A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But he couldn’t avoid it! Not with the execution scheduled.

  He felt the way she did, didn’t she?—Naomi had to ask.

  Waiting for Dunphy to die? Yes.

  Darren had laughed harshly. It was a shameful admission, somehow—waiting for another person to die.

  She’d asked him if anyone from the Chillicothe prison had contacted him. He was over twenty-one, he could be an observer at the execution if he’d wished.

  Darren had been shocked at the suggestion. “Jesus! No.”

  She’d shocked him further by saying that she could imagine herself attending the execution—maybe.

  “Fuck you would, Naomi. That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s just that I hate him so much. I hate all of them—‘Dunphys.’”

  The very name was repellent to her. A rush of something like nausea overcame her, seeing Dunphy in print.

  As the widow of the murdered man Jenna must have been contacted by the prison authority. She had not mentioned this to either Naomi nor Darren—but then, they were not often in touch.

  Of course, Jenna would never have considered observing an execution for a moment.

  She’d explained on several occasions—“Gus opposed the death penalty. I do, too. Executing that man will not bring back Gus.”

  Often on the phone Jenna sounded like someone making a careful, precise public utterance not like a mother speaking to a daughter who’d called her because she’d been feeling lonely, and anxious.

  All that Naomi knew was that her mother was living now in Bennington, Vermont; that she worked with a small law firm, very likely comprised of women, in Bennington, and that she had a visiting appointment at Bennington College.

  Whenever it was proposed that Naomi visit Jenna, Jenna quickly said, “Yes of course, soon. We will look forward to that.”

  Or, “Soon! When this ‘bungalow’ I’m renting is habitable for a guest.”

  Naomi’s legal address was her grandparents’ home in Birmingham, Michigan. De facto, Clem and Adele had been their grandchildren’s guardians since Jenna’s departure. They were such good people! Gus’s death had ravaged Grandfather Clem but he rarely spoke of his loss and neither he nor Adele spoke critically of their wayward daughter-in-law. Naomi tried to keep in frequent contact with them for she was grateful for them—their unstinting support, their affection. Even the smiling step-grandmother, Naomi tried to love.

  Well—love was an overstatement.

  She tried also to keep in touch with Melissa who remained so young—sixteen. Living with their grandparents in the house in Birmingham and attending now the prestigious Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills where she took a course in Mandarin Chinese, cello lessons, played soccer, and earned uniformly high grades. A life their father would have disdained as suburban, “preppy.”

  When Naomi spoke to Melissa she never alluded to the subject. She could not have brought herself to utter the name Dunphy. She supposed that Melissa was aware of the imminent execution in Ohio for there was sure to be coverage in local media, considering Gus Voorhees’s renown in that part of Michigan. But she couldn’t speak of such an ugly matter to her sensitive young sister.

  Melissa was a shy girl who could be urged to speak enthusiastically about her courses and school “activities.” She seemed to Naomi to belong to another era, long ago when the Voorhees family had all been different people.

  NAOMI WAS TELLING DARREN about Melissa when, at 9:34 P.M., Darren interrupted her.

  “Jesus! He’s calling me. It must be over.”

  Naomi listened intently. She could hear her brother speaking with Roberts—she assumed it must be Roberts.

  “Darren? Hello? Hello? What has happened? Is he—dead?”

  She could hear Darren’s voice—(he was asking Elliot questions)—but couldn’t make out his words. She was beginning to feel light-headed as if the floorboards of this unfamiliar place were shifting beneath her feet.

  Then, Darren’s voice was loud on the phone. “Yes! He’s dead.”

  Naomi wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Dead . . .”

  Darren told her grimly that the execution had been “botched.” It had gone on for two hours. The observers hadn’t seen it—most of it.

  “They drew a curtain so that no one could see how terrible it was . . . Jesus!”

  Dead! Luther Dunphy was dead.

  Naomi tried to stammer a question but Darren wasn’t on the phone. She could hear him talking with Elliot Roberts and in the next instant the line went dead.

  Tried to call Darren back. But no answer.

