A Book of American Martyrs

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Naomi stared. She would not have recognized this young woman.

  How strange, how incongruous—there were streaks of crimson and green in Dunphy’s spiky dark hair. On the biceps of both her arms were lurid tattoos.

  Naomi felt a sharp visceral dislike of Dunphy. What she most hated was the happiness of the female boxer, what she perceived as Dunphy’s childish gloating in victory.

  Dunphy spoke excitedly but uncertainly. She faltered, stammered.

  Clearly she was not accustomed to speaking with a microphone extended to her mouth—she was not accustomed to speaking at all. And she was being asked questions by an aggressive (male) interviewer that seemed to intimidate her and so repeatedly she glanced to the side, seeking help from someone off-camera.

  “What’re my ‘plans for the future’?—I guess—training real hard—for—maybe—a title fight . . .”

  “And when will that be, ‘D.D.’?”

  “When? I—I don’t know—it’s up to . . .”

  “Which title are you looking to, ‘D.D.’? Midwest Boxing League? World Boxing Association?”

  “I d-don’t know . . .”

  “Ready for the big time, eh? Atlantic City? Vegas?”

  “ . . .d-don’t know . . .”

  Naomi observed the TV screen covertly. How pathetic, this interview with “D.D. Dunphy”! She hoped that no one in the pub would notice her interest. Especially she didn’t want the bartender or the men drinking at the bar to note her interest and to draw her into their conversation.

  The men murmured together, laughed. In their voices a grudging admiration.

  That’s her—Dunphy. Wouldn’t recognize her.

  They lived over on Front Street. Luther was a roofer like my dad.

  Shit yes. Wouldn’t forget that poor bastard Luther Dunphy.

  My brother hung out with her brother—what’s-his-name . . .

  Jesus she is homely! But she can hit.

  A female boxer, some kind of joke. Make you feel like puking. But there’s some that’re OK—like Muhammad Ali’s daughter.

  “’SCUSE ME, MA’AM—”

  “Sorry ma’am—”

  “Shit! Sorry ma’am—”

  Squeezing past her one of them spilled a dark frothy liquid and ice cubes onto her knees out of a giant Styrofoam cup.

  “That’s all right”—quickly Naomi dabbed at the corduroy trousers with a tissue, smiling to show that she wasn’t upset or annoyed.

  Loud-laughing the gangling young men took their seats. They were not laughing at the lone white girl in a seat on the aisle in the Armory, in an instant they’d forgotten her.

  But others had noticed her, with curiosity. Not exactly unfriendly but not smiling.

  Naomi Voorhees in her wanly “white” skin! Like exposed bone from which marrow is leaking. And she was alone.

  It was a fact: no one else in sight in the cavernous space appeared to be alone. Groups of a dozen or more boxing fans, taking up entire rows.

  These were mostly dark-skinned and Hispanic and male. A predominance of males in their twenties, thirties, forties, who’d come to see the major fights of the evening and for whom the female boxers were of very little interest.

  The bout in which D.D. Dunphy was fighting Pryde Elka was but number three on a bill of five boxing matches culminating in a heavyweight “contest” (as it was called) between two top-ranked (male) boxers (African-American, Jamaican) who were the stars of the evening.

  Not knowing how to dress for the East Cincinnati Armory fight night Naomi had worn dark corduroy trousers, dark pullover sweater, nondescript jacket, boots. Her hair was brushed back from her face. On her head, a khaki-colored rain hat. Her face was pale, plain as if scrubbed: she rarely wore makeup, thus disappointing (she presumed: Madelena had not actually told her this) her stylish and still-beautiful grandmother for whom artfully applied cosmetics were as crucial as the exquisite silver human-hair wig she now wore.

  Naomi had hoped to look like the most ordinary of boxing fans but a quick glance informed her that in this festive gathering there was no ordinary.

  Everyone in sight was conspicuously well dressed: money had been spent on clothes, shoes, hair, jewelry. Dark-skinned and Hispanic women and girls were lavishly attired, glamorously made up. They might have been models, actresses. They might have been figures in romantic films. Their fingernails were polished and remarkably long. Their hair was spectacular, defying gravity. Their jewelry winked and dazzled even in the gloom of the arena and piercings made their faces glitter. And the men with them were as elaborately dressed, many with gold chains around their necks, stylish shirts open at the throat.

