The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (29 page)

He’d dropped the Thompson, so he took the stolen revolver from his left
pants pocket and pointed it at the shattered windows. The automatic in his
shoulder holster would have been better, but with his dead right arm it was
unreachable. Compared with the Thompson, the revolver felt so light, as if his
arm were floating upward, which was when he started wondering if he was about
to pass out.
He dared to turn his head to the left, away from the kitchen and
toward his brother. It was as if he had known what was
coming, because as soon as he saw Whit—sitting there with his back
against the wall, behind the ravaged couch and beside the stripped corner
wall—someone stepped around that corner. Jason opened his mouth to warn
Whit but only blood came out. He also aimed with his revolver. Whit saw his
brother’s gun pointed at him and his eyes scrunched in confused terror,
but before he could respond Brickbat Sanders was in front of him. In
Brickbat’s right hand a Thompson was pointed at the ceiling. In his left
was an automatic pistol. Brickbat reached toward Whit’s head, and when
Whit finally felt his presence and turned to face him Brickbat pressed the
barrel of his pistol into Whit’s forehead and killed him.
Jason’s finger finally understood that it should be squeezing. His mouth
opened weakly and his pistol screamed twice as loud to compensate. Brickbat
leaped behind the corner again, too quickly for Jason to know if he’d
been hit.
Somehow Jason sat up. He kept firing the revolver until its little
merry-go-round was horseless. He tried to walk to the stairs but his legs
didn’t work. He dragged himself with his one good arm. He dared to look
at Whit, but all he saw was a body, like the others. Sitting against the wall,
the shoulders erect but the head leaning forward at such a sharp angle that at
first it looked as if he’d been decapitated. There was a large circle of
blood on the wall at what should have been eye level.
Jason again reminded himself that this didn’t matter. What he had just
seen happen to his brother didn’t matter. His own pain and imminent death
didn’t matter. They would both wake up again tomorrow, surely. He was
losing his mind.
He made it to the stairs. He crawled past the naked corpse. Still no sounds
from the kitchen, so either that guy, too, was dead or he’d lammed off.
Jason tried to scream Darcy’s name again but he had no voice. His voice
was dead. So was most of his body.
He looked behind him to see if Brickbat was following. He didn’t see
anything or anyone alive. At the other end of the room was a pool of blood from
his own mauled back.
He was so, so thirsty. He was sweating as if the building were on fire, and he was
pretty sure he’d soiled his pants.
It actually got easier to crawl up the stairs once he
managed some momentum.
So much brighter up there, a naked bulb dangling in the second-floor hallway,
tracing an arc in the air as if the gunfire had shaken the whole house. Jason
paused for a few labored breaths, then crawled toward the nearest door. He told
himself again that this was not a problem. Death was not a problem. It was life
that was so damn confusing.
His left palm was slick with sweat and it was difficult to pull the rest of him
after it. The hand seemed the only part of him that was working correctly. He
admired its tirelessness. Maybe the rest of him had been like that, too, once.
Up until only a few minutes ago. Now the left hand seemed ashamed of the rest
of Jason Fireson and was trying to get as far away from all this dead weight as
it could. Yet the dead weight followed, as it always did.
He was in a small bedroom containing an old chaise in place of a bed. There was
an end table in the corner and upon it sat an unshaded lamp that provided the
room with its meager light. A thick chain lay in the center of the room, coiled
around a two-foot metal base pinned down by what looked like barbells. His left
hand reached forward again to pull, but it landed on something. The hand
grabbed the something and wandered back to Jason’s face, opening up to
present its finding. It was gold and thin, with a red stone hanging from it. It
was an earring. Jason had bought it himself.
The stairs groaned. Jason’s left hand closed to a fist around the
earring. He turned his head. The light from the lamp illuminated the imposing
figure of Brickbat Sanders, a big gun in one hand and a small one in the other,
a homicidal fiddler crab.
Brickbat grunted as he lowered himself, sitting on the floor a few feet from
Jason. He rested the Thompson on his lap but held on to the automatic. Either
he’d been sleeping in his dark slacks and shoes or he had found the time
to put them on during the attack. Apart from that, Brickbat wore only a
sleeveless undershirt. Pomade and a pillow had sculpted his blond hair into a
violent wave. One of his shoulders was bleeding, but so little that Jason was
envious.
“Well, you got me with one, Jason,” his voice hoarse, his breath
labored. “But I got you a lot worse.”
Brickbat’s automatic was so silver you could
melt it into bars and make a fortune. It gleamed in the light.
“I was thinking I’d give you one more, right between the eyes like
that idiot brother of yours. But you know what? I think it’ll be more fun
to just watch it happen, real slow.”
He was no more than five feet away. Jason wanted to drive his foot through that
ugly mug, but no single part of his body was obeying his commands. Even the
left hand had turned mutinous. He was still breathing, and his heart was still
beating, but that had nothing to do with him anymore.
“Take your time,” Brickbat said, smiling. And Jason did.

