“What is it? Who’re you talking to? Is it—”
Mary Kay gestured for Dawn to keep back, and to be quiet.
“Is it about Dad? The verdict?”
At this point Edna Mae suddenly lost her composure, and her balance; intending to push past her brusque, annoying older daughter, as if to seek peace in another part of the house, she lost her footing, swayed, and fell heavily onto the floor with a faint little wail; Dawn tried ineffectually to prevent her from falling, and then knelt over her as she lay moaning—“Mawmaw! Mawmaw!”
Both the young children were crying now. Mary Kay told the lawyer she had to hang up and would call him back within the hour. On the floor Edna Mae lay on her side insensible, white-faced, with tight-shut eyes. Dawn continued to kneel over her crying “Mawmaw”—as Mary Kay would report to the family, as if her heart was broken.
MUD TIME
That the one—Dunphy?
Her father’s the one killed those men—
—on Death Row now—
Oh man she is homely! Face like a bulldog.
BEHIND THE SMELLY DUMPSTER she hid. She waited.
For it was a mistake to enter the 7-Eleven store on Sixteenth Street at certain times.
Too soon after school. (But Dawn would never make such a mistake.)
At other times if there were loud-voiced boys inside, or girls who knew Dawn Dunphy from school, or knew of her.
Whatever the loud voices said, she never heard.
She did not mind waiting. She was accustomed to waiting. She was accustomed to the Dumpster smells.
“WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?”—no one wished to ask.
With Edna Mae you took particular care. It had become so extreme that you could not even say “Daddy”—or “Chillicothe” (where Luther was incarcerated)—without upsetting her: Edna Mae pressing the palm of her thin blue-veined hand against her heart and her eyes swimming with pain.
Death Row.
Sentenced to death.
Lethal injection.
They avoided speaking of these matters. Even Luke.
To allude to the situation at all you might say the Trouble.
As in, before the Trouble. Or, after the Trouble.
Though it was not clear if the Trouble meant their father shooting the men at the Women’s Center, or only just their father being arrested and incarcerated; or whether the Trouble meant specifically the second trial, the verdict and the terrible sentence.
Two counts of homicide, first degree.
Condemned to death.
Appeal pending.
Definitely, there was hope in this appeal! A team of lawyers experienced in death penalty law were now involved in the case as well as Luther’s original public defender.
They were arguing not guilty by reason of (temporary) insanity.
Or were they arguing not guilty by reason of insanity.
(Luther Dunphy angrily refused to accept this defense strategy. But by a technicality some variant of the defense could be argued in a presentation to the Ohio State Court of Appeals with which the defendant was not required to concur.)
Among the Dunphys no one believed that the execution would ever really take place for the Republican governor of Ohio could commute Luther Dunphy’s sentence to life imprisonment if he wished and it was known that petitions were being sent to the governor by politicians supportive of the Right-to-Life cause as well as by Christian congregations in Ohio and the Midwest. It was believed too that a wealthy Ohio manufacturer was exerting pressure on the governor whose campaign he’d helped finance—the man’s name was “Bear” or “Beard”—Dawn had heard . . . Edna Mae did not like to speak of such matters because it made her anxious to be “hopeful” but Dawn wanted to know as much as she could for she wanted to have hope.
In fact there had been good news. Luther’s lawyer had called one day with good news.
The execution scheduled for April 16, 2002, had been rescheduled for October 29, 2002.
And there was a “strong probability” that the execution would be rescheduled again, to give the appeals team the opportunity to argue their case to the Court.
Each night Dawn X’d out another day on the calendar she kept hidden in a bureau drawer in her bedroom. Each morning noting how many days to October 29 . . .
It will not really happen, Jesus will intervene.
We know this. We have faith.
Edna Mae would have been upset if she’d seen Dawn’s calendar in which October 29 was marked with an ink-black cross. Even Mary Kay might have been upset.
So long as Luther Dunphy was alive, there was hope.
Luther was incarcerated in the Chillicothe State Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, Ohio. It was in Death Row he was incarcerated—the actual name of the unit was Death Row.
