Whit popped another doughnut into his mouth, and a cloud of powdered sugar was all that Jason heard of Whit’s curse before he walked into the other bedroom.
Darcy woke with a start. She was on a bed. Praise be, an actual bed. She had been dreaming of a bed for so long. Her body had not been perfectly horizontal like this in, what, a week? More? The events of the previous evening returned to her. Had she really seen Jason? But the bed was empty. Where was she? Wait, a note. Running an errand, food and medicine. His handwriting. Proof.
She walked out of the bedroom. The chintzy cabin smelled of mildewed freshwater from previous occupants’ forays into the river. The curtains in the living room were drawn, but Darcy cracked open the windows for some air. She kept thinking of Brickbat Sanders walking down the stairs. She would never enter a basement again.
What time was it? Ten o’clock, and Jason’s note had been written nearly an hour ago. Should she be worried? She hoped he was buying her some clothes. She wanted to burn these. She checked the bathroom and saw that there were some thin towels and a slightly used bar of soap. A marble tub would have been nice, a lavender bubble bath with floating rose petals, three bars of Parisian soap, and a plush bathrobe, but an old bar of lard in a sportsman’s cottage was good enough for today. She turned on the water and waited for it to be almost scalding. There was much she needed to burn off. She undressed and climbed in.
In the shower, the bandages fell from her hands and the soap stung at the raw wounds, but she didn’t mind the pain. She washed until the soap was a mere sliver, falling from her hands again and again until there was nothing for her to drop; it was just vapor, she was just vapor, and even on that hot day the air was so full of steam that she needed to breathe through her mouth.
Not until the hot water was fading did she turn it off. One towel attempted to contain her unruly hair—its time was up; she would go flapper as soon as she found a blade—and another she wrapped around her torso, though it was immodestly small. Hopefully Whit wasn’t prowling about. She opened the door and as the moisture escaped in a cloud so did she, floating to her room, closing the door, and lying on the bed. She stared at the ceiling and closed her eyes and didn’t wake until Jason walked in.
“Hungry, beautiful?” He looked smashing. Wearing the same dirty clothes as yesterday, the ones he had slept in.
“I could eat a farm.”
She sat up and he walked over to kiss her. Then he laid out the Sports section of his newspaper like a picnic blanket on the bed and opened a bag of pastries. An acceptable snack, but after dispatching her share (and most of his), she was ready for bacon, ham, chicken, steak.
He asked about the days she’d been held, but there was nothing she wanted to do less than relive that. She wanted to drive with him, lie with him, laugh with him, do whatever they could to expunge the memory of those hellish days. Whether this was a healthy or a pathological response to her situation she didn’t care. She was alive and so was he and they were going to live, goddamn it.
“I bought you some new clothes.” He motioned to a bag he’d left by the bedroom door.
She kissed him. “I don’t feel like wearing clothes. I’ve been wearing them for days.”
They kissed again, and he lowered himself onto her. He tasted like pecans and chocolate. It hurt when she ran her cut palms over his chest, but she ignored the pain, or told it she didn’t care. Pain would always be there, after all. Many people spent much time and even more money trying to run from pain, but she had learned you could never escape it. You just needed to tell it that it could not master you. She grabbed one of his hands with hers and interlocked their fingers and squeezed, so tightly she felt a wound reopen, the work of millions of white blood cells undone in one motion. She squeezed again and when he came up for air she laughed with him.
They were lying beside each other, the sheets and her towel and most of his clothes somewhere on the floor, although he’d strangely insisted on leaving his undershirt on. Sunlight glowed on the drawn curtains.
“This may sound a bit odd,” Jason said, “but, should I ever die, promise me that you’ll have them wait awhile before they put me in a coffin. A long, long while. Maybe a week.”
“That does sound odd, Jason. Please. I don’t want to think of you as a corpse.”
“I’ve been thinking of myself as one for a while now.”
