The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

ALSO BY THOMAS MULLEN

The Last Town on Earth

for my parents,
brothers, and sister

Men’s memories are uncertain, and the past that was differs little from
the past that was not.

—CORMAC McCARTHY,
BLOOD
MERIDIAN

It seemed a little too pat. It had the austere simplicity of fiction rather
than the tangled woof of fact.

—RAYMOND CHANDLER,
THE BIG
SLEEP

It all began when they died
.
No one I spoke to was entirely sure when they were first called “the
Firefly Brothers,” or why the phrase stuck. A play on the Firesons’
name, or an initial mispronunciation embossed into permanence by the papers? Or
perhaps a reference to how the brothers always seemed to vanish from the
authorities’ gaze, only to reappear so very far from their pursuers. As
if they were a tiny piece of magic, an otherworldly glow, misplaced in our dark
and mundane world
.
But what was magic, and what mundane, in those insane times? Jobs
you’d worked for two decades vanished. Factories that had stood tall for
lifetimes went vacant, were scavenged for scrap, and collapsed. Life savings
evaporated, sometimes in a single day. In our once fertile heartland, dry winds
blew with the power and rage of untold stories accidentally left out of ancient
texts, returning with a vengeance, demanding to be heard. Men disappeared, some
scribbling sad notes for their wives, others leaving behind nothing, as if
they’d never lived there at all. The reality we’d all believed in,
so fervently and vividly, was revealed to be nothing but a trick of our
imagination, or someone else’s, some collective mirage whose power to
entrance us had suddenly and irrevocably failed
.
What the hell had happened? What had we done to ourselves? The looks I saw
on people’s faces. The shock of it all. Capitalism had failed; democracy
was a sad joke. Our country’s very way of life
was at death’s door, and everyone had a different theory of what would
rise up to take its place. I saw the prophets on the soapboxes, spinning their
own stories, trying to wring some moral lesson out of the chaos. Or the movies
and pulps, hoping to distill the pain into entertainment. Or the next round of
politicians, assuring us they were not afflicted by the same lack of vision as
their predecessors. But I didn’t believe them. Or, rather, I believed
everything, because so much had changed so fast that anything seemed possible.
Anything
was
possible
—
you moved about cautiously and
glanced at the sky as if expecting part of it to land on top of you
.
In the midst of it all were the Firefly Brothers
.
They were already worshipped during their bank-robbing spree between the
spring of ’33 and July of ’34. They were already celebrities
—
heroes
or villains, depending on one’s position on the ever-shifting seesaw of
the times
—
indistinguishable in fact from the many folktales
chorusing around them. But they became so much more during a two-week spell in
August of 1934, starting with the night they died. The night they died for the
first time
.

THE FIRST DEATH
OF THE
FIREFLY BROTHERS

I.

