People said the Firefly Brothers looked alike, but Jason never saw it. Whit’s face was narrower and his jawline more prominent, something Whit had inherited from their mother, an angular Irish contrariness as present in bone structure as it was whenever he opened his mouth to utter his latest complaint. Whit was hairier, too, his eyebrows thick and the shadow present on his cheeks even at the moment he was washing his razor. He was the only one of the three Fireson boys who could boast of blue eyes—to Jason’s everlasting envy—and at the moment they seemed even bluer than usual, as the rest of his face was blanched of color.
Their attention was diverted by a flushing toilet. Without a word, they pressed their backs against opposite sides of the wall flanking the portal. Whit released the knot of his bedsheet to free his hand and then the uniformed cop walked in, eyes on his shiny brown boots as he adjusted his cap. Whit slipped behind him and threaded his left arm between the cop’s left arm and neck, clamping around the windpipe and holding the blade with his right hand just inches before the man’s eyes. Jason stepped in front of the cop, scalpel in view, the white medical coat fluttering around him, a sociopath medic forcing experiments upon the damned.
“Officer,” Jason greeted the cop, “we’d like to report a crime. Pants theft. We were hoping we could borrow some clothes while you investigated the crime for us.”
If the cop’s eyes had been wide at the surprise attack, they were wider still at the sight before him. His mouth dropped open and the color was draining from his face.
“Uh-oh,” Jason said to Whit. “Better lean him against the wall here, quick.”
Whit obeyed, and the cop slumped to his knees. His eyes were so wide it didn’t seem possible they could widen further, but they did. Then he gagged and vomited. The brothers stepped back.
“Actually, Whit,” Jason said as he viewed the mess, “he’s more your size. You can have his clothes.”
Whit stepped forward. He grabbed the cop’s collar and pressed his back against the locker.
The cop was thin, about Whit’s size minus a couple of inches. Jason relieved him of his sidearm—a Colt .38 revolver—and checked that it was loaded. He would have put it in his pocket if he’d had any.
The cop opened his eyes, keeping them aimed at the floor.
“How …? How could—”
Whit dangled the scalpel into the officer’s view, nearly trimming his officious mustache. “Find us some clothes.”
The cop’s eyes remained focused on the ground as he gingerly led the brothers to his locker, which his shaking fingers allowed him to open after two failed attempts. In the locker were a pair of trousers, a white cotton shirt, and a pair of shoes Whit could already tell were too big.
Jason took a wallet from the cop’s pants pocket. A quick peek revealed a five-dollar bill and two singles, which Jason slid out. “We’ll use this to fund our investigation.”
Then, like a slug in the gut, Jason remembered how much money had been in their possession when they’d been driving to meet Owney Davis. Jesus Christ, he thought. That money was likely still in this building, but surrounded by cops, not all of whom would necessarily pass out at the mere sight of the Firefly Brothers.
“Have a seat, Officer,” he said, turning the cop so his back was against the lockers. The man slid down slowly. As Whit dressed, Jason kept the revolver trained on the cop’s chest, continuing to hold the scalpel in his other hand, the seven dollars wrapped around its handle.
“Look at me,” Jason said, and the cop reluctantly complied. “Point me to the locker of someone my size, and be quick about it.”
The cop called a number and Jason made sure there wasn’t a round in the Colt’s chamber before hacking at the lock with the gun handle.
“Making a racket,” Whit chided him, standing above the cop with his scalpel ready.
Soon Jason was clothed, but barefoot—there were no shoes in the locker. Loudly breaking into another locker would be too risky, so he would have to go unshod.
“Give us your keys,” Whit said to the cop, who reached into his pocket and obeyed. “Which is your car?”
“Green Pontiac, out back. Tag number 639578.”
Whit asked where the armory was, but as the cop told them Jason shook his head—too risky. They’d have to make do with the one Colt.
“Why is it so quiet in here?” Whit asked.
