The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

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.

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.”