Thomas Mullen - The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

Ma pulled back from Whit but kept her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were wet. “But they said…We’ve been getting these calls…The police…”

“I’m sorry, Ma,” Whit said, his voice shrinking as hers had grown. “I’m sorry we scared you. We’re okay.”

One of her hands moved to his cheek as she stared at him, then she buried her face into his shoulder and hugged him again. Jason watched Whit’s hand at Ma’s back, long pale fingers kneading the thin cloth. Eventually she opened her eyes.

“Jason, you’re barefoot,” she said. “And your toes are black.”

He laughed at how easily she’d turned maternal and scolding. But damn if she wasn’t right about the toes, he noticed, hoping it was only dirt.

“Sit down, Ma,” Whit said, an arm around her as he guided her into the dining room. “Take a minute.” Jason scanned the room, as well as the front parlor, to make sure all the curtains were drawn.

They sat at the table and Jason handed her a dishcloth to wipe her eyes. Whenever he saw his mother after a time away, he was struck by the fact that his adulthood was pushing hers further toward senescence. He always thought she had lost weight, but maybe this was just his new awareness of how frail she always had been. Her thin dark hair was laced with gray, and she usually kept it pulled back, a reminder that she no longer had anyone to look pretty for. It amazed Jason that something as inanimate as hair could possess such sorrow.

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Jason said. “Let’s just settle in for a moment.”

The telephone on the wall began to ring. None of them made a motion toward it, and there were no footsteps from above. After seven rings, it stopped.

Ma’s face had been colorless when she first opened the door, but now her eyes were red and glistening. So this was what her sons did for her: put color in her face, and texture. She shook her head at them, her boys who were supposed to be dead, and her eyes moved from son to son as if wondering when one or the other might disappear.

“I could kill you,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” Jason replied. Whit shot him a look.

The small dining room’s evergreen wallpaper, dark-stained molding, and west-facing windows contributed to its customary element of morning gloom, made worse by the drawn curtains.

Then the sound of the front door opening, the key and the hinges, and footsteps.

“Ma, what’s—” Jason looked up just in time to see Weston walking into the dining room, stopping midstride. “Jesus…”

“Boo,” Jason said.

“Jesus.” Weston moved back a step. He was gripping a copy of the Sun, rolled tight like a billy club. Jason could just make out the word brothers in the headline, see some blurry part of the photograph shaking in Weston’s tensed fingers.

“You’re…You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“What happened?”

Whit was already out of his chair, grabbing the paper from his shocked brother. He stepped into the kitchen and put the newspaper in the trash bin, burying it deep beneath coffee grounds and napkins. When he returned to the room, Weston was in the same spot.

“Sit down, Wes.” Whit motioned to an empty chair. “I know this is kind of strange.”

“Do you have any idea—”

“I’m sure I don’t.” Whit clapped his brother on the shoulder. “C’mon, sit.”

Jason had always thought Weston looked like someone who couldn’t possibly be related to him. Weston was too bookish; he seemed to have inherited the personality of an elderly man from the moment he turned twelve. And in the past few months Weston had aged at a pace that seemed almost science-fictional. He was naturally slender, closer in physique to Whit than to Jason, and the skin of Weston’s face was even tighter than usual, with dark circles around the eyes. Looking at him made Jason too aware of his skull. Weston recently had started wearing glasses, and Jason wondered if that had less to do with deteriorating eyesight and more to do with a need to distinguish himself from the faces on those wanted posters.

“We wish we could have told you sooner,” Jason said. “But we still don’t trust the phones. Things are a bit crazy at the moment.”

Weston seemed to be crumpling as Jason spoke. His head fell into his hands and then through them, hanging so low his nose grazed the table. His fingers kneaded into his hair for a moment and then stopped, but even at rest they shook. When he sat up, his eyes were wet and his muscles tense. Jason and Whit glanced at each other; they both had been so worried about how Ma would take the news of their death, they hadn’t thought much about their brother, with whom neither had been terribly close the past few years.

Jason stood up and walked to his seated brother, leaning over to wrap an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, Wes,” Jason said, guilt pouring in. “I’m sorry we worried you.”

Jason sat back down and Weston nodded, waiting out the tears. “We’ve had police outside, reporters from all over the country,” he finally said. His voice was quiet. “And now everybody’s reading the paper and calling us. What…what happened?”

“Who else is here?” Jason asked.

“June and the boys are upstairs.” Weston took off his glasses as if to make sure his brothers still could be seen by the naked eye. “I called a few folks this morning, so they could hear it from us and not the papers, but…no one’s been able to come by yet. I told them not to, because of…all the ruckus out front. I wasn’t sure if—”

“No, that was good. We’ll need to hide out here a bit, and the fewer people to explain things to, the better.”

Windows were open behind the curtains and flies clumsily patrolled the room. Jason wondered if it was just his imagination or did the insects seem to be particularly interested in him and Whit. He hoped the others hadn’t noticed.

“So…” Weston let the word drag like a broom. “The pictures in the paper…?”

“Not us,” Jason answered.

“But…what happened?”

Whit looked to Jason, who replied, “Look, a lot gets blamed on us that we didn’t do. That may not be fair, but this time it’s worked out in our favor. Looks like somebody saw two fellas they thought were us, and they told the cops out in Points North. Cops ambushed the poor bastards, then got all excited and called the papers. There you go.”

“Didn’t they take fingerprints?” Weston asked.

“You’d be surprised how incompetent cops tend to be,” Jason said.

“So…” Weston again took a while to get his question out. “What happened in Detroit?”

“How did you know we went there?” Whit asked.

“The radio said…something about an ambush?”

“Look, I know this is all pretty strange,” Jason said, trying to keep a calm front while spinning his lies and taking in Weston’s information. “But what matters is we’re okay, and the folks chasing us are all relaxed right now because they think they got us.”

“Are you boys hungry?” Ma asked, standing up, apparently anxious to conclude talk of her sons’ lesser deeds. “Can I get you anything?”

“Ma, don’t worry about—”

Weston’s rebuke was interrupted by his brothers saying, actually, yes, they’d love a bite to eat. They surprised even themselves with this; after an evening of feeling curiously detached from physical needs, the sights and smells of the family dining room had stirred something within them.

After she had walked into the kitchen, Weston glared at them. “She didn’t sleep all night, for God’s sake. She certainly doesn’t need to be slaving for you two right now.”

Jason shrugged. “You know damn well she’s happiest when she’s doing something.”