A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  She told Dawn that she had heard of some of this “trouble”—and thought it was a “very sad” situation. Maybe the second trial would “help clear things up . . .” Dawn should know, however, that there were several other students in the school with relatives who were incarcerated—the situation was not so uncommon in Farloe County.

  But now Dawn glared up at Penelope Schine. She’d remained seated on the stairs, hugging her knees to her chest and gazing up at Miss Schine, and she spoke hotly now, and loudly: “People like that are criminals. They belong in prison. My Daddy isn’t like them. My Daddy Luther Dunphy is a soldier of God.”

  SOON THEN she began to turn up after school. I would be in my homeroom preparing to leave, clearing my desk, and there she was stammering she’d forgotten something and she’d go to search through her desk seeming embarrassed and excited. She had trouble understanding some of her math homework so I would help her—she wasn’t so comfortable asking the math teacher for extra help. She had trouble “organizing her thoughts” for writing so I would help her—I was her teacher for eighth grade English and she was always silent in class, just sitting kind of tense and anxious and furrowing her forehead so I wanted to go to her and smooth her forehead with my fingers—I hate to see a child frowning so hard . . . She seemed to understand when I was speaking with her and she could do problems while I watched but—for some reason—she seemed to forget what she’d learned from one time to the next. But getting help for homework was just the pretext. The girl was lonely and she wanted to talk. This was around the time I gave her a hairbrush—just an inexpensive little pink plastic hairbrush from the drugstore. I’m sure she had one at home—there had to be at least one hairbrush in the Dunphy house!—but having this seemed to inspire her, so she began brushing her hair—(not when I was around; she’d just show up at school in the morning looking much, much better). I mulled over whether to give her one of those little stick deodorants—for girls—and finally I did this, and she was embarrassed, and muttered something like OK, and did not thank me; but I think she used this too, and she didn’t seem to smell so strongly as she had, or maybe I was getting used to her, and didn’t so much mind.

  She brought me a dozen oatmeal cookies she said she and her aunt had baked—they were very homemade-looking cookies that crumbled easily but they were delicious!

  After snow fell during one of our school days there was Dawn outside in the parking lot at my little Nissan and she’d brushed away the snow and ice from the windshield—from all the windows! It was a total surprise to me that she even knew which car in the lot was mine.

  But I didn’t offer her a ride home. Possibly she would have said no thank you, but if she’d said yes, and I drove her home, and the mother found out, that might have presented problems. And if I drove one of my students home just once, she might expect to be driven home again; and if others found out, or other teachers, that would definitely present problems. So I never knew where she lived but I had the idea—I don’t know why—that she had a considerable distance to walk and that she wouldn’t take the school bus, and I could imagine why not.

  And one day suddenly when we were alone together in my homeroom she said, Miss Schine, did you know people kill babies?—and nobody cares; and I asked what did she mean, who kills babies?—and she said, looking like she was about to cry, At the ’bortion clinics. They kill them and dump the baby-bodies different places. And nobody cares.

  I was shocked to hear an eighth grader say such things. I don’t know what I said—something like, Oh that’s terrible, Dawn . . .

  She asked had I ever heard of it, and I said no, I didn’t think so. (Because I could not say yes. Not to an eighth grader.) And she said, They don’t have one of them here, I guess—’bortion clinic. There was one in Muskegee Falls where we lived, a “women’s center” they called it . . . And I said, Did they! (Thinking, Oh my God that was where her father had shot the men, the abortion doctor and the other man, who’d been his driver. That was what she was talking about—why she was so earnest and emotional. But I could not—I could not acknowledge this.) She asked me did I think the babies who were cut into little pieces would go to heaven and I swallowed hard and said yes.

