A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  With wetted leaves she wiped at herself, down inside the corduroys, between her legs, awkwardly. She had been so anxious to pull on the trousers, that no one might see her part-naked. With wetted leaves she wiped at her face. Picked clumps of mud out of her hair. Assessing the situation with a measure of calm—Really I am all right. No one will know.

  “Thank you, Jesus. For sparing me.”

  It had been her own fault, she knew: taking the shortcut home.

  She would make her way limping home through the railroad yard, to Depot Street. She would enter very cautiously at the rear of the house. If Edna Mae was in the kitchen, she could avoid the kitchen. That would be easy—Edna Mae might call out, “Who’s that?”—and Dawn would need to say only, “Who’d you think, Ma? Me”—and walk past the door and go upstairs. (Dawn no longer called her mother Maw-maw. Even the younger children no longer called Edna Mae this name.) If Anita or Noah were close by they would take little note of their sister. Mary Kay would not be home yet. Quickly Dawn would ascend to the second-floor bathroom and no one would be a witness to her shame—for Jesus would grant this small mercy, she believed.

  YEH WE FUCKED HER. Dun-phy. Some of us did. She liked it fine.

  Dirty cunt. Dyke. Told her we’d kill her if she told anyone but she wouldn’t tell anyone ’cause she liked it.

  SHE DID NOT RETURN TO SCHOOL. Not the next day, or the next.

  Not because she was sick or injured for (she was sure) she was not sick or injured.

  Behind the 7-Eleven store she waited in the late afternoon. Beside the Dumpster.

  Near the Fort Street underpass she waited.

  And then the following week, late afternoon of a Tuesday she sighted several of the boys, the Beams boy, Jay-Jay, the one with the Cleveland Browns cap, one or two others descending the steps at the Fort Street underpass. Quickly she crossed the street, and approached them. In her pocket was a claw hammer she’d found in her aunt’s garage, the handle of which she’d wrapped carefully with black tape so that the grip would be more secure.

  The boys saw her. A single expression of startled surprise ran across their faces like a headlight flashing. And then they were grinning, and one of them made a mocking gesture like a salute—Hi there Daw-en Dun-phy.

  They saw the look in her face before they saw the claw hammer in her hand and they ceased grinning.

  She rushed at Billy Beams, the slowest and clumsiest of the boys as he was the biggest. Wildly the hammer struck at Billy Beams—swinging in Dawn’s hand of its own volition, seemingly—his face, his head—the nape of his neck that was exposed as he tried to duck away. Wanting to break his neck but the flesh at the nape of his neck was too thick. But she felt a gratifying crack!—she was sure, she’d cracked Billy Beams’s skull, and brains would ooze out onto the filthy pavement to which he fell, jerking convulsively, crying and whimpering like a young child. She moved on then to another boy, swinging the hammer at him, blunt side, claw side, blunt side, claw side, blunt side swinging and striking and drawing blood from wounds in the boy’s forehead like skid marks. And then he was down, and Dawn ran after the boy wearing the reversed cap, at the steps at the far side of the underpass she overtook him striking the back of his head with the hammer, gripping the black-taped handle now hard in both hands and swinging it as the boy lost his footing and fell, screaming in pain; one of the others tried to wrest the hammer from her but Dawn was too strong, and too quick, turning the hammer onto this boy, Jay-Jay, striking him on the crown of the head so hard he fell to the dirty pavement like a sack of feed.

  Turning back then to the boy who’d fallen on the steps. Dropped the hammer and struck at his face with her fists. She struck the astonished eyes, the nose. She struck the mouth that began at once to leak blood.

  The nose was broken. Blood gushed from the nostrils.