“Jason! Enough! It’s not like you to be so … macabre.”
“I know it’s strange, but I need you to promise me. At least a week before I’m put in a coffin and buried.”
“Jason—”
“Just promise me, Darcy.”
“Very well. I promise I won’t let anyone bury you until an inordinate amount of time has passed, and I’ve been consigned to a home for wayward necrophiliacs. Thank you for painting such a bright future for me. But you have to promise me you won’t die.”
“Hmm. I definitely can’t promise you that—”
“Jason!”
“But I can promise I won’t stay dead very long. I can very confidently promise that.”
“I’m falling asleep again, Jason. You’re not making sense. You’re babbling, and I’m falling into the babble. Your words are cushions. They comfort me regardless of what they say.”
“Then I’ll throw words all around you.”
“Mmm. Bury me in them.”
“I look forward to digging you out when you wake up.” He kissed her forehead. “Just promise you’ll do the same for me when the time comes.”
They woke after noon, hungry again. Jason donned one of his new outfits, a simple white oxford and light-gray slacks, dispensing with a jacket. Darcy had pronounced the two dresses he bought for her “rather drab,” and he’d told her that was the point. She chose the yellow one, which hung shapelessly around her. Darcy was not accustomed to being unmemorable, but she seemed to understand the situation.
She pulled her hair back and tied it with a matching yellow bandanna. She looked as un-urban and un-Darcy as he’d ever seen her, but it worked.
“Maybe I should forget the restaurant idea and buy a farm instead,” he teased. “Think you’d like milking cows?”
“Oh, it sounds divine. And milking goats, and milking horses, and milking chickens …”
“Never mind.”
Before leaving, Jason went to check on Whit. He could hear his brother snoring before he even opened the door. Whit was sprawled on his back, the new bottle of rye unopened on his nightstand. Jason was about to skulk off again but he backed into the doorjamb, his heel loud against the wood.
Whit’s reflexes would have impressed Jason under other circumstances. Whit hadn’t even stopped snoring yet when he opened his eyes, reached behind his pillow, and pulled out an automatic.
Jason held out his palms. The fuzziness in Whit’s eyes faded with startling quickness and he frowned, a force more powerful than sleepiness or wakefulness or regret pulling at him. Finally, he put the gun down on the bed. They stared at each other for an awkward moment.
Jason asked Whit if he wanted anything. Whit closed his eyes as he said no. His leg still didn’t look good, and Jason said so, but Whit said he was confident he’d live.
Jason left the room and tried to smile at Darcy, wondering why he felt so shaken.
They drove into town, he in his boater and sunglasses and she in her bandanna. She told him that maybe she wouldn’t cut her hair after all, and instead would gather a bandanna collection. They bought sandwiches and a sack of fruit and some pop, and Darcy chose a pair of sunglasses so unstylish that she laughed.
Even with the windows down, the afternoon heat felt aggressive, the humidity surly.
“We should have bought swimsuits,” Darcy said. “We should soak in the river all day.”
“We don’t need suits for that.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be attention-getting, Mr. Smith.”
He told her the plan to drive up to the U.P. and gather Whit’s family as soon as Whit was r
eady.
“Is it safe to go there?”
“Hopefully. Either way, I owe Whit for helping me find you. Plus, you know darn well he’d get into trouble without me there to bail him out.”
“You always have been your brother’s keeper.”
“I just need to watch out for him, is all. He has too much anger in him. Makes him do stupid things.”
“You’re funny. You always say that about him, as if he’s the only one.”
“What does that mean?”
She smiled at him to defuse the sting. “You’re as angry as he is, Jason. You just show it differently.”
They drove in silence for a short while, on a long street that cut through woods shading them from the sun. Then she asked him to pull over.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Just pull over.”
He was grinning at her, probably misinterpreting. Once the car was motionless, she opened her door and got out. Closing it, she bent down and smiled back at him through the window, then stood on the running boards. “Continue, driver.”
