't seem very enthusiastic.

"We don't have to," said Devon. He knew it was his responsibility to take care of Stanley, not to take advantage of him. Plus, while somebody else would have called les gendarmes immediately, Devon was here and nobody else was, so it was up to him to do the best he could.

"No, it's fine," said Stanley. "I should probably get the lay of the land, anyway."

"Here, have another orange, and I'll get the steaks going," said Devon.

He got up and handed Stanley the last orange, feeling a little bit sad at the reverence with which Stanley took it. If anything was proof that he really was from 1917, his attitude towards oranges was one of them. Of course, he could be crazy, he could be a liar, or he could be a time traveler. Devon wanted it to be the latter, but that would mean Stanley had come through something horrific and would need the tenderest of care, the kindest handling. Which Devon could do, could most definitely do.

He turned on the burner, put the cast iron pan over the heat, and tried not to stare as Stanley ate his second orange.