  After several rings, a recording switched on. Naomi pleaded:

  “Darren! Pick up! Talk to me! Please.”

  For several desperate minutes she tried to call her brother. The landline, the cell phone. “Damn you! Darren. Don’t leave me alone now.”

  She sent him an email. Darren rarely answered her emails.

  She called again, and no answer.

  IT HAD HAPPENED, AT LAST: Luther Dunphy was dead.

  It was over. It had ended.

  She was feeling—well, what was she feeling? As if the top of her skull had been sheared away. Such lightness! Was this—joyousness?

  She was outside. On the street. (But which street? She’d forgotten where she was—an apartment borrowed for the evening from an Ann Arbor graduate student friend.)

  Here was a surprise—she was weak with hunger. She supposed it was hunger, she’d forgotten to eat since breakfast. She’d forgotten to drink liquids and was feeling faint now, dehydrated.

  In the borrowed apartment she’d considered drinking a glass or two of (borrowed) wine out of a bottle she’d found in a cupboard. But she had not dared, for fear that she would lose control and drink much of the bottle.

  She’d begun drinking at the age of seventeen, at high school parties in Birmingham. Not serious drinking. Of course, she never drank alone.

  What had Darren said—the execution had been “botched.” It had gone on for more than two hours. She’d read of such executions, the suffering of the victim. She felt a twinge of horror, that Luther Dunphy must have suffered in this way.

  For the first time, she thought of Dunphy’s family—wife, children. What did they know of what had happened to him. How had the execution been for them.

  At one time, she and Darren had taken note of the Dunphys. They had seen pictures online of Edna Mae, Luke, Dawn, Anita, and Noah. These had not been clear pictures but blurred photos taken without the consent of the Dunphys.

  Dawn was the child closest in age to Naomi. Hardly a “child”—a big-boned Eskimo-faced girl with defiant eyes. Luke was the one closest in age to Darren.

  What had become of the Dunphy family? Naomi wondered. It was not likely that they lived in Muskegee Falls any longer. Seven years had passed, much had changed in their lives too.

  She was walking quickly. But she was not walking steadily. Seen from a distance, she might’ve been mistaken for an undergraduate girl who had had too much to drink, and was not accustomed to drinking.

  (Had she poured a glass of red wine, out of Mercedes’s bottle? She didn’t think so. She wondered if her breath smelled.)

  Here was another surprise—it was snowing. Every day this week snowfall. Despite alarms of global warming the Michigan winter had been bitter cold. And something was wrong—like a fool she’d run outside without her fleece-lined jacket. Another pair of gloves she’d lost somewhere. Her head was bare. Her hair was damp and tangled from wind-driven snow. She was running recklessly, slipping on the pavement. She’d been neglecting her classes. She’d been neglecting her literacy tutorials. She was letting everyone down exactly as Jenna had let everyone down.

  A smile distorted her face like a clamp. Someone called to her—“Whoa! Watch out, girl.”

  Snowflakes were blown against her hot face. Veins, capillaries exposed. The heat of blood beating beneath her skin melted the snowflakes at once.

  She had thought that she was
headed toward the university campus, a shortcut across the snowy stretch in front of the Rackham Building which would take her in the direction of her residence hall but—somehow—she’d taken a wrong turn, or she wasn’t on State Street after all. Or, she’d gone in the wrong direction on State Street.

  She was panting. She was very tired suddenly. She did not want to be seen—recognized. She was huddled beneath a scaffolding. Across the street was a Chinese restaurant that had once been her parents’ favorite Ann Arbor restaurant but it had a new name now and the front window was opaque with steam. A voice echoed with astonished glee in her head—Dead! Luther Dunphy is dead.

  The smile remained on her mouth, clamped in place. Rivulets of tears were freezing on her cheeks.

  She left the shelter of the scaffolding. She needed to be alone. She did not want to answer questions. She did not want to be interviewed. And now how do you feel, you and your siblings? Now that the assassin of your father Gus Voorhees has been executed? Hurrying along an alley. An odor of beer and greasy food wafted through a vent and made her feel nauseated. There was an overflowing Dumpster, litter scattered on the ground. It was the most bitter truth, she had not wanted to tell Darren—no undergraduate she’d met seemed to know who Gus Voorhees was, or had been. Her roommates did not know. Her closest friend in the residence hall had clearly never heard the name Voorhees.

