The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

Ma’s good mood at her sons’ reappearances would continue after their equally sudden departures, but after a couple of days she would descend again, the landing always worse than the one before it, so much so that Weston began to wish his brothers wouldn’t visit anymore, wouldn’t tease her this way. He hated himself for it, but sometimes he wanted them to dispense with the running and chasing, the long and torturous prologue, and get on with the obvious conclusion, allow their mother to grieve in peace. Grieving over people who weren’t even dead yet—this was cruelty, and he hated his brothers for forcing her into such a position.

He knew that his brothers would die, and badly, and soon. The ending was inevitable, just as it had been for past hoodlums like Jesse James and Billy the Kid. The only question was whether it would be at the hands of the police, jealous associates, or court-ordered executioners.

After unpacking the groceries, Weston walked into the dining room, where his mother was still sitting at the bare table, the gas lamp too dim.

“That should set you for the week.” He told her he needed to head home and kissed her on the forehead.

“Thank you,” she said, but her eyes seemed to be on something else.

If he were Jason, he would have known a joke to brighten her face. But mirth tasted funny on his lips, like bad moonshine that skipped the buzz and went straight to the headache.

The steps creaked as he walked upstairs to say good night to June and the boys. He noticed that the banister was coming loose from some of its posts, another repair for the list. He knocked on the bathroom door, which wasn’t quite shut, and walked into the warm air as June was violently towel-drying Mikey’s hair. The tub was draining, toy boats capsized in the vortex.

June asked if Uncle Weston would like to read the boys bedtime stories and the kids cheered. Weston had been hoping merely to say good night and make his escape, but he saw that June was even more tired than he was, so he played along.

After reading to them about trains and heroes and happy endings, he walked downstairs and saw June sitting at the dining-room table, sipping what looked like bourbon. Her graying hair was in a bun, and patches of her red cardigan were still wet from the bath. It was barely eight, but she told him that Ma had excused herself for the night, saying she wasn’t feeling well. Weston wondered if June knew about the federal visitors.

“Have you heard from them?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Your brothers.”

“No.”

She stared at her glass. “Sometimes I wish…they’d just turn themselves in.”

He had overheard her arguing with Ma about them, not infrequently. She’d even told him she suspected that her late husband’s past applications for state aid had been denied because of Jason’s run-ins with the law, as if the state of Ohio had blacklisted the family. To Weston it was insane to believe a few bureaucrats in the aid office had any clue that Joe’s nephew had been a bootlegger, but now that Weston had Douglasson’s warning ringing in his ears he wondered if June could have been right.

“They’re doing what they can to help the family,” Weston said.

“I get the dirtiest looks from people on the street. What they think of us.”

“I get some, too, but I get just as many people telling me how they’re rooting for them. More, actually.”

She rolled her eyes. “Male fantasies, all of it. Women know better. They’re tearing your mother’s heart out, you know. Bit by bit, day by day.”

He needed to change the subject. “The boys seem to be doing fairly well.”

“Mikey still cries for Joe at night, sometimes.”

He didn’t know what to say. He made a short frown.

“It wakes up the other two.”

She looked at him as if she expected that he, as someone who’d lost his own father, would have some advice for her. But Weston had been twenty-two when Pop died, three years ago. Compared with little Mikey and Pete and Sammy, he’d been an old man. Then why had he felt like such a kid?

They forced themselves to chat about mundane matters and soon they were both yawning, so he bade her good night. With his hand on the doorknob he turned for a last glance. June was still sitting there, staring at her glass like she wished she’d poured herself more.

After his talk with Mr. Douglasson, Weston felt as haunted as ever. Now it wasn’t only his brothers haunting him but this Agent Delaney. Surely Mr. Douglasson wasn’t threatening to fire him. Surely the conversation was just meant as a well-intentioned reminder of the seriousness of the Fireson family’s plight, Douglasson feeling the need to dispense paternal advice to the fatherless. Surely Weston’s fate—and his brothers’—was not resting in his shirt pocket.

He often imagined the many ways in which things would be different, if not for the hard times, if not for the curse of his family. He would have a better job than that of an office assistant, certainly, and would be in a more lucrative field. Still, he knew he was fortunate to have this job; at a time when so many were out of work, most employers would never consider hiring a Fireson. Though Jason’s irregular contributions had temporarily saved the house from foreclosure, that specter was always hovering around the corner. One day, surely, the brothers’ payments would end, leaving Weston as the bachelor breadwinner supporting a sprawling family.

