A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  One of the drugs injected into the bloodstream was a “paralytic” which rendered speech impossible but did not counteract pain. The anesthesia could not be guaranteed not to wear off before the heart ceased beating.

  Sometimes the condemned prisoner suffered a good deal since he did not lose consciousness as planned, or regained consciousness in the midst of the protocol, which was very painful.

  The longest recorded “botched” lethal injection took place over several hours during which time the condemned prisoner was frequently conscious and screaming in agony. Afterward it was revealed that the lethal drugs had been injected not into a vein but into soft tissue surrounding the vein.

  The scientist who’d developed lethal injection as a “more merciful” means of execution than gas, hanging, or electrocution was quoted: “It never occurred to me that we’d have complete idiots administering the drugs.”

  There was more to read but Luke deleted the website abruptly.

  In an undertone he said, “Fuck.”

  Dawn protested faintly, “But—the governor will commute Daddy’s sentence. Everybody thinks so.”

  Luke shoved back the chair he was sitting in. His face was covered in an oily sweat.

  “What ‘everybody thinks’? Bullshit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said, ‘D.D.’—bullshit.”

  Luke uttered the name “D.D.” as if he didn’t think much of it. He was heading for the rear exit door of the library as Dawn followed after him staring at his back in disbelief.

  “But—the execution was just ‘stayed.’ The lawyers have an ‘appeal.’ The governor—”

  “Fuck the governor. And—just—shut up.”

  Breathless and dazed Dawn followed after her brother. Before they reached the exit he turned to her glaring with wet furious eyes and shoved her, hard.

  Dawn cried in surprise and hurt. “What—what’s wrong? Why—”

  “I said—shut up.”

  Dawn slapped at Luke’s arm, which was a mistake for Luke did more than slap her in return, punching her hard on the shoulder.

  When Dawn tried to pummel him about the head with flailing fists Luke shoved her with the palms of both hands so hard she was thrown against a library table, and onto the floor.

  Everyone was staring. In an instant Dawn was on the floor spread-legged, wincing at pain at the base of her spine.

  One of the librarians approached them — “S-Stop! What are you doing! That isn’t allowed here . . .”

  A second librarian approached. Both women were clearly frightened.

  “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”—the younger librarian asked Dawn,

  Luke had already pushed out the exit door. Dawn muttered she was all right and managed to get to her feet before either of the librarians could help her.

  Whatever they were saying to her, Dawn didn’t hear. She ran limping outside to discover that her angry brother wasn’t waiting for her—he’d started the car engine and was driving out of the parking lot as she pursued him crying—“Wait! Luke! God damn you—wait . . .”

  It was two miles back to the house on Depot Street.

  By this time she’d begun to cry but her tears were tears of anger and not sorrow or despair and long before she reached her aunt’s house her eyes would be tearless and her face dry.

  SOON AFTER, news came that their father’s execution had been rescheduled for August 9, 2003—eight months away.

  UNCLEAN

  The first fly, so small it appeared to be a mere speck of dirt, appeared on the refrigerator door as Edna Mae was about to leave the kitchen. With a rolled-up newspaper she managed to kill it but then she noticed a second, very small fly on a windowpane above the sink, and then a third, also very small fly buzzing on the windowsill . . . Clumsily Edna Mae flailed with the rolled-up newspaper and managed to kill both flies though with some difficulty for (it seemed) her hand-eye coordination had deteriorated in recent months, or years; and there was something wrong with her vision, that flooded with moisture when she stared intently at something that was crucial to see.

  Edna Mae was about to throw away the befouled and torn Mad River Junction Weekly when she saw, as in a bad dream, yet another fly on the ceiling above the stove—too high for her to reach unless she stood on a chair.

  Was it a fly? Or a speck of dirt? As she stared her eyes filled with tears so that her vision was occluded.

  In fact, there were two flies buzzing against the ceiling—no, three. Unmistakably flies and not specks of dirt.

  “Dawn! Where are you! Come help . . .”

  Dawn was uttered in a thin impatient whine. Rare for Edna Mae to utter the name of her older daughter in a voice that wasn’t whining or reproachful.