  Someone had asked her with a quizzical smile, isn’t Voorhees the name of a university building?

  These were contemporaries who’d been born, like Naomi, in the late 1980s. They’d scarcely been in middle school when Gus Voorhees had died.

  The fact is: none of this matters.

  Gus has ceased to exist and Gus is not coming back.

  Recklessly she was crossing an icy-slushy street. Headlights blurred as if underwater. Someone sounded a horn sharply—“Get out of the street, bitch!” She was very cold and could not remember where the hell she’d left her fleece-lined jacket with the zipper hood. And the beautiful leather gloves her grandmother Madelena had sent her—out of nowhere—at Christmas. Thinking of you, Naomi. No need to get back to me but let’s keep in touch.

  In front of her were concrete steps leading down—somewhere. She had a vague idea that this was the way to the arboretum—though it was dark, and snowing, and the arboretum was miles away.

  They’d been happy there, in the arboretum! She could not recall but she knew because she’d been told.

  Little Naomi carried in a backpack, on Daddy’s strong back. Why could she not remember? She hated Darren, who’d stolen all her memories.

  Not seeing where she placed her foot she slipped, fell heavily on icy stone steps, and lay stunned on freezing pavement six feet below. Her mouth was bleeding but she felt no pain. A wonderful numbness coursed through her. In the distance were festive voices, a sound of traffic. It was not late on State Street in Ann Arbor: the drinking places were open.

  We’d been so happy there. Ann Arbor, when we were newlyweds.

  Badly she wanted to be with them! Her young parents.

  Wanted to remember that exquisite happiness, before she’d been born.

  ALONE

  Next of kin? Whom to notify?

  No wallet? No ID? No name?

  In the early morning she was found by Ann Arbor sanitation workers, where she’d fallen down a flight of stone steps at Terrace Place which was a dead end of vacated buildings. Blood coagulated at her mouth and in a hard little trickle on her forehead. Snow covered her motionless body like a shroud.

  She was not dead: though she was suffering from hypothermia there remained a heartbeat.

  Medical workers found a pulse, detected a breath, checked her blood pressure and partly revived her, lifted her onto a stretcher and bore her by ambulance to the emergency room of the University Hospital where once as a young man decades ago Gus Voorhees had been a resident physician.

  Her fingers and toes were stiff with cold. Her temperature was 95.2°F.

  Mistaken for a homeless person, maybe. A mentally ill person, of about twenty, Caucasian and weighing approximately 108 pounds.

  Had she been beaten? Robbed? Sexually assaulted?

  Had she been drinking? Fell, and fractured her skull?

  Despite the ringing in her head and her bruised mouth trying to explain: she was not a homeless person but a student at the university. She was not ill and not drunk but yes, she must have fallen on the icy steps the night before and struck her head.

  Had she been with someone, who had harmed her? And left her lying in the street?

  No! No one. She’d been alone.

  Wearing no jacket or coat, in such cold weather? No gloves, nothing on her head?

  Had she been fleeing someone? Trying to escape someone?

  Had she ingested any drugs? Prescription medicine, controlled substance? Recreational drugs?

  Her blood tested negative for alcohol or drugs, which was not a surprise to her. But the bloodwork showed a mild anemia.

  The emergency brain scan detected no fracture or concussion. No evident abnormalities.

  She smiled to think—There is no sign, then. Not a trace!

  An IV line was dripping liquid into a vein at the crook of her left arm. She had no memory of a needle being stuck into her. She’d been seriously dehydrated, she was told.

  In the ER she lay exhausted in a cubicle, covered in layers of thin white woolen blankets. Her outer clothes had been removed. On her feet were cotton slippers. Curtains had been drawn around the bed, to assure privacy.

  How safe it was here. In the University Hospital ER, each patient in a cubicle shrouded by white curtains, anonymous, muted. And no shoes: white cotton slippers.