That bachelor part was one of the things that rankled most, when he allowed himself to think selfishly. He had dated a few girls, but getting close to anyone was out of the question; he had too many obligations as it was. And so his romantic life had taken on a distressing pattern. He would meet a pretty girl and ask her out, or, more typically, he’d call a girl he had known in school, someone whose parents knew him and (hopefully) hadn’t warned their daughter to stay away from that no-good Fireson family. But of course the girl would know about his brothers—perhaps she would be attracted to the sense of adventure, or doom, that the Fireson name evoked. He would take her to dinner at a carefully chosen, inexpensive restaurant, and perhaps see a movie. But after a few dates it would be obvious he wasn’t in a position to take things further. Some of the girls had stuck with him for a few months, maybe had even fallen in love with him. But as time passed and they saw that no proposal was forthcoming, that indeed Weston never spoke of the future at all, they would break things off. Which always came as equal parts disappointment and relief.

At least he wasn’t the only one deferring his dreams for some fabled, future moment of prosperity. None of his old school friends—few of whom he saw much of anymore—were married, as everyone seemed to be putting off important decisions. But that didn’t make it any easier. He ached to touch someone, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He didn’t want to get a girl in a jam, both for her sake and his. Somewhere out there, Jason and Whit were carousing with their tawdry fans, women they probably had met in Jason’s speakeasy days, molls enamored of the brothers’ myth and money. Weston’s dates, when he was lucky enough to have any, ended with a chaste kiss at best.

He was lucky enough to have a date on the Friday after Douglasson’s warning. At six o’clock he took the streetcar uptown to the Buckeye Theater, where he was to meet the secretary of a real-estate company whom he’d chatted up while running an errand for Douglasson. He was early and no line had formed, but dusk was settling and the marquee’s lights glowed. Then he noticed the title displayed above.

“Excuse me,” he asked the girl at the booth, “wasn’t The Invisible Man supposed to start showing today?”

“Yes, but we’re holding Scarface over an extra week because it’s doing so well. We’ll open The Invisible Man next Friday.”

Weston’s heart sank. His knuckles tapped the edge of the booth.

“I really do recommend Scarface,” the girl said. “It’s rather risky, I’d say, but very thought-provoking. And exciting, of course.”

He smiled thinly at her. The gangster movie had been playing all month; he hadn’t seen it yet, nor would he. “Let me guess: he dies in the end.”

She didn’t know what to make of him. “Well, er, you’ll have to see it to find out.”

He backed up and stepped aside. Why all this fascination with criminals? His date was running late, which he was thankful for. He needed to come up with some other idea, maybe dinner first, maybe dancing instead of the movie. He needed to devise an escape, some miraculous evasion, something worthy of a true Firefly Brother.

Within minutes, the line was twenty deep. So many people, so happy to watch tales of others’ bloodletting and sorrow.

VII.

The depression was making people disappear.

They vanished from factories and warehouses and workshops, the number of toilers halving, then halving again, until finally all were gone, the doors closed and padlocked, the buildings like tombs. They vanished from the lunchtime spots where they used to congregate, the diners and deli counters where they would grab coffee on the way in or a slice of pie on the way out. They disappeared from the streets. They were whisked from the apartments whose rents they couldn’t meet and carted out of the homes whose mortgages they couldn’t keep pace with, lending once thriving neighborhoods a desolate air, broken windows on porches and trash strewn across overgrown yards. They disappeared from the buses and streetcars, choosing to wear out their shoe leather rather than drop another dime down the driver’s metal bucket. They disappeared from shops and markets, because if you yourself could spend a few hours to build it, sew it, repair it, reline it, reshod it, reclod it, or reinvent it for some other purpose, you sure as hell weren’t going to buy a new one. They disappeared from bedrooms, seeking solace where they could: a speakeasy, or, once the mistake of Prohibition had been corrected, a reopened tavern, or another woman’s arms—someone who might not have known their name and certainly didn’t know their faults well enough to judge them, someone who needed a laugh as badly as they did. They disappeared, but never before your eyes; they never had that magic. It was like a shadow when the sun has set; you don’t notice the shadow’s absence because you expect it. But the next morning the sun rises, and the shadow’s still gone.

