A Book of American Martyrs(120)

Since they’d begun to visit Luther at Chillicothe, Edna Mae had been in contact with the friendly prison chaplain, who called himself Reverend Davey. Or rather, Reverend Davey had been in contact with Edna Mae, for it was his custom to befriend the wives and close relatives of condemned men, to whom he offered sympathy and commiseration. He’d told Edna Mae that her husband was a “very special Christian” and in a “state of grace”; that of the prisoners on Death Row, that numbered a dozen, it was Luther Dunphy who was “most admired” by COs and by his fellow prisoners. Reverend Davey had said that he would “miss Luther like a brother.”

He had also told Edna Mae that it would be a “relief to Luther’s soul” if he expressed remorse for having shot and killed Timothy Barron but Edna Mae had not seemed to hear this.

As the execution date had approached, Edna Mae’s sister Noreen had been in touch with her to offer sympathy and commiseration as well. The sisters had not been close for years and now Edna Mae had not the energy to telephone Noreen with the good news of the reprieve, as she had not the energy to call anyone in her family.

Mary Kay who was in a very festive mood as if she’d just won the state lottery made these calls. She relayed to the older children the lawyer’s intention to appeal again to the governor for a “commutation” of sentence to life in prison and somehow in the relaying it seemed (almost) to be a certainty that Luther’s sentence would be commuted. And also, in the relaying, it began to seem that there might be a possibility of parole—“But not for a long time, I’m afraid. Not for a looong time, kids.”


LUKE WAS HELPING HIMSELF to beer from Mary Kay’s refrigerator. And Mary Kay was drinking too, splashing beer into a glass. “Edna Mae? Dawn? C’mon join us! Celebrate the good news, Luther has been reprieved.”

Dawn had been blinking and dazed-looking since she’d come in the door. At Home Depot where (she said) the stockroom area where she worked wasn’t heated she wore heavy corduroys, two shirts, a pullover sweater and a hoodie, and on her feet woolen socks and work-boots. Since quitting school—(it was said of Dawn that she had “quit” and not that she’d been “expelled”)—she no longer groomed herself quite so carefully as she’d once done and her hair hung in sullen greasy coils around her face. Her forehead was blemished and her fingernails were broken and edged with dirt. When her great-aunt offered her a beer Dawn laughed as if suspecting a joke but Mary Kay was not laughing, and urged her to take the beer. “Lighten up, D.D. ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’”

D.D. was some fond-funny name Mary Kay had made up to call Dawn. But D.D. had not caught on with anyone else, and so Mary Kay was the only one who called Dawn by this name out of a kind of foolish stubbornness.

Hesitantly Dawn accepted the can of beer, which was very cold. In a mumble she said that sixteen was too young to drink.

“Hell it is. This is a private party, you can drink any G-damn drink you want.” Mary Kay laughed pronouncing G-damn with a flair.

The phone was ringing. Luther’s relatives were calling. Edna Mae’s relatives were calling. Word had gotten out, Luther Dunphy had been granted another stay of execution.

And had the execution been rescheduled? No one seemed to know.

In her confused state Edna Mae did not wish to speak to anyone on the phone. She did not want to speak to Noreen, or to her own mother. She did not want to speak to Reverend Davey—or was it Reverend Dennis who’d called? She did not want to speak to a reporter from the Mad River Junction Weekly. Some of those who called were neighbors and friends of Mary Kay Mack with whom Mary Kay spoke in a loud celebratory voice and to Edna Mae’s horror she heard her aunt invite some of these strangers over to the house.

Edna Mae was sitting in a kitchen chair. Staring at the head of foam on the beer freshly poured into Mary Kay’s glass steeling herself to see the foam overflow and run down the side of the glass onto the kitchen table or worse yet onto the linoleum floor where it would be sticky underfoot and no one would notice except Edna Mae.





LETHAL


She wished she hadn’t. It was a mistake.

Discovering what lethal injection meant.


WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE they’d gone together to look up lethal injection online at the public library.

Soon after the verdict and the sentencing of their father to death by lethal injection they’d gone—together—(a rarity in recent years for Luke had little time for his sister)—to the Mad River Junction library where there were computers available to the public; and Luke typed in the terrible words lethal injection that acquired a kind of matter-of-fact calm by being so typed into the library computer in a brightly lit space patronized by numerous others.

Dawn had difficulty reading the entry for her eyes filled with moisture. She had to read leaning over her brother’s shoulder which was awkward.

Luke read slowly, squinting and grimacing. He brought his eyes near the computer screen as if he had trouble seeing the letters. Luke had never been a good reader in school and was challenged to keep his gaze moving along a line of print and not careening off in other directions as you might do with a picture, a video game, something seen out a window.

Lethal injection was a lengthy entry in Wikipedia. They skimmed the names of the drugs of which only one—“barbiturate”—was familiar to them. Others were “potassium chloride”—“sodium thiopental”—“pancuronium bromide”—which they could not have pronounced. Dawn began to tremble reading that the execution protocol “ideally” resulted in the death of the condemned prisoner within seven to eleven minutes after the procedure was started; but sometimes there was considerable difficulty finding a vein into which to inject the chemicals and sometimes there were mistakes in the dosage since it was a set dosage for all subjects no matter their size, age, or physical condition. No doctor or medical worker would participate in an execution for “humanitarian” and “professional” reasons and so the individuals who administered the lethal drugs were prison personnel with no training.