The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (37 page)

She had always known how ambivalent Jason felt about the Firefly legends. One
night the previous spring, while the gang was planning the
Federal Reserve job, she had asked him why he
didn’t get the same kick out of it that his brother did.
“Because it’s all bunk.” He shook his head, then told her
again about the time he’d saved Whit at the Hooverville. “I let
them put a bunch of other sick folks in my car, too, so the story gets twisted
that I’m this saint ferrying the poor to the hospital, like I run my own
ambulance service for the needy. And, yeah, whenever we’ve needed to hide
out on someone’s farm because we had a busted tire or a breakdown,
we’ve paid ’em for it, paid handsomely. But it’s not like we
were redistributing the nation’s wealth. We were just trying to make sure
they wouldn’t think bad of us and rat us out.” He shook his head.
“And once, during an endeavor, Marriner happens to put out his cigar on
some banker’s papers and they catch fire, and next thing I know, people
are talking about how we burn up mortgages for them, erase their debts.”
He laughed. “And people believe it!”
“Maybe it helps to have something to believe in.”
“Well, they shouldn’t.”
“Jason.” She was surprised by his bitterness.
“They’re getting their hopes up for something that isn’t
there. I don’t want to be blamed when it all comes crashing down on
them.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. He was overreacting. “I can’t tell
if you’re saying you don’t deserve to be loved or that they
don’t deserve to love you.”
“Maybe both. I just hate them thinking I’m their hero. It was never
about that. Maybe I only do this because I’m good at it, and it was the
only way I could help Ma save the house, or maybe it’s because I’m
lazy and shiftless and I don’t like to work eight hours a day. Maybe I
should’ve stayed at Pop’s store and none of this ever would have
happened. Maybe I just like fine clothes too much, and I like showing off, and
I’m vain and selfish and Pop was right.”
She kissed his cheek. “Is it so terrible to be loved?”
His eyes softened. “We’re not as bad as some people say we are. But
we sure as hell aren’t as good.”
“I think you’re plenty good.”
“Whit talks a great game, about fighting back and helping the people. He
spread some money around to some factory pals in Lincoln City, yeah,
and I know he brought food to Hoovervilles a few times,
but that was a while ago. I haven’t seen him donating his share of the
last few bank jobs to the Salvation Army or anything.”
“Well, he does have a family to take care of.”
“And that’s what I’m doing. That’s all I’ve been
trying to do. People can take those silly ideas about heroes and—”
“It’s not your fault what people say.”
He was silent for a while. “We’re just goddamn thieves.
That’s all we are.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty for not living up to—”
“Who said I felt guilty?” he snapped.
“Darling, I didn’t—” He always acted so comfortable in
his skin, so strong in his suit of armor, that she was startled by how easily
he could be hurt.
He turned around and walked toward the door. “I need to get some air,
sweetness.”
“No, Jason, don’t. Where are you going?”
“I’ll be fine. I just need to walk a bit.”
She stood there as Jason escaped into the darkness outside the apartment,
whichever one it was then—Gary? Fond du Lac? Springfield? The nights of
so many different cities had borne silent witness to the anger he so carefully
held inside.

Darcy woke to the sound of someone descending the stairs. A narrow beam of
light shone on the bottom of the stairway. Seconds later, the room brightened
to the meager level it had attained earlier, and she saw the doctor screwing a
new lightbulb into the fixture dangling from the ceiling.
“Please help us,” Darcy said to him, so quickly it was pure reflex.
Then she heard the stairs creaking again.
Brickbat reached the bottom, turned, and smiled at her. He had removed his
jacket and wore only a shoulder holster over his sleeveless undershirt and
slacks. A large white bandage covered only part of his massive shoulder; it
would have taken a dressing the size of a bedsheet to
cover
the whole thing. He had shaved and was apparently enjoying the painkillers; he
held a white pillow as if he still wanted to cuddle with it.
“Sorry, kitten. Ride’s not quite over yet.”
“I don’t want them down here much longer,” the doctor said.
He was looking around at his vast piles as if hoping to find a box large enough
to stuff them in. Jesus, she hoped that wasn’t what he was looking for.
“And what’s with the pillow?” the doctor asked.
