The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (33 page)

XXIV.

T
he woman at the unemployment office
listened to Weston’s story. She actually seemed to sympathize. She really
wanted to help him. She just couldn’t.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Fireson. Your employer won’t allow
it.”
“I don’t have an employer. That’s why I’m here.”
“I meant your
former
employer, of course.” A pursed smile,
perfectly erect posture. “Employers need to file the appropriate forms
for their former employees to be allowed to collect unemployment payments. To
verify you’ve been laid off as opposed to quitting. Yours has not yet
been filed.”
The Lincoln City Social Services office was a large room on the second floor of
a downtown building only five blocks from Mr. Douglasson’s office. Gray
buns bobbed as the clerks carefully typed, the hammers mashing government forms
in triplicate. The place smelled of old ladies’ perfume and sorrow.
“My former employer can deliberately prevent me from getting unemployment
checks from the government?” Weston had been fired a month earlier.
“That would be the net result, yes.”
“So I don’t
work
there anymore, but I’m technically
not
unemployed
, either?” Only later would Weston realize that this
meant the feds were still pressuring Douglasson to make things difficult for
him.
“I have to ask you to keep your voice down, Mr.
Fireson.” She hadn’t shown any reaction when he’d given his
name, but everyone knew it. “Perhaps you could file for state aid.”
He nodded, smiling bitterly. He had heard stories about state aid—it took
forever to apply, and they made the experience as unpleasant as possible. They
asked about family, friends, and past associates, hoping to discover someone
else who might be expected to provide you with funds so the state
wouldn’t have to. As if you wouldn’t already have asked them
yourself. Weston was a young, healthy man who, since he was single, technically
had no dependents—his name would not shoot to the top of the list. And
times were as bad as they’d ever been: he’d read in the
Sun
a few days back that the Lincoln City unemployment rate, now that two more tire
plants had closed, had risen above fifty percent.
Weston thanked her and took his leave. He could hear the next guy beginning his
story as he walked out the door.
How to spend all this time? Time overflowing, spilling out of his empty
pockets. Time flooding the ground before him, washing him away. There was a
surplus of time. If only he could have traded it for money, or for something he
could hammer, weld, shape, smelt, or otherwise transmute into money. He was a magician
staring at a hat, trying to remember the magic words for conjuring bunnies. And
all down the street were other failed magicians, dressed in rags, everyone
looking at one another with vacant eyes, silently asking if they remembered how
to cast any spells.
Weston had applied for countless jobs. Anything he could think of. Legal and
other white-collar positions at which his experience at Douglasson’s
might have proved beneficial, but such offices had no need of applicants, thank
you. So, manual labor, at a lumberyard outside town, at a sugar-refining plant
where the unionized workers turned him away before he could find the office, at
a tool-and-die maker’s shop, a movie theater, a trucking company, a
furniture upholsterer. At hotels where he offered to carry luggage for nothing
but tips. At restaurants that might need a cook or busboy or janitor. He had
passed afternoons standing outside construction sites, just in case one of the
men fell injured and the foreman needed a replacement. He had sat there hoping
for some disaster,
offering immoral prayers that a
crane cord might snap, a scaffolding collapse.
He had even wandered into the local supermarket and asked if they needed help,
argued his qualifications—his adolescence spent stocking shelves and
calling suppliers and counting orders. His voice had cracked. He had been
politely refused.
The day after his visit to the unemployment office, Weston spent money he
shouldn’t have at the cinema. But even though he carefully avoided
gangster films, he still couldn’t escape his brothers, who were featured
in a newsreel before the picture started. This was in late May, two months
before their death in Points North; J. Edgar Hoover sat at his desk and
promised the American people that the Firesons would be captured, but his
officious voice was drowned out by the audience’s cheers at the sight of
Jason and Whit’s confident faces. Was it hometown loyalty, or did people
everywhere love them like this?
He spared himself the streetcar fare by walking home. It was an hour’s
walk, and he took breaks on park benches and at bus stops. At least the
springtime weather was agreeable, warm but still a couple of weeks before the
humid air began suffocating the city.