  If Jenna knew. If Jenna saw.

  You see what has happened to your daughter. There are consequences.

  In fact the consequences were muted: by midday she was speaking coherently. The ringing in her ears had abated. She was able to establish her identity as a bright and (to a degree) socially sophisticated undergraduate enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences at U-M. Carefully she spelled her last name—V-o-o-r-h-e-e-s. The young Asian woman intern who was taking down this information did not seem to think that Voorhees was anything out of the ordinary.

  She insisted, she was ready to leave the ER. Whatever had happened to her would not happen again, she was sure.

  “There has been a death in the family. I was upset but I am feeling much better now.”

  I DIED, but I was revived.

  So longing to stay in that place, where we’d been happy.

  AFTERSHOCK

  A day, a night. More than twenty-four hours since the execution.

  In Ann Arbor no one whom she encountered seemed to know about it. No one to whom she spoke. No one who spoke to her. The name Luther Dunphy was not once uttered.

  Wasn’t news of the execution in the newspaper? On TV, online?

  Didn’t everyone know?

  She could not sleep. She did not attend classes. She avoided her friends. She avoided strangers. She could not have explained. No one knew, she’d confided in no one. It was the aftershock of the execution.

  She vowed that she would not call her brother again. But then, she called Darren’s number in Washington State.

  Darren did not answer.

  She had many times vowed that she would not call her mother. But then, she called her mother’s number in Bennington, Vermont.

  Jenna did not answer.

  She was feeling just slightly disappointed. There was joy and relief and gratitude to celebrate—Luther Dunphy was dead at last.

  The curvy cut on her forehead resembled an exposed vein, that quivered with life. The cut on the left side of her mouth had turned purple.

  When she was asked what had happened to her she said she’d had a small accident, slipping on icy steps.

  She went away exulting in secret. The long wait was over!

  “My life can now begin.”

  “SOMETHING FANTASTIC HAPPENE
D in my life the other day.”

  So she announced. But when the query came to her rapid as the return of a Ping-Pong serve Really? What?—she could not speak.

  That reckless feeling. Giddy-happy.

  Drunk, stoned. “High.”

  But, well—just slightly down.

  Had not the new life begun? She was sure the new life had begun.

  But where?

  Fuck she could not sleep. Missing fucking classes. No wonder Jenna was fed up with her as Gus would be fed up with her (if Gus could but know) beginning a semester with such hope, such energy, such promise, such enthusiasm, high grades—then the inevitable downslide, wreck. It did not give her much solace to note that among her peers at the university this pattern emerged in numerous others—the bright, fresh start of the term, the slow car wreck that followed. Except a daughter of Gus Voorhees understood that she was special, she was specially fated, doomed. She found herself online typing the name Luther Dunphy and the word execution.

  ANTI-ABORTION SHOOTER DUNPHY EXECUTED IN CHILLICOTHE, OHIO

  LETHAL INJECTION FOLLOWS YEARS OF POSTPONEMENTS

  RIGHT-TO-LIFE MOVEMENT ISSUES STATEMENT “LUTHER DUNPHY DID NOT DIE IN VAIN”

  It had happened, then! The death of Luther Dunphy.

  Quickly skimming the screen. Forgetting what she read in the very instant of reading it.

  Unavoidably linked with Luther Dunphy—Augustus Voorhees. A headline of November 1999 she’d was sure she’d never seen before.

  OHIO ABORTION DOCTOR VOORHEES, EX-MARINE KILLED IN SHOTGUN ASSAULT

  SELF-PROFESSED “SOLDIER OF GOD” DUNPHY SURRENDERS TO POLICE

  In the aftershock of the death forced to realize that nothing had changed in her life after all.

  Her father was still dead. Luther Dunphy had still killed him. The two names were linked together inextricably and one of these names was her own.

  ANOTHER TIME she called her mother in Bennington, Vermont.

  Naomi imagined a phone ringing in an empty room.

  Was it March, yet? Still winter.

  Still white, and still very cold.

  She imagined a vast wilderness of white in Bennington, Vermont.