A Book of American Martyrs(110)

She’d felt such shame. Wanted to shrink up like one of those inchworms you step on, on the sidewalk, curl up to make themselves smaller.

No. She’d felt such rage. Flaring up inside her sudden and hot. Fingers flexing she’d have liked to make into a fist to hit the girl in her smirking face and draw blood.

And when the other girls screamed, rush at them striking with both fists the smirking faces until all were bloodied and retreating in terror from the wrath of the Hammer.

Jesus had said I bring not peace but a sword. In Dawn’s vision the sword of Jesus was a hammer.

Sleepless nights had yielded the Hammer of Jesus. Somehow the vision had come to her fully formed. She’d wanted to speak of it to another person, to Reverend Dennis (maybe) but was unable to force out the words when she’d had the opportunity.

She knew only a little of the Great Tribulation. This would be a time of hardship, trouble, disaster, the “last days” just before Jesus returned to establish His kingdom on earth and to convert the Jews of Israel . . . None of this was clear to her. She had never listened very carefully. She had no idea when it would come—in a hundred years, in a thousand years, in a few years. She could not think that her father’s being tried in the Broome County Courthouse was in any way related to such a massive prophecy but of course in such matters Dawn Dunphy could not know with any certainty.

Truth that passeth understanding. The way, the truth, and the Light.

It was her habit now at school to deliberately not-hear. For they had “passed” her into ninth grade, she knew—it was no secret. Other students known to be barely literate unable to read, write, do math at their grade level similarly “passed” out of eighth grade and into ninth grade were expected to quit on their sixteenth birthdays and give the school district no more trouble but Dawn Dunphy did not intend to quit but to graduate.

Her daddy had told her he would be proud of her if she graduated. Her daddy had been unhappy, that Luke had quit on the morning of his sixteenth birthday. She had said—I will, Daddy. I will graduate. I promise.

Seated at the back of the classroom where no one listened. The dead zone all coarse-mouthed boys and among them the sole girl Dawn Dunphy in shirt untucked over dungarees and frayed size-ten sneakers with her hair crudely shorn (scissor-cut by her aunt Mary Kay) to expose the back of her neck. Through the first week of algebra class she had tried to pay attention despite the boys’ stupid mutterings and jokes, she had tried to make sense of what the teacher was saying, jotting numerals and equations onto the blackboard in clicking white chalk . . . But somehow then she’d given up, thinking of her father being tried.

The Hammer of Jesus! She’d have liked to wield such a hammer if it was a giant hammer like something coming out of a cloud to devastate the courthouse and the men’s detention facility like Samson bringing down the walls of the temple.

In ninth grade she did not have Miss Schine for homeroom. She did not love Miss Schine (who had betrayed her) but she missed her very badly. But there was no excuse for wandering over into the eighth grade corridor for all who saw her (including Miss Schine) would know why she was there and would mock and laugh at her.

In Miss Schine’s homeroom (which had also been her English class and study hall) Dawn Dunphy had been seated in the front row of seats. But in her new homeroom, she was seated at the very rear of the room. And in all her ninth grade classes, she was seated at the very rear of the room. Bitterly she hated this, her teachers dismissing her, expecting her to quit at sixteen like the other poorly performing students and troublemakers, “learning disabled” boys and girls for whom no one had patience.

Abruptly then on this Tuesday in September the class was interrupted. You could almost not recognize the principal’s voice over the loudspeaker, it was so strangely agitated, breathless.

This is an emergency announcement. All students are to immediately leave their classrooms and return to their homerooms for further instructions . . .

Filing out of the classroom and into the corridor, that was already crowded, chaotic. You would think there was a fire at the school except the fire alarm wasn’t ringing, they were accustomed to the deafening alarms ringing for fire drill once a week and now there was silence except for the loudspeaker voice repeating the emergency announcement like a robot except it was a real person, you could hear breathing and a faint stammering of words.

Like others she’d grabbed her things. Books, backpack. Her heart was thudding in her chest for she was imagining the Hammer of Jesus striking the school . . .

One minute pressing her fingers against her ears to muffle sound and to hear more clearly the BEAT BEAT BEAT of her blood and the next minute on her feet with the others trying not to push, shove, panic on the stairs and then in homeroom sinking into her desk at the back of the room, that had been shoved sideways in a scramble by other students to get to their desks, disoriented by the blank looks of the adults, blank frightened looks of adults usually composed and in control and in possession of all knowledge.

Then, when they were seated, the loudspeaker voice continued in a jagged lurching fashion:

“It has been announced that the United States has been attacked by a foreign country. There have been bombings in New York City and in Washington, D.C. It is not known if the President of the United States has been killed but it is known that thousands of people have been killed by ‘terrorist’ explosions and more attacks are expected. It is being advised that you remain in your homerooms until further notice when you will be allowed to return to your homes . . .”