  The eyes she pounded with her fists as if to blind them. She would burst the capillaries, she would blacken the hateful eyes that had seen the lower part of her body naked. She had never struck anyone with her fists, like this. She had fought with Luke—but never like this. For Luke was too strong for her, she could not prevail against Luke. But these boys had been taken by surprise. Though her fists were aching, the knuckles scraped and thinly bleeding yet she was excited, exhilarated. “Fuckers! Now you know.” They had thought she was a good Christian girl, that they might demean her without consequence. But Dawn Dunphy was not to be demeaned. Jesus had not always turned the other cheek to be slapped another time. Jesus had driven the moneylenders out of the temple. In a loud jubilant voice Jesus had said, I bring not peace but a sword. Her fists swung, her booted feet kicked, for Jesus, for Jesus and for her father Luther Dunphy who was a soldier of Jesus and would die for Jesus’s sake.

  She followed the others out of the underpass but did not pursue them along Fort Street. The bloodied claw hammer she secured in her pocket. She did not want to be seen, she did not want to be seen by witnesses, for she knew from her father’s trial how “witnesses” will damn you though you are scarcely aware of them at the time. And she might be seen by witnesses if she pursued the boys on Fort Street.

  And so they ran from her, she allowed them to escape calling after them in a jeering voice, “Fuckers! Go to hell.” And Jesus observed and saw that it was good.

  You are my servant Dawn Dunphy in whom I am well pleased.

  IT WAS IN NINTH GRADE it happened, she was expelled.

  The Dunphy girl—the one whose father killed those men at the women’s center and was sentenced to death . . .

  We persuaded the principal to expel her. Everybody was talking about how she’d attacked some boys from the high school (who’d been teasing her, allegedly) with a hammer or a knife or some deadly weapon which the boys hadn’t reported because they were embarrassed or didn’t want to get into trouble themselves so we went to the principal and persuaded him she was dangerous and that was that—the Dunphy girl was gone.

  You could see in her face she’d be trouble. Though she had not actually caused any trouble at school yet, that we knew of. Probably she was dyslexic. You see that pretty often in these poor-white families where almost nobody graduates from high school or even sometimes middle school and there’s high absenteeism and not a surprise, a father or some other family member is incarcerated.

  The surprising thing was, the Dunphy girl—“Dawn”—(later she called herself “D.D.” but not when she was at our school)—had a younger sister named Anita, and a younger brother Noah—except for being almost mute in their classes they were not bad students, the girl especially—what you’d call bright-average, and mostly clean and well-mannered. Totally different from the older sister and everybody else in the family, probably.

  After being expelled from school Dawn worked somewhere local like Home Depot. Then news came from Cleveland she was some sort of girls’ boxing champion—“D.D. Dunphy”—“The Hammer”—this was a surprise! Interviewed on some Cleveland cable TV station after a fight and when they asked her where she was from in Ohio she said Muskegee Falls. Like she’d never lived in Mad River Junction at all.

  THE STAY

  Edna Mae! Come. Jesus extended His hand to hers.

  She felt the fingers grip hers. Jesus’s strong fingers. Jesus’s patient fingers. If she’d wanted to withdraw her own hand she could not have done so.

  She was awake, her brain ached but it was alert and alive. Yet she could not move. The night before she’d taken a new pill, a hexagonal green pill that melted under her tongue. Now her tongue was numb in her mouth like something that had died there.

  Edna Mae! Hurry. The cross lay on the barren ground. They were forcing a man down, on his back, and his arms outspread, upon the cross that must have measured seven feet at its height. They would nail the man’s hands and feet to the cross.

  She was wetting a cloth in cold water. She would press the wetted cloth against the man’s bleeding forehead. She would press the wetted cloth against his bleeding hands, his bleeding feet whe
re the terrible three-inch spikes had been driven in.

  He had been a carpenter. That had been his life, before God had singled him out for a special destiny.

  It was a melancholy irony, that he who’d once wielded hammers, had once driven three-inch spikes into wood, should suffer in such a way.

  Edna Mae! Come now.

  Hurriedly she wetted the washcloth to lift to her heated face. Water in the cloth cupped to her eyes so that she sighed in pleasure for her eyes were parched from all she’d seen in the night. She was so exhausted! But she’d been wakened from sleep by the sound of His voice.

