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 toimagine 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 callles gendarmes.
Les gendarmesarrived promptlywithin 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 goneback 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 gendarmeswent 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.
Whenles gendarmescame 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 footprintsles gendarmesfound had been the only ones tobefound. 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.