H
e was a man well accustomed to waking
up in unorthodox positions and in all manner of settings. He’d slept on
floors, in the pillowless crevices of old couch frames, amid the nettles of
haylofts, against the steering wheels of parked cars. Whether it was stationary
or in motion, Jason Fireson could sleep on it: he’d snoozed on buses,
phaetons, boxcars. He’d nodded off standing up, sitting down, falling
over.
But this was something new.
He didn’t know what he was lying on at first. He knew only that he was
cold, that his skin was touching metal, and that he was naked. A thin sheet was
pulled halfway up his chest.
He had suffered more than his share of automobile accidents and he was familiar
with the awful feeling the following mornings. This was worse. He sat up
gradually, the muscles and tendons of his neck and arms achingly stiff. He
thought that it would have been difficult to imagine being any more sore
without being dead.
He inhaled. He was accustomed as well to waking to all nature of
scents—to animals in the barn below, or unwashed criminals sweating in a
cramped room, or Darcy’s occasional and disastrous breakfasts. But this
was a strange, bitter vapor trying in vain to mask more human evidence of body
odor, urine, and blood. The room was brightly lit, two overhead lights and desk
lamps on either side casting their jaundiced glow. He
looked
to his left and saw cruel medical implements lying on a narrow metal table,
some of them wrapped in gauze or cloth and all of them lying in a pool of dried
blood. A hospital room, then. He’d never woken up in one of those before,
so add that to the list. It was an unusual hospital, and his eyes took stock of
the various items his physicians had left behind. On the same table as those
grisly tools was a camera and its tall flash, an empty pack of cigarettes, and
an overflowing ashtray.
One of the lamps flickered on and off every few seconds. Heavy footsteps
followed invisible paths above the ceiling. He could taste the memory of blood
in the back of his throat, and when he swallowed he nearly gagged at the
dryness.
The tiled floor was filthy, as if his physicians moonlighted as hog farmers and
had tracked mud throughout the sick ward. Ringing the room at waist level was a
narrow counter, and in the corner a large radio was precariously balanced on
it, the announcer’s smooth voice earnestly recounting the latest WPA
project. Most alarming was the policeman’s cap hanging from a hook on the
back of a door, framed photographs of unsmiling officers haunting three
different walls, and, on the wall behind his bed, the portrait of what Jason figured
for a governor—guys with jowls like that just had to be
governors—glaring at him like a corpulent god.
He noticed that the fingertips of his left hand were blackened with ink, those
five blotches the very picture of guilt, of shame, and some very unfortunate
luck indeed.
At the far end of the room a similarly unclothed, half-covered man lay on a
cot, pushed up against the wall as if trying to keep as far from Jason Fireson
as possible.
Then Jason noticed that it wasn’t a cot.
He lifted himself from elbows to palms, the sheet slipping down to his waist.
His eyes widened at the grotesque marks on his chest. They looked like boils
that had been lanced with dirty scalpels and had become infected, drying out
crusted and black as they sank back into his flesh. Two were in his upper chest
just beneath his clavicle, another was a couple of inches southeast of his left
nipple, and three more were in his abdomen. Jason had always been proud of his
physique, and for a moment—a brief one—his thoughts ran to profound
disappointment at the way these
wounds marred his
well-proportioned pectorals and flat stomach. But he had been shot
before—months ago, in his left forearm—and he knew the markings for
what they were, even as all rational thought argued the contrary.
In a panic he tore the sheet off his body and let it collapse like a dispelled
ghost onto the tiled floor. He wanted to touch the wounds but was afraid to.
“Well this is a hell of a thing.”
He sat there for a moment, then forced his neck to scan the room again. Objects
that before had been fuzzy declared themselves. To his right was a third
cooling board, which had been obscured from view by a table between them. He
thought he knew the face lying in profile upon it—how could he
not?—except for the fact that he’d never seen his brother look so
peaceful.
Jason stood, the tile cold on his feet, and stared wide-eyed at Whit. He
reached forward and hesitantly touched his brother’s stubbly left cheek.
It felt cold, but everything felt cold at that moment. He grabbed the sheet
that lay up to his brother’s neck, waited a moment, and slowly began to
pull it down. In the center of Whit’s chest, like a target, was what
could only be a bullet wound.
As he took in this sight he breathed slowly—yes, he was breathing,
despite all the metal he must be carrying inside, clanging about like a piggy
bank—and leaned forward in grief, involuntarily putting his right hand on
his brother’s biceps. It flexed into alertness, and Whit’s head
turned toward Jason. Whit’s jaw was clenched and his brows quivered. Then
his eyes darted down.
“You’re naked,” Whit said.
“That hardly seems the most noteworthy thing here.” Their voices
were hoarse.
Whit sat up, still staring at Jason’s pockmarked chest. Eventually his
eyes shifted down to his own body, and he lurched back as if shot again, nearly
falling from his cooling board.
“What …?” His voice trailed off.
“I don’t know.”
They stared at each other for a long while, each waiting for the other to
explain the situation or to bust up at the practical joke.
Jason swallowed, which hurt, and said, “For the
sake of discussion I’m at least going to ask if this has ever happened to
you before.”
“Not in my worst dreams.”
“I thought you never remember your dreams.”
“Well, I would think I’d remember something like this!”
“Shh
. We’re in a police station, for Chrissake.”
Whit hopped off his cooling board. “Do you remember anything?”
“No.” Jason reversed down his mental map, wildly careening through
each turn and over every bump. “I remember being in Detroit, I remember
driving with the money to meet with Owney…. But that’s it. I
don’t remember if we even made it to the restaurant.”
“Me neither. Everything’s all fuzzy.”
Jason felt a sudden need to look back at his own cooling board, in case he was
a spirit and had left his husk behind. But no.
Whit started glancing around the room again as if searching for a perfectly
