“Cool.” Oliver’s face lit with excitement. “If you do travel to Hellgate, can I join you? I can ride shotgun.”
“Can you even shoot a gun, lad?” Charles asked.
“Sure. I’m certified in gun safety and maintenance. My dad, sister, and I go deer hunting every fall, and he made us take the classes.”
“If there’s no mail waiting for us in town, consider yourself hired to ride shotgun.” Charles smiled. “We’ll spend the night at the trading post and head back the next morning. Perhaps you might gather more souvenirs while there, eh?”
Oliver bobbed his head. “That’s the plan.”
Daniel prayed Charles would come up empty-handed in town. The prospect of having the entire day and night to spend alone with Meredith filled him with giddy anticipation.
“Do you think you’ll hire the deputy?” Oliver asked as the two walked home side by side.
“Perhaps. He’s a good man and well-qualified.” He shrugged. “We’ll talk to the sheriff, see what he has to say about Ben, but I’ve never heard anything untoward about him.”
“You existed in ghostly form in the twenty-first century, so you’ve seen things,” Oliver began.
“Aye.”
“You know what seems really weird to me?” the lad continued. “There’s no plastic in this era. Plastic is everywhere in my era. It’s also weird to live without refrigerators and electricity.”
“Dare I ask?” Daniel muttered. He’d heard of electricity, though he’d never seen it employed for any practical purpose, but he’d never heard of plastic or refrigerators, not that he could recall, anyway. “What is plastic?”
“You don’t remember seeing plastic water bottles on the ground in Garretsville when you haunted there?”
“I do not.”
“Hmm. It’s difficult to describe something comprised of such unlikely chemical compounds.” Oliver’s brow creased. “It’s a material made from a number of organic ingredients such as cellulose, coal, and crude oil. In my time, scientists have also figured out how to make some forms of plastic using corn.”
“Corn?” Daniel cast him a look of surprise.
“Yep. Plastic isn’t just one thing though. Some plastics are extremely thin and flexible while others are rigid. Bags, storage containers for food and other stuff like plates and cups are made of plastic. In the future, milk and a whole bunch of products are stored and sold in plastic containers.” Oliver shook his head. “It’s not good for the environment though, and by the twenty-first century, plastic has become a problem, especially the bags, which are not biodegradable.”
He couldn’t imagine what plastic might be like, so he had no idea how the stuff might be a problem. He chose to let the matter drop and forged on. “What about a refrigerator?” Daniel asked.
“It’s like a big metal box that keeps food cold so that it stays fresh longer.” Oliver used his hands to demonstrate the size.
“An icebox then.”
“Yes, except you don’t have to put any ice in it to keep things cold. Refrigerators run on electricity, and a coolant circulates through coils in back to extract heat from the air inside. They also have freezer compartments where you can keep meat and vegetables. Some of them even have icemakers built in.”
“I’ve no notion of what a coolant might be.”
“They’re also chemical compounds, only their function is to draw heat out of their surroundings. Refrigerators use a coolant called tetrafluoroethene, which doesn’t cause holes in the ozone layer like its predecessors, chlorofluorocarbons.”
Gad, his head was beginning to spin. “What’s an ozone layer?”
Oliver huffed out a laugh. “It’s complicated. Come to think of it, everything in my era is complicated.”
“You seem quite knowledgeable on the subject.” There was more to Oliver than met the eye, and he couldn’t help being a little impressed.
“Yeah, well, I’m studying to be an environmental scientist, so I’ve learned a lot about chemistry, biology, ecology and the like.” He glanced Daniel’s way again. “Do you remember the gift shop in Garretsville? That shop has a refrigerator where cold drinks and snacks are stored.”
“I don’t remember anything about the gift shop.” He frowned. He had a vague memory of watching Meredith as she wrote down the names and birth dates of his family. Somehow he knew that had taken place in the gift shop Oliver referred to, but he couldn’t recall a single detail about the interior.
“Oh well.” Oliver shrugged. “Things are much simpler in your time than they are in ours.”
By ours, Oliver meant his and Meredith’s century, and that brought to mind the argument he’d had with Charles about who belonged where. The obstacles he faced to secure a future with Meredith loomed larger every day. “Different, perhaps, but not necessarily simpler.” At least, not to his way of thinking.
“So, what are you going to do when the ambush is behind you?” Oliver asked, sliding an assessing look his way. “Will you return to our century with Meredith, or will you remain here in yours?”
“You are blunt, and that’s a fact.” Heat surged to Daniel’s face, and his heart pounded. “So I’ll be equally blunt. It’s none of your damned business.”
“I know it’s not, but you’re like two star-crossed lovers, and I can’t help finding the drama riveting.” He shrugged. “I’m one of those people who always reads the end of a book first. Then I go to the beginning to find out how the characters arrived at that ending. That’s why I want to know now.”
Daniel’s jaw clenched. “Hmph.” That Oliver saw them as entertainment rankled.
“I have a suggestion,” Oliver continued as if completely unaware of Daniel’s reaction to his rudeness. “The two of you should sit down together and make separate lists of pros and cons for staying in this time or returning to the twenty-first century. Like, how would you benefit in either scenario; what would you each lose by choosing to leave your time for the other’s? Then, combine them. Cross out the cons you have in common because they’re a given and should cancel each other out. It’ll be easier to decide when you can visualize which choice has the
