“You all right?!” Whit had to scream to be heard above the hot wind blowing through the open front.
“I think so!” Jason’s right eye was still shut and still angry but at least it felt as if it was intact. That and the wind in his face forced him to squint the other eye.
Whit brushed the glass shards from the passenger seat and climbed up beside Jason. “You gotta take the next exit before they put up another roadblock!”
Jason replied that he goddamn knew that, but they hadn’t reached an exit yet. A minute later, hallelujah, he came upon one. He missed Jake Dimes, his old wheelman, more than ever. From his bootlegging days, Jason had a number of chases to his credit, but speeding past firing officers while avoiding terrified civilians was hardly easy.
Jason had the distinct thought that he would not survive another death. He didn’t understand his new existence, but surely there was a limit. More important, surely his adversaries would devise some countermeasures. If they shot him down again, maybe they’d skip the press conference and drop his body in a cast of wet cement, and he would spend eternity trapped inside a commemorative statue of himself. Or the coroner would saw the brothers’ bodies into a thousand pieces, to be distributed as trophies to police stations across the country. Or they’d just burn the corpses. Whether the brothers were enjoying an unfathomable stretch of good luck or heavenly beneficence, Jason knew it couldn’t last forever.
He flashed his headlights—which might not have been working anymore—at a meandering Studebaker that was insisting on the left lane. Finally, Jason angled to pass it on the right, but he was doomed by the Studebaker’s belated decision to acquiesce. They didn’t hit hard, but at eighty miles an hour it was enough. The Terraplane’s front wheels skittered and one of the tires lost its tether to the ground. Jason tried to straighten the car but that only made it worse. It swerved to the right, onto the skidway. A roadster was already pulled over there, the hood raised as someone peered inside. Whit was screaming at Jason to brake and he thought he was but the car skidded back into the left lane. The Terraplane nosed into the side of the Studebaker and the steering wheel seemed to leap forward and whack Jason’s chest, hard. His knees hit against the steering column even harder. Then Jason lost track of what was happening. Dozens of separate events seemed to occur every second.
Finally, they were motionless. The stasis was surreal. The Terraplane was pointed backward, facing oncoming traffic. Not that there was much to face: the few moving automobiles were like a barely trickling river, slowly winding their way past the many wrecked or stalled cars that sat like rocks jutting from a creek bed. Doors were opening and people were emerging, shaking their heads, rubbing their necks, yelling. Two bodies were facedown on the road twenty feet in front of a car with no windshield. Women were screaming, children were wailing. A uniformed milkman was limping and holding his right arm at an unnatural angle. Someone else’s arm dangled through the open window of a smashed flivver, his head slumped on the dash. Traffic on the other side of the highway slowed in morbid curiosity.
Jason’s right eye was working again. Every other part of his body hurt. “You okay?”
“I’m stuck,” Whit said. “My legs are trapped.”
The front of the Terraplane was crumpled, the hood misaligned by a few feet, and the dashboard was compressed and knocked down. The interior of the car reminded Jason of something he’d seen at some terrible art exhibit Darcy had once taken him to—all the angles wrong, nothing but vanishing points and no center. Jason looked for Whit’s legs but couldn’t find them.
“Jesus. Can you move them at all?”
“Little bit. I don’t think they’re broke, they’re just stuck.” Whit was leaning forward, his hands underneath, blindly trying to feel his way out. “Something’s pressed into my knees. Something that feels hot.”
Jason smelled gasoline. He offered Whit his hands and started to pull.
“Stop, stop!” Whit winced after the first tug. “It’s not going to work.”
Jason could just see smoke emanating from the torn hood, the wispy trail fading into the sky. A police siren was getting louder, and multiplying.
Jason tried to think of something to do other than yank harder and ignore Whit’s cries. Suddenly a breathless young man appeared at Whit’s window.
“You fellas all right?”
The man looked about twenty, with a broad chest and thick arms. Jason couldn’t have thought up a better Good Samaritan if he’d tried.
“What’s your name, friend?” Jason asked as he scooted closer to his brother.
“Eddie.”
“Eddie, I’m going try to lift the dash with my feet. Grab my buddy’s hands here.” He turned to Whit. “Once you feel your legs have more space, tell Eddie to pull. Got it?”
Jason could see that Whit was not enamored of the plan. “Got any better ideas?” Jason asked him. Whit shook his head.
