Thomas Mullen - The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

The family store may have been what brought the Firesons out of their cramped apartment and into a modest house in a tree-lined neighborhood, but it had never interested Jason as a career. He’d always thought of it as punishment. Stacking crates, unpacking boxes, filling the shelves, taking inventory, enduring his father’s constant criticism and moralizing—Jason did all these things, from a young age, just as he raked leaves or washed the family car. But he sure didn’t plan on being a professional leaf raker as an adult, so why should he work at the store, either? Let his brothers take over. Whit in particular seemed the natural choice; Pop was different with him, funny and carefree. Whenever Pop imparted advice to his youngest—telling him, for example, that most men were lazy and that the hardworking man had an instant advantage over his competitors—young Whit would listen with a look of awe in his eyes, as if it was an honor to receive such guidance.

Life was a contest, according to Pop, even a battle. You needed to be strong, of course, but also upstanding and honest—a capitalist Sir Galahad—for fortune to shine on you. He worked long hours and spent much of his time at home reading various business papers and journals, ignoring the chaos of his household until he felt called upon to interrupt with lessons of struggle and success.

When Jason was eighteen, only two months away from graduation, he dared to tell his father that he wasn’t sure he wanted to work at the store after he finished school.

They were sitting on the front porch, Pop’s cigar burning in an ashtray between them. “And I don’t really see myself being a college boy, either.”

“You don’t want to work, Jason.” Pop wasn’t thin anymore, his hair had gone gray, and he looked older than he was. “You want it all handed to you.”

“No, sir, it’s just that—”

“You want to skate by on charm for as long as you can. You got by on smiling at the teachers and getting your friends to pass you their notes, sure, congratulations. But those tricks don’t work in the adult world, and suddenly all you’ll have to show for yourself is laziness and a smile that won’t last after you’ve taken a few hard knocks.”

“I don’t plan to be lazy, Pop. I just want to go in a different direction.”

“You’ve had a pretty nice life, never really having to scrap for anything.”

“I can scrap just fine.” Jason straightened. He was an inch taller than Pop and already more muscular.

“I don’t mean scrapping for girls, or for attention. I mean scrapping to get by.”

God, not this again. Patrick Fireson’s life had been a series of obstacles to clear. He had conjured invisible advantages from the darkness, had taken emptiness and poverty and turned them into the raw materials of a life’s adventure, et cetera, et cetera. Talking to him wasn’t so much having a conversation as giving him new opportunities to make old points.

“You need to keep moving if you want to stay ahead. Like what I’ve done at the store, expanding and moving forward.”

“I’m just saying maybe there are other things.”

“Such as?”

He told Pop he had some buddies from school, a few years older than him, who worked for a shipping outfit based in Cincinnati, delivering goods across the Midwest. He’d been offered a job and could move in with his friends. Even though truck driving might not sound glamorous, at least he’d get to take a step outside Lincoln City and see something.

“Maybe it’ll only be a few months,” Jason said, playing his trump. “And then I’ll feel like the time’s right to take over the store.”

He didn’t mention the illicit nature of this particular shipping outfit, or that some of these school friends were related to one Petey Killarney, the owner of Lincoln City’s finest speakeasies, to which Jason had begun winning admission in the past few months. After some delicate lobbying over the next two weeks, Jason won Pop’s reluctant blessing to take the job, Pop likely figuring that his headstrong kid soon would learn the hard way about the tough, cruel world.

But did he? He loved bootlegging: the late nights, the secrecy, the cool cats and code words. When you walked through that back door, you were someone special, part of the select group. The man in charge of the operation, Chance McGill, was a few years older than Pop but existed in a different realm. Chance was wise and hardworking, sure, but he didn’t lord it over you. He showed Jason how to talk, how to move, whom to impress and whom to ignore. When Jason spotted a trap on the road one night and managed to elude it, Chance talked him up in the important circles, doubled his pay. Had Pop ever acknowledged anything Jason had done right? The speakeasies were loud and dark and Jason could disappear inside them or do the opposite—be the man of the show, smile at the ladies, who couldn’t resist smiling back. He wasn’t far from home but he felt a lifetime away from Pop’s criticism.

And he was bringing in decent money, which, even then, he wasn’t shy about displaying. His clothes became sharper and tailored, he wore Italian shoes and silk socks, and one night when he rolled into town for a family dinner he was behind the wheel of a shiny new Hudson.

Pop confronted him that night. He had been oddly silent during dinner, but just when Ma was about to serve dessert he finally spoke up.

“I know what you’re driving back and forth across state lines. Machine parts, huh? I suppose, if Petey Killarney’s booze machine is the one you’re talking about.”

Jason shifted in his seat and smiled awkwardly.

“That’s funny to you? Why don’t you tell your brothers what you’ve been peddling?”

Jason glanced across the table at his brothers, who were clearly oblivious.

“I haven’t been peddling anything, Pop. I’ve just been driving.”

Ma asked him to explain, but something in her voice betrayed the fact that she had feared this all along. Jason couldn’t take the disappointment in her eyes, so he looked at his father. Pop’s disappointment was more bearable; Jason had so much experience with it.

“Go ahead, impress your brothers,” Pop said. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Looking good, looking tough? It’s always been about looks to you.”

“Pop, everybody’s still drinking it, laws or no laws. All I’m doing is…administering a public good. It’s like being the milkman.”

“So be a milkman!”

Everyone seemed waxed in place. Jason waited a beat. “It’s not like what the movies and magazines make it out to be. It’s all perfectly safe, and we’re smart about it.”

“You, smart? I find that difficult to believe.”

“For God’s sake, there’s some in your glass right now. You can’t take the Irish out of the Irishman.”

Jason offered his usual disarming smile when he said that, and his uncomprehending little brothers smiled along with him, as they always did. Then Pop’s fist struck the table and their glasses danced.

“I did not raise a family of criminals!”

Things got worse from there. First Pop stood and then so did Jason. His brothers’ chairs slowly backed away, disappearing into the margins. He remembered pointed fingers on both sides, and then fists. He was tired of being told what to do. He was young and proud of himself and stupid, yes, he saw that now. But not then. Then he was yelling and shouting and Ma was telling them to stop, and when it ended Pop told him he was no longer welcome in their house. Fine, Jason thought, trying to convince himself that’s what he’d wanted all along.

He still remembered that line, a family of criminals. He would think of it years later, at Pop’s trial.