“It’s gonna help us get rid of them. Here, hold it. I’ll show
ya.”
He handed the pillow to the doctor, who looked as if he hadn’t had a
drink in a while now and sorely missed it. He seemed more annoyed than confused
as he held the pillow to his chest. Then Brickbat unholstered his gun, pressed
it deep into the pillow, and fired.
Darcy was too startled to shout. She didn’t so much hear the muted shot
as feel it. The doctor was on his back now and the pillow had landed beside
him. Feathers hung in the air and the basement smelled of burned laundry.
Brickbat picked up the pillow, torn on both sides, stained red on one and black
on the other. “Worked pretty well,” he said to himself. Darcy
looked down at her feet. She felt him take a step toward the silent judge but
was unable to look up. He was putting the pillow on the judge’s lap. A
blackened feather landed on her knee.
“No need to rush with a guy who’s tied up,” Brickbat said.
“Any last words, old man?”
“That won’t work on me.”
Brickbat chuckled. “That so?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
“I cannot die. I cannot imagine it.”
Brickbat laughed harder this time. “Ain’t that a riot.
Imagination’s got nothing to do with it, old man. Sweet dreams.”
Then a metallic crunch, gears straining against each other. “What the
hell?”
From the corner of her eye she thought she saw Brickbat move the gun closer to
his own face. He shook the gun, then extended his arm so that it was pressed
into the pillow once more. Again the failed sounds of unyielding metal.
“Damn thing’s jammed,” he muttered.
Darcy finally dared to watch. Brickbat was fiddling
with his gun. She had never touched one of Jason’s, so she wasn’t
sure what was wrong. Finally, he shook his head.
“Your lucky day, old-timer. But not so lucky.” He swung the gun
into the judge’s face. Darcy didn’t look away quickly enough. The
force of the blow against the judge’s head toppled him in his chair.
There was no moan or cry of pain, just the dry crunch of wood snapping, and
maybe bone. Finally, she was able to look at the heap on the floor—the
chair legs pointing up at her like an inept lion tamer’s stool, unable to
prevent the mauling.
“Just you and me, kitten.”
“Please.” Her voice was not usually so small. “Please
don’t do this.”
“I’m not going to—the show must go on.” Brickbat
holstered the problematic gun. “Sorry you had to see all that, but I
don’t like to leave messes.”
“Please, just let me go and you can disappear. Isn’t that what people
like you want?”
“Disappearing broke is what plenty other saps been doing, so no thanks.
Disappearing with loads of cash, though—that sounds nice. Speaking of
which, I gotta go back up and make some calls.”
He took something from his pocket. “You too good to look at me? Then I
guess you don’t want any hooch.”
She looked up. He was holding a bottle of rye. He tipped the open mouth in her
direction. She hated him, but she lifted her chin.
He lowered the bottle to her lips and she drank. She could have spat in his
face, of course, and she did consider it. But that wouldn’t gain her
anything, and drinking this surely would. She gulped, and he made an admiring
sound.
“Some food would be nice, too,” she said when he let her breathe.
But goddamn that had tasted good. She inclined her chin again as he was moving
to pocket the bottle. He laughed and gave her another snort. She swallowed and
felt the burn in her throat. When she closed her eyes, she felt lighter. She
willed her feet to be lifted into the air, willed her body to float away.
She heard him pocket the bottle and she opened her eyes. They looked at each
other silently. Then she asked if he had really killed him.
“Which one?”
“Jason.”
“Yeah, kitten. I really did. Hopefully this’ll all end soon and you
can make it to his funeral.”
Then Brickbat gagged her with a dishrag. As he stuffed it into her mouth, she
tried to bite him. She thought she was successful until she saw his fingers
move, and then he was tying the ends behind her head. She had only bitten the
rag. The bastard hadn’t even bothered to find a clean one—it was
damp and tasted of grease and old dishwater. She felt her stomach turn, but she
closed her eyes to control her insides. She needed to stay calm. There would be
a way. There had to be a way.
“Sorry, kitten. Can’t trust you to keep quiet while I run a little
errand. Say a prayer and maybe you’ll be a free woman before long.”
He walked up the stairs and closed the door.