  Naomi was grateful to be ignored and grateful that young black men squeezing past her to their seats were not rude or disrespectful but rather lighthearted, gleeful.

  “Sorry ma’am—God damn.”

  “Sor-ry—”

  The eight-hundred-seat arena was scarcely half-filled by the time of the Elka-Dunphy fight at 8:10 P.M. There came virtually no applause for dark-robed D.D. Dunphy hurrying as if abashed down the aisle on the farther side of the ring, and an outburst of enthusiastic applause for Pryde Elka that faded by the time both boxers were in the ring.

  Naomi was shocked by the vulgarity of the match—“The Squaw” vs. “The Hammer of Jesus.”

  Pryde Elka wore quasi-Indian attire into the ring, an aqua-feathered robe, feathery aqua tassels on her ankle-high shoes. Her hair was very black, as if dyed, in stiff six-inch plaits. Her cheeks appeared to be tattooed in emulation of the savage-painted cheeks of Apache warriors. She was a tight-faced sinewy woman in her early thirties with a deep-tanned skin, close-set eyes, a grim expression about the mouth. She wore dark Spandex shorts to the knee with some sort of advertising logo on them, unless these were Shawnee word-symbols. Her tight-fitting T-shirt was similarly inscribed. Her shoulder and arm muscles were ropy, her dark-tanned legs hard-muscled but desiccated-seeming, like something organic, living wood that has been dehydrated and distilled. Dunphy was wearing plainer attire, black shorts and T-shirt with a sturdy sports bra beneath that did not flatter her body that was thick-set as a heifer’s.

  Naomi stared in alarmed sympathy. She did not want to be patronizing or condescending. Her parents had taught her: do not measure others by yourself for (often) you have had advantages that others have not. Yet how pathetic it seemed to her, that Pryde Elka, said to be a Native American descendant of the Shawnee tribe of Ohio, was billed as “The Squaw”—in combat with D.D. Dunphy, a decade younger, heavier, taller, stronger-looking, billed as “The Hammer of Jesus.”

  Squaw. Hammer of Jesus. Pagan vs. Christian? It was appalling to Naomi Voorhees, child of a culture in which the mere enunciation of “squaw” was an obscenity, and feminist principles of equality and dignity inviolable as scientific facts, that women should be so debased and exploited, presumably willingly.

  In the ring the aqua-feathered robe was removed from Pryde Elka’s shoulders and she strutted about lifting her gleaming red gloves to a splattering of applause. Someone at ringside made a war-whooping sound. As D.D. Dunphy disrobed in her corner, no one responded.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, eight rounds of women’s welterweight boxing courtesy of Midwestern Boxing League . . .”

  There came isolated cries, catcalls and whistles as a bell rang loudly signaling the beginning of the fight. The women boxers rushed at each other meeting in the center of the ring with red-gloved fists pummeling.

  Naomi shrank in her seat. She felt a stab of panic—that one of the women boxers would be hurt, and she would be a witness.

  In a trance of apprehension she sat very still in the hard wooden seat. Wanting to shut her eyes, press her hands against her ears. Blurred and nightmarish the boxers’ flying gloves, swift-thrown punches, grim-set faces. She could hear the women grunting—she could hear their shoes making dry skidding sounds on the canvas.

  God help me why am I here. Why did I think I should come here to discover�
�what?

  Apart from isolated cries, shouts of encouragement, mocking boos the fight was silent—no broadcasters’ voices, no TV. Naomi was not a sports fan but she recognized the absence of sports commentary. Without the continuous chatter of broadcasters boxing is mute and the observer is disoriented with no idea what is happening.

  A crude sound of blows against flesh. She saw that D.D. Dunphy was hitting, and had been hit. She’d been knocked back onto her heels for a moment stunned. Naomi felt a thrill of something like satisfaction—that Dunphy was being hit.

  Relief then, when the fighting abruptly ceased. The boxers were clutching at each other—clinching.

  Or possibly, one of them was trying to throw the other off balance and knock her onto the canvas. Several times the (white, male) referee commanded curtly: “Break!”

  How long the first round was!—by the time the bell rang signaling its end Naomi could scarcely breathe. Immediately both boxers dropped their gloved hands like puppets whose strings have been cut and turned away, to hurry to their corners.