It was not so easy to visit Luther now, for Chillicothe was a three-hour drive from Mad River Junction. The detention facility at Muskegee Falls had been less than twenty miles away.
Visits had become difficult for other reasons as well. Edna Mae was so often unwell—and Luke was not always available to drive. And once, when they’d made the trip, Luke driving Mary Kay’s car that rattled and jolted on the interstate, Edna Mae in the front seat and Dawn and the younger children crammed into the rear, it was to discover that Luther Dunphy was himself unwell, suffering from some kind of “flu” that prevented him from seeing visitors. Another time, it was to discover that all of Chillicothe was in lockdown after the attempted stabbing of a prison guard.
“Your father knows that we are thinking of him and praying for him. Maybe that is enough for now”—so Edna Mae told them, with a brave smile.
LATE MARCH 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.
Melting snow, ice. Dripping roofs. Tall snowbanks slow-melting draining into gutters, ditches. Glistening pavement, puddles. Swaths of mud in fields and beside walkways. Everywhere the debris of winter—shattered tree limbs, rotted leaves, skeletons of Christmas trees abandoned in vacant lots, shredded papers, plastic. The sun shone brightly and fiercely at midday then began to fade by afternoon. The air turned cold and smelled of something metallic that made Dawn’s nostrils pinch.
She was fifteen years old. She was repeating ninth grade.
For a few weeks that winter she’d played basketball on the girls’ high school team. It had happened like a miracle, so suddenly. There’d been a vogue of Dawn Dunphy—She’s not so bad. She’s kind of shy actually. Too bad she smells when she gets excited. Dawn Dunphy had not been the fastest player on the girls’ basketball team nor had she been the most skilled player but she’d been the most reliable player, the strongest and one of the tallest at five feet eight inches, 147 pounds; she’d been the most indefatigable player capable of playing a full game without a break, panting, frankly sweating, in a glow of perspiration in her dark green uniform and always willing to pass the ball to those girls who could sink baskets far better than she could—A fantastic team player, Dawn Dunphy. If she didn’t run you down like a horse.
Just once, Dawn Dunphy had been so conspicuously tripped to the floor by a player on the opposing team that the referee had declared a foul; Dawn was given two foul shots—both of which she’d missed.
But applause in the gym had been deafening along with cheers, cries, foot-stamping. Dun-phy! Dun-phy! Enthusiasm for ruddy-faced Dawn Dunphy with her thick, muscled, dark-haired legs solid as a man’s legs was laced with laughter but it was good-natured laughter, Dawn was sure. It was not mean.
(“This is the happiest day of my life. Thank you, Jesus”—for Dawn had known that Jesus had allowed this to happen; but He had not assisted her in sinking the basket for that was something other, a matter of what was called “free will.”)
But then, there’d been complaints. Girls who hadn’t been chosen for the team complained to the principal that the girls’ gym teacher had favored Dawn Dunphy who wasn’t, strictly speaking, eligible for the team since her grades were low, barely passing
, second time in ninth grade yet barely passing, also Dawn Dunphy was only in ninth grade and so (in theory) there was plenty of time for her to be on the high school team in subsequent years. (As if Dawn Dunphy was likely to remain in school past the age of sixteen.) And so Dawn had had to be dropped from the team and had never quite recovered from the shock, as she’d never quite adjusted from having been invited to join the team initially, and from having been singled out for such attention for a magical three weeks.
Dawn I’m truly sorry. But next year, I promise. OK?
The girls’ gym teacher who also refereed the games had genuinely liked Dawn Dunphy. Possibly she’d felt sorry for the girl (knowing of the notorious Luther Dunphy on Ohio’s Death Row) but that wasn’t why she’d invited Dawn to join the team. She’d invited Dawn to join because Dawn was a good enough player, and her size was intimidating to players on opposing teams, and the other girls on the team had not objected, or at least not strenuously. For the vogue of Dawn Dunphy at Mad River Junction High involved students feeling good about themselves for behaving magnanimously and not meanly. But it had ended abruptly as it had begun.
Often there were such surprises in her life. She had grown immured. Or wished to think so.
“‘Dun-phy’—ug-ly!”