  On Valentine’s Day Dawn left a beautiful valentine for me on my desk, about ten inches high, inside a large white envelope. She’d made the valentine that was in the shape of a heart out of scraps of white satin sewn together and dozens of hearts she’d drawn with a red marker pen and inside in red ink was—

  Dear Miss Schine

  You are my Vallentine

  I LOVE YOU

  Your Vallentine Freind

  There were a few other valentines for me from students but nothing like Dawn Dunphy’s which was so special. I think I still have it somewhere at home . . . Every Valentine’s Day I make up cards for all my homeroom students, girls and boys both, but the cards are just commercial cards from the drugstore, so of course I had one for Dawn Dunphy but it was not a special card, nothing like hers. I think that she was happy enough to receive it but maybe she was a little hurt, it was just such an ordinary valentine compared to hers. (Oh I hate Valentine’s Day! I just dread February fourteenth! It’s so cruel at school especially, some of the popular girls get dozens of valentines and girls like Dawn Dunphy get none—not one. Which is why I make sure I have valentines for everyone.)

  But then, the next Saturday I encountered Dawn Dunphy and a short heavyset woman at the mall, at first I thought the woman might be Mrs. Dunphy but turned out she was an aunt, and I was with my fiancé Rolly on our way to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Dawn stared at him and seemed very distracted by him; and the following Monday at school Dawn was waiting for me by my car and asked if my brother lived in the same house with me and if we lived with our parents, and I told her that Rolly was not my brother but my fiancé and she didn’t seem to hear this or possibly to understand. But after that things were not so friendly between us. I mean, on Dawn’s side. She didn’t smile at me so much and she didn’t drop into my classroom so much and I could see that I had disappointed her. It might have been around this time that her father’s second trial began, over in Broome County. It was on TV every night—not the TV camera in the courtroom but outside in the street, and reports on how the trial was progressing, and many pictures of Luther Dunphy—and Dr. Voorhees—every night. So it wasn’t a good time for Dawn Dunphy, I knew. And what she had to endure at school I could imagine. She’d show up in the morning for homeroom then disappear an hour later. She was missing classes, and her grades were poor. And one day she said to me with this strange look in her face, a kind of smile, but her eyes were not smiling, People say you are married, Miss Schine, and I said, Really? Who?—(because I doubted this could be true for Rolly and I had set our wedding date for June tenth and everyone who knew us knew this fact)—and Dawn said vaguely, Oh just people. That’s what they are saying. And I said, But why? Why’d they say such a thing? and Dawn said, with this mean little twist to her mouth, and her eyes narrowed almost shut, Because they say you are preg-nent, Miss Schine. Because your belly is getting big and you are preg-nent, Miss Schine. That is what they are saying.

  I was so shocked, I could not stammer any reply. And Dawn Dunphy just laughed and pushed past me. And that was the end of what you might have called our friendship—whatever it was . . . That was the end.

  TRIAL

  The date was set for the trial. Then, the date was postponed.

  A new date was set. Then, the new date was postponed.

  “God will never allow you to be judged, Luther. I think that must be it”—so the chaplain said, laying a hand on Luther’s shoulder.

  Wincing, Luther did not shake off the man’s heavy reassuring hand.

  “IF THE SECOND TRIAL ends in a deadlock also, that’s it—the prosecutor won’t try again.”

  And, “All we need is one hold-out, Luther! Out of twelve, one.”

  With boyish excitement the court-appointed attorney consulted with his tacitu
rn and somber-faced client whose lower face was covered now in a metallic-gray stubble and whose skin, creased and fine-wrinkled, had grown parchment-colored as if with the passage of decades. His eyes, though alert and seemingly watchful, were ringed with fatigue as if he rarely slept.

  Both guards and other detainees in the detention facility admired Luther Dunphy for his Christian faith, kindness, composure. Most of all, not talking bullshit like everybody else.

  Guards understood that they could trust Luther Dunphy. Doubt if he’d walk away from the facility if every door was unlocked.

  Somebody tried to push him around, in the dining hall for instance, he didn’t fight back though you could see a look in his eye, like a match struck, what he’d do if he was in some other place without guards to inhibit him.

  The size of Luther Dunphy. Even losing weight and his face getting thinner he was still a big man at two hundred pounds (or so) and in a prison facility it is size you respect, mostly.

  Excess flesh melted from him. In his cell he did push-ups, sit-ups, rapidly touching his toes, flexing his arm and shoulder muscles as if he were lifting weights, running in place. Tirelessly he ran in place. His body broke out into a sweat but he barely panted, his heartbeat was slow and measured.