  Tried to take care, shaking out one of the green hexagonal pills into her hand. A new doctor now in Mad River Junction was prescribing a new medication for her for (he’d said) she had become over-dependent upon the old.

  But she had a small quantity of the old. Shrewdly she’d hoarded these precious (white) pills for a time when the new pills would not be strong enough.

  On the stairs, running footsteps. Someone rapped on the bathroom door and called her name excitedly and in that instant the pill slipped from her hand—“Oh!” She was on her knees groping for the pill that had rolled beneath the sink on the grimy floor.

  “Edna Mae! Edna Mae! Open the door!”

  It was the morning of October 29, 2002.

  JESUS HAVE MERCY on his soul. Lord have mercy.

  Beloved husband Luther Dunphy who gave his life that others might live.

  “This day you shall be with me in paradise.”

  EXCEPT, THE ASTONISHING NEWS was: the governor had granted a stay of execution.

  Another time, pending the appeal on his behalf that was winding its slow way through the Ohio State Court of Appeals, Luther Dunphy’s life had been saved.

  She could not comprehend at first. Staring at their glowing faces.

  A stay of execution!

  By the grace of God, Luther has been spared.

  She had given him up for dead. Her beloved husband. She had prayed for his soul and she had commended him to God and now it seemed to be that God had granted them a reprieve.

  One of Luther’s lawyers had called at 9:40 A.M. of October 29.

  Fewer than ten hours before preparations for the execution were to begin at the Chillicothe State Correctional Institution near Lucasville.

  “Mrs. Dunphy? Good news! We just heard from the Governor . . .”

  She listened. Her hand holding the receiver shook. There came a roaring in her ears as of ice and snow sliding down a steep roof.

  This lawyer whose name she could not have recalled was saying now that he and his team would petition the governor to commute Luther’s sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole—“We have a very good chance, I think. Mrs. Dunphy? Hello? Are you there?”

  Someone took the receiver from her fingers before it fell to the floor.

  In the Dunphy family there was rejoicing. Dawn was summoned home from work at Home Depot and Luke arrived soon after. It had been planned that Luke would drive them to the Chillicothe Correctional Institution that afternoon—Edna Mae, Mary Kay, Dawn, and himself—so that they could say good-bye to Luther during the final visitation between three and four o’clock.

  Preparations for the execution were scheduled to begin at six o’clock. And the execution was to begin promptly at eight. But the call had disrupted all plans for this special day.

  Since they’d begun to visit Luther at Chillicothe, Edna Mae had been in contact with the friendly prison chaplain, who called himself Reverend Davey. Or rather, Reverend Davey had been in contact with Edna Mae, for it was his custom to befriend the wives and close relatives of condemned men, to whom he offered sympathy and commiseration. He’d told Edna Mae that her husband was a “very special Christian” and in a “state of grace”; that of the prisoners on Death Row, that numbered a dozen, it was Luther Dunphy who was “most admired” by COs and by his fellow prisoners. Reverend Davey had said that he would “miss Luther like a brother.”

  He had also told Edna Mae that it would be a “relief to Luther’s soul” if he expressed remorse for having shot and killed Timothy Barron but Edna Mae had not seemed to hear this.

  As the execution date had approached, Edna Mae’s sister Noreen had been in touch with her to offer sympathy and commiseration as well. The sisters had not been close for years and now Edna Mae had not the energy to telephone Noreen with the good news of the reprieve, as she had not the energy to call anyone in her family.

  Mary Kay who was in a very festive mood as if she’d just won the state lottery made these calls. She relayed to the older children the lawyer’s intention to appeal again to the governor for a “commutation” of sentence to life in prison and somehow in the relaying it seemed (almost) to be a certainty that Luther’s sentence would be commuted. And also, in the relaying, it began to seem that there might be a possibility of parole—“But not for a long time, I’m afraid. Not for a looong time, kids.”

  LUKE WAS HELPING HIMSELF to beer from Mary Kay’s refrigerator. And Mary Kay was drinking too, splashing beer into a glass. “Edna Mae? Dawn? C’mon join us! Celebrate the good news, Luther has been reprieved.”