“‘Dun-phy’—done-for!”
She’d been so distracted thinking about the basketball team, and the foul shots she’d missed, or rather had almost made—(on the second throw the ball had circled the rim teasingly, as the audience erupted)—that she’d taken no notice of her surroundings, and had not heard the boys approaching her from behind as she descended into the dripping underpass at Fort Street. Suddenly then their voices came loud and gleeful and echoing in the concrete underpass and she walked quickly, half-ran, to escape them. Their chanting words were scarcely intelligible to her, for the hard-pounding of her heart—“‘Dun-phy’—done-for!”
It was her father they mocked. Dully she realized this, with an ache of fury and shame.
There were five boys, or six or seven. They were older than she but in their behavior they were younger, like middle school children. She knew the names of some of these boys, she knew their faces. She did not think that they disliked her. She did not think that they hated her. But there was something about her that made them angry, jeering—something to do with her body that was a female body yet carried like a man’s, with a rolling gait, a way of bringing her feet down hard on her heels, pushing herself forward as her arms swung free. Her eyebrows grew heavy above her deep-set eyes. Her forehead was low, and often furrowed. Her shoulders and upper arms were strong. She wore clothing that might’ve been a man’s clothing, dark, or khaki-hued, without color—corduroy trousers, flannel shirt, dark cotton T-shirt beneath, polyester jacket and frayed running shoes. She observed them sidelong, with narrowed eyes.
“‘Dun-phy.’ Your father is done for.”
Their laughter was idiot laughter like pebbles shaken inside a metal container. There was not even cruelty in it, rather a vacuousness, an emptiness, repulsive to her, loathsome. Without looking back at her tormentors she began to run as they cupped their hands to their mouths calling after her—“Dun-phy! Ug-ly! Where’re y’going, cunt!”
She emerged from the underpass, panting. Desperate to escape the jeering boys she ascended crude stone steps into a vacant lot strewn with the rubble of a ruined building, cut through the lot and into a no-man’s-land of scrub trees that opened out into a muddy field, and ran blindly through the field—she thought that they would probably not follow her for it would mean running in mud, and mud sucking at their shoes as it was sucking at her sneakers, and splattering up onto her trousers.
Their cries behind her faded. She made her way to the dead end of Fort Street where she scraped some of the mud off her shoes against a curb. Her heartbeat was subsiding, the danger was past. Still she felt debased, shamed. They had dared to mock Luther Dunphy!
She felt a thrill of murderous rage. A double-barreled shotgun in her hands, she would blast them with buckshot.
At the Fort Street bridge over the Mad River she waited until traffic passed. A thunderous tractor-trailer passed with Illinois license plates. High in the cab the driver cocked his head to observe her on the pedestrian walkway, staring and dismissing in virtually the same instant the lone female figure in shapeless clothing. In that instant she felt a thrill of relief—No one will see me! I am safe.
Making a decision then to take the shorter way home to Depot Street, and not the longer, on public streets.
She crossed the bridge ducking her head against the wind. Below was the narrow turbulent river that so fascinated her, in the March thaw a confusion of boulder-sized ice chunks amid dark rushing water. The sound of the river was cascading sound, a waterfall of sound, as of numerous voices murmuring together nearly out of earshot.
Safe. If invisible to the enemy, safe.
On the other side of the river she ascended a hill of tangled trees and underbrush, emerging at the far end of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad yard where freight cars and other railroad equipment no longer in use were kept; the property was posted against trespassing but no one would see her, for no one ever seemed to be around this part of the yard. Dawn was within a quarter mile of Depot Street when she heard an excited mutter of voices somewhere close by; still, she was slow to realize They are in front of me now. They have crossed in front of me. Then ahead to her horror she saw several of the boys who’d chased her out of the underpass now approaching her through the railroad yard with broad sniggering smiles—Dun-phy! Hiya!—and when she turned she saw the others behind her, quickly approaching and calling Dun-phy! Hey!