  Some defendants talk. Some defendants talk nonstop. But some, like Luther Dunphy, do not talk much. These are the very best defendants.

  God, that man was like a sphinx—with us at least. Like he didn’t really care about the trial because he believed himself to be in a place where it could not touch him. First time I’d ever met a zealot—a “religious fanatic”—up close. Luther Dunphy was absolutely convinced that he’d done nothing wrong—in fact, he had done something absolutely right: he’d taken orders as a “soldier of God.”

  It was like he’d done what he had done. And he was not going to think about it further.

  Right away he’d acknowledged that he killed the abortion doctor. He would not acknowledge that he’d killed the other man.

  Yet, he was not insane. We dug up a psychologist from Toledo to argue yes, Luther Dunphy was “incapable mentally of participating in his own defense” but the judge didn’t buy it.

  (Only crazy thing about Dunphy was, he’d refused to replace me with a private lawyer. He never accepted the Army of God defense fund money—he had some principle about that.)

  At the first trial we lucked out—prosecution had an absolutely airtight case but not one but two wacky Christian females held out for not guilty. Everybody wanted to strangle the old bags including the judge but that was how it went down. Being that the trial was taking place in the same county, with the same juror pool of Protestant Christians, it wasn’t all that far-fetched a mistrial might happen again.

  I said to Luther, Just pray to God the way you did the other time and Luther said, deadpan, Why would I pray? God has already made up His mind.

  MORNING OF THE second trial seventeen miles away in Broome County Edna Mae could not rouse herself from bed when her daughter Dawn tried to wake her.

  “Mawmaw! Wake up.”

  But Edna Mae could not wake up.

  Lethargy heavy as a leaded net lay upon all her limbs rendering her helpless.

  Her eyelids too were heavy as lead.

  The insolent daughter went so far as to push up one of Edna Mae’s eyes with her thumb shouting Wake up wake up WAKE UP MAWMAW but it was not to happen.

  Luther’s older brother Norman was coming by the house, on the drive from Sandusky, to take his sister-in-law Edna Mae with him to Muskegee Falls; but when Norman arrived, in a car bearing three other Dunphy relatives, Edna Mae was still in bed, and not yet fully conscious.

  Dawn ran out front to meet them. “Guess you’ll have to go without Mawmaw.”

  She felt a stab of shame, seeing how her uncle Norman exchanged a glance with his younger brother Jonathan. As if it didn’t surprise any of the Dunphys that Luther’s wife was letting him down when he needed her.

  “‘Mawmaw’ not feeling well again? That’s it?”

  There was a sneering emphasis on both Mawmaw and again. Dawn understood that her uncle was furious with Edna Mae and by extension with Dawn—with all of Luther’s family.

  Still she said: “Tell Daddy hello, Uncle Norman. Tell him we’re praying for him! Please.”

  Usually, in the presence of her father’s brothers, Dawn was self-conscious and mute; her wish was not to be noticed by them. But something of Miss Schine’s manner had influenced her. Though Miss Schine had betrayed her and was no longer her friend often she found herself thinking—This is how Miss Schine would speak.

  Each morning she brushed her hair with the pretty blue plastic hairbrush Miss Schine had given her. Sometimes she dared to look into a mirror, hoping she would not be too homely that day.

  Her uncle Norman stared at Dawn as if he’d never seen her before. Finally muttering, “Yeh. OK. Sure. I will. If they let me near him.”

  IT HAD BEEN DECIDED that neither Dawn nor Luke would attend the new trial. Dawn could not miss school, and Luke could not take off from work. Their great-aunt Mary Kay Mack had expressed a wish to attend the trial to provide “moral support” for her niece’s husband but did not dare request time out from Walmart for fear she’d be summarily fired.

  Edna Mae felt so bad! She’d fully intended to come with the Dunphys to Muskegee Falls—(she had laid out her best clothes the night before)—but was so exhausted when Dawn tried to wake her that she could scarcely lift her head from the pillow, and could not keep her eyes open.