“Everybody is out front with the reporters. Announcing your … apprehension.”
“And were you a part of that apprehension, Officer?” Jason asked.
“No, no, I was away, at my in-laws’.” His voice slid into a more panicked tone. “I had no idea until I showed up this afternoon. I wouldn’t have gotten involved anyway—I think what you boys have been doing is just grea—”
“What exactly happened to us?” Jason cut him off.
The cop’s eyes slowly drifted up to Jason. “You were shot.”
“No kidding. But how, and when?”
“And who did it?” Whit added.
“And where’d they put our money?”
“You were shot,” the cop repeated, his voice hollow. “You were lying there. I touched you. You were so cold. Doctor said … doctor said you were dead.”
“It’s amazing what people can get wrong these days,” Jason said.
“But how did they get that wrong?” Whit asked the cop. “What did they really do to us?”
“And where’d they put our money?”
“You were both so cold.” A line of sweat bulleted down his cheek. “And stiff. Chief even pretended to shake Whit’s hand. But it wouldn’t bend.”
Whit flexed the fingers of his left hand. He made a fist and the tendons popped against one another.
The cop moaned and lowered his head.
“Oh Christ, not again,” Jason said. But the cop simply slumped over, his limbs loosening like a released marionette’s. Jason dropped his scalpel and bent down, putting his hand behind the man’s unconscious head and gently lowering it to the floor.
The brothers stood beside each other in their stolen clothes. Something needed to be said. But neither had any idea what that might be.
Footsteps from above jarred them, and what had been a faint murmuring from the other side of the building suddenly grew louder. Laughter, or applause. They were having a hell of a time out front. And there were a lot of them. Much as it pained Jason, they would have to leave their money behind. You can’t take it with you, he thought.
Jason fed a round into the Colt’s chamber and stepped into the empty hallway, checking both directions. Whit followed him to the exterior door. Jason lifted the latch and slid the bolt, then nodded at his brother.
The door wasn’t as heavy as it had seemed and when Jason threw it open it slammed into a brick wall. The side of the police station extended twenty yards, and before them, above the lot in which a dozen cars were huddled, the redbrick backs of storefronts rose three storys, fire escapes switchbacking past windows laid out with perfect symmetry. All the windows were dark, like the starless sky above.
Skeletal tree branches spiderwebbed overhead. Midsummer, and the tree was dead. The leafy branches of neighboring elms swayed in the breeze but this one stayed motionless, forlorn.
They scanned the tags until they found the car. Jason handed Whit the Colt and opened the driver’s door.
He started the car and pulled out of the lot, headlights illuminating a badly paved road. From here they could see along the side of the station, and it was clear there was quite a gathering out front. The side street and the main avenue were choked with parked cars, and through some of the windows he could see the flashes of news cameras. The room appeared full of men, dark shoulders and hatted heads vibrating with laughter and proclamations.
“Somebody in that room,” Whit said, unable to finish. He tried again. “Somebody in that room—”
“Well, congratulations to them. Poor saps can feel like heroes for a few hours at least.”
He turned left, putt
ing the station in his rearview. The street soon intersected with the town’s main drag.
“Recognize anything?” he asked.
“No.”
Jason tapped the top of the wheel. Driving without a git to guide them felt risky, amateurish. Main Street was dark, the theater marquee unlit and the storefronts displaying nothing but reflections of the Pontiac’s headlights. He thought he’d been through Points North once—stopped for lunch, maybe, or gasoline—but he’d seen so many Main Streets in so many states that he often confused them.
They continued at a calm twenty-five miles an hour. Eventually the tightly packed buildings were replaced by the widely spaced front yards of darkened houses. Jason let his foot fall heavier on the accelerator.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Thirsty?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither. Christ, this is strange.”
A hole tore in the cloud cover and there were the stars, informing Jason that he was headed north. He soon passed a sign for the state highway. Ordinarily they would stick to the country roads, but Jason figured there would be no roadblocks if the police thought the Firefly Brothers had already been apprehended.