rational explanation. Maybe these weren’t bullet wounds but something
else.
“How could we …” he tried to ask. “How could we have
survived this?”
“I don’t know. We’ve survived a lot so far, so why
not—”
Whit pointed to his wound.
“Look
at this, Jason!”
“Shhh
. Keep it down, goddamnit. And, no thank you, I’ve
looked at it enough.”
Whit turned around. “Where’s the exit wound? Do you think it could
have managed to slip out and miss the major organs?”
Jason waved him off without looking. “What about all of
mine?”
Whit turned back around and briefly examined his brother’s chest.
“I don’t know, maybe they …” Then he looked at
Jason’s face. “You’re white as a sheet, too.”
Jason lightly slapped his own face. “I’ll get some color once we
get out of here. C’mon, let’s figure a way out.”
Whit tapped at his chest. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, opened them.
“I don’t
feel
dead.”
“Thank you for clarifying that.”
“But, I mean, I’m breathing. Are you breathing? How do you
feel?”
“I feel stiff but … normal.” Indeed, Jason was feeling less
sore the more
he moved, as if all that his joints needed
was to be released from their locked positions. “Shockingly normal.
You?”
Whit nodded. “But if we’ve survived this and have been recovering
here for a few hours, or days, shouldn’t we … feel a little
worse?”
“I don’t know, maybe we’re on some crazy medication. Or maybe
they used some new kind of bullets. Who knows? Look, a police station
isn’t the place to be wondering about this. We don’t have
time.”
Jason turned off the radio. A closer inspection of the police hat on the wall
informed him that they were in Points North, Indiana. He told Whit.
“Where the hell is Points North?”
“Not far from Valparaiso,” Jason said. The plan had been to pick up
the girls at a motel outside Valparaiso after the cash drop-off in Detroit. So
had the drop-off been successful, only to have something go wrong when they
tried to get the girls?
Jason motioned to the third cooling board at the other end of the room.
“Come on, let’s see who our accomplice is. Maybe he has some
answers.”
He walked over to the body, Whit following after bunching his sheet around his
waist. The man on the third board was every bit as naked under his sheet and
every bit as bad off. He was big, once inflated but now sagging, and a gunshot
to the left side of his neck had not only left a large wound but had torn at
the loose skin, shreds hanging there. The crooked bridge of his nose boasted
that he’d survived previous acts of violence before succumbing to this
one.
“I don’t know him,” Whit said. “You?”
Jason shook his head. Something in the man’s face, as well as the fact
that the doctors or morticians had separated him from them, made Jason certain
this was a cop.
“Hey, buddy,” Jason said, a little more loudly. “You
awake?” He snapped his fingers over the man’s face, but nothing.
Whit slapped the man’s cheek.
“Have some respect,” Jason chided him. He waited a moment, but the
slap went unanswered. Then he placed his thumb between the man’s right
eye and eyebrow, pressing at the socket of his skull and pulling up to reveal
the still, hazel eye beneath. This man seemed content enough in his death not
to be fighting it.
“I guess whatever we have isn’t
contagious,” Jason said. He patted the corpse’s cold chest.
“Okay, buddy. Rest in peace.”
The room had a lone window, small and high on the wall. Twilight was fading,
and the clock beside the window called the time quarter past eight. What day
was it? Jason had the vague feeling an entire day had passed since his last
memory, if not more.
“What the hell happened?” Whit asked again.
“Let’s figure it out later. When we’re very far from
here.”
Beyond the dead man’s feet was a wooden door; on its two hooks hung not
only an officer’s cap but also a white medical coat, which Jason grabbed.
The coat barely cloaked him, and it was so thin it was nearly transparent.
Jason began opening the drawers that lined the left-hand wall, hoping to find
something worth taking. He had never been comfortable around doctors, and being
alone in a medical room rife with their soiled detritus was even worse. He felt
like the fool in an old silent movie who spelunks the depths of a
monster’s lair without noticing the shadow growing behind him. He found a
roll of surgical tape and some gauze and tossed them to Whit, who gave him a
confused look.
“I don’t know, we might need ’em later.”
He continued fumbling among the forceps and pliers and shears that lay on the
tables, taking the two longest scalpels and handing one to his brother.
“The window?” Whit asked.
“You can tramp around in the nude if you’d like, but I want some
clothes first.”
Jason had broken into and out of several buildings in his time: police stations
and armories; the federally monitored homes of friends and family; a county
jail; hell, even a moving train. On some of those occasions he had been
unarmed, but never unclothed. He felt his nudity was an unfair handicap, the
cops violating some essential code.
The room had a second door on the opposite wall. They pressed their ears to one
and then the other, deciding that the one by the dead cop was the safest
bet—through the other door they’d heard a dull rumble of activity.
Jason turned the doorknob slowly, glanced back at his brother a step
behind him, and nodded. Then he leaned his weight into the
door, his right hand clutching the scalpel still encrusted with his own blood.
It was a narrow hallway, white tiled floor and unpainted white walls, and just
beyond was another door. Through that was a locker room, movable wooden benches
lining the walls. It smelled of soap and sweat; an opening in the wall to the
left led to some stalls, probably some showers— but all was quiet.
Jason silently opened the few unlocked lockers but found nothing. Whit did the
same from the opposite wall until they met in the center.
Despite the speed of Jason’s heartbeat—either his heart was still
beating or he could feel the lost echo of such vibrations like an
amputee’s phantom pain—he was still cold, and the tile against the
soles of his feet caused him to shiver. He stepped back into the middle of the
room and found himself in full view of a mirror hanging between two lockers.
Distracted as usual by his reflection, he stared at the dark bullet wounds
visible through his thin coat. Then he noticed his hair—he ran his
fingers through it but still it hung ragged down his forehead.
“They cut off some of my hair. Jesus.”
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.