“What?”
“Keep going. Drive. But faster, please.” She couldn’t see him from here. Maybe he was shaking his head, maybe he was rolling his eyes. “Pretend someone’s chasing you.”
“Someone’s always chasing me.”
“Well, pretend they’re right behind you. And gaining.”
For a moment she feared he was going to refuse, but here they were on a secluded street, in the woods, all the weight of summer pressing down on them. The Ford’s engine roared. She laughed as it picked up speed. Her dress ruffled most immodestly, and her bandanna was gone, a memory— not even a memory but whatever you call a memory that you forget instantly. Something that didn’t happen. But this was happening—yes, definitely, the wind in her hair and the almost painful glinting of the sun off the Ford’s roof and the familiar tension against her finger bones. She remembered this. Along the tops of her ears, where the kidnappers’ goggles had once chafed, she could feel the desperate grip of her sunglasses, barely holding on as the Ford raced faster still. Pebbles biting into her ankles, the unexpected lurch of a pothole. She thought she heard Jason yell something. Calling her crazy, most likely. Or saying he loved her. She yelled, gleefully, triumphantly, her reckless voice reclaiming her place in the world.
The Ford coasted for a moment, then began to slow. She laughed again, patting the hot roof of the car as if congratulating her prized stallion.
When it stopped, she bent over and peeked inside.
“Still there?” she asked.
He smiled. He seemed to know what she was asking. “Yeah, sweetness, I’m still here.”
XXXIII.
It wasn’t a sound that woke Jason that night but the memory of a sound.
Beside him Darcy was breathing heavily. A sick feeling was emanating from his stomach to his fingers, a helpless sort of terror. He hadn’t woken up from something, he’d woken up to something.
He got up and quietly put on his pants. He was already wearing his undershirt, of course, as he couldn’t let Darcy see the fading bullet wounds in his back. He opened the door and walked into the hallway, then into Whit’s room. His eyes were used to the dark and he saw Whit on the bed, sprawled on his back. For once he wasn’t snoring.
“Whit,” Jason said, just above a whisper. No response, so he repeated it. By the door was a small table with a lamp, and he pulled its cord.
Whit didn’t pull his gat on Jason this time. Once had been more than enough. He opened his eyes and sat up, calmly, as if he’d been expecting Jason.
“I remember,” Jason said.
Whit leaned against the wall. He wore only boxer shorts, and he looked so pathetic with the one red leg and the other dark, hairy one. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Jason closed the door behind him. “When did you—?”
“Just this morning,” Whit said. “Or maybe I’ve known for a while, too, and just didn’t want to believe it. Or didn’t really understand.”
Jason sat on the edge of the bed. They were talking around it without talking about it, he knew, the way brothers talk about what’s important. All brothers, or just his?
He stared at the wall, the memories unspooling no matter how badly he wanted them to disappear. God, let it not have happened that way.
This is what they remembered:
Two weeks earlier, one day before they would be killed in Points North, they had received their clean money from the launderer. The euphoria of their score had registered immediately, as they realized that the hellish summer of living destitute was finally over. They were still notorious, Public Enemy Number One, but the irrefutable fact of the money was like a surge of adrenaline. Finally they could escape someplace, start over, live well, all those warm phrases whose full meaning they didn’t entirely understand but were quite ready to learn. They checked into one of Detroit’s finest hotels, paying in advance for two extra nights they wouldn’t need, confident that in their beards they were unrecognizable. In their rooms they showered and scrubbed for thirty minutes each, then splurged at a barbershop, buying the shave and hot towels and haircut and shampoo—usually a weekly ritual for Jason but one he hadn’t dared enjoy since the Federal Reserve job. They had their money now, and with it invincibility. Then, on to the haberdasher’s. Even Whit was drunk with freedom, and despite never much caring for clothes he bought duds nearly as expensive as Jason’s. They ate at a French restaurant and drank expensive wine and slept late the next morning.