Darcy saw that the judge’s chest was rising and falling, so the old man had
managed to escape death once again, though he likely wouldn’t be moving
anytime soon. She tried to call out to him, to wake him up, but she could
barely make a sound, and when she tried to move her tongue she nearly choked.
She wondered again how long she would be down here. The bulb did not burn out,
and the bodies on the floor did not stir.

XXVIII.

“P
eople are saying you can’t
be killed.” Eddie’s voice quavered as he drove his commandeered
Dodge. They’d been off the highway for half an hour, and apart from a few
driving instructions not a word had been spoken. “Dillinger was the crook
who couldn’t be caught, and you’re the crooks who
can’t—”
“They caught Dillinger eventually,” Jason noted.
“But what about you two?” He peered at Whit in the rearview.
“That bullet hole real?”
“Let’s drop him off here,” Whit rasped. His eyes had been
shut for the past ten minutes.
They were on a country road and hadn’t passed an inhabited building for a
few minutes. More important, Jason hadn’t spied any telephone lines in a
while. He told Eddie to pull over when they reached an intersection with a
narrow, badly rutted road.
Once Eddie was out of the car and Jason had slid into the driver’s seat,
Jason told him to step a few paces off the road, close his eyes, and spin in a
circle for ten seconds. Then he ordered the dizzy hostage to lie facedown in
the field and to stay that way, with his eyes shut, for two minutes.
“You do that,” Jason said, “and I promise you the police will
find this fine automobile not far from here and in good condition.”
After another twenty minutes, Jason was driving them through a particularly
barren stretch of farms when he pulled over to the side
of the road. The engine still running, he stepped out of the Dodge and opened
the back door to get a better look at his brother. Whit’s right pant leg
had been burned black. It was warm to the touch as Jason tore it open. Whit
winced, his eyes still shut. The skin of his leg was lobster red, like a very
bad sunburn. It wasn’t white or blistering, at least not yet.
“Think you’ll be okay. Lucky we got it put out so fast.”
“You crashed and I got burned. Doesn’t feel so goddamn lucky.”
Back behind the wheel, Jason soon came upon a small town with a block-long
commercial district; fortunately, it boasted a pharmacy but not a police
station. Jason parked the Dodge at the far end and told Whit to stay the hell
awake. Whit nodded unconvincingly, one hand gripping the pistol in his pocket.
Jason put the fedora on Whit’s head, slanting it low over the bullet
hole.
Jason had no glasses or disguise of any kind, but hopefully he was disheveled
enough to be unrecognizable. Still, he was self-conscious at his mangy
appearance, hatless and wearing only an undershirt, with highway-blown hair and
various cuts across his filthy face. His right hand rested in his pocket to
conceal the barrel of an automatic pistol as he bought dressings and burn ointment
from the pharmacist, telling the young man that his wife had burned her hand
something awful at the stove. He also bought an eighth of rye, some
painkillers, a
Post-Dispatch
, a state map, and a quart bottle of pop. No
radios were on, and he hoped that word of their misadventure had not yet
spread. If the pharmacist noticed that Jason wasn’t wearing a wedding
ring, he didn’t say anything.
He was back at the Dodge in less than five minutes. Half a mile later, he found
a filling station that was closed on account of its being the Lord’s Day.
He pulled over and emptied the bottle of pop, then refilled the bottle and wet
the dressings at a spigot. Whit opened the bottle of ointment and poured a good
amount into his right hand, impatient to begin the healing, but then he stared
at his throbbing legs as if realizing for the first time that he’d
actually have to touch them to apply it. He sucked in his breath as he began.
Jason wished Whit would hurry but he understood, so he held his tongue as Whit
slowly slathered himself. Whit was panting by the time he finished, then Jason
laid the wet dressings on his brother’s
legs.
Finally it was over, and Whit washed down four painkillers with a healthy swig
of rye. He added a much longer pull for good luck.
“I’d like you to stay conscious,” Jason told him.
“Too late,” Whit said, drinking again. “Just drive. If you
need to wake me up later, try shooting me in the head.”