  But Edna Mae recalled: Dawn was working at Home Depot and would not return for hours. And Mary Kay was working as well, and the children were in school—there was no one to help her.

  It was disgusting, and made her very nervous—the sight of so many flies in the kitchen. Edna Mae recalled infestations of tiny ants in the old house in Muskegee Falls, in the spring; and infestations of field mice after the first frost. These infestations had nothing to do—(she was sure)—with the cleanliness of her household, yet she’d been very upset at the time. Luther had gone out to buy aerosol spray cans and mousetraps, and helped her rid the household of pests.

  She could not stand on a chair to swat the flies on the kitchen ceiling. She did not dare—she would become light-headed and faint. Already she was feeling faint seeing more flies—three, four—five, six—ten—so many hateful flies in the kitchen and buzzing against the windows, ceiling and walls! Where were they coming from?

  Had something died somewhere in the house, and flies were hatching out of maggots in the corpse? It was a terrible thought.

  “Please God no.”

  Nothing so shameful and frightening as an unclean house in which Edna Mae had no choice but to live.

  In fact there was a faint, or not-so-faint smell in the kitchen, sour, unpleasant, which Edna Mae had noticed, as perhaps others had noticed, but had not wished to investigate. For there were other smells in the kitchen, and in Mary Kay’s house, that not even opening the windows could quite eradicate.

  Her mother’s younger sister Mary Kay Mack had invited her and the children to live with her out of Christian charity—initially. This was what Edna Mae had been led to believe. But once they’d come to live in the house on Depot Street it had fallen to them—(mostly to the older children Luke and Dawn, at the time)—to keep the somewhat run-down house reasonably clean, and the small scrubby yard, and to haul trash and garbage to the curb for the weekly pickup. Anita and Noah were assigned chores as well. And Edna Mae had done what she could despite her health problems and the constant strain of Luther’s incarceration. In Muskegee Falls Edna Mae had kept a very clean house though the children had been young at the time—all of the relatives, both hers and Luther’s, had complimented her on her housekeeping, and on her cooking. Reverend Dennis had praised her for her “Christian optimism” and “Christian spirit” in volunteering at church as much as or more than women who hadn’t half Edna Mae’s responsibilities. Reverend Dennis had particularly praised Edna Mae for her full-time loving care of her youngest child Daphne. He had understood the terrible grief she’d felt when Daphne had been taken from them.

  Nothing will ever be the same again, Reverend Dennis. That is what I fear.

  But you have your other children, Edna Mae. You have your husband.

  No. I don’t, Reverend.

  What a strange thing to utter! Reverend Dennis had stared at her speechless.

  She did not confide in Reverend Dennis further. There was no one she dared tell: her knowledge that Luther had let their little girl Daphne die in the car crash. Or rather, Luther had not protected their little girl as she’d needed to be protected. For Luther had not loved Daphne, really. He’d been embarrassed and ashamed of their youngest child because she was not
“right”—as other children her age were “right”—she had seen it in his face. A man cannot disguise his emotions looking upon his own child.

  As Luther was to be embarrassed and ashamed of Edna Mae after Daphne’s death. Because her grief made her sick, and less of a woman than she’d been. Less of a mother, and less of a wife. Sometimes it seemed to her—(though she told no one this, not even Reverend Dennis)—that Luther had killed two men in cold blood as a way of ending his marriage and changing his life utterly.

  Now it had happened, God was punishing him for such a terrible act. But in punishing Luther Dunphy, God was punishing them all.

  (Oh but that was not true—was it? Edna Mae reminded herself how at any time, at any hour, the governor of Ohio could “commute” Luther’s sentence. He could grant “clemency.” There were legal hearings, appeals. There was much work to keep lawyers busy on both sides: the side of the State of Ohio and the side of the defendant. She’d more or less forgotten exactly what commute meant—what exactly it might mean in terms of Luther’s situation—but she’d so often heard this possibility stated, by Luther’s legal team and by relatives, she had to believe it was true. Her new friend Reverend Trucross and his wife Merri consoled her: The will of the Lord at any time can alter lives. There are tempests, plagues, floods, but also harvests. Barren wombs have yielded great fruit. The Lord taketh away but the Lord also giveth.)

