The other fellas joined in. “Hear them calling you and me, every son of Liberty.…”
“Over there, over there… Hoist the flag and let her fly, Yankee Doodle, do or die,” Chauncey said, though he’d gotten the verse and chorus mixed up. He sniffed back happy tears. “You’re here. How are you here?”
His mates welcomed him with smiles. “Dream with us.”
Chauncey laughed. “All right, then. All right.”
He took a seat at the table, which had been laid out with an enormous feast: boiled eggs and slabs of bread and butter on silver platters, a roast pig surrounded by shiny apples, beer, and cake. Those cold nights when they’d burrowed into trenches in France, their bellies rumbling with hunger and their heads itchy with lice, they’d talked incessantly of the food they’d eat when they returned.
“Who are we fighting this war for?” Teddy had asked once under a cold, starless sky as they passed a lone cigarette among the unit. “What are we doing here?”
“Defending democracy,” Chauncey had answered.
Teddy had let the next question out with his smoke. “Whose democracy?”
That had been long ago. They’d died, horribly, all of them. All his friends. But somehow, they were here now, healthy and smiling, as if the war had been a dream and this was truth. Chauncey felt drunk on gratitude and profound relief. Even though just last week the doctors had told him there was something wrong with his liver, and he might want to get his affairs in order—as if he had any affairs to put in order! Well, they were wrong. His liver wasn’t failing. He was being granted a second chance at life. Chauncey imagined getting married in the church where his parents had been married, raising a passel of rambunctious kids who liked to fish in the creek. And if anyone asked his future sons to fight a war, he’d tell them to go to hell.
Clem patted his arm and made a funny face. “Sick,” he said. “Not much life. Bad dreams.”
Chauncey smiled. “Clem, old boy, this is the best dream yet.”
The food looked delicious, and even though the past few weeks his appetite had been flagging, Chauncey found that he was eager to eat.
“Bad dreams,” Rolly said, and for just a moment, the dream wavered.
“Cheers, boys!” Chauncey said, willing the dream to continue. He spooned potatoes into his mouth and spat them out again just as quickly. The potatoes tasted bitter and dry, like eating a mouthful of sawdust. He looked more closely at the lump. It was moving. Maggots. They were maggots.
“My god,” Chauncey said, gagging into his napkin. He wiped furiously at his mouth. “Say, wh-what sort of joke is this, fellas?”
His friends were unbothered. They had abandoned their utensils and scooped up handfuls of food, shoveling it in faster and faster, with desperate strokes, gorging themselves, too fast to chew and swallow. Bertie choked, vomiting up what he’d just eaten, then started in again.
“Slow down there, Bertie,” Chauncey warned, but Bertie kept gorging.
Teddy smiled at Chauncey. There was something off about it. Like looking at a picture where another picture is trying to break through, and the image breaking through was of Teddy’s mustard-gas rictus grin.
A thread of fear tightened around Chauncey’s guts.
Clem cocked his head, listening. His fingers were slick with egg and saliva. “Still hungry,” he said in a raw, croaking voice.
The others’ heads snapped up. Food scraps hung from their wet mouths. Chauncey’s heartbeat accelerated. Around him, the French saloon began to unravel, revealing the dark, cold brick of the tunnel.
“Hungry,” they chanted, showing rows of pointed teeth in oily mouths. Soulless eyes stared out of cracked, pallid skin. Chauncey backed away. These were not his brothers. Not Clem or Rolly or Joe and definitely not sweet Teddy. What were these things?