Jason Fireson himself disappeared whenever he needed to, which was quite often.

Indeed, for all the glorified stories of his prowess at shooting his way out of dragnets, his fabled ability to slide his wrists out of handcuffs or simply vanish after a job, Jason knew that much of his success was due, quite simply, to his tolerance for long drives. When you robbed a bank in southern Illinois, cops wouldn’t expect you to be hiding in St. Paul the next day. When you knocked over a bank in Akron, the heat wouldn’t even be simmering in the Ozarks. All it usually took was a good ten to twenty hours of driving and he’d not only be safely beyond the authorities’ reach but beyond their comprehension. The bulls assumed that hoods were lazy, and maybe most were; good, old-fashioned work ethic was what separated Jason from the others. Maybe Pop would have been proud after all.

The sun had barely risen when Jason and Whit set out for Cleveland, the morning after their visit with Chance. Jason had borrowed money from Ma—money that he had paid her after an endeavor, but money he now needed back; he couldn’t travel north to gather a gang without cash for food and gasoline. But he was deeply ashamed to take the cash and was worried about what it might mean for her. He vowed to get her more within the week.

What bothered him the most wasn’t the bullet wounds in his chest, which seemed to be fading rather rapidly, but his empty pockets.

Their telegrams to Darcy and Veronica had gone unanswered. In desperation Jason had risked being overheard and called Darcy from a downtown pay phone the previous night. But she never picked up. He’d tried again that morning after leaving Ma’s, with the same result. Whit’s luck hadn’t been much better. He’d called Veronica’s mother’s place in Milwaukee—for which he had occasionally paid the rent, not that they treated him any better for it—but the suspicious old lady wouldn’t put Veronica on or even confirm whether she was there.

Jason’s mind had trailed every conceivable path for Darcy, and none of them were a pleasant ride. Had she been arrested for aiding and abetting but the press hadn’t reported it yet? Had she received his message but was under heavy surveillance and couldn’t respond? Was she convinced he was dead and had descended into hysterics, or something worse? She was an impulsive girl, prone to brazen acts and startling shifts in temper. He regretted that he and Whit were driving to Cleveland and not straight to Chicago, but the brothers had agreed that they needed to get a gang together before making any other moves.

It always seemed to come back to this. The need for money, and the only means for obtaining it.

Jason Fireson had started bank robbing a few months after his release from Indiana State Prison for his second bootlegging rap. During that second stretch, the visits from his mother and brothers had been far less frequent than the first time; they were busy trying to keep the family business afloat while Pop was in Lincoln City jail awaiting trial, and then, after Pop was convicted and sent to prison in Columbus, the remaining Firesons had only so much time to divide between their two imprisoned family members.

Pop in jail? None of this seemed real. It was impossible. Pop arrested for murder? For killing a business partner and bank man who reneged on an agreement? Patrick Fireson, mild-mannered, hardworking, churchgoing, tithe-paying, Hoover-supporting, flag-waving civic Booster extraordinaire? It was a sick joke, a horrible mistake, a vicious frame, one more symptom of a world gone not only mad but cruel.

All the bad news had hit while Jason was waiting for his release: he learned by telegram that Pop had been convicted of second-degree murder, and then, less than six months later, Weston had visited Jason alone, his face still white even after that long drive, to tell him that Pop’s heart had given out the night before.

Jason had petitioned his warden to be allowed to attend his father’s funeral under guard, but he’d been refused. The last time he ever laid eyes on Pop was when he took the stand months earlier, offering futile corroboration of Pop’s alibi.

After Jason’s release, the brothers went their separate ways. Weston disappeared to his law office and his newly rented room—even the good son needed distance from the remnants of their broken family—Whit to his factory gig and the tiny flat he shared with three other working stiffs, and Jason to his itinerant band of ex-cons and ne’er-do-wells. He had always liked guys like these, men who didn’t want to fit into society’s staid categories. But the rising tide against Prohibition—it would be repealed by summer, people were saying—and Jason’s bitterness over his two stints in jail had made him think differently. These men seemed so much less than he remembered. With bootlegging jobs on the verge of extinction, their new ideas seemed either juvenile (petty thefts) or hopelessly grandiose (train robbery). Their skills were nominal, their views of the world badly blurred. Would he continue to link his fate with men like these? Maybe this was growing up: realizing that you’re better than the situation you’ve landed in.