He was tired, hungry, and a bit dizzy; he’d been cutting back on meals,
which made the stomach pains more severe. It was dark when he approached his
building. A young man standing on the corner called his name.
Weston recognized the voice from the phone, and he remembered the face from the
confrontation at his mother’s door.
“Agent Cary Delaney,” the Justice agent said, extending his hand.
He was Weston’s height, and though he stood with confidence, he looked
nothing like a cop. “Good to finally meet you in person.”
Surely Jason or Whit would know how to respond, but Weston had no idea how to
play this game. Say something witty, or does that mark you for a criminal? Act
respectfully, or does that mark you for a heel? So he said nothing.
“Working late?”
“I’m … I’m out of work at the moment.” Surely
that was not the right thing to say.
“That’s too bad.”
It took Weston a second to realize Delaney had known that.
“What do you want, Agent Delaney?”
“I want to find your brothers before they cause any more trouble.”
“Why would I want to help you?”
“Because one of these days some country cops are going to shoot them up
just so they can hang their heads on a wall. But if you can give me some
information on your brothers the Bureau can at least try to bring them in
alive.”
“So they can be executed a few months later?”
“Not all the states in which they’re wanted have the death penalty.
Maybe I can pull some strings, get them put to trial in states that would only
give them life sentences.”
“‘Only life sentences.’ You make it sound so agreeable. You
think I want to see my brothers spend the rest of their lives behind
bars?”
“I’m afraid that’s their best option at this point.”
“Prison killed my father awfully fast.”
“I understand. I know your mother’s been through a lot. Do you want
her to see their faces all shot up on the front page of the
Sun?
Because
that’s where they’re headed. I’ll bet most papers already
have the death stories written up; they’ve just left a few blanks for the
where and the when. That way, when it happens they can go to press like
that”
—he
snapped his fingers. “I’m offering you a chance to save
them.”
Weston laughed despairingly. That seemed to be the only way he laughed anymore.
“Save my brothers. You make it seem like I’d be a hero to
them.”
“I know they wouldn’t thank you for it. But that’s how family
is sometimes—we do things for the good of the people we love, even if
they don’t always see it that way. And you’d be saving other
people, too. That’s the thing none of these hero-worshippers like to talk
about. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your brothers have killed people.
Maybe they’re naïve enough to think they didn’t mean it, but
fellows who steal at gunpoint can’t blame anyone but themselves for what
happens. So, yes, I’m interested in saving your brothers’ lives,
but I’m also interested in saving the lives that they’re going to
take with them. Some bank clerk trying not to lose his house. Some sad sack in
to cash his CCA check. Some farmer hoping—”
“Enough,” Weston waved his hand.
“Yes, of course—who cares about those other people? Empathy only
carries us so far, huh?”
“You’re talking about my
brothers
.
You seem to be forgetting that.”
“I think
you’re
forgetting who they are—who
they’ve become—and you’re buying those stories and myths.
That they go into Hoovervilles and carry the sick and injured to the hospital
and pay their medical bills. That they tear up banks’ new mortgages
before they can be recorded. That they spread their money around to help folks
keep up with the bills. You’re letting the myths displace the reality.
“Here’s who your brothers really are, Mr. Fireson: they’re
men who couldn’t handle the pressures everyone else is facing, so they
decided to just take from decent people, even if it means killing along the
way. Whit gunned down an old bank clerk who was about to faint from fear. And
one day he shot a fifty-year-old bank guard who’d only taken that job
because he’d been laid off from a machine-parts factory. An old librarian
in Louisiana took a ricochet to the head from a gunfight between your brothers
and the police—I’m sure your brothers blame the police for that
one. They killed two cops, and Jason shot a federal agent who I personally
knew. His name was Mike. He was a Reds fan, had a son—”
“I said,
enough.”