  The problem had been, for Edna Mae and the children, how to live without Luther. Which meant where to live, and with whom. For Edna Mae could not support the family even if she’d been a nurse, and not merely a nurse’s aide. Even a registered nurse’s salary would not have been sufficient in the crisis and even if Luke had been able to help them more than he was willing to help them, once he’d begun working for the county—there was just not enough money. Edna Mae had not worked as a nurse’s aide in almost eighteen years. (She had loved the work—she had hoped someday to train as a nurse! But life had intervened.) She would have to be retrained, and be relicensed. It had not occurred to her to apply for a job at Walmart or Home Depot like Mary Kay and Dawn for she (secretly) believed such work to be beneath her. She could not return to her parents’ home though they had halfheartedly offered to take her and the children in, and she could not live with any of the Dunphys because they did not want her any more than she wanted them.

  And so, Luther’s family had gone to live with Mary Kay. But soon it became clear to Edna Mae that her mother’s younger sister was a shockingly careless and indifferent housekeeper. Everywhere were dust balls, sticky floors, loose planks, stains. The asphalt-siding exterior of the house badly needed repair. The scrubby grass was always going to seed, and riddled with weeds. Trash accumulated everywhere. Even Luke commented derisively on his great-aunt’s house and had never invited any of his friends to come inside while he’d lived there.

  Mary Kay was a generous person but a careless and often rude and profane person. She was in her mid-fifties, at least thirty pounds overweight but shapely rather than fat, and brimming with “personality” like a TV weather woman. She favored cheaply glamorous clothes—purple suede, black leather, colorful blouses and shoes with straps. Her hair was dyed red-brown. She spoke chidingly of Edna Mae for “letting herself go” and for being “skinny as a broomstick” as if to be thin was a moral failing.

  Worse, Mary Kay was likely to be sharp-tongued if you suggested the slightest criticism of her lifestyle. Her choice in clothes, her choice in friends. Her casual attitude toward religion. If you remarked that a carpet needed to be cleaned, or replaced, or that stairs needed repair; if you dared to remark that the single bathroom (that was used by six people) needed a thorough cleaning, Mary Kay was likely to say, “Really! Well, you know what to do, Edna. You’re not crippled.”

  Edna Mae was not crippled. That was so.

  But she was not strong. It was unfair and unjust of her solidly-built aunt to suggest that she was shirking her responsibilities in the household.

  Often, Edna Mae could barely breathe as if a steel band were tightening around her chest. She could not sleep without medication—if she tried, her brain buzzed like a hornets’ nest. Her pulse raced, her eyes flooded with tears, a dull ache throbbed in her head. Always she was hearing the terrible word Guilty. She was hearing the words Sentenced to death by legal injection.

  (Though in fact, Edna Mae had not heard these words uttered aloud by the trial judge in the Broome County Courthouse. They had been repeated to her. But she seemed to recall them as if she’d been there, and had heard, and could not now forget.)

  She’d had to find another doctor in Mad River Junction. Dr. Hills had refused to continue to prescribe the medication she required so she’d gone to another, elderly doctor whose hearing was so poor she had to repeat her symptoms several times but who was willing at least to prescribe medication for her—“nerve pills”—“sleeping pills.” It was a relief that Luther had ceased asking after her pill dependency as he’d called it, as if he’d forgotten, when she visited him at Chillicothe.

  At first Edna Mae had tried gamely to keep the house reasonably clean despite her health problems, but Mary Kay’s old-fashioned vacuum cleaner was not only inefficient but very heavy, and dragged at Edna Mae’s arms. She’d tried to keep the kitchen clean, and the bathroom—the most disgusting, relentless of chores. The children were supposed to help but were not reliable. Dawn could be depended upon only to a point—then, rudely, she rebelled and said terrible things to her mother. For always there was the strain of their father in prison. Always the anxiety that weighed upon them all like a heavy overcast sky.

  Edna Mae knew that the children were teased, taunted, tormented on account of their father Luther Dunphy. She knew, and was heartstricken for them, but she did not know what to do about it, and so she tried not to think about it.

  Waking each morning in the unfamiliar house on Depot Street startled and confused not knowing for a moment where she was, and why. And then the thought would rush at her—Your husband is in prison. Your husband is on Death Row.

