Stanley knew that he could turn and run, though where he would run to and what he would find when he got there was beyond him. Somehow, he’d been taken out of the war and was now in a place that looked familiar in only the vaguest of ways.
The color of the sky, now darkening with clouds, seemed the same. The shapes of the trees, the tall oval ones that he’d never seen back home, spindly with only half of their brown and orange autumn leaves still clinging to the thin branches, were familiar. The roll of the earth, the trenches now hidden by green grass flecked with frosty rain, had shapes that looked like a memory he kept trying to recall, but which kept being subsumed by the landscape before him. He was not on the battlefield, except that he was.
“Come on, kid,” said the man as they walked toward the cottage. “Why don’t you tell me your name.”
“Tell me yours first,” said Stanley, thinking at the last minute that if this were some sort of trick by the enemy, he’d recognize the German accent hidden in the man’s voice, and take off running.
“My name is Devon Foster,” said the man. “I’m a student at DU working on my master’s thesis. And you?”
Stanley had no idea what any of what the man—Devon—had just said meant, except that he was a student at a school somewhere, and that there was not a trace of any accent in his voice. In fact, he sounded like someone from back home.
“DU is the University of Denver,” said Devon, as if sensing Stanley’s confusion.
“Denver, Colorado?” asked Stanley, his voice high-pitched again. His throat hurt, and he could hardly believe what he’d just heard. “I’m from there. I mean, I’m from Harlin, Colorado—I was going to go to farm school, but enlisted instead—how could you be from Colorado?”
“Because I was born there,” said Devon. “So we have Colorado in common, it seems.”
Devon smiled, and Stanley could sense that Devon was trying to put him at ease, though he didn’t know whether he should believe him or not. But the clouds were moving in overhead, and it was starting to rain. Either he could stand there and argue it out until he convinced Devon as to how wrong he was, or he could give in, give Devon his name and rank, and then go someplace warm.
It was pathetic how easily he was about to surrender, and he thought he should resist just a little while longer, like a good soldier. Except that Devon looked at him, and in that moment, he didn’t look quite so fierce, and in fact, seemed concerned because his eyes were gentle and he let go of Stanley’s arm.
“I’m Stanley Sullivan,” he said, giving Devon a sharp salute. “Lance corporal in the 44thBattalion, second class gunner.”
He didn’t know why he’d given the salute, even if it seemed the right thing to do, because Devon shook his head.
“If you’re a soldier, where’s your helmet?” Devon looked at him asif the missing helmet would prove that Stanley was wrong and Devon was right.
Stanley debated not telling him because Devon wouldn’t believe him, and it didn’t make any difference, anyway. Besides, the morning’s horror was too real, too recent, to talk about.
The shrapnel had come directly at him. He’d ducked just in time, the metal of the shrapnel clanging against the metal of his helmet, the brief heat of it against his forehead as the shrapnel skipped off the rim of his helmet and dug itself into the trench behind him—all of this came at him, and he found his mouth opening, the whole story coming out in a babble of words: the sound of the explosion, the smell of burnt metal, and the horrible realization that the majority of the shrapnel had just ripped his friends to shreds.
He was shaking so hard he couldn’t stop talking, couldn’t breathe. Just when he was about to start screaming, he realized that Devon had laid the rifle in the grass, in the rain, and was gripping Stanley’s arms in his hands, firmly, but with kindness.
“Stanley,” said Devon. “Stanley, listen to me. If there’s a war going on, you’re not in it, okay? You’re not in a war—you’re here in this field. Listen to how quiet it is? Can you hear the birds? Can you hear the rain on the grass?”
It was such an odd thing to say about the grass and the rain, but Devon’s voice was low and continued in the same steady way for a few minutes. After the earth and the horizon of the trenches stopped rocking back and forth, Stanley found that he could focus again.
He had to stop himself from falling into Devon’s arms to be caught by a warm embrace because it was sure as shooting that Devon would be horrified. He would then indeed callles gendarmes, except it would not be to find out where Stanley should be, but instead to have him arrested for being the sort of man who was attracted to other men.
“Better now?” asked Devon. He let go of Stanley, bent to pick up the rifle, and then pressed his hand in a broad circle in the middle of Stanley’s back. “Let’s go in the house before we get soaked.”
“It’s not a house,” said Stanley, mumbling as he allowed himself to be directed. “It’s a cottage. It was the caretaker’s cottage for thechurch, only now the windows aren’t bombed out and the roof isn’t collapsing.”
He remembered the cottage from when they’d dug the trenches in the summertime; it had been an intact dwelling then, even if the church that abutted it had been falling down. Within weeks of battle, the church had been shattered to rubble, and the cottage had been mercilessly shelled by the Germans, who used it to calculate the distance to the enemy.
The cottage showed hardly any of the damage now. The gray stone walls still bore evidence of having been chipped, though somebody had taken the time to patch the cracks, as some of the stone was less weathered than the others. The roof was dark gray slate rather than thatch, and the whole of the cottage sat in the green grass as though it had been gently and carefully planted there.
Devon opened the door and gestured with the rifle that Stanley should precede him, and it felt a bit like Stanley was under arrest. But Devon held the rifle at his side, and the interior of the cottage beckoned, so to get out of the rain Stanley ducked his head beneath the low lintel and went in.
The floor was of thick boards of honey-colored wood, and the ceiling was crossed by dark, time-worn beams. The walls were of the same gray stone, and though it should have been chilly, like the last time Stanley had been inside, it was warm. The windows had thick curtains that were drawn to the side to let the rain-gray light come in.
As Devon crossed the open space to the sturdy farmhouse table, Stanley followed him. He watched as Devon pushed papers aside, moved a thin metal box to a wooden chair, and then placed the rifle on the table.
“I’m sorry about the mess,” said Devon. “I could use the storage room as an office, but the light’s better in here, and it’s closer to the food.”
He jerked a thumb at the kitchen, where Stanley saw on the wooden counter evidence of tea things and a wrapped loaf of bread. Also on the counter was an entire bowl of fruit, including oranges, which Stanley hadn’t seen since he enlisted.
His mouth began to water, but he just swallowed. He might be a soldier, but he wasn’t one of the ones who marched in and demanded that they be served, as he’d seen some American and British soldiers do. As if the French owed them for not razing their village to the ground and should be grateful that they didn’t put everybody up against the wall—