“I haven’t even mentioned the reward money. We could get it to you
secretly, so no one would know you were involved. Don’t tell me you
don’t need it. Don’t tell me your mother and your aunt and her kids
don’t need it. I know your mother’s paid off most of her mortgage
and your father’s debts with money from bank jobs. But she won’t be
getting any more from Jason, not with all the heat on him. Her bills are going
to be awfully hard to meet each year, what with feeding and clothing the little
ones. Your brothers could have stayed home and supported your family the way
everyone else is doing, but they made other choices.”
“Yeah, it’s been going so well for everyone else these days.”
“Maybe they would have had dry spells, I’m not fooling myself. But
they could have done it, just like you’re doing it, just like I’m
doing it. They chose to abandon your mother, abandon you.”
Weston didn’t contradict him.
The agent reached into his pants pocket and took out a crinkled Hershey’s
wrapper.
“Got a little hungry waiting for you to show up, so I stepped into the
place around the corner and bought a little snack. First candy bar I’ve
had in a long while. Want to hear why?”
“I’m sure it’s a fascinating story,
but—”
“I lived off the things for months at a time. In college and law school.
I was there on scholarship—my family couldn’t have afforded it
otherwise. One time, I was evicted from my apartment and had to live in an old
Model T. I moved it around different nights so I wouldn’t get spotted by
the campus cops. Living off the candy bars that had been passed out as
promotions to all the students. Anyway, we hear that Jason and Whit have taken
to living in automobiles lately, too. Funny coincidence.”
“You know, I was wrong. That wasn’t fascinating.”
Delaney looked insulted as he stuffed the wrapper back into his pocket.
“What I’m trying to say is that I know what it’s like to be
down on your luck. I know how it feels to be surrounded by people who could
help you but won’t. They just don’t care. They’re too
concerned with themselves, and maybe if the shoe was on the other foot you
would be, too. Look, the Bureau could have sent some thug to yell and threaten
charges at you like they tried with your mother, but I understand the pressures
you’re under. You’re the one stuck in the thankless position of
having to keep everyone else going. Hell, I send most of my paycheck to my
mother, too. But I also know there are right ways of dealing with this, and
wrong ways.”
“Fuck you.”
Weston had never said that before. “Fuck
you for even
thinking
you know what my family’s going
through.”
Delaney stood there and took it.
“For God’s sake, you’re asking me to pass a death sentence on
my brothers!”
“No, Mr. Fireson. I’m telling you that your brothers are already
dead.”
He reached forward and stuffed a business card into Weston’s shirt
pocket. “You can add that to your collection. Call me when you’ve
made the right decision.” He walked off.
Weston’s anger was so vast, so all-encompassing, that it filled his body,
pinned him in place. He lost track of how long he stood there. Other people
entered or exited the building, all of them eyeing him queerly.
The anger he’d felt at his brothers was redirected at the Justice agent.
Now he almost felt sorry for them, to be pursued like this. Were they really
living in a car, or had Delaney made that up? Jason always tried to defuse the
myths about them, but he also had implied he was having a grand time. Maybe it
wasn’t all booze and cheap women after all.
A man was sleeping in the first-floor corridor again.
Weston stepped around the body and trudged up the stairs. At his door, he
turned the key and walked into his apartment. He shed his shoes and sat on the
bed to strip his socks. It was hot—he’d closed the windows in case
of rain. He let some air in, then sat back on the bed and thought of his
father.
Pop had always preached the importance of hard work, thrift, honesty. What
would he think of his famous desperado sons? And what would he think of his
unemployed, hapless middle son?
Weston had been there when they came for him. A Monday evening, late, the
family woken by loud knocks at the door. Weston’s room was closest to the
stairs, and he made it to the door first. Police officers, two of them on the
landing and two more a few steps behind. Was this a nightmare? But Weston had
never had nightmares about cops before—he’d never had reason to.
That would change.
They asked for his father, and he told them Pop was asleep. They told him to
wake the old man up and followed Weston upstairs.
“… the heck’s going on?” Whit’s nineteen-year-old
voice warbled into the hallway.
Pop opened the door in his nightshirt. The light from downstairs barely
outlined his cheekbones, but his eyes shone.
“What’s going on? It’s the middle of the night.”