The revelation at the general store left Robert hollowed out, a vessel filled only with the cold dread of foresight. He moved through the next few days like an automaton, his motions at the workbench precise but soulless. The simple satisfaction he had begun to glean from shaping wood was gone, replaced by the grim understanding that he was merely building props for a stage soon to be engulfed in flames.
Arthur and Eleanor noticed the change. The quiet, confused young man had been replaced by a grimly silent one. They attributed it to the sobering reality of Jimmy Miller's future, a prideful yet solemn reminder for every soul in Oak Creek. Their response was not to pry, but to envelop him further in the fabric of their daily lives, a kindness that felt to Robert like a suffocating blanket.
One evening, Eleanor brought out a box. "We can't have you wearing Arthur's old things forever," she said with a soft smile. "And we certainly can't have those strange clothes of yours causing more talk." She laid out two new shirts and a pair of trousers, made from the same sturdy, coarse cloth as Arthur's, but cut to Robert's slimmer frame. "Mrs. Henderson helped with the sewing."
Robert stared at the garments. They were a gift, an act of profound generosity in a time of economic hardship. They were also a uniform. Donning them would be the final act of shedding his old skin, of accepting his place in this timeline. He felt a surge of nausea.
"Thank you," he forced out, his voice thick. "This is... very kind."
"It's nothing," Arthur said, not looking up from whittling a small piece of wood by the fire. "A man needs proper clothes."
Later, as Robert folded his 21st-century jeans and t-shirt, preparing to store them away in the small trunk at the foot of his bed, a wave of pure, unadulterated grief washed over him. It was a funeral for his own identity. He was burying Robert Vale, the graduate student, and fully becoming Robert Vale, the carpenter's assistant. The proof of his other life—the dead phone, the strange money, the student ID—felt more alien than ever, radioactive artifacts hidden beneath the floorboards of his new existence.
His despair sought a target, and it found one in the most mundane of problems.
"We've got a rat," Arthur announced the next morning, his voice laced with disgust. He pointed to gnawed corners on a sack of flour in the pantry and droppings near the woodpile in the shed. "A big one. Clever, too. Avoids the traps."
Eleanor wrung her hands. "It'll get into the preserves! All our work for the winter, ruined!"
This was a problem they understood. A tangible, immediate enemy. Robert watched them, a strange idea beginning to form in the back of his mind. It was a small, almost pathetic idea, but it was a chance to use a sliver of his real knowledge, not for grand, historical change, but for a simple, practical solution. It was a chance to feel useful, not just as a pair of hands, but as a mind.
"I... I might have an idea," he said, his voice tentative.
Both Arthur and Eleanor turned to him, their expressions skeptical.
"It's a clever rat, you said," Robert continued, stepping into the shed and studying the evidence. "It knows the simple snap traps. But what if we build a better one?"
Arthur snorted. "A better trap? Son, the spring trap has been good enough for generations."
"This would be different," Robert said, his engineer's mind now fully engaged, pushing the grief aside. "It wouldn't kill it. It would capture it alive. A box trap."
He spent the next few hours in a focused frenzy, a feeling he hadn't experienced since his late-night sessions with the Chronos Anomaly. He explained the concept to a doubtful Arthur: a wooden box with a hinged door, a trigger plate inside, and a simple latch mechanism that would drop the door once the rat took the bait. It was a basic, almost childish application of leverage and spring tension, but to Arthur, it was a peculiar novelty.
Using scrap wood and a piece of wire, Robert built it. His hands, now accustomed to the tools, worked with a certainty they lacked in planing. He wasn't just following instructions; he was implementing a design. He was creating.
Arthur watched, his initial skepticism giving way to grudging curiosity. "Trigger's the tricky part," he mused, pointing a thick finger. "Got to be sensitive enough, but not so much it falls in a draft."
Robert nodded, adjusting the tension on the wire with a pair of pliers. "It's a balance. Like the suspension on a car." He caught himself too late. The analogy was too modern.
Arthur gave him a long, unreadable look but said nothing. He simply handed Robert a smaller nail.
That night, they baited the trap with a piece of bacon rind and set it near the woodpile. The next morning, a frantic scratching sound emanated from the box. Inside, a large, sleek brown rat glared at them with beady, terrified eyes.
"Well, I'll be damned," Arthur breathed, a genuine smile breaking across his weathered face. He looked at Robert with a new, appraising respect. "You built a better mousetrap."
The victory was small, absurdly so. But as Arthur took the trap to a field to release the rodent, Robert felt a flicker of something he hadn't felt in weeks: competence. It wasn't about changing the course of a world war. It was about solving a problem with the tools at hand, with the knowledge in his head.
That evening, as Robert sat by the fire in his new, old clothes, Arthur didn't hand him the darning or a piece of wood to whittle. Instead, he pushed the local newspaper across the small table between them.
"Seems you've got a head for how things work," Arthur said, his tone casual. "Might be you're more than just a pair of hands after all."
Robert looked down at the paper. The headline was about a new public works project, a bridge being built on the edge of county. It was a simple piece of local infrastructure. But to Robert, it was a set of engineering problems. Stress loads, material tolerances, foundation depth.
He had won a small measure of trust, not by hiding who he was, but by revealing a tiny, useful part of it. The cage he was in had not gotten any larger, but he had just discovered he still possessed a key. It was a dangerous realization. For the first time since he arrived, he began to wonder if survival wasn't just about blending in, but about carefully, so carefully, letting a little of his light shine through the cracks.