“Why couldn’t this have happened to Pop?” Whit asked.
Jason swallowed, driving even faster now. “I was thinking the same thing.”
The highway took them through farmland so flat and featureless it was as though they were crossing a black, still sea. Jason remembered an old yegg from prison telling stories about the Florida Keys and how he’d planned to retire there after one last job, remembered the man’s stories of a road cutting through long islands where the emerald ocean glittered on either side. If that was a paradise on earth, then Jason felt he was navigating its opposite. He wished it was day, wished there was something to look at, wished he had someone to talk to other than his taciturn brother, who had been struck mute since leaving Points North. He wished Darcy were here; one of the many questions throwing stones in his mind was where she was. Hell, what day was today? How long was the black hole of memory he was carrying inside him?
Jason could feel a wind chopping at the side of the Pontiac. Clouds had reclaimed the sky. He had been driving for two hours when he realized they were low on gasoline. Didn’t anyone in this damned country keep his tank full? Jason had driven an untold number of stolen cars, sometimes just for a few miles and sometimes for days-long escapes, yet he could count the number of full or even half-full tanks on one hand. And then there were the cars that broke down inexplicably, or stalled out at stop signs, or dropped their fenders, or had no water in their radiators, or had their wheels loosen on rough roads and slide into ditches. If only his fellow Americans would keep better care of their automobiles.
The brothers had decided their destination was Lincoln City, Ohio, and they had many hours to go. Jason pulled off the highway after passing a hand-lettered sign for a filling station in the town of Landon, Indiana.
“Jesus,” Whit said suddenly. “Jesus Christ!”
“What?”
“Jason! We’re goddamn dead!”
“Keep yourself together.”
“What the hell’s going on?”
Jason pulled onto the side of the road. He turned to face his brother.
“I don’t know, but I know that losing our heads isn’t going to help things.”
Whit opened his door and stumbled out.
“Where are you going?” Jason opened his own door, following. Whit was pacing in quick strides on the dry grass, running his hands through his hair.
“Whit. Get in the car. All I know is that until the news spreads, most cops still think we’re on the prowl, so if anyone ID’s us we’re in for a gunfight.”
“A gunfight? Who cares? What’ll they do, kill us again?” Whit stopped moving, his hands on his hips. Behind him cornstalks gossiped in the wind.
“What do you think would happen if I shot myself right here?” Whit took the pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at his chest.
“I’d have to clean up one of your messes, as usual.” Jason sighed. “C’mon, brother. It’s late. We need to get some gasoline while we can.”
Whit was on the verge of tears. “Whit,” Jason said, stripping the impatience from his voice. “Put the gun in your pocket and sit down. Let’s just bandage ourselves up and sit for a while. All right?”
Whit finally obeyed. Jason reached into the Pontiac and pulled the gauze and dressing out of the glove compartment, then stepped aside so his brother could sit. No cars passed.
Whit unbuttoned his shirt as Jason unwound some gauze. He dared to glance at his brother’s chest; fortunately, he could barely see the bullet hole in the dark, could pretend it was just a large bruise. He placed the gauze against it. “Hold this here,” he said, and after Whit’s fingers replaced his he taped down its edges. “All right.”
Then Jason unbuttoned his own shirt, and this time Whit taped the makeshift bandages onto his brother’s chest. The wounds weren’t bleeding and didn’t hurt at all, so the bandages served no purpose other than to remove these monstrous questions from view.
“Good as new,” Jason said, patting his brother on the shoulder.
Then he saw headlights, far away but approaching.
“C’mon, we have to get going,” Jason said.
They drove another half mile to the filling station, a tiny glimmer of financial life beside a shuttered general store and a collapsed barn.
“Lean your head to the side like you’re sleeping,” Jason said. “I don’t want you talking to anyone right now.”
