Good Company

I grew up with this guy called Firefly. The first reason we called him that was because his house– a lonely, faded blue box at the top of the far hill– kept the lights on through every odd hour of the night. The second reason we called him that was that he collected explosives like loose change.

A boy with weird hobbies, that Firefly. He would grill a half rack for breakfast each Tuesday morning during middle school, and wait for the scent to waft down towards the schoolyard that same dewy dawn. Then he’d spread his arms wide and take it in. Say, smell that? with a little too much pride. The bell would ring, sharp like a knife, and he’d blabber all day about the firecrackers he had to light on his walk to stay awake, and the spider he shot with a rifle the day before. We already knew about it, we’d say. Firefly was our very own rooster– our howler monkey, better yet. 

When he wasn’t making noise in the morning, he was making noise in the noon. So much noise in fact, that one of his more tolerable high-school habits was blasting rock music for the Big Guy upstairs every late, summer Sunday. Queen, Hendrix, Bowie… Though he never went to church, Firefly always said he wanted to impress the King with human music; according to him, souls in heaven didn’t have fingers or guitars, and God listened to prayers, not radio. It was a better pastime than shooting arachnids, but after the second hundredth playing of The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” the town got together with an assorted list of their own favorite songs, passing it off as a birthday present. They were three months off, but Firefly had blushed like mad, running up and down the street to shout his thanks to every person that he passed. 

I lost sight of Firefly some weeks after graduation– and the town. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, small as it was. But whenever I’d call during college, the folks back home were always eager to keep me up to date on all of the odd things I missed. New neighbors moved in, the old train tracks were ripped out, and at nineteen, Firefly performed a solo musical at the high school theater. At twenty he was arrested for, of all things, underage drinking. At twenty-two he grew this habit of lighting candles at the park at three in the morning. At twenty-three he pitched a giant disco ball on his roof (a mission to blind the elderly for good, they were convinced, because it was all too big an issue by the time the Fourth of July rolled around.)

But by twenty-eight, Firefly found himself a better way to live. As the story went, one chosen stranger had taken a wrong turn about a hundred miles from town, and wandered– mere minutes before the sunrise– upon a romantic setting in the park. Enraptured by some twenty-hundred candles sprouting from pale grass, she found Firefly lighting the twenty-hundred-and-first. They likely spoke at length about cicada calls and romance, Firefly must’ve proposed by purple sky, and then his lady had the privilege of witnessing sparkler drawings every evening in her name. They had a wedding by themselves. Firefly’s hut was coated in fairy lights and white silk like some bedazzled, rockstar’s ghost– and the rest of the town was flooded with the noise of it. They all drank drunk in a red, light polluted night. Toasted to the voice of Billy Joel. To the Fireflies. 

In the wake of everything, I hear he was tamed. Barbecue was switched for soup, and Firefly could be found in the silhouette of his porch strumming a banjo, or reaching down to pet a scruffy pooch. Mrs. Firefly’s shadow would sway in the window to the flicker of a candle, and both their jaws flapped mute on the dead air between. A peaceful sight where there could have been noise. 

The years passed with the occasional story of expensive anniversary gifts or large holiday gestures. But for the most part, the world finally rested. 

I was halfway through a piece of toast when I got the news of Firefly’s death. It was slightly soggy, and he was thirty-three. 

Everyone who ever knew him came to the funeral, crushed like sardines inside the Chapel. His wife passed around empty books for people to write anecdotes. Old classmates cluttered together in groups. 

“He was a friendly guy,” one said. “Odd, but friendly.” 

“Young, too,” someone else responded. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news.”

“Never knew I’d miss the music.”

“Never knew I’d want to keep the disco ball.”

“Well. They say you never know a good thing until it’s gone.” 

“I still don’t think I know. Who orders for their funeral to be held at night?” 

“Only Firefly.”

“Of course Firefly.” 

“To Firefly!” 

The people cheered and drinks were passed around. Mourners talked in circles until the air grew humid between them, and steadily, the crowd bled out into the glistening night for fresh oxygen. 

As the noise faded, pulled back like a thick blanket to unearth the piano below, I was slow to wander up beside Firefly’s casket. It was closed and resolutely silent. Shining under a white light that fluttered with moths. All but Firefly’s wife had headed out for the cemetery by then. 

In the quiet, I raised my hand to touch the wood. I marveled at polished mahogany and listened to the loving trickle of soft piano keys, likening them to raindrops in the green. It smelled like wet dandelions. It smelled like schoolyard mornings. It almost smelled like barbecue. 

When his casket was lowered, the gunpowder burnt. 

Acid green comets and raw gold fountains. Red skies and a haze on everything. Fireworks burning the world to licking ash. Shouting muffled through the walls and Mrs. Firefly, hunched over the written stories weeping low:

 “My Fletcher. Oh Fletcher. My poor, poor Fletcher...” 

If legend were to be believed, he was hit by a drunkard on his way to buy carrots.