A Book of American Martyrs(144)



Often on the phone Jenna sounded like someone making a careful, precise public utterance not like a mother speaking to a daughter who’d called her because she’d been feeling lonely, and anxious.

All that Naomi knew was that her mother was living now in Bennington, Vermont; that she worked with a small law firm, very likely comprised of women, in Bennington, and that she had a visiting appointment at Bennington College.

Whenever it was proposed that Naomi visit Jenna, Jenna quickly said, “Yes of course, soon. We will look forward to that.”

Or, “Soon! When this ‘bungalow’ I’m renting is habitable for a guest.”

Naomi’s legal address was her grandparents’ home in Birmingham, Michigan. De facto, Clem and Adele had been their grandchildren’s guardians since Jenna’s departure. They were such good people! Gus’s death had ravaged Grandfather Clem but he rarely spoke of his loss and neither he nor Adele spoke critically of their wayward daughter-in-law. Naomi tried to keep in frequent contact with them for she was grateful for them—their unstinting support, their affection. Even the smiling step-grandmother, Naomi tried to love.

Well—love was an overstatement.

She tried also to keep in touch with Melissa who remained so young—sixteen. Living with their grandparents in the house in Birmingham and attending now the prestigious Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills where she took a course in Mandarin Chinese, cello lessons, played soccer, and earned uniformly high grades. A life their father would have disdained as suburban, “preppy.”

When Naomi spoke to Melissa she never alluded to the subject. She could not have brought herself to utter the name Dunphy. She supposed that Melissa was aware of the imminent execution in Ohio for there was sure to be coverage in local media, considering Gus Voorhees’s renown in that part of Michigan. But she couldn’t speak of such an ugly matter to her sensitive young sister.

Melissa was a shy girl who could be urged to speak enthusiastically about her courses and school “activities.” She seemed to Naomi to belong to another era, long ago when the Voorhees family had all been different people.


NAOMI WAS TELLING DARREN about Melissa when, at 9:34 P.M., Darren interrupted her.

“Jesus! He’s calling me. It must be over.”

Naomi listened intently. She could hear her brother speaking with Roberts—she assumed it must be Roberts.

“Darren? Hello? Hello? What has happened? Is he—dead?”

She could hear Darren’s voice—(he was asking Elliot questions)—but couldn’t make out his words. She was beginning to feel light-headed as if the floorboards of this unfamiliar place were shifting beneath her feet.

Then, Darren’s voice was loud on the phone. “Yes! He’s dead.”

Naomi wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Dead . . .”

Darren told her grimly that the execution had been “botched.” It had gone on for two hours. The observers hadn’t seen it—most of it.

“They drew a curtain so that no one could see how terrible it was . . . Jesus!”

Dead! Luther Dunphy was dead.

Naomi tried to stammer a question but Darren wasn’t on the phone. She could hear him talking with Elliot Roberts and in the next instant the line went dead.

Tried to call Darren back. But no answer.

After several rings, a recording switched on. Naomi pleaded:

“Darren! Pick up! Talk to me! Please.”

For several desperate minutes she tried to call her brother. The landline, the cell phone. “Damn you! Darren. Don’t leave me alone now.”

She sent him an email. Darren rarely answered her emails.

She called again, and no answer.


IT HAD HAPPENED, AT LAST: Luther Dunphy was dead.

It was over. It had ended.

She was feeling—well, what was she feeling? As if the top of her skull had been sheared away. Such lightness! Was this—joyousness?

She was outside. On the street. (But which street? She’d forgotten where she was—an apartment borrowed for the evening from an Ann Arbor graduate student friend.)

Here was a surprise—she was weak with hunger. She supposed it was hunger, she’d forgotten to eat since breakfast. She’d forgotten to drink liquids and was feeling faint now, dehydrated.

In the borrowed apartment she’d considered drinking a glass or two of (borrowed) wine out of a bottle she’d found in a cupboard. But she had not dared, for fear that she would lose control and drink much of the bottle.

She’d begun drinking at the age of seventeen, at high school parties in Birmingham. Not serious drinking. Of course, she never drank alone.

What had Darren said—the execution had been “botched.” It had gone on for more than two hours. She’d read of such executions, the suffering of the victim. She felt a twinge of horror, that Luther Dunphy must have suffered in this way.

For the first time, she thought of Dunphy’s family—wife, children. What did they know of what had happened to him. How had the execution been for them.

At one time, she and Darren had taken note of the Dunphys. They had seen pictures online of Edna Mae, Luke, Dawn, Anita, and Noah. These had not been clear pictures but blurred photos taken without the consent of the Dunphys.

Dawn was the child closest in age to Naomi. Hardly a “child”—a big-boned Eskimo-faced girl with defiant eyes. Luke was the one closest in age to Darren.

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