Thomas Mullen - The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

Another of Pop’s lines: You’re better than these people.

Jason remembered that one, too, voiced by his old man during their first conversation in a prison visiting room. At the age of twenty-one, Jason had been collared. Chance McGill paid his bail, and Jason spent most of his pretrial time with his new associates, which did not go over well at home. He had told his family that everything would be fine, it was all a mistake, but the look in his mother’s eyes when he’d pleaded as McGill recommended—guilty, a plea bargain, a weaker sentence for the good of the organization—was something he would always remember. He got ten months, with a chance to be out in eight.

He had been surprised on that first Sunday to be told he had a solo visitor. He’d figured his mother would have come with his brothers, that maybe she would have been able to coax Pop as well. But when he walked into the large cinder-block room, prisoners and visitors facing off across six long wooden tables like poker players without cards, he saw, in the back corner, Patrick Fireson sitting alone.

They hadn’t spoken much over the past two years. Pop had made his views clear and Jason hadn’t seen why he should subject himself to such haranguing ever again. So when he saw Pop sitting there he wondered if he could tell the guard that he wasn’t interested in visiting with this particular gentleman. But it was a three-hour drive for the old man—Jason had been caught and tried in Indiana—and Jason didn’t want to send Pop back thinking his son didn’t have the guts to look him in the eye.

He made it to the table and Pop extended a hand. They shook, which felt formal and strange, then he sat. Pop asked how he was doing.

Jason shrugged. “How are Ma and the boys?”

“They’re fine. They wanted to come, too, but I thought I should come alone this one time.” Jason didn’t say anything as Pop looked around. “You know, I’ve worked awfully hard in the one life I’ve been given. Built a strong business, got a good house for my family. And you chose this instead.”

“ This wasn’t exactly what I was choosing, Pop.”

“You knew the risks.”

Jason reminded himself that he would have a week, at least, until he could entertain another visitor. That meant one week to replay this conversation in his mind, so he should try, despite the difficulties and temptations, to play it well the first time.

“I guess I made some mistakes, Pop.”

“Yes. I guess you did.”

“I should have driven faster that one time,” he said, grinning. Pop’s face tightened.

“I’m so glad you have your sense of humor. That should make the months fly by.”

“Did you drive all this way just to tell me how I messed up? The judge already told me that. And the prosecutor, and the cops, and half the guys in this room, to be honest.”

“Yeah, what about these guys?” Pop looked around again. “I’ve been thinking about them, studying them a bit as I waited for you. You know, when you’re a parent you can’t help but look at the other kids, think of the different choices the other parents made, the different people your kids are all becoming. I thought about that at your high school graduation, looked at the caps and gowns, wondered where they were all headed. And now I look at your new cohorts here…Are these your people now, Jason?”

“Pop—”

Patrick Fireson leaned forward, lowered his voice. They were still the only two at this table. “You’re better than these people, Jason.”

“I know that.”

“You’ve got a head on your shoulders and you know how to succeed, you know right from wrong. I taught you that. You’re better than these people.”

“I know that,” Jason said, raising his voice.

“Then what are you doing here?”

Jason stared at the wall. He would have punched it if it weren’t cinder block.

They spent most of their thirty minutes that way, trying to talk casually but always forced back to these moments of reckoning. Jason couldn’t tell if his father was trying to help him or torture him.

When the thirty minutes were up, they shook hands again and that was that. The conversation, as he’d expected, didn’t get any better as he thought about it during the week.

The next Sunday the whole family came. Ma didn’t cry, for which Jason was thankful, and Weston and Whit kept staring at the other prisoners, apparently wondering which were ax murderers and which ate children. Jason’s eyes occasionally trailed his father’s, to the two younger sons and back to himself, and he felt worse, not necessarily for what he had done but for what he was forcing his brothers and his mother to see. He sat up straighter that day, smiled more, did what he could to show that this wasn’t so terrible. He joked with his brothers, told Ma how he was teaching some of the men to read, mentioned to Pop that he was studying the Bible a bit (failing to explain that the Good Book was the only reading material prisoners were allowed).

The Sunday after that, it was just Pop again, and Jason tensed, anticipating another browbeating. But it didn’t come. They just talked—about the family, the store, Pop’s real-estate plans, baseball. Eventually Jason realized that Pop was done with the lecturing. He didn’t know if Pop felt he’d pointed out his son’s flaws enough by then or if the old man was silently assessing what fault in this was his own. Over time, Jason learned to let his guard down.

“Tell Weston and Whit that they don’t have to come if they don’t like…seeing me like this,” Jason said one of the times when they were alone. “I’d understand. I don’t want them looking at me in this place and thinking, I don’t know, that this is their future, too.”

“They miss you, Jason.”

Jason nodded, looked away.

“They don’t want to talk about it, but I can tell. They missed you before, when you were out doing all that. But now, too.”

“I’m a lousy brother.”

“Brothers usually are.”

“I’m a lousy son, too.”

“You have your moments.”

Jason let a grin pierce through his self-loathing. Then it faded. “Look, I know I haven’t been…who you want me to be, but—”

“It’s not about what I want. We are what we do, Jason. I’ve tried to show you that. I guess I failed at it. But we are what we do, the choices we make.”

“I know I made some wrong decisions.”

Pop seemed struck by the admission. This would have been, what, the second month? The third? How long had Jason’s reserve of pride and cockiness held out?

“So when I get out of here…could I work at the store again? Or do you have a policy against hiring guys with records?”

Pop smiled. “That policy doesn’t apply to blood relations. And I can always use the cheap labor.”

And that’s what Jason was after his term ended, cheap labor, the prodigal son returned. Smiles all around. The good feelings lasted a few weeks.

Eventually Jason got over his guilt at having been a lousy son and he admitted to himself how incredibly bored he was to be back at the store, performing the same tasks he’d done as a schoolboy, standing behind the same counter, making the same idle talk with the same customers. The onset of Pop’s money troubles only made things worse—the stock crash and the new supermarkets undercutting his business, and the debt Pop had rung up investing in real estate just before the crash. Jason was tired of hearing about it, tired of inheriting someone else’s problems. He told himself he had a right to live his own life. So finally, when Weston was working at the store full-time and Whit was in his final year of school, Jason broke the news as delicately as he could. He thanked Pop for taking him back in and told him no hard feelings this time but he was moving in with some friends to try “something new,” something for himself. Pop said he understood, acting as if his son had not broken his heart again.