A Book of American Martyrs(141)

She had tried! God knew, she had tried to assemble The Life and Death of Gus Voorhees: An Archive—but she’d been defeated by the enormity of her subject that fell into pieces like something that has been broken and inexpertly mended, that shatters again at the slightest pressure.

In her zeal she’d amassed a dozen folders. Hundreds of pages of notes. Newspaper and magazine clippings, taped interviews with people who’d known and worked with her father (most of which she had yet to transcribe and edit—indeed, some of these she had never returned to). Photocopies of letters written by her father, which recipients had provided; and letters to her father, which Jenna had allowed her to take. (Of course, Jenna had selected an undisclosed number of letters to keep for herself, or perhaps even to destroy, that were “too private” for Naomi to see.) Documents, timelines, sketches. Photographs—every kind of photograph including baby pictures. Much of the material Naomi had typed carefully online but it existed in scattered files of which several had been lost inside malfunctioning computers . . .

Most awkwardly she’d tried to “interview” relatives. What might have seemed like the most obvious course, as well as the easiest, turned out to be extremely difficult. Her mother refused to speak with her at all on this painful subject and her absentee grandmother Madelena Kein had rebuffed her in a terse email—“Maybe someday. But now is too soon. Please do not ask me again.”

Even Darren had discouraged her. He’d have liked to assemble an archive of Gus Voorhees of his own, Naomi supposed.

It had seemed to her also that the complete history of The Life and Death of Gus Voorhees could not be written so long as her father’s murderer remained alive.

Worse, the archive would have to contain material about the assassin, and the highly charged “political environment” out of which he had sprung.

This was the most bitter irony: to wish to honor her father was inexorably bound up with a fixation upon his murderer which filled her with despair, rage, shame.

She did not want to care about Luther Dunphy—whether the man lived or died. She did not want to be consumed by hatred for him, and for the many (hundreds? thousands?) of individuals who’d applauded the “assassination” (as it was called) among the right-to-life movement.

Yet, Voorhees and Dunphy were bound together, unavoidably.

Through history the assassin has attached himself, like a blood-gorged tic, to the individual he has killed. Of the many indignities provided by death, this is the most insulting.

Each time Dunphy had been scheduled to die, Naomi had begun an involuntary count. She had no need to mark the date on the calendar, for it was imprinted in her memory.

Like Darren, she’d become something of an amateur expert in lethal injection. She knew how increasingly difficult it was for penal authorities in the United States to purchase the lethal drugs, from European manufacturers; often it was the case that executions had to be postponed for this reason.

It was possible that Chillicothe had failed to secure the proper drugs in time for Dunphy’s execution. Or, something had gone wrong with the administration of the drugs. Or, the Ohio Judiciary had granted another reprieve.

For Naomi knew, if the drugs had been properly administered to the condemned man at the prescribed time that evening, the execution would have been over by 7:30 P.M.

That it was now 9:20 P.M. and Roberts had not called meant that something had gone terribly wrong.

Pointless to speculate. Yet Naomi was too restless to remain silent.

“The worst news is that it’s been stayed—again.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think—what?”

“I don’t think it has been stayed this time.”

“But—how do you know?”

“Because their final appeal was turned down.”

“But Dunphy’s lawyers will file other claims, or whatever they are called—they file these automatically, even if it’s the final appeal.”

“Well—I don’t think so.”

“But—how do you know?”

“I told you, Christ! I don’t know.”

“But you said—no.”

Quick as a match flaring up, their old childhood animosity. Naomi’s heart beat in opposition to her brother whose authority she must always undermine even as she wanted (badly) for Darren to like her.

Love was not an issue, as love was not a possibility. Naomi knew that Darren did not love her as (probably) Darren did not love anyone in the family except their father who had died.

Very likely, Darren didn’t love anyone at all. In a way, Naomi hoped this was so.

Desperately she had to keep him on the line. She dreaded his hanging up before the news came to him.

“Darren? What time is it there?”

“What time? You know it’s three hours earlier than you.”

“So you’ve been waiting since three P.M.”

It was an inane remark. It was a child’s remark, which Darren barely acknowledged.

Tell me of your life, then! Tell me something that is secret, that no one else knows like our hatred for Luther Dunphy and our wish for him to die.

But Darren was sounding distracted. (Was he speaking to someone there with him? Was someone speaking to him? She could imagine Darren pressing the palm of his hand over the receiver.)