The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

“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, putting 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?”

“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.

They desperately wanted to find Darcy and Veronica and let them know they were all right, or alive, or whatever they were, but that seemed too risky. If the girls thought the brothers had been caught, it would be hard to predict how they would react. Go into hiding? Surrender to the police? There was also a chance the cops had been watching the girls all along, and had somehow gleaned information from their movements that had led to the brothers’ “apprehension.”

With their wounds bandaged up and the scene of their ghastly awakening many miles behind them now, it was easier to tell themselves that there was some other explanation for this. The morning’s clarity only heightened the previous night’s dreamlike quality, and Jason and Whit both sat there in the car, hoping that this soon would make sense, hoping that God had granted them some startling favor. Or maybe the Devil had held up his end of an already forgotten bargain—that was more believable. And so they were merely trying to act the way they normally would when pursued by forces beyond their control—something with which they had considerable experience.

Over the past few months—ever since the federal government had made the elimination of “Public Enemies” a priority, like reducing unemployment and stabilizing the dollar—the brothers had been transformed from local criminals of modest repute to world-famous outlaws, as newspapers across the country printed exaggerated versions of their life stories. Jason was flattered until the drawbacks became clear: safe houses started turning the brothers away, and wary associates showed declining interest in future heists. Worse, the type of regular folk who used to put up Jason and Whit whenever breakdowns or blown tires left them stranded in the middle of farm country—the people who were grateful for the hideout money the brothers paid them and who praised their efforts against the banks—were now too tempted by the government’s bounty on the Firefly Brothers’ heads. Back in May, when the gang had pulled a job at the Federal Reserve in Milwaukee, Jason and Whit had barely survived when random civilians started taking potshots at them; one of their associates wasn’t so lucky.

At least the bloody Federal Reserve job had been their most lucrative yet: a hundred and fifty grand, to be divided among the four surviving members of the Firefly Gang. The money, however, was easily traceable and therefore needed to be washed. Which was a problem: launderers were even more skittish around the brothers than safe houses were. Sorry, they all begged off, you’re too hot. The gang split ways as Jason and Whit tried to find a reliable, less cowardly fence. There followed weeks of hiding out, of exhausting the goodwill and bad judgment of old pals, of waking to late-night police raids and sneaking through early-morning stakeouts. One fence who claimed he could help them had turned rat, setting them up for a meeting at a Toledo restaurant that was surrounded by feds. Jason had pulled off a brilliant escape that time, but barely. Finally, he and Whit had fallen so low as to live in a car, sleeping in their clothes and bathing in creeks. Jason Fireson, the silk-suit bandit, had become unwashed and unshaven. Carrying six figures of unspendable bills on his rather foul person.

The brothers’ share of those unspendable bills only grew when one of their two remaining partners was gunned down by cops in a Peoria alley. Jason read about it in the paper.

Finally, they found a trustworthy guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who could pass the hot bills while on a gambling expedition to Cuba. The laundering fee would be steep; the chiseler had insisted that washing money for the Firefly Brothers was an extreme risk, as was doing business in Cuba. But it was the best Jason and Whit could do. Stomach fluttering, eyes especially vigilant after the Toledo escape, Jason had handed two very heavy suitcases to this stranger he had just met, who was boarding a flight for Havana and would supposedly be coming back to the States for a Detroit rendezvous with the Firesons two weeks later.

Miraculously, the fence did return, with seventy thousand clean bills—less than they had agreed upon, but he claimed he had run into some trouble abroad and had needed to dip into the funds for some healthy bribes. Jason shook the washer’s dirty hand and took the money. Now, at long last, he and Whit could disappear and start a restaurant in California, or raise bulls in Spain, or whatever it was they had promised themselves and their girls they would do.

But they didn’t make it to Spain or California. They sent coded messages to Darcy and Veronica telling them to meet at a motel outside Valparaiso, noting that they would pick them up as soon as they paid a share to Owney Davis, Jason’s longtime collaborator and the lone survivor of their gang. They were supposed to meet Owney at a restaurant in Detroit, the night after getting the money washed. Neither could remember what had happened. Had they been shot while driving to the restaurant? That meant they somehow would have driven, badly injured, all the way from Detroit to Points North, which defied credulity, but no more so than their current existence. And if they had been shot in Detroit, did that mean Owney had betrayed them? Or maybe the drop-off with Owney had gone as planned but then something had happened during their long drive through Michigan and into Indiana to meet the girls. But what, exactly? And why Points North, which was a good twenty miles from Valparaiso? What on earth had happened that night?