  Naomi was feeling hyper-alert, vigilant. She wondered—which of the boxers had won the round? Had one of the women outfought the other? She saw that a fine line of red gleamed at Dunphy’s hairline even as it was swiftly wiped away by one of the corner men.

  It seemed to Naomi that the elder boxer had been just discernibly more agile on her feet than the younger, backing away from her, moving from side to side to elude blows, while Dunphy had pushed forward aggressively, flatfooted, head lowered like a cobra poised to strike.

  Strange that inside the bright-lit ring there was such concentration, tension! But outside the ring, in the partially filled rows of the Armory, in the aisles where vendors loitered with soft drinks, hot dogs, snacks, the spectators were talking and laughing as if the fight so hard-fought between the two women was of little significance to them, if not something to sneer at. Through the action of the first round a steady stream of spectators entered the Armory, loud-talking and jocular.

  “Man, who’s this? Females? Jesus!”

  The second round began like the first: bell ringing, boxers rushing at each other. But this time (it seemed to Naomi) the younger boxer, the “white” boxer with streaks of color in her spiky hair, was driving her Native American opponent back, skidding-back, cringing-back, toward the ropes where (so suddenly this happened) she appeared to be trapped, and could not protect herself against the other’s wild swinging blows.

  Yet—(and this too, suddenly)—there was an ugly red gash on Dunphy’s forehead, just above her right eye. How had that happened?

  Bleeding badly, wiping blood from her eye with her glove, Dunphy stumbled and staggered. At once Elka was on her with a barrage of blows, some of them wild, some striking their target as spectators began to shout and call out encouragement—Hit her! Hit her! Elka! El-KA!

  Naomi was seized with a sensation of dread. What was happening? A kind of wildness whipped through the Armory. She had an impulse to leap to her feet to join the cry—Hit her! El-KA!

  On her knees the camera was forgotten. The braying of voices close about her was frightening and exciting to her.

  She felt a low, mean thrill of satisfaction, that Luther Dunphy’s daughter had been hit, and hurt. Blood streaking her face and giving her a ghastly blind look. Now you know. You know what it is to be hurt. You are hateful, you deserve to be punished.

  Was the referee about to stop the fight? Naomi didn’t know if she wanted this to happen, for then Dunphy’s punishment would end.

  Fortunately then, the bell rang signaling the end of round two.

  Her heartbeat was quickened. Her breath was quickened. From comments in the seats behind her Naomi gathered that D.D. Dunphy had been “head-butted.” The wily Shawnee warrior had lowered her head and struck Dunphy hard against the ridge of bone above her right eye, seemingly by accident; yet, the referee was deducting points from her for a foul.

  There was a scattering of boos from the audience. Against the referee’s ruling? Against Pryde Elka? Or—D.D. Dunphy?

  “Who is ahead?”—Naomi was anxious to know.

  “Nah, nobody ahead. Not yet.”

  Naomi was hoping that Pryde Elka would win, soon. Hoping that the cut above D.D. Dunphy’s eye would begin bleeding again. And the ugly fight would be halted. For she did not like the feelings it was arousing in her, that were new to her, crude and barbaric and shameful.

  Admit it: you want Dunphy hurt. You want Dunphy badly hurt.

  Like her father the murderer: destroyed.

  But at the start of the third round there came D.D. Dunphy rushing at her opponent with renewed energy, with a kind of pit bull ferocity, flatfooted but relentless, pressing blindly forward. Dunphy resembled both a stocky-bodied adolescent girl and a mature woman, so driven. Her strategy appeared to be sheer pressure: using her weight, her height, her indifference to being hit, to her advantage. Naomi had heard of “counter-punching”—she could see that Dunphy, the less skilled boxer, took a kind of energy from being hit, receiving sharp-stinging jabs to her face, that inflamed her lower face, and bloodied her nose. Each blow seemed to rejuvenate her, inspire her. Elka could punch, and Elka could connect, yet no blow of hers was strong enough to stop Dunphy’s assault; and when the bell rang to end the round, there was applause from the audience and even a cry—Dun-PHY!

  How fickle they are, Naomi thought in disdain. You could not place any faith in them.

  In the next round, and in the next, Dunphy continued to push Elka backward. Many jabs struck Dunphy’s reddened face, many blows struck her shoulder, her midriff, even her breasts, but Dunphy was not deterred. The effect was of a blind creature like a mollusk pressing forward, always forward. In her seat Naomi felt paralyzed. Her mouth had gone dry, she could not stop swallowing, or trying to swallow.