“That’s smoke, ain’t it?” Eddie asked. Then for the first time he seemed to notice something funny about Whit’s forehead. Eddie’s eyes grew wider, and then he saw the very large gun draped across Whit’s lap. “Oh, goodness.”
Eddie began to backpedal, and Jason quickly unholstered an automatic and pointed it at him. “Don’t you walk away, Eddie. You do what I told you to do and we’re square, got it?”
Eddie nodded and stepped closer to Whit, hesitantly reaching for his hands. Still holding his pistol, Jason pressed his knees into his chest and placed his feet against the dash. He counted to three and pushed out with his legs, slowly exhaling as he tried to muscle the dash off his brother. It refused to budge. He stopped for breath and the sirens were louder, singing their castrati chorus.
Then the front of the car glowed, and flames rose from beneath the hood.
“Try it again!” Whit yelled. “Hurry, goddamnit!”
Jason kicked against the dash. In that one inhalation he smelled smoke and melting rubber and what he hoped was not singed cotton. The force of his kick broke the seat from the floor and he and Whit fell back, heads snapping.
Whit screamed as his legs were released. Eddie let go of Whit’s hands and backed up as Whit lunged out of his open window. The Thompson had slipped onto the seat, and Jason grabbed it with his free hand as he, too, jumped free of the burning car.
When Jason got to his feet, he saw Whit thrashing on the road in a cloud of smoke. One of his legs was on fire. Eddie was trying to kick dirt and pebbles at him, but there wasn’t enough debris to smother it. Jason placed his two guns on the road and tore at the buttons of his shirt and pulled it off. He used it to whip at his brother’s leg as Whit screamed and rolled and kicked. Finally he just fell on Whit, smothering him. He felt a strange heat at his chest but it faded almost immediately. Whit lay beneath him, gasping for breath. Jason rolled off, leaning on his hands and staring at his brother. Whit was on his back, wide-eyed. Dirt and dust hovered in the air; as most of it settled, more rose into the sky. Jason realized it wasn’t dust at all but smoke from Whit’s pants.
Superheated metal popped like a gunshot and Jason winced as if struck. The front of the Terraplane was engulfed now and he felt the heat on his face. He scrambled to his feet, opened the back door, and grabbed the bag of guns and the briefcase.
Eddie was still standing by Whit, not realizing he’d just missed his golden escape opportunity. Jason picked up the automatic pistol and the Thompson.
Despite the screams and the fire, Whit and Jason had attracted little attention from the people standing on the road and on the embankment; they were all immersed in their own private dramas. Cars were no longer winding their way through the disaster but had pulled up just behind it, creating their own roadblock that the cops would have to navigate.
Whit was gritting his teeth. His right pant leg had been burned black and was still smoking.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Whit’s voice was a thin rasp between quick breaths. “Hurts like hell.”
Eddie bro
ke from his stupor and pointed to someone. “There’s some other fellas look like they need help,” he said, meekly, and made as if to assist them.
“Hold on—you’re not done helping us yet.” Jason asked where Eddie’s car was, and if it was still working.
Eddie pointed to a two-toned, black-and-red four-door Dodge that was pulled onto the skidway, twenty yards away. Jason couldn’t see any signs of damage. And Eddie had taste. Still holding the Thompson with one hand, Jason handed Eddie the briefcase with the other and told him to put it on the floor of the backseat and be quick about it. Then he had him do the same with the heavy bag of guns. As Eddie obeyed, Jason fished the fedora out of the not yet burning backseat and put it on.
“You’ll be okay, Whit,” Jason told his brother, handing him the Thompson. “Hold this and I’ll drag you to the backseat.”
Jason threaded his arms beneath Whit’s armpits, pinned his own forearms together, and pulled his brother up. Only now did he realize that Whit wasn’t the only one who’d got banged up. His own chest ached and he limped on tender knees.
He could see the lights of a police car flashing, its sirens and horns berating the parked cars that blocked its path. There didn’t seem to be any cops on foot yet, but surely they’d shoot before making themselves visible. Hopefully the cops would decide there were too many civilians around for them to open fire. Most of the drivers and passengers had run to the embankment beyond the highway, but Jason could see some of them sitting shocked in their cars, and a few were still standing in the road. A young boy in a Cardinals cap stood a few feet away from two facedown bodies, staring.
Jason remembered the chaotic Milwaukee job and realized that any number of people had gotten good looks at the Firefly Brothers. If one of them had a gun, he could step forward and try to claim the reward money. Unless it had already been paid to whoever had plugged them the first time.