So now, home. Normally they called their mother before visiting, using their code phrase (“I was just checking to see if the furnace needs oil”) in case the phones were tapped. But if the cops were still listening to her line, and if they were wise to the code, then calling would raise new suspicions. There was no way to tell what the Points North cop from the night before had told his colleagues, but Jason was betting on the fact that the cop would keep the bizarre encounter to himself, even after the alarm was raised about the missing bodies. For who would believe such a story? The cops had gone to the extent of announcing that the Firesons were dead, so police nationwide at least believed it to be true. That meant they would find some way to fit the fact of the brothers’ escape into their predetermined reality, and it was up to the brothers to hide in the shadows of logic that such lies cast.

“What if Ma’s already heard about our…‘apprehension’ by now?” Whit asked.

“If the gas station kid had, then she has, too. Reporters were probably calling her all night to ask for a comment.”

They were off the highway now, driving through occasional farm towns that had prospered during the war but had sickened and withered years before their malaise was shared with the rest of the country. Ten miles west of Lincoln City, they were winding through a particularly desolate hamlet when Jason pointed to a general store that sat between a vacant building and a farm equipment rental-and-supply company.

Whit parked in front. The sidewalks were empty and the light felt golden, dozens of suns reflecting from store windows.

Jason reached into his pocket and handed Whit one of the cop’s dollars. “Here, you’re the one wearing shoes.”

Whit walked into the store. Jason rolled down his window and let his arm dangle, feeling the light breeze of night’s retreat. His fingertips were no longer black, as he and Whit had stopped by a closed filling station late at night to rinse their hands with a hose.

When Whit walked back out of the store, his facial expression was grim. Jason did notice that Whit looked less gray than he had the night before, and he glanced down at his own arms and saw that the same was true of him, as if their bodies were recovering from…recovering from what?

But they still didn’t look quite right.

“We made the front page,” Whit said, closing the door behind him and opening the Lincoln City Sun between their seats.

Before Jason could read the enormous, Armistice-sized headline, his eyes were drawn to the photograph below it. Five policemen were smiling proudly. In front of them two bodies lay prone atop cooling boards, white sheets pulled to their armpits. Jason recognized the room. The bodies’ profiles were small enough in the picture for it to be possible to doubt who exactly they were.

FIREFLY BROTHERS GUNNED DOWN IN FARMHOUSE BATTLE

POINTS NORTH, Ind.—Jason and Whit Fireson, the Lincoln City natives and bank-robbing duo known as the Firefly Brothers, will terrorize no more financial institutions, murder no more officers of the law, and, one hopes, inspire no more misguided fealty among our more disaffected countrymen.

The Firefly Brothers were shot to death in a gunfight early Thursday morning that also claimed the life of Points North police officer Hugh Fenton, 42. Officers had been alerted by an anonymous tip that the brigands, who have at least seventeen bank robberies and five murders to their credit, were using an abandoned farmhouse outside the town of Points North as a temporary refuge during an attempt to flee the law and hide out in the western United States. More than a dozen Points North officers and deputies, led by County Chief Yale Mackinaw, surrounded the building under cover of darkness past midnight. After obtaining visual confirmation that the villains were in the building, Chief Mackinaw used a bullhorn to demand that they surrender. The brothers did not respond to that or to subsequent entreaties, and the intrepid officers stormed the building at approximately 1 A.M.

The Firefly Brothers, armed with Thompson submachine guns and automatic pistols, fired countless rounds from several weapons before they were vanquished. Chief Mackinaw would not divulge which of his officers fired the fatal shots, instead praising his entire force for its bravery and dedication.

Nearly $70,000 was discovered on the felons, the police reported.

“Those who choose to live outside the law will be brought to justice,” Chief Mackinaw said. “We gave the brothers ample opportunity to surrender, but they chose to try shooting their way out instead.”

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation had declared the Firefly Brothers the nation’s top Public Enemies three weeks ago, after its fatal ambush of John Dillinger eliminated him from those notorious ranks.

Jason Liam Fireson, 27, was unmarried and believed to be childless, though several young women have made claims to the contrary. Whitman Earnest Fireson, 23, was married and the father of an infant son, though the whereabouts of widow and child are unknown. The Firesons’ mother continues to reside in Lincoln City, where the desperadoes were born and raised, as does a third brother.

Calls to the Fireson residence requesting comment were sternly refused.

The story continued in that vein for many paragraphs, recounting bits of the brothers’ pasts, noting that they were “sons of a convicted murderer,” melding fact with legend and assuming readers were unaware of such alchemy. It offered no more details about the circumstances of their apprehension.

“I don’t remember any of this,” Whit said. “And it says Veronica and Patrick’s whereabouts are unknown—that can only be good, right?”

Yet neither felt celebratory. Reading the story of their death was an experience both disturbing and oddly unaffecting.

“And it says there was an anonymous tip,” Whit added. “From who?”

“Seventy thousand dollars.” Jason shook his head. Then he thought of something. “That means we never paid Owney his share.”