A Book of American Martyrs(119)
You could see in her face she’d be trouble. Though she had not actually caused any trouble at school yet, that we knew of. Probably she was dyslexic. You see that pretty often in these poor-white families where almost nobody graduates from high school or even sometimes middle school and there’s high absenteeism and not a surprise, a father or some other family member is incarcerated.
The surprising thing was, the Dunphy girl—“Dawn”—(later she called herself “D.D.” but not when she was at our school)—had a younger sister named Anita, and a younger brother Noah—except for being almost mute in their classes they were not bad students, the girl especially—what you’d call bright-average, and mostly clean and well-mannered. Totally different from the older sister and everybody else in the family, probably.
After being expelled from school Dawn worked somewhere local like Home Depot. Then news came from Cleveland she was some sort of girls’ boxing champion—“D.D. Dunphy”—“The Hammer”—this was a surprise! Interviewed on some Cleveland cable TV station after a fight and when they asked her where she was from in Ohio she said Muskegee Falls. Like she’d never lived in Mad River Junction at all.
THE STAY
Edna Mae! Come. Jesus extended His hand to hers.
She felt the fingers grip hers. Jesus’s strong fingers. Jesus’s patient fingers. If she’d wanted to withdraw her own hand she could not have done so.
She was awake, her brain ached but it was alert and alive. Yet she could not move. The night before she’d taken a new pill, a hexagonal green pill that melted under her tongue. Now her tongue was numb in her mouth like something that had died there.
Edna Mae! Hurry. The cross lay on the barren ground. They were forcing a man down, on his back, and his arms outspread, upon the cross that must have measured seven feet at its height. They would nail the man’s hands and feet to the cross.
She was wetting a cloth in cold water. She would press the wetted cloth against the man’s bleeding forehead. She would press the wetted cloth against his bleeding hands, his bleeding feet where the terrible three-inch spikes had been driven in.
He had been a carpenter. That had been his life, before God had singled him out for a special destiny.
It was a melancholy irony, that he who’d once wielded hammers, had once driven three-inch spikes into wood, should suffer in such a way.
Edna Mae! Come now.
Hurriedly she wetted the washcloth to lift to her heated face. Water in the cloth cupped to her eyes so that she sighed in pleasure for her eyes were parched from all she’d seen in the night. She was so exhausted! But she’d been wakened from sleep by the sound of His voice.
Tried to take care, shaking out one of the green hexagonal pills into her hand. A new doctor now in Mad River Junction was prescribing a new medication for her for (he’d said) she had become over-dependent upon the old.
But she had a small quantity of the old. Shrewdly she’d hoarded these precious (white) pills for a time when the new pills would not be strong enough.
On the stairs, running footsteps. Someone rapped on the bathroom door and called her name excitedly and in that instant the pill slipped from her hand—“Oh!” She was on her knees groping for the pill that had rolled beneath the sink on the grimy floor.
“Edna Mae! Edna Mae! Open the door!”
It was the morning of October 29, 2002.
JESUS HAVE MERCY on his soul. Lord have mercy.
Beloved husband Luther Dunphy who gave his life that others might live.
“This day you shall be with me in paradise.”
EXCEPT, THE ASTONISHING NEWS was: the governor had granted a stay of execution.
Another time, pending the appeal on his behalf that was winding its slow way through the Ohio State Court of Appeals, Luther Dunphy’s life had been saved.
She could not comprehend at first. Staring at their glowing faces.
A stay of execution!
By the grace of God, Luther has been spared.
She had given him up for dead. Her beloved husband. She had prayed for his soul and she had commended him to God and now it seemed to be that God had granted them a reprieve.
One of Luther’s lawyers had called at 9:40 A.M. of October 29.
Fewer than ten hours before preparations for the execution were to begin at the Chillicothe State Correctional Institution near Lucasville.
“Mrs. Dunphy? Good news! We just heard from the Governor . . .”
She listened. Her hand holding the receiver shook. There came a roaring in her ears as of ice and snow sliding down a steep roof.
This lawyer whose name she could not have recalled was saying now that he and his team would petition the governor to commute Luther’s sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole—“We have a very good chance, I think. Mrs. Dunphy? Hello? Are you there?”
Someone took the receiver from her fingers before it fell to the floor.
In the Dunphy family there was rejoicing. Dawn was summoned home from work at Home Depot and Luke arrived soon after. It had been planned that Luke would drive them to the Chillicothe Correctional Institution that afternoon—Edna Mae, Mary Kay, Dawn, and himself—so that they could say good-bye to Luther during the final visitation between three and four o’clock.
Preparations for the execution were scheduled to begin at six o’clock. And the execution was to begin promptly at eight. But the call had disrupted all plans for this special day.