  OXYCONTIN PILLS Edna Mae swallowed down with water from her scummy bathroom plastic cup the night before. Problem was she could not remember if she’d taken her daily dosage, 15 milligrams OxyContin three times a day, or if she’d miscounted, and had taken one or even two too many.

  Before the trouble at the Women’s Center Luther had sometimes counted out the pills for Edna Mae, leaving them on the bureau top in their bedroom each morning. He’d tried to hide the pills from Edna Mae so she couldn’t take more than her daily allotment. But now, there was no one to oversee her. Mary Kay Mack was prescribed for diet pills that left her edgy and over-excited and forgetful and she could not take time to oversee Edna Mae’s medications as well as her own.

  Worst thing, Edna Mae’s bowels were constipated. Bad stomach cramps! Dr. Hills had warned her about this “unfortunate” side effect of the OxyContin but when Edna Mae tried to cut back on the pills her nerves became tight as piano wire you could strum to make shiver and shudder up and down her spine and she’d get to crying and could not stop.

  “Sounds like they’re just presenting the same ‘evidence’ as the first time. Witnesses going to say how they saw Luther with a shotgun running up the driveway. How the gunshots scared the hell out of them, they’d been desperate to hide.”

  Norman Dunphy laughed harshly at this imagined scene funny as some stupid thing on TV.

  No one else laughed. Dawn was trying not to see her daddy behaving in such a way.

  If she gave it thought, she could understand—her daddy had not ever behaved in such a way but people were accusing him.

  Bearing false witness. That was it.

  Edna Mae was sitting in a sort of daze listening to her brother-in-law without exactly seeming to hear his actual words. Meekly now she asked how Luther was?—and Norman said, frowning, “Well. He missed you.”

  Did he! Edna Mae blinked as if she’d been slapped.

  Dawn saw the meanness in her uncle’s hatchet-sharp face. That little tinge of self-righteousness in the man’s mouth, knowing he’d hurt his brother’s wife he had come to dislike.

  All of the Dunphys had come to dislike Edna Mae. Even the elder Dunphys, Dawn’s grandparents.

  Among the Dunphys there was even talk that Edna Mae was to blame for what Luther had done. The St. Paul Missionary Church and all this Army of God bullshit was entirely the fault of her.

  After the first day’s session at the Broome County Courthouse Norman stop
ped by the house on Depot Street in Mad River Junction on his way home to Sandusky with the others. By this time—late afternoon—Edna Mae was fully awake and reasonably well groomed and had even smeared red lipstick onto her thin mouth because she knew that Norman Dunphy approved of women who made some attempt to appear attractive to men though he might yet be contemptuous of the attempt.

  Abashed and anxious Edna Mae provided her visitors—(all males of Luther’s generation: Luther’s parents had not attended the trial)—with a fumbled-together meal out of the refrigerator. Not an actual supper but just a “bite to eat” until they returned home.

  In an embittered and derisive manner Norman spoke of the first day’s session at the courthouse. He disliked the judge—“Thinks he’s better than anybody else. Just the look on his damn face.” And how strange it was, Luther sitting at the same damn table as at the first trial and wearing the same damn clothes; and the same damn “public defender lawyer” with him saying the same damn things, and the “prosecutor” repeating the same things too.

  “Seems like he could do more for himself. The first trial, he didn’t testify. Seems like he could try to explain what he did, like that priest did for him . . .”

  It had been a shock to the Dunphy brothers that their youngest brother Luther had done such a thing—acted so publicly. There was consternation among the Dunphy relatives, most of whom lived in Sandusky and the surrounding countryside, that Luther had done something so extreme to cast all the family in the “public spotlight.”

  Edna Mae listened for an opening in her brother-in-law’s incensed speech to ask, in her meek abashed voice, a voice pleading not to be brushed away like an annoying gnat, if any one of them had had a chance to speak to Luther in the courthouse; and Norman said impatiently, no—“They don’t like you to try that. You can’t get close. They figure, somebody could pass a weapon to the ‘defendant.’ If you could get past the metal detector with some kind of plastic knife, maybe that’s what they’re figuring.”