  No longer did Edna Mae attend Reverend Dennis’s church in Muskegee Falls. All that was over—her old life that seemed now to have existed for her on the far side of a rushing river. In this new place she’d joined a new church, the Mad River Junction Pentecostal Church of Christ. Reverend Trucross and his wife Merri had sought Edna Mae out to offer commiseration and sympathy—“Our prayers are with you and your family and with your courageous husband Luther in your hour of need, Mrs. Dunphy.” When Merri Trucross embraced her with a sob of sisterly emotion Edna Mae had stiffened in surprise though afterward she’d been deeply moved. No one in her family including her sister Noreen had embraced her in such a way after Luther had been transferred to Death Row. Soon it happened that Reverend Trucross arranged for one of the congregation to pick up Edna Mae and the children to bring them to Sunday services, since Edna Mae no longer drove a car.

  She hadn’t been able to visit Luther at Chillicothe in months. Illnesses—(flu, pneumonia, shingles)—swept through the prison facility and visitation hours were canceled. On Death Row the prisoners were relatively protected from the general population yet seemingly susceptible to contagions spread by guards and other prison personnel.

  Edna Mae continued to hear from the Chillicothe chaplain Reverend Davey who told her how “bravely” and “steadfastly” Luther bore up under the stress of Death Row.

  There were eleven men on Death Row awaiting execution. All, including Luther Dunphy, had been granted temporary “stays” pending appeals and clemency hearings. So far as Edna Mae knew, and she did not really want to know such information, just two men had been executed since Luther had been sentenced to death, after delays and postponements of many years; but these were murderers, who had deserved to die, and nothing like Luther Dunphy.

  “This gives us hope, Edna Mae. We must always have hope!”—so Reverend Davey consoled her.

  AT LAST, she found an old, badly stained flyswatter in a clo
set. With this, she would hunt down flies.

  Yet, more flies appeared. The more Edna Mae swatted, the more appeared as if out of nowhere. Not only in the kitchen but in the hallway, and on the living room walls.

  She had never seen so many flies since childhood on her grandparents’ farm! Every kind of fly including gigantic horseflies, buzzing about manure heaps. The farmhouse doors were always being left open, the screens were ill-fitted to the windows, or torn; flies crawled over kitchen counters and table, stovetop, anything left out and uncovered. And if covered, flies crawled over the covers. As a fastidiously clean girl Edna Mae had been dismayed by the flies and their insolent buzzing that roused in her now a sensation of shame and nausea.

  “Damn you! Damn.”

  She was becoming adept wielding the flyswatter which was more lethal than a rolled-up newspaper though its surface was smaller.

  Yet it was a delicate matter not to stain a wall by smashing a fly against it and leaving a smear, and Edna Mae did not always succeed. She was becoming reckless, impatient. It angered her that the flies struggled so for their lives—escaping her frantic wild swings as if with their microscopic eyes they could envision beforehand the imprecise trajectory of her blows, and were mocking her. Much of the morning she’d been groggy after a poor night’s sleep but by quick degrees she was wakened by the exertion and challenge of fly-swatting. Yet, no matter how many flies she swatted, more flies were appearing.

  Jesus was sending a sign. Jesus was not pleased with Edna Mae Dunphy this morning. Your place of refuge is unclean.

  It had to be, the flies were hatching. Disgusting as this was to contemplate, it had to be true. Edna Mae squatted to determine the source of the flies, somewhere near the baseboard of the kitchen. Then, she saw that a fly was emerging from a corner of the kitchen nearest the hall—near a hall closet. And when she timorously opened the closet door several flies flew at her face. She gave a cry, swung wildly and nearly dropped the swatter.

  The closet was crammed with her aunt’s things. Old clothing, old boots and shoes, dirt-stiffened mittens. Badly rusted steel wool cleaning pads. An old, filthy wooden-handled mop, plastic buckets, rags needing laundering. Carelessly folded paper bags from the grocery store. An ancient box of dog biscuits from a time, years before, when Mary Kay had owned a dog—out of this box of dog biscuits small moths emerged, fluttering at Edna Mae’s face.