  Dawn had been blinking and dazed-looking since she’d come in the door. At Home Depot where (she said) the stockroom area where she worked wasn’t heated she wore heavy corduroys, two shirts, a pullover sweater and a hoodie, and on her feet woolen socks and work-boots. Since quitting school—(it was said of Dawn that she had “quit” and not that she’d been “expelled”)—she no longer groomed herself quite so carefully as she’d once done and her hair hung in sullen greasy coils around her face. Her forehead was blemished and her fingernails were broken and edged with dirt. When her great-aunt offered her a beer Dawn laughed as if suspecting a joke but Mary Kay was not laughing, and urged her to take the beer. “Lighten up, D.D. ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’”

  D.D. was some fond-funny name Mary Kay had made up to call Dawn. But D.D. had not caught on with anyone else, and so Mary Kay was the only one who called Dawn by this name out of a kind of foolish stubbornness.

  Hesitantly Dawn accepted the can of beer, which was very cold. In a mumble she said that sixteen was too young to drink.

  “Hell it is. This is a private party, you can drink any G-damn drink you want.” Mary Kay laughed pronouncing G-damn with a flair.

  The phone was ringing. Luther’s relatives were calling. Edna Mae’s relatives were calling. Word had gotten out, Luther Dunphy had been granted another stay of execution.

  And had the execution been rescheduled? No one seemed to know.

  In her confused state Edna Mae did not wish to speak to anyone on the phone. She did not want to speak to Noreen, or to her own mother. She did not want to speak to Reverend Davey—or was it Reverend Dennis who’d called? She did not want to speak to a reporter from the Mad River Junction Weekly. Some of those who called were neighbors and friends of Mary Kay Mack with whom Mary Kay spoke in a loud celebratory voice and to Edna Mae’s horror she heard her aunt invite some of these strangers over to the house.

  Edna Mae was sitting in a kitchen chair. Staring at the head of foam on the beer freshly poured into Mary Kay’s glass steeling herself to see the foam overflow and run down the side of the glass onto the kitchen table or worse yet onto the linoleum floor where it would be sticky underfoot and no one would notice except Edna Mae.

  LETHAL

  She wished she hadn’t. It was a mistake.

  Discovering what lethal injection meant.

  WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE they’d gone together to look up lethal injection online at the public library.

  Soon after the verdict and the sentencing of their father to death by lethal injection they’d gone—together—(a rarity in recent years for Luke had little time for his sister)—to the Mad River Junction library where there were computers available to the public; and Luke typed in the terrible words lethal injection that acquired a kind of matter-of-fact calm by being s
o typed into the library computer in a brightly lit space patronized by numerous others.

  Dawn had difficulty reading the entry for her eyes filled with moisture. She had to read leaning over her brother’s shoulder which was awkward.

  Luke read slowly, squinting and grimacing. He brought his eyes near the computer screen as if he had trouble seeing the letters. Luke had never been a good reader in school and was challenged to keep his gaze moving along a line of print and not careening off in other directions as you might do with a picture, a video game, something seen out a window.

  Lethal injection was a lengthy entry in Wikipedia. They skimmed the names of the drugs of which only one—“barbiturate”—was familiar to them. Others were “potassium chloride”—“sodium thiopental”—“pancuronium bromide”—which they could not have pronounced. Dawn began to tremble reading that the execution protocol “ideally” resulted in the death of the condemned prisoner within seven to eleven minutes after the procedure was started; but sometimes there was considerable difficulty finding a vein into which to inject the chemicals and sometimes there were mistakes in the dosage since it was a set dosage for all subjects no matter their size, age, or physical condition. No doctor or medical worker would participate in an execution for “humanitarian” and “professional” reasons and so the individuals who administered the lethal drugs were prison personnel with no training.

  With mounting horror Dawn read that only anesthesiologists –with an MD—were trained to administer anesthesia. It was not like putting somebody to sleep which everybody supposed.