They stayed in their hotel room all that day, ordering room service and waiting out the hours until their meeting with Owney. Finally, as five o’clock approached, they left the hotel, clean-shaven, wearing new suits, and carrying one briefcase full of weapons and one full of dollars. But as they drove to the restaurant where they were supposed to meet Owney something felt wrong. Maybe Jason was paranoid after so many past near-arrests, but maybe not: too many men were chatting on the sidewalk or waiting for a bus or sitting in parked cars. The brothers drove past the restaurant twice, Thompsons on their laps and pistols in their shoulder holsters. Whit agreed—this was all wrong. Their secret meeting with Owney had become a widely advertised event.
Jason headed for the highway, and for three blocks they were followed by a pair of blue Packards, until Jason pulled a U and ran a red. Then sirens were placed atop the Packards and all pretense was lost. Jason made a few more maneuvers that would have made old Jake Dimes proud, and after five frantic minutes that felt like fifty the brothers lost their tails and got on the highway.
“You think somebody recognized us?” Whit had asked as they drove west. “Maybe we shouldn’t have cleaned up after all.”
“No, the cops were there before we were. They knew we were coming.”
“So Owney ratted us.”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet.”
“Then who else? Who else knew we were meeting him?”
As usual, Jason had been the one handling the advance planning. He made the connection but couldn’t bring himself to say it. Jesus Christ. He hadn’t even considered the possibility when he’d gone out to Weston’s apartment. Never. He felt sick to his stomach and he tightened his hands on the wheel, taking a deep breath to control himself. He didn’t want Whit to notice or ask what was wrong. He couldn’t say it out loud. He swallowed and took another breath.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Once they were out of town, he stuck to the speed limit and Whit strained his neck facing backward for the next half hour, anxiously keeping watch. The Firefly Brothers were in a car that the Detroit cops—or had it been feds?—had surely spotted, so that needed to be changed. They took an exit and traded cars, swiping a red Terraplane from a train depot and affixing to it one of the many tags they were carrying.
They drove back roads through Michigan and into the Indiana countryside, headed toward the designated meeting place with the girls, hoping that rendezvous wasn’t blown as well. Whit removed
a flask from his pocket and took a few healthy pulls.
At a small joint off the highway the Firefly Brothers bought two chicken dinners, eating in the car as they continued west. The steering wheel was slick with grease beneath Jason’s fingers and he drove with the windows down, yet still the car managed to stink of fried buttermilk and dark meat.
They were less than ten miles from the pickup point when Jason passed a motel and saw a police car parked across the street. A few miles later, another motel and another police watchman. A third cop passed them going the other way.
“We’re getting damn close and there are too many cops around,” Jason said.
“You’re just worried. It doesn’t mean anything.” Whit took another snort from his flask.
“I say it does. I say the girls are being watched, or at least the cops know enough to be near every motel in this county.”
“Jason, we’re so close—”
“Which is why I don’t want to ruin it here.” He was exhausted—the panic from the chase in Detroit had long faded, and his brain and his body were numbed by the long hours on the road. He wished he could think more clearly. But all he could think about was Weston. “We’re not picking them up tonight.”
“Jason—”
“Not till we’ve had a chance to think it through. And you’ll be thinking better when you aren’t drunk.”
“I’m not drunk. You’re just worried, and—”
“Of course I’m worried. You should be, too.”
“So what do we do, pick another barn to sleep in?”
Jason told his brother to hide out of view. Whit, cursing, slumped in his seat.
Jason headed south, away from the motel. After thirty minutes without seeing cops, he pulled to a stop in front of a foreclosure sign. It sat at the edge of a long, untended yard on the other side of which was a secluded farmhouse. He could barely make out its silhouette in the night, so he pulled into the drive and let the headlights bring it out. White paint was flaking from the front of the building. No lamps were on, and all the windows were shut despite the heat. No other structures were in view.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 41