Of course, they knew where Dawn was headed: Depot Street. They knew, and had outsmarted her, and now it was too late for her to run from them for they were upon her, the big fat-faced boy called Billy Beams, the long-limbed boy called Jay-Jay, another who wore a Cleveland Browns cap reversed on his head, whose jaws were stubbled. Someone shoved Dawn from behind at Billy Beams who laughed and shoved her back again; and suddenly they were upon her, too many to fight; she was pulled down, desperately scrambling to escape even as they grabbed her ankles, her legs, her arms and wrists, turning her over roughly onto her back so that she lay helpless, trying to kick free, thrashing. How quickly it had happened—she was down. They were calling her cunt—dirty cunt. They were calling her dyke. Her cries were hoarse sobs. She could not draw breath to shout or to scream. One of the boys squatted behind her gripping her wrists. Another gripped her ankles. Whooping and laughing they managed to unzip and pull down her corduroys—took time to unlace and pull off her sneakers—and to tear off her white cotton underwear, that fitted her tightly and left red marks on her upper thighs and at her waist. The sight of the thick springy pubic hair, that grew up onto her white-skinned lower belly, roused them to ecstatic whoops and yodels—Jesus! Look at that! What a pig! They were made to think of their mothers’ bodies perhaps, those bodies out of which they’d emerged as infants, and for this they must punish her.
Their clumsy hands snatched up twigs, rotted leaves, mud to rub into her face, into her hair, and between her legs. With special vehemence, between her legs. They had not taken time to remove her shirt and had now to content themselves with squeezing her breasts hard, and rubbing mud onto them—her breasts that were not large, and not soft, but hard and resilient like sponge rubber. Something about her body maddened them, she saw their faces, flushed and furious, murderous. The tall long-limbed boy wearing the reversed cap seized a broken tree limb of about twelve inches long, to shove up inside her, between her legs; the limb was soft-rotted, and began almost at once to break, though Dawn felt an excruciating pain and managed now to draw breath to scream.
“Dirty cunt! You like this. You know you like this.”
Billy Beams grunted seizing a concrete block in both hands, to hold above her, taunting her. Dawn stared up in terror knowing that if the concrete block slipped from his hands her skull would be crushed.
Barely Dawn managed to beg—“No please, please don’t . . .”
Billy Beams let the concrete block fall—not onto Dawn’s head but onto the muddy ground beside her. His expression was one of disgust, rage.
“If you tell anybody you’re dead. Dirty cunt, you’d better not tell anybody, got it?—or you’re dead.”
Soon after the boys retreated. She heard them running away, and she heard their low guttural cries of laughter fading. And then there was silence and she was alone.
For a long time she lay unmoving on the ground. She saw that the sky far overhead was silver-cast, as if the sun had withdrawn and had become a pallid thin light. Her eyes flooded with moisture. The ground beneath her was damp, cold. She realized that she was shivering convulsively for her lower body was naked, and a terrible weakness suffused her limbs.
“Jesus. Help me . . .”
Where had Jesus gone? Had He retreated in disgust, like the boys?
She managed to sit up. Her head rang with pain, both her wrists ached and her right shoulder throbbed with pain as if it had been jerked out of its socket. Between her legs was a throbbing pain and a thin cold trickle of blood and so cautiously she moved, very cautiously pulling up her mud-streaked corduroys, wincing yet determined to regain some measure of composure in case she was seen, for of course she would be seen, only a hundred yards or so from Depot Street (where sparse traffic moved, visible through a stand of trees; yet no one on Depot Street would have seen Dawn, and the boys squatting above Dawn during the several minutes of the assault). She would abandon the torn underpants but she located her running shoes tossed a few feet away, and managed to put them on, and to tie the ties securely. Thinking I am all right. I am not bleeding hard. I will be all right. It is up to me.
Shakily she stood. She felt a rush of blood between her legs—but it was not the dark humid near-hemorrhage of menstrual blood, that so frightened and disgusted her every few weeks, but rather a thin chill trickle, a different sort of bleeding that was not so serious (she believed) and would stop soon. The sharp tree limb had scratched her—the soft inside of her vagina. But it was only superficial scratches, that would cease bleeding soon. She told herself this.
A Book of American Martyrs Page 36