Jason kept his word to Eddie; the kid would surely tell the police the make and
model of his car, so the Dodge needed to go. Jason stopped at a farmhouse whose
driveway was cluttered with automobiles; either some kind of party or a farm
auction was in full swing. Crouching all the while, Jason transferred their
possessions to the backseat of a new but otherwise nondescript black Nash.
Hot-wiring the engine took less than a minute; waking and then moving his
injured brother took considerably longer. But no one seemed to notice, or, if
they did, no one dared interfere, and Jason backed onto the road and pulled
away.
The Firefly Brothers’ many getaways were usually conducted in less
harried a fashion, but not always. Once Jason had been shot in the forearm when
exiting a bank, and of course there was the time Jake Dimes was killed before
Jason could even get into the car. Other allies had suffered broken bones and
bullet ricochets, so the stress of traveling with a grievously injured
companion was not entirely foreign. Still, it complicated their already
long-shot plan to find Darcy.
Jason drove south for another hour. Because the cops had chased them east on
the highway, they likely would assume the brothers were headed for the state
line and would set up more roadblocks around Jefferson City and along the
border to Illinois. This suited Jason fine—the doctor he suspected
Brickbat was visiting lived on the Missouri side of St. Louis. Their brief
detour would allow them to drive into the city from the southwest, bypassing
Jefferson City and the main highways. The foothills of the Ozarks rose calm and
dark on the horizon as Jason followed signs for a park and a campground to hide
in until sunset.
“This is a punishment.” Whit startled him by speaking suddenly, his
eyelids still clamped shut. Jason had assumed that his brother was asleep or
unconscious. Even now he wasn’t sure.
“What, your leg?”
“No,
this
. Waking up after dying,
haunting each other. It’s a punishment.”
Still Whit insisted on finding some grand narrative within which to place them.
“Okay, fine. It’s punishment. But for what? Robbing banks? For not
being nicer to each other as kids? For shooting folks that got in our way?
What, exactly, do you think we’re being punished for?”
But Whit was silent, and a moment later he answered Jason’s question with
a snore.
After hiding in the park for a few hours, Jason drove to a filling station to
get more water for his brother, who had finally woken up to a terrible thirst.
Jason again risked being identified by purchasing four dollars of gasoline from
the old-lady proprietor, and, since he didn’t have a car key, he risked
annoying her by explaining that he couldn’t turn off the engine during
the transaction because the starter had been giving him trouble.
“Looks like a new car,” she said.
“Lemons come in all shapes and sizes these days.”
Whit was feigning sleep in the backseat, the fedora crooked over his eyes, and
he’d delicately laid the pages of the
Post-Dispatch
over his legs
to hide his injury. Jason idly asked the lady how far they were from Jefferson
City, receiving an answer he paid no attention to, then asked if she knew of a
place where they could get some supper. She told them the pastor’s family
tended to barbecue in their front yard and sell to neighbors and whoever should
pass by on Sunday evenings, and she gave him directions. She advised against the
chicken, which the pastor’s wife tended to overcook.
The sun was setting and the gathering at the pastor’s was breaking up,
but judging from the output of the smoker there still seemed to be some fixings
left. A dozen adults and that many children were spread out on blankets or the
well-watered lawn of a three-story white house surrounded by elms. Packs of
kids were running around with sparklers. None of the men looked like trouble.
He removed the automatic from his pocket, replacing it with a smaller revolver
that could nestle there without being noticed.
Adrenaline had done much to mask the initial toll of the crash, but
now he was suffering his injuries’ delayed wrath.
His neck was stiff, he felt a stabbing pain in his left shoulder if he lifted
his arm more than ninety degrees, and the center of his breastbone was tender
from its multiple impacts with the steering wheel. He tried his damnedest not
to limp despite his throbbing knees, and he hoped that the cuts on his face
didn’t look so bad in the dimming light.
Jason smiled at the middle-aged man working the grill and asked if a traveling
salesman could buy some dinner for himself and his dozing partner. The cook,
who Jason figured for the minister, speared two chunks of brisket and piled
them on a paper plate beside a heap of potato salad, and only now did Jason
realize how hungry he was. He sat on a bench near the grill and tried to eat as
quickly as he could without appearing frantic about it.
