A Book of American Martyrs(131)

“No.”

“No—what?”

“I don’t want that.”

“You don’t want—?”

“People to protest. Sign petitions. Interfere.”

“But, Luther—”

“I said no.”

“But our appeal has been denied. Our final appeal. You know that.”

This was what Luther knew: he could not oppose the execution, on principle. His principle was that a man should not defy the will of God in a matter so crucial.

Not quite allowing himself to think—It will not happen. God will not allow it to happen. It has been postponed many times and will be postponed again.


AT CHILLICOTHE THERE were happy times. In fact, many happy times.

Daily workouts gave him much pleasure. Heart pumping hard and sweat oozing down his face and sides so with a kind of boyish glee it came to him—I am alive.

The man he had killed, the abortion-doctor Voorhees: he was not alive.

Perhaps there was not pleasure in this knowledge, exactly. But there was justice.


PRISON-ISSUE CLOTHES he wore: jumpsuit, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, boxers, socks, cheap coarse fabrics manufactured by American Corrections, Inc. Much-laundered clothes he’d come to inhabit comfortably.


EACH DAY in his cell that measured six feet by nine feet with a height of nine feet six inches he did his squats—slow, never hurried, with concentration, counting in groups of ten.

He did his sits-ups, push-ups, leg raises counting in groups of ten.

He did his handstands, even headstands. These were particularly slow, and required intense concentration.

His exercises. Particular to him.

Like those special prayers, particular to him.

Because he was on Death Row and not in the general population at Chillicothe he did not have yard privileges. He did not have exercise room privileges. He was not allowed dumbbells or weights in his cell. He had learned to compensate by exerting pressure on muscles in his upper body in vigorous exercises worked out over a period of time with much care and calculation.

Pressing the palms of his hands against the wall and pushing forward, for instance. Counting (slowly) to ten before releasing pressure so extreme his arms and shoulders trembled and the tendons in his neck stiffened as if about to snap.

Each of these routines, ten times a day spaced through the day at precise intervals.

One hour a day he was brought from his cell and led outside into a penned-off area of the yard like the kind in which quarantined cattle might be kept. This area he estimated to be approximately fifteen feet by twenty feet. The sky was a patch of usually faint light high, high above the dull-gray concrete walls and often if it was raining, the rain did not seem to reach Luther Dunphy lifting his face to it.

In this space, he could “run”—as he could not in his cell.

An entire set of exercises he could do outdoors, once a day, with more pleasure than those he did in his cell.

More often now, there was pain. In cold damp weather, pain.

Considerable pain in knee-joints, thighs and tendons. The squats brought tears to his eyes.

On his back, knees bent, legs rapidly “running”—jolts of pain to his hips that caused tears to leak from his eyes down the sides of his cheeks.

No longer young. He had to concede that.

In this place, in the solitary confinement of Death Row, he had become middle-aged.

(Though he wasn’t always sure of his age. When it had begun, the inexorable sequence of events that led to this cell at Chillicothe, he had been thirty-nine, he knew.)

(Now, six years later? seven years? Had to be forty-five or -six.)

(His children’s ages he had forgotten. When he thought of them they were fixed at younger ages. And Daphne among them, the youngest. And though he’d seen Edna Mae recently, in his mind’s eye he saw her as a younger woman, a baby in her arms. Always a woman is happy, a baby in her arms.)

At the crown of his head it felt as if some of his hair had fallen out. So slowly, over months and years, he’d hardly noticed. Except touching his head and feeling the hard bumpy skull with patches of fuzz he had not noticed before.

On Death Row there were no mirrors. You do not need to see the person you inhabit. You do not need to examine your own face, stare into your own eyes.

He’d forgotten his face. Except for the birthmark on his cheek.

Very slightly rough, it was. The texture of the birthmark when he drew his fingertips across it.

If he tried to remember his face—(which rarely he did, for why?)—he was likely to recall his brother Jonathan’s face, not his own.

His brothers at the kitchen table. Shared moods between the boys that excluded Luther.

He had always liked Jonathan who was two years older than he. He had always feared and disliked their older brother Norman.

In Norman’s face in the courtroom at Muskegee Falls he’d seen incredulity, shock—hurt and dismay—at the verdict guilty.

The deep shame of guilty.

His brothers rarely visited him at Chillicothe. His parents were said to be too ill to make the journey.

Heartsick was a word told to him, by someone.

Five times the execution of Luther Dunphy had been scheduled and four times it had been “stayed” by a judiciary order sent to the Ohio Department of Corrections. The first execution date had been in August 2000 and it was now February 2006 and it was not uncommon (Luther’s lawyer had told him) that an inmate might wait on Death Row for ten, twelve, even fifteen and (in a rare case) twenty years before being executed; and in this lengthy period of time there was always the possibility of an appeal being granted, or clemency, or commutation of sentence. We will not give up, Luther!—the young lawyer had promised.