  Each time she opened her eyes it was to see D.D. Dunphy lowering her head, coming forward, swinging. And another time, the cut above Dunphy’s eye began to bleed. Surely the fight would be stopped now? Surely—soon? But Dunphy hardly paused, peering through a mask of blood, blinking and fixing her opponent in her vision, grunting as she struck at Elka with both fists, a left, a right, a blow to the underside of Elka’s chin, unprotected for a fleet second. And Elka was staggered but held on to her opponent as a drowning person would clutch at a rescuer, gasping for breath. Until at last the bell rang again.

  “Now, who is winning?”

  “White girl winning.”

  “White girl?”—Naomi’s voice trailed off in dismay.

  The row of black boys laughed at her. Wasn’t she a white girl, herself?

  Another time, it occurred to Naomi that she could leave. Very quickly, unobtrusively, get to her feet and hurry up the aisle and disappear out of the Armory, find a taxi to take her back to her hotel . . .

  She would call Darren, just to hear his voice. She would laugh with Darren, reminiscing about Katechay Island. Their impossible mother! Was Ms. Matheson some relative of yours? Are you all related?

  No one but Darren with whom she might laugh, laugh until she was exhausted. Both of them sobbing with laughter. Are you all related?

  Fifth round, the boxers got tangled in each other’s legs. Amid a clinch Elka struck furiously at Dunphy’s lower back (was this a foul? kidney-punching?), grabbed at Dunphy’s muscled shoulders, and Dunphy wrenched herself back to get leverage to strike at Elka’s (lowered) head, and suddenly, comically—the two women had fallen to the canvas, and the crowd erupted into laughter as the annoyed referee commanded them: “On your feet. On your feet.”

  Almost, Naomi thought she’d heard the referee say ladies.

  On your feet ladies. Mocking, muttered.

  Or—had she imagined this?

  Badly she wished that Luther Dunphy’s daughter would be knocked down, humiliated—lose this terrible fight. Yet, she did not really want either of the boxers to be seriously hurt.

  Especially she did not want Pryde Elka—(could that really be he
r name? Pryde Elka?)—to be hurt, and to lose. She had read that Elka was the divorced mother of two young children, one of whom was “severely autistic”; she was a factory worker in Electra, Illinois; she’d begun boxing intermittently at the age of seventeen and had had two title fights (which she’d lost); the previous year she’d acquired a new manager and new trainer and was embarked now upon a “comeback campaign.”

  (Some online sources challenged Pryde Elka’s affiliation with the Shawnee Nation. But these were vigorously denied by Elka’s handlers.)

  Information about D.D. Dunphy was sparse. You would not have known that Dunphy was the daughter of a notorious murderer executed in Ohio in 2006. Apart from her boxing record all that was claimed for “The Hammer of Jesus” was that she was active in the Zion Missionary Church in her hometown Dayton, Ohio.

  Eight rounds! The strain was near-unbearable.

  At last the fight was ending. Both boxers appeared exhausted. In the closing seconds Dunphy continued to hammer at Elka who tried to clutch and clinch and (another time) head-butt—but Dunphy was shrewd enough now to avoid being struck in the face by the other’s head.

  Through the fight Elka had moved about the ring far more agilely than Dunphy who’d remained flatfooted, relentless as a landslide. Of the two boxers it was Dunphy whose face was the more battered; her nose was bloody, her right eye swollen shut. How grotesque the quasi-glamorous swaths of color in her hair, the lurid gleaming tattoos on her upper arms! (Naomi had only just noticed a tattoo on Dunphy’s back, just below the nape of her neck—looking like Jesus Is Lord.) She was feeling a hostility for D.D. Dunphy that was near-overwhelming, visceral as nausea.

  Bell rang! Naomi could breathe. The terrible ordeal was over, she would never subject herself to anything like this again.

  Lifting her camera, taking pictures. No one objected, no one noticed. She would record “The Squaw” Pryde Elka barely able to lift her gloved hands in a simulation of boastful victory—“Hammer of Jesus” D.D. Dunphy stunned-seeming (not comprehending that the fight was over?) wiping blood out of her eyes as her handlers hurried to her.