He slid Whit into the backseat. Whit, breathing heavily, drool on his chin, sat up and smashed at the back window with the barrel of the tommy. Eddie didn’t seem to mind—he was too busy staring at Whit’s forehead.
“That ain’t …” He didn’t want to complete his sentence. “That can’t be, um …?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Jason told him. He unzipped the bag of guns and pulled out a Browning rifle. He told Eddie to get behind the wheel and drive as fast as he could to the next exit.
Before they could move, Jason felt something whiz past his head. Then multiple shots, and people were screaming again. Whit let loose with a volley from the Thompson and Jason told Eddie to drive.
Eddie started the engine and Jason took shotgun.
“A hostage means they’re not supposed to shoot at us,” Jason said. “You’re not a very good hostage, Eddie.”
Jason faced backward and leaned out his window as Eddie apologized. Flashes timed with the gunshots came from behind a wrecked Reo convertible. A dark streak of smoke from the burning Terraplane blocked Jason’s view but he fired anyway. Holes popped out of the Reo’s sides as if it were inflatable and bursting with air. Windows on other cars exploded from ricochets. Bits of asphalt geysered ten feet high.
Eddie pressed the accelerator and they lurched forward. Whit’s gun started to click and he dropped it onto the road, pulling an automatic pistol from his pocket and firing. Within seconds, they had pulled away from the scattered wreckage, and from that vantage point Jason could see the squad cars from the roadblock losing ground as they wove their way through the crashed cars.
Eddie took the first exit and Jason told him to head east on the country road. They sped past farms and then the sparse shops of a tiny main street, then farms again. Jason had hoped to stumble upon terrain he knew, but he hadn’t yet. In the backseat, Whit had closed his eyes and was sweating badly, though he still seemed to be conscious. At a country intersection Jason told Eddie to turn south, hoping to put more distance between them and the highway. It was still midafternoon and they had many hours of sunlight to go.
XXVII.
Do you believe now? Have you accepted it?
It was pitch-black in the basement. Darcy wasn’t sure if her eyes were open, wasn’t even sure if she was awake.
“Leave me alone.”
But you are alone. Unless you count the crazy old man sleeping on the chair beside you. And don’t worry—he can’t hear me.
She hadn’t wanted to believe that there were voices in her head, that she was losing her grip on reality, but she no longer had the strength for such denials. This was her world, after all. Voices in her head, Jason supposedly dying but now alive, an old judge not dying but insisting that he had. She told herself her sanity would return one day. She hoped she would know what to do with it when she found it.
“What do you want?”
Brickbat’s upstairs and he’ll be awake soon—you know that. You have to accept Jason’s death and understand that you can only count on yourself to escape this place. You can’t afford self-pity or mourning. You need to be thinking, thinking of how you’re going to get out of here.
“I seem to be tied up rather well. You are not being helpful. Unless you’d care to untie me.”
Voices lack fingers, unfortunately. But be ready. He’ll be drugged when he comes down the stairs. There will be an opportunity, somehow.
“Why don’t I just wait for the ransom to be paid? It’s taken so long already—”
Because you know your old man can’t pay it. He can’t save you—you’ll need to save yourself. No one knows you’re here. No one really cares. People are reading about your story, they’re following it in the papers, but do you think it matters to them whether you’re set free or your decomposed body is found in the woods next fall? You’re a story, and that’s all you are to them. Just like your precious Jason.
“Jason was not a story.”
He was. He hated being one, of course, and he fought against it, but he knew. He was a story people could tell themselves, a way for people to believe that the world wouldn’t always conquer them, that there were ways of fighting back. All those myths and legends—that he could escape any ambush, that he couldn’t be killed. They said angels watched over the brothers, deflecting policemen’s bullets. He was a prophet, an Old Testament judge let loose to save his people. Those stories gave people hope. Whit understood that, but Jason didn’t care. He was only out for himself.
“He wasn’t that selfish.” She was crying again.
Wasn’t he? He cared about you, of course. But only because you were his. He was selfish. He was the embodiment of selfishness. What else can a thief be? Jason was who he was. And you admired him for it.
“I do admire him. And I despise you.”
We hate so much about ourselves. He did, too, but he tried not to let you see it.
“He showed me everything.”
Not everything. You notice a lot, but you don’t notice everything.
“Leave me alone. Let me sleep.”
And what would you like to dream about?
“Jason. And escaping.”
That can be arranged.
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—”
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers: A Novel Page 35