The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. Thomas Mullen

reading to them about trains and heroes and happy endings, he walked downstairs and saw June sitting at the dining-room table, sipping what looked like bourbon. Her graying hair was in a bun, and patches of her red cardigan were still wet from the bath. It was barely eight, but she told him that Ma had excused herself for the night, saying she wasn’t feeling well. Weston wondered if June knew about the federal visitors.

      “Have you heard from them?” she asked.

      “Who?”

      “Your brothers.”

      “No.”

      She stared at her glass. “Sometimes I wish…they’d just turn themselves in.”

      He had overheard her arguing with Ma about them, not infrequently. She’d even told him she suspected that her late husband’s past applications for state aid had been denied because of Jason’s run-ins with the law, as if the state of Ohio had blacklisted the family. To Weston it was insane to believe a few bureaucrats in the aid office had any clue that Joe’s nephew had been a bootlegger, but now that Weston had Douglasson’s warning ringing in his ears he wondered if June could have been right.

      “They’re doing what they can to help the family,” Weston said.

      “I get the dirtiest looks from people on the street. What they think of us.”

      “I get some, too, but I get just as many people telling me how they’re rooting for them. More, actually.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Male fantasies, all of it. Women know better. They’re tearing your mother’s heart out, you know. Bit by bit, day by day.”

      He needed to change the subject. “The boys seem to be doing fairly well.”

      “Mikey still cries for Joe at night, sometimes.”

      He didn’t know what to say. He made a short frown.

      “It wakes up the other two.”

      She looked at him as if she expected that he, as someone who’d lost his own father, would have some advice for her. But Weston had been twenty-two when Pop died, three years ago. Compared with little Mikey and Pete and Sammy, he’d been an old man. Then why had he felt like such a kid?

      They forced themselves to chat about mundane matters and soon they were both yawning, so he bade her good night. With his hand on the doorknob he turned for a last glance. June was still sitting there, staring at her glass like she wished she’d poured herself more.

      After his talk with Mr. Douglasson, Weston felt as haunted as ever. Now it wasn’t only his brothers haunting him but this Agent Delaney. Surely Mr. Douglasson wasn’t threatening to fire him. Surely the conversation was just meant as a well-intentioned reminder of the seriousness of the Fireson family’s plight, Douglasson feeling the need to dispense paternal advice to the fatherless. Surely Weston’s fate—and his brothers’—was not resting in his shirt pocket.

      He often imagined the many ways in which things would be different, if not for the hard times, if not for the curse of his family. He would have a better job than that of an office assistant, certainly, and would be in a more lucrative field. Still, he knew he was fortunate to have this job; at a time when so many were out of work, most employers would never consider hiring a Fireson. Though Jason’s irregular contributions had temporarily saved the house from foreclosure, that specter was always hovering around the corner. One day, surely, the brothers’ payments would end, leaving Weston as the bachelor breadwinner supporting a sprawling family.

      That bachelor part was one of the things that rankled most, when he allowed himself to think selfishly. He had dated a few girls, but getting close to anyone was out of the question; he had too many obligations as it was. And so his romantic life had taken on a distressing pattern. He would meet a pretty girl and ask her out, or, more typically, he’d call a girl he had known in school, someone whose parents knew him and (hopefully) hadn’t warned their daughter to stay away from that no-good Fireson family. But of course the girl would know about his brothers—perhaps she would be attracted to the sense of adventure, or doom, that the Fireson name evoked. He would take her to dinner at a carefully chosen, inexpensive restaurant, and perhaps see a movie. But after a few dates it would be obvious he wasn’t in a position to take things further. Some of the girls had stuck with him for a few months, maybe had even fallen in love with him. But as time passed and they saw that no proposal was forthcoming, that indeed Weston never spoke of the future at all, they would break things off. Which always came as equal parts disappointment and relief.

      At least he wasn’t the only one deferring his dreams for some fabled, future moment of prosperity. None of his old school friends—few of whom he saw much of anymore—were married, as everyone seemed to be putting off important decisions. But that didn’t make it any easier. He ached to touch someone, but that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He didn’t want to get a girl in a jam, both for her sake and his. Somewhere out there, Jason and Whit were carousing with their tawdry fans, women they probably had met in Jason’s speakeasy days, molls enamored of the brothers’ myth and money. Weston’s dates, when he was lucky enough to have any, ended with a chaste kiss at best.

      He was lucky enough to have a date on the Friday after Douglasson’s warning. At six o’clock he took the streetcar uptown to the Buckeye Theater, where he was to meet the secretary of a real-estate company whom he’d chatted up while running an errand for Douglasson. He was early and no line had formed, but dusk was settling and the marquee’s lights glowed. Then he noticed the title displayed above.

      “Excuse me,” he asked the girl at the booth, “wasn’t The Invisible Man supposed to start showing today?”

      “Yes, but we’re holding Scarface over an extra week because it’s doing so well. We’ll open The Invisible Man next Friday.”

      Weston’s heart sank. His knuckles tapped the edge of the booth.

      “I really do recommend Scarface,” the girl said. “It’s rather risky, I’d say, but very thought-provoking. And exciting, of course.”

      He smiled thinly at her. The gangster movie had been playing all month; he hadn’t seen it yet, nor would he. “Let me guess: he dies in the end.”

      She didn’t know what to make of him. “Well, er, you’ll have to see it to find out.”

      He backed up and stepped aside. Why all this fascination with criminals? His date was running late, which he was thankful for. He needed to come up with some other idea, maybe dinner first, maybe dancing instead of the movie. He needed to devise an escape, some miraculous evasion, something worthy of a true Firefly Brother.

      Within minutes, the line was twenty deep. So many people, so happy to watch tales of others’ bloodletting and sorrow.

       VII.

      The depression was making people disappear.

      They vanished from factories and warehouses and workshops, the number of toilers halving, then halving again, until finally all were gone, the doors closed and padlocked, the buildings like tombs. They vanished from the lunchtime spots where they used to congregate, the diners and deli counters where they would grab coffee on the way in or a slice of pie on the way out. They disappeared from the streets. They were whisked from the apartments whose rents they couldn’t meet and carted out of the homes whose mortgages they couldn’t keep pace with, lending once thriving neighborhoods a desolate air, broken windows on porches and trash strewn across overgrown yards. They disappeared from the buses and streetcars, choosing to wear out their shoe leather rather than drop another dime down the driver’s metal bucket. They disappeared from shops and markets, because if you yourself could spend a few hours to build it, sew it, repair it, reline it, reshod it, reclod it, or reinvent it for some other purpose, you sure as hell weren’t going to buy a new one. They disappeared from bedrooms, seeking solace where they could: a speakeasy, or, once the mistake of Prohibition