When asked, he told the minister that he and his partner were salesmen for a
growing line of men’s wear out of Chicago. He joked that he normally
would look more dapper but they’d had auto trouble and he’d spent
half the weekend lying beneath their company’s supposedly new car. His
partner was sleeping their troubles off. The guy in the plaid shirt pointed out
that Jason had left his engine on and Jason repeated his line about the
starter. They chatted about the Cardinals, and Jason tried not to appear
nervous as two boys strayed toward the Nash, pointing at the fine scalloped
lines above the front wheels.
The minister asked Jason for the salesman’s opinion of the hard times.
Jason tried to plagiarize the nonsense that the jellybean at the diner had told
him a few days ago, but he himself didn’t believe it.
It’s a
cruel, awful world
, he wanted to say to the minister.
They take it from
you if you don’t take it first. They’ll ignore your pain, or laugh
at it
. But instead he smiled and said he was sure things would turn around
by Christmas, God willing.
Then one of the boys screamed.
Jason leaped off the bench and ran toward the car, along with a couple of
parents. One of the kids said there was a dead man in the car’s backseat.
Jason saw that Whit had passed out again, and the fedora had slipped off his head.
It was growing dark, but Whit’s gunshot wound was still plenty visible.
“My partner’s just dead tired,” Jason clarified with an
awkward smile.
“There’s a hole in his head!”
Jason realized that the kid didn’t sound so much frightened as
enthralled; he was pointing into the Nash with one hand and eagerly tugging his
father’s sleeve with the other.
“He got some oil on his forehead when we were tinkering with the
engine,” Jason said.
The other boy was hesitantly walking toward the Nash again, but Jason told him
not to come any closer.
“Don’t you talk to my son that way,” said the overall-clad
father, who was tall but a weight class below Jason. “What’s going
on here?”
The adults were exchanging whispers, pulling at the boys’ shoulders. The
minister left the grill to come closer, and soon the scattered picnickers
became more of a pack.
A woman gasped. Some of the whispers weren’t quiet enough anymore and
Jason heard his name spoken, then repeated, carefully handed from adult to
adult as if it were a cursed, unholy relic.
He couldn’t be sure none of the men had guns of their own, so he took out
his. More gasps, and people backed away. Keeping his gun pointed at the ground,
Jason apologetically told the minister that he needed to be leaving now, and
how much did he owe?
“Just take the food. I don’t want your blood money.”
“It’s not blood money.”
“Radio says you killed five people today.” The minister was
standing closest to Jason; he’d held his ground as the others had backed
off. “One was a young mother. Two were police officers.”
“You got your news wrong.” Jason had tried not to dwell on the
myriad results of the shootout. “Don’t believe everything you
hear.”
“Do not tell me what to believe.” The minister held his gaze.
Whit started snoring. The congregation gasped again. Hands were raised to
mouths or made the sign of the cross.
“Keep those hands where I can see them,” Jason said, more nervously
than he’d meant to.
“It’s true,” a woman said.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Jason echoed. “Whatever else it is,
it’s certainly true.”
“So even Hell rejects you,” the minister said.
Jason had had enough of the preacher. He walked backward to the
driver’s side of the Nash, his eyes keeping watch
over the five men of the group, none of whom appeared eager to intervene. Jason
apologized for disturbing their cookout and got into the car, leaving
Whit’s share of the food behind. He turned on the headlights and pulled
onto the road.
Ten minutes later, Whit stirred when Jason hit a pothole. So far Jason
hadn’t seen any cops, and he wondered how quickly the picnickers would
spread the alarm.
“Where’s supper?” Whit asked.
“They said they only feed Seventh-day Adventists.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Minister was a real jerk about it.”
Jason saw Whit’s foggy eyes in the rearview. Whit took another sip from
the half-empty eighth. “Why do you smell like barbecue?”
Jason dodged the question. “You missed your chance to ask a man of God
all your deep questions.”
“I have a feeling I’ll have other opportunities.”
Jason thought of the minister’s claim that hell had rejected them. As if
he and his brothers were bad checks no bank would cash, left to wander a
devalued limbo.
“Yeah,” he said as he stared out at the dark road. “Welcome
to the land of opportunity.”