A Book of American Martyrs(100)

First days they’d moved here, on Depot Street, one two three she’d counted them, fucking stupid sneakers, four five times she counted them, craning her neck, grinning upward and her heart racing in fury.

“Yah, it’s kind of weird. Stupid.”

“Who does it?”

“Who? How’d I know?”

No one could explain. Dawn was exasperated, for the sneakers drew her eyes upward repeatedly and involuntarily and appeared to be perfectly good sneakers no filthier or more frayed than her own.

Also she had reason to dislike Mad River Junction for the air smelled of creosote from the sprawl of a train yard at the foot of their aunt’s hill. And no one knew them here as they’d been known in Muskegee Falls before what had happened to their father so all that was said of them was Those new people, you know—Luther Dunphy’s family that had to move here.

Or—That crazy guy who killed people in Muskegee Falls with a shotgun, they put away in the nuthouse. His wife and kids.


SHE WAS THIRTEEN years old. And then she was fourteen.

Made to transfer from the Muskegee Falls school to the Mad River school she’d been kept back a year. She had hated the Muskegee Falls school but after Mr. Barron had been shot (it was explained to her) there was such dislike of the Dunphys in Muskegee Falls they could not continue to live in their old house even though (it was not exactly explained to Dawn but she understood) the St. Paul Missionary Church and “donors” from Army of God were helping out financially while their father was not able to provide for his family.

But Dawn had worse problems in the new town with “reading comprehension” and “writing skills” than she’d had back in Muskegee Falls. Arithmetic was now called math, a dizzying swirl of numerals that made her feel nauseated.

It will be best for your daughter to repeat eighth grade. That way she will have a solid foundation to build upon, to advance.

Luke too would’ve been made to take his year over, tenth grade in high school, but Luke was sixteen which was the legal age to quit school in Ohio and so shrugged and told them fuck it he was quitting, he’d had enough of crummy shitty school.

Dawn did not want to quit school—not yet. She did not want to displease Daddy at such a time.

And yet: fourteen years old and in eighth grade (which she’d already finished in Muskegee Falls) so she towered over the girls and was of a height with the taller boys.

She’d begged the woman in the principal’s office with the prissy eyeglasses could she take the test again, thinking she would remember the answers the second time, but it did not work out that way for the second test was all different questions and her score was even lower than the first.

“Eighth grade will not be so bad. You will be a little ahead of the other students, Dawn. Look at it that way!”

She had grown inches in a single year. She stood five feet five inches tall. She weighed 130 pounds. All that worry about Daddy—her stomach was always empty-feeling, needing to be filled. She was solid-built as a young heifer with hard-muscled shoulders, arms, thighs, legs that wanted to lower her into a crouch, for better protection. Her feet were large as her brother Luke’s feet and held the grip of the earth firm as hooves.

Luke and Dawn watched TV boxing when everyone else was in bed at Aunt Mary Kay’s house. In their aunt’s house Edna Mae did not have such control over the TV as she’d had in Muskegee Falls where, when their crummy old set no longer worked, Edna Mae hadn’t gotten it repaired for months and there was nothing of interest they were allowed to watch anyway.

TV boxing came on late on one of the cable channels—10:00 P.M. to midnight. Her and Luke’s favorite boxers were Roy Jones Jr., Floyd Mayweather, Arturo Gatti, and Mike Tyson—who wasn’t heavyweight champion any longer but in film clips you saw him, Ironman Mike Tyson.

They cheered the winning boxers. Sneered at the losers dripping blood onto the canvas.

“I could box as good as some of these guys,” Dawn said. “I bet I could.”

“Bet you could not.”

“There’s girls boxing now. I could be one of them.”

“Women’s boxing is such shit. People just like to see their titties jiggle and their asses. Don’t kid yourself.”

Dawn’s face flamed. Her brother was like most of the boys she knew, he could say nasty things to shock and silence you, and to wound you deeply, without seeming to know what he did. Or, if he knew, not giving a damn.

Seemed like, now their father was gone, and their mother sick or sleeping most of the time, there was no one to hear Luke say crude nasty things right inside the house where he’d never have dared, before. And Dawn was more and more saying bad words, like her tongue was too big for her mouth and could not be controlled.

Shitty. Fuck. These words came into her head to suffuse her with shame and dismay, that Jesus would hear such nastiness.

But Jesus understood. Jesus would not judge.

Stubbornly she said to Luke: “Still, I bet I could. If I tried.”

“Tried what?”

“Tried to be a boxer.”

Luke laughed, dismissively. He said:

“A boxer uses his feet, to move around fast. A boxer uses his brains, to figure out what to do. You’d stand there like some half-ass and get hit in the face and go down in a heap—knockout.” Luke laughed meanly as if seeing this spectacle on TV right now.