Whit did as he was told, grumbling something his brother couldn’t hear. A moment later, a gangly teenager in overalls yawned as he walked toward the Pontiac.
“Evenin’,” Jason said after shutting off the engine. “I’d like two dollars’ worth, please.”
“All righty.” After the kid grabbed the spigot and fastened it to the Pontiac, he asked if they’d heard the news.
“What news is that?”
“They killed the Firefly Brothers, late last night.”
“That right?”
“S’all over the radio. Local boys did it, not the feds. Caught ’em at some farmhouse in Points North. Shot ’em up real good. Brothers took a cop with ’em, though.”
“How ’bout that.” Jason looked down at the pavement. “Radio say if they killed the brothers’ girls, too?”
The kid thought for a moment. “I don’t remember. That’d be a shame, though,” and he offered a gawky grin. “They’re real lookers.”
“They certainly are.”
“Can’t believe they killed the Firefly Brothers, though. Gonna cost me a two-dollar bet to my own brother—I said they’d never be caught.”
“They’re always caught eventually. Sorry to hear about your two bucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
They were silent as the tap clicked every few seconds. The smell of gasoline seeped through Jason’s window.
“Two dollars’ worth,” the kid said, placing the handle back on the latch.
Jason handed the kid a five with his un-inked hand and pocketed the change. Then he looked the kid in the eye and extended his hand again. “And here’s your two bucks.”
“Huh?”
“For losing your bet. Pay this to your brother.”
The kid looked at him strangely. “That’s kind of you, sir, but I’ll be all right.”
“I don’t like hearing about young lads already in debt. Take it and pay your brother.”
The kid seemed distracted by the way the bills hung in Jason’s perfectly still hand. Then he was looking at Jason again, his eyes spotlights. Jason’s lips curved into the barest smile.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” Jason turned the ignition. “Night.”
After they’d pulled onto the road, Whit looked up. “Did the kid look funny at all?”
“What do you mean?”
<
br /> “I don’t know, maybe everyone else out here is dead, too. Maybe this is the afterlife.”
“That explains the hoop floating over his head.”
“Go to hell.”
“Maybe we’re there already. Besides, I thought you didn’t believe in an afterlife.”
Whit scanned the horizon. “Well this is the kind of thing that shakes a man’s unfaith.”
Jason pulled back onto the highway and the sky flashed, light filling its vast spaces before vanishing again.
“We have to learn more about what happened,” Whit said.
“We’ll read the papers tomorrow.”
“I’m worried about Ronnie, and little Patrick. You don’t suppose … they might have been there, too, maybe in another room?”
Jason let himself laugh. “I don’t think they have separate women-and-children morgues, Whit.”
“This isn’t goddamn funny!”
Jason waited a beat. “Don’t think about it, all right? As soon as we get home we’ll send a telegram to the girls and figure out what’s what.”
The window was still open and he could smell the rain before the drops started hitting the windshield. The drumming grew louder and the wipers struggled to keep up. Jason left his window rolled down, letting the water soak the sleeve of his stolen shirt, the drops wetting his hair and catching in his eyelashes. The rain was filling his side of the cabin now, the sound almost too loud to be believed.
II.
The sun rose grudgingly, as if it would have preferred to stay in hiding. Jason intermittently checked its progress over the familiar, softly sloping landscape of southern Ohio before finally admitting he was awake.
“Good morning,” Whit said when he noticed his brother rustling.
Jason grunted in return. He sat up straighter. The feeling of his stolen shirt tugging slightly against the bandages on his chest told him it hadn’t been a dream.
Though for the first few hours the brothers had felt charged with adrenaline and bewilderment, they had grown tired as their drive unfolded into the night. They chose to sleep in shifts, aiming to make it home as quickly as possible.
“Home” referred to the Lincoln City house they had grown up in. They hadn’t lived there in years, but nothing had taken its place in terms of either permanence or significance—even though their other brother, who still lived in Lincoln City, made them feel less welcome every time they visited.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 2