THE THIRD DEATH
OF THE
FIREFLY BROTHERS

As more time passed and the official line on the Firefly Brothers became
less believable, an equally absurd list of deeds and misdeeds were attributed
to the outlaws, dead or not. The brothers had been endowed with supernatural
powers, people told me, divine abilities. Calls came in from parents claiming
the Firesons had visited them at night and cured their sick children. Formerly
dry cows were producing milk again on farms where the Firefly Brothers had
allegedly hid. A family in Kansas claimed that an elderly relative had died one
night but that the Firesons had stopped by for dinner, and after their
departure the old-timer had risen from his deathbed demanding steak and
potatoes. Destitute families found bricks of hundred-dollar bills stashed
beneath rocks at the periphery of their property lines, or hidden in decaying
fences, or sitting beneath their bedframes, the mornings after they’d had
vivid dreams about the brothers
.
Across the country, newspaper editors debated the merits of sensationalism
versus missing the story of a lifetime. Police officers didn’t know whether
to doubt their panicked constituents’ stories, or their superiors’
rational explanations, or their own eyes
.
In Kansas City, three municipal employees who had been pilfering from a food
bank were found shot to death; hungry witnesses claimed the Firefly Brothers
had avenged them. The city of Toledo suffered an all-night power outage that
began only moments after a telephone-line repairman had seen
the Firesons driving into town. Several reports out
of Lincoln City claimed that mysterious fires had been lit on the surrounding
hilltops, a spectacle beheld by thousands, but by the time firefighters reached
those outposts there were neither flames nor ashes nor embers to welcome them.
Rallies and marches had turned violent in Akron, Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, and
Omaha after the Firefly Brothers, rumored to be appearing, were no-shows.
Governors’ mansions in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were being patrolled
by the National Guard after the chief executives received death threats
allegedly signed by the Firefly Brothers, and citizens’ militias were
patrolling the streets outside dozens of the Midwest’s largest banks
.
There was already so much in the world to be overwhelmed by, to be confused
about. I used to think
—
or hope
—
that no sane person
truly bought those stories but simply had fun telling them. It was a parlor
game, a communal experiment in storytelling, something to pass the time. The
whole country was sitting on a rocking chair, spinning a ridiculous yarn. The
only true believers, I figured, were the pathetic, the depressed. Those
unfortunate souls who were already unhinged by mental illness or who had become
so by the hard times
—
the ones who had lost sight of anything else
to believe in
.
I would soon learn otherwise
.

XXI.

