A Book of American Martyrs(107)
I said to Luther, Just pray to God the way you did the other time and Luther said, deadpan, Why would I pray? God has already made up His mind.
MORNING OF THE second trial seventeen miles away in Broome County Edna Mae could not rouse herself from bed when her daughter Dawn tried to wake her.
“Mawmaw! Wake up.”
But Edna Mae could not wake up.
Lethargy heavy as a leaded net lay upon all her limbs rendering her helpless.
Her eyelids too were heavy as lead.
The insolent daughter went so far as to push up one of Edna Mae’s eyes with her thumb shouting Wake up wake up WAKE UP MAWMAW but it was not to happen.
Luther’s older brother Norman was coming by the house, on the drive from Sandusky, to take his sister-in-law Edna Mae with him to Muskegee Falls; but when Norman arrived, in a car bearing three other Dunphy relatives, Edna Mae was still in bed, and not yet fully conscious.
Dawn ran out front to meet them. “Guess you’ll have to go without Mawmaw.”
She felt a stab of shame, seeing how her uncle Norman exchanged a glance with his younger brother Jonathan. As if it didn’t surprise any of the Dunphys that Luther’s wife was letting him down when he needed her.
“‘Mawmaw’ not feeling well again? That’s it?”
There was a sneering emphasis on both Mawmaw and again. Dawn understood that her uncle was furious with Edna Mae and by extension with Dawn—with all of Luther’s family.
Still she said: “Tell Daddy hello, Uncle Norman. Tell him we’re praying for him! Please.”
Usually, in the presence of her father’s brothers, Dawn was self-conscious and mute; her wish was not to be noticed by them. But something of Miss Schine’s manner had influenced her. Though Miss Schine had betrayed her and was no longer her friend often she found herself thinking—This is how Miss Schine would speak.
Each morning she brushed her hair with the pretty blue plastic hairbrush Miss Schine had given her. Sometimes she dared to look into a mirror, hoping she would not be too homely that day.
Her uncle Norman stared at Dawn as if he’d never seen her before. Finally muttering, “Yeh. OK. Sure. I will. If they let me near him.”
IT HAD BEEN DECIDED that neither Dawn nor Luke would attend the new trial. Dawn could not miss school, and Luke could not take off from work. Their great-aunt Mary Kay Mack had expressed a wish to attend the trial to provide “moral support” for her niece’s husband but did not dare request time out from Walmart for fear she’d be summarily fired.
Edna Mae felt so bad! She’d fully intended to come with the Dunphys to Muskegee Falls—(she had laid out her best clothes the night before)—but was so exhausted when Dawn tried to wake her that she could scarcely lift her head from the pillow, and could not keep her eyes open.
OXYCONTIN PILLS Edna Mae swallowed down with water from her scummy bathroom plastic cup the night before. Problem was she could not remember if she’d taken her daily dosage, 15 milligrams OxyContin three times a day, or if she’d miscounted, and had taken one or even two too many.
Before the trouble at the Women’s Center Luther had sometimes counted out the pills for Edna Mae, leaving them on the bureau top in their bedroom each morning. He’d tried to hide the pills from Edna Mae so she couldn’t take more than her daily allotment. But now, there was no one to oversee her. Mary Kay Mack was prescribed for diet pills that left her edgy and over-excited and forgetful and she could not take time to oversee Edna Mae’s medications as well as her own.
Worst thing, Edna Mae’s bowels were constipated. Bad stomach cramps! Dr. Hills had warned her about this “unfortunate” side effect of the OxyContin but when Edna Mae tried to cut back on the pills her nerves became tight as piano wire you could strum to make shiver and shudder up and down her spine and she’d get to crying and could not stop.
“Sounds like they’re just presenting the same ‘evidence’ as the first time. Witnesses going to say how they saw Luther with a shotgun running up the driveway. How the gunshots scared the hell out of them, they’d been desperate to hide.”
Norman Dunphy laughed harshly at this imagined scene funny as some stupid thing on TV.
No one else laughed. Dawn was trying not to see her daddy behaving in such a way.
If she gave it thought, she could understand—her daddy had not ever behaved in such a way but people were accusing him.
Bearing false witness. That was it.
Edna Mae was sitting in a sort of daze listening to her brother-in-law without exactly seeming to hear his actual words. Meekly now she asked how Luther was?—and Norman said, frowning, “Well. He missed you.”
Did he! Edna Mae blinked as if she’d been slapped.
Dawn saw the meanness in her uncle’s hatchet-sharp face. That little tinge of self-righteousness in the man’s mouth, knowing he’d hurt his brother’s wife he had come to dislike.
All of the Dunphys had come to dislike Edna Mae. Even the elder Dunphys, Dawn’s grandparents.
Among the Dunphys there was even talk that Edna Mae was to blame for what Luther had done. The St. Paul Missionary Church and all this Army of God bullshit was entirely the fault of her.
After the first day’s session at the Broome County Courthouse Norman stopped by the house on Depot Street in Mad River Junction on his way home to Sandusky with the others. By this time—late afternoon—Edna Mae was fully awake and reasonably well groomed and had even smeared red lipstick onto her thin mouth because she knew that Norman Dunphy approved of women who made some attempt to appear attractive to men though he might yet be contemptuous of the attempt.