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The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers. Thomas Mullen
Читать онлайн.Название The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007368365
Автор произведения Thomas Mullen
Издательство HarperCollins
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
Thomas Mullen
FOURTH ESTATE • London
For my parents, brothers, and sister
Men’s memories are uncertain, and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.
—CORMAC McCARTHY, BLOOD MERIDIAN
It seemed a little too pat. It had the austere simplicity of fiction rather than the tangled woof of fact.
—RAYMOND CHANDLER, THE BIG SLEEP
Table of Contents
THE FIRST DEATH OF THE FIREFLY BROTHERS
THE SECOND DEATH OF THE FIREFLY BROTHERS
Already the stories were coming to life
THE THIRD DEATH OF THE FIREFLY BROTHERS
No one I spoke to was entirely sure when they were first called “the Firefly Brothers,” or why the phrase stuck. A play on the Firesons’ name, or an initial mispronunciation embossed into permanence by the papers? Or perhaps a reference to how the brothers always seemed to vanish from the authorities’ gaze, only to reappear so very far from their pursuers. As if they were a tiny piece of magic, an otherworldly glow, misplaced in our dark and mundane world.
But what was magic, and what mundane, in those insane times? Jobs you’d worked for two decades vanished. Factories that had stood tall for lifetimes went vacant, were scavenged for scrap, and collapsed. Life savings evaporated, sometimes in a single day. In our once fertile heartland, dry winds blew with the power and rage of untold stories accidentally left out of ancient texts, returning with a vengeance, demanding to be heard. Men disappeared, some scribbling sad notes for their wives, others leaving