He told himself the straight life wasn’t all bad and he tried to find a job, but he barely understood this world, let alone the vast changes that had befallen it during the past few years. Hat in hand, Jason walked into countless offices, his self-esteem shrinking each day. With Pop and his business gone, he didn’t even have that to fall back on anymore. Whit’s factory was laying men off; Weston’s lawyer boss wouldn’t even meet with Jason. And, Jesus, the looks he received, full of either pity or outright scorn. He was used to being greeted with smiles, fresh drinks, pretty ladies, and all the other signs of respect. Now the tone of his voice was unrecognizable to himself.

The closest he came to finding honest work in that cold and constricting winter of ’32–’33 was with a small shipping outfit. The owner needed another driver, so Jason explained his qualifications, lying about the exact kind of freight he had experience shipping, and even provided references. Two days after that meeting he walked back into the man’s office, and the references had been checked. The job was about to be his.

The office was a single long room at the front of a warehouse, with drivers and other lackeys hustling in and out, grabbing keys, checking clipboards, telling jokes. He could do this. It was so busy that he hadn’t noticed another man walk in behind him.

“You ain’t doing business with this guy, are you, Larry?”

Jason turned around. It was a cop. Jason was fairly sure he’d never exchanged words with this cop, but he looked familiar. Hell, they were all alike—same clown suit, big feet, sunburned noses.

“Was thinking about hiring him,” the manager said. “Why?”

“You don’t know who this is?” The cop had a good fifteen years on Jason but even without his gun and his club and the weight of society behind him he would be a tough one in a brawl. “You’re looking at a two-time convict here.”

Jason tried to sound polite. “We’re conducting some private business here, Officer, and I think—”

“What’s the idea?” Larry said. “You didn’t say nothing about doing time.”

“Well, you didn’t ask about—”

“Don’t you come into my place of business pulling some con!”

“It’s not a con. I just want a—”

“The son of a murderer, too,” the cop added. “Probably be a murderer himself soon, if he ain’t already. Be a real addition to your workforce, Larry.”

Jason glared at the cop.

“No thanks, son.” Larry shook his head.

The cop chuckled. “Hit the road, Fireson.”

Crushing the brim of his hat, Jason turned and walked out. He paced the sidewalk, too enraged to give up and head home. He’d been there less than a minute when the cop joined him.

“You have no right to run me like this,” Jason said. “I was a kid and I made some mistakes—and they’re about to change those laws anyway! I have a right to try and make good.”

“You did make some mistakes, I’ll give you that. That cop you beat on in Indiana? That was my cousin—and those laws ain’t about to change.”

Jason had resisted arrest the second time he’d been taken in, had gotten a few licks in before they paid him back tenfold. “I did my time for it! I paid my debt!”

“Everybody’s got debts right now, and I couldn’t give a damn about yours.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing here!”

“You wouldn’t know the right thing if it hit you on the head.” The cop’s right hand dangled onto his billy club. “Now shut your mouth and go make your living someplace else. Someplace very far from here.”

It took a second to register. “You can’t run me out of my own town. I got family here, I got—”

“I can’t? You’re lucky I’m being so polite about it. I ain’t always in this good a mood.”

They stared each other down. Jason could feel some of the truckers from inside the office and others out on the sidewalk watching them. He searched for some angle to play, but there was none. He turned and walked away.

The next day he inquired about a few more jobs, but halfheartedly. The straight life was revealing itself to be nothing more than a mirage, and Jason cursed himself for being so gullible. Pop had always believed in playing by the rules, working hard and following the law, the American dream, and look where it had gotten him. Jason burned with shame at the way he had lost face in front of that cop. He was better than this. If the cop was so sure that Jason’s Fireson blood doomed him to being a murderous outlaw, then Jason would do him one better: he would be the best goddamn outlaw anyone had seen.

His thoughts returned to Marriner Skelty, an old yegg he had befriended during his second stint in jail. Marriner wasn’t like the Lincoln City small-timers Jason had walked out on; he was smart and professional. Marriner had other friends, particularly skilled friends, some of whom Jason also had met behind bars. Marriner’s jail term was nearing its end, as were some of the others’. Jason started visiting Marriner at the same visiting room where his brothers had very infrequently visited him. The view’s nicer over here, he told Marriner the first time, smiling.

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