D
arcy had been woken by a voice
whispering in her ear, so close the lips grazed the earring that had been
hanging from her lobe for longer than she could remember. She’d been
dreaming of lips, but not these.
“Wake up, miss. Don’t say a word. Time to go.”
She could feel and hear Rufus fumbling with the chain that connected her
handcuffs to the mystery anchor in the center of the room. She felt a sudden
slackening and inhaled deeply.
She whispered, “What about the handcuffs?”
“I don’t have the key, and the guy that does won’t be
interested in handing ’em over.”
“My eyes—”
“The goggles stay on for now. No more talking or I’ll change my
mind.”
A large hand gripping both of hers. The crickets told her it was night. The
lack of other sounds told her they were the only two awake.
He pulled her behind him. The floorboards were silent beneath his feet but
piano keys beneath hers; he seemed to know the lucky spots, but in her
blindness she was missing them. Twice her feet struck low notes and Rufus
stopped, tensing to hear if anyone might stir at the sound. Then onward. It
felt so strange to move forward, this linear trajectory so
unlike the circles she had orbited around her anchor
these many days. Her heels seemed curved from her detention, her body
stubbornly listing fore and aft.
“Stairs,” he warned in a whisper. She was disconcerted at how off
balance she felt. Blind and bound, she could feel the universe shifting and
spinning, gravity pulling at more directions than made sense, and she feared
she was on the verge of falling. She thought of all the things Jason had
escaped from and told herself that surely some of his magic had rubbed off on
her.
Once they reached the first floor, Rufus seemed to feel a surge of confidence,
or perhaps desperation. Her hands were yanked farther from her body and she
raced to catch up. She heard the muted sifting of air through a screen door and
suddenly she was outside. The creaking of a porch, but this time he
didn’t stiffen or stop, and instead forgot to warn her of more stairs.
Her right foot swung up into the void, the heel landing too hard on a lower
step. Rufus! She wanted to yell at him but her jaw snapped shut when it hit against
something, his shoulder perhaps, and before she could fall to the ground she
felt hands clamping at her sides. The palms and fingertips seemed to linger at
her waist as he righted her.
Rufus hadn’t told her freedom was coming, though she, of course, had hoped
for it. Confused and half-asleep, she was responding to it as best she could.
She heard an engine purr to life. A door quietly announced itself as the driver
emerged, the molars of a gravel driveway grinding against one another as he
walked toward them.
“All right,” Rufus’s nameless conspirator said. “Point
her and let’s go.”
Rufus’s hands were on her shoulders now, and they rotated her to the
right.
“When I let go, miss, you start walking forward. Once you hear us driving
away, you can take off the goggles.”
“But not before then,” Nameless reiterated in a more threatening
tone.
“Rufus, you can’t expect me to—”
“Lady,” Nameless interrupted, “we’ve put ourselves out
for you far enough. Any lip and we’ll tie you to the porch for the other
guys to find.”
“You’ll be okay, miss,” Rufus said, seemingly regretting his
partner’s tone. “We’re going one way, and you’re going
another. You just have to walk a few hundred yards to the road.”
Darcy breathed for a moment. After days of yearning
for freedom, the idea of being separated from Rufus and his calm, sweetly
stupid voice was, of all things, terrifying.
“And, uh, I’d appreciate you putting in a good word for me with
Jason and Whit.”
“I don’t even know your name.” She almost laughed.
He gently squeezed one of her hands in lieu of a farewell. Then the gravel
munching again, and two car doors closing so quietly it seemed the vehicle
itself was holding its breath.
Darcy felt paralyzed, the removal of one cage leading only to the imposition of
a more psychological one. The sudden availability of options befuddled her.
The car pulled away.
Go
, she told herself. Hesitantly she stepped one
foot forward, then the next. The sky did not collapse upon her. Alarms did not
sound. She did not wake on the chaise bathed in sweat. So, more steps, and
faster. The dizziness she’d felt on the stairway was magnified, the
frightening emptiness around her combining with her blindness. She let the fear
power her forward, and soon she was running.
She had never been terribly agile, and days of inactivity had turned her leg
muscles to tar. She was breathing heavily and already her chest burned—so
many insufficient meals had left her half-starved and listless. She wanted to
lie down. The earth felt so soft beneath her feet.
No—run, faster. Her gait was awkward with her cuffed hands, not to
mention her narrow dress. Thank God she’d worn flat shoes, though they
were nearly slipping from her heels. Mosquitoes pinched at her ankles and
calves, a swarm of them. Or was that dry grass?
The car was gone now—she could remove the goggles. Hallelujah. The width
of her handcuffs was less than that of her skull, so she needed to attend to
one side of the goggles at a time. She slid her fingers beneath the elastic on
the left and pulled up, pain flooding the softness above her ear as the vise
was released. She did the same with the other side, dropped the goggles and
blinked.
Nothing. Why couldn’t she see? Darkness, nighttime, or perhaps only
fuzziness, residual loss of sight that would take hours to blink away. She
rubbed at her eyes, which hurt. But it seemed to help, a little. Was she
crying?
For God’s sake, not now, not until you’re safe
.
She walked quickly. Her knees twitched and her fingers shook. The
palsy of freedom, the terror of choices. Then she fell.
She stayed on the ground for a moment, feeling the dryness around her. She
seemed to be in a furrow, where once the earth had produced something other
than this spiny scrub grass. Mosquitoes continued to have their way with her.
A sound, jarring her. How long had she been lying here? Had she fallen asleep?
She realized the sound had been a gunshot only when she heard more of them. Too
many to be counted, that crazed rat-a-tat-tat of so much violence in so little
time. Finally, she saw light.
So loud and so bright, yet so tiny. Her mind was having trouble decoding
messages. Bursts of brightness from a house in the distance, like lightning, as
if that one building contained its own weather system, powerful and angry yet
dwarfed by the vastness of the dark sky above.
Could they see her from here? Were the shots flares to snuff her out? No, they
were too chaotic. They had found Rufus and his friend, perhaps, and were doling
our punishment. Or, Lord, they were fighting with one another; they had
discovered her absence and were distributing blame. Which meant they soon would
be searching for her. The shots ceased.
Darcy stood up and ran, almost wishing the shots would return to illuminate her
path. Rufus had said there was a road not far from here, hadn’t he? Had she
veered off the intended trail? She ran until her body was shaking again. She
would have sprinted for hours, she would have flown into the air, if only such
things were possible. How deathly simple the world was. How uninspired. She was
going to pass out again.
But first a form before her. Scraps and slivers of the darkness seemed to
thicken and solidify into three dimensions. She walked forward and the darkness
shifted before her, but that thing was still there in the middle. She touched
it: an automobile. Cold in the thick air. Darcy circumnavigated the car but
found no road. The car had been abandoned in the middle of the field, as lost
and forlorn as herself.
She tried to control her breathing and listened. No sounds of pursuers.
And if she had possessed the capacity for rational thought—Lord, that had
passed days ago—perhaps she would not have opened the car door and
slumped inside. Perhaps she would not have closed the door as loudly as she
did. Perhaps she would have kept running. But she could feel wakefulness
fleeing her. She needed only to lie down, just for a moment, on the
cool upholstery, and feel the way it crumpled beneath the
awesome weight of her heavy, heavy head.