A Book of American Martyrs(145)

What had become of the Dunphy family? Naomi wondered. It was not likely that they lived in Muskegee Falls any longer. Seven years had passed, much had changed in their lives too.

She was walking quickly. But she was not walking steadily. Seen from a distance, she might’ve been mistaken for an undergraduate girl who had had too much to drink, and was not accustomed to drinking.

(Had she poured a glass of red wine, out of Mercedes’s bottle? She didn’t think so. She wondered if her breath smelled.)

Here was another surprise—it was snowing. Every day this week snowfall. Despite alarms of global warming the Michigan winter had been bitter cold. And something was wrong—like a fool she’d run outside without her fleece-lined jacket. Another pair of gloves she’d lost somewhere. Her head was bare. Her hair was damp and tangled from wind-driven snow. She was running recklessly, slipping on the pavement. She’d been neglecting her classes. She’d been neglecting her literacy tutorials. She was letting everyone down exactly as Jenna had let everyone down.

A smile distorted her face like a clamp. Someone called to her—“Whoa! Watch out, girl.”

Snowflakes were blown against her hot face. Veins, capillaries exposed. The heat of blood beating beneath her skin melted the snowflakes at once.

She had thought that she was headed toward the university campus, a shortcut across the snowy stretch in front of the Rackham Building which would take her in the direction of her residence hall but—somehow—she’d taken a wrong turn, or she wasn’t on State Street after all. Or, she’d gone in the wrong direction on State Street.

She was panting. She was very tired suddenly. She did not want to be seen—recognized. She was huddled beneath a scaffolding. Across the street was a Chinese restaurant that had once been her parents’ favorite Ann Arbor restaurant but it had a new name now and the front window was opaque with steam. A voice echoed with astonished glee in her head—Dead! Luther Dunphy is dead.

The smile remained on her mouth, clamped in place. Rivulets of tears were freezing on her cheeks.

She left the shelter of the scaffolding. She needed to be alone. She did not want to answer questions. She did not want to be interviewed. And now how do you feel, you and your siblings? Now that the assassin of your father Gus Voorhees has been executed? Hurrying along an alley. An odor of beer and greasy food wafted through a vent and made her feel nauseated. There was an overflowing Dumpster, litter scattered on the ground. It was the most bitter truth, she had not wanted to tell Darren—no undergraduate she’d met seemed to know who Gus Voorhees was, or had been. Her roommates did not know. Her closest friend in the residence hall had clearly never heard the name Voorhees.

Someone had asked her with a quizzical smile, isn’t Voorhees the name of a university building?

These were contemporaries who’d been born, like Naomi, in the late 1980s. They’d scarcely been in middle school when Gus Voorhees had died.

The fact is: none of this matters.

Gus has ceased to exist and Gus is not coming back.

Recklessly she was crossing an icy-slushy street. Headlights blurred as if underwater. Someone sounded a horn sharply—“Get out of the street, bitch!” She was very cold and could not remember where the hell she’d left her fleece-lined jacket with the zipper hood. And the beautiful leather gloves her grandmother Madelena had sent her—out of nowhere—at Christmas. Thinking of you, Naomi. No need to get back to me but let’s keep in touch.

In front of her were concrete steps leading down—somewhere. She had a vague idea that this was the way to the arboretum—though it was dark, and snowing, and the arboretum was miles away.

They’d been happy there, in the arboretum! She could not recall but she knew because she’d been told.

Little Naomi carried in a backpack, on Daddy’s strong back. Why could she not remember? She hated Darren, who’d stolen all her memories.

Not seeing where she placed her foot she slipped, fell heavily on icy stone steps, and lay stunned on freezing pavement six feet below. Her mouth was bleeding but she felt no pain. A wonderful numbness coursed through her. In the distance were festive voices, a sound of traffic. It was not late on State Street in Ann Arbor: the drinking places were open.

We’d been so happy there. Ann Arbor, when we were newlyweds.

Badly she wanted to be with them! Her young parents.

Wanted to remember that exquisite happiness, before she’d been born.





ALONE


Next of kin? Whom to notify?

No wallet? No ID? No name?

In the early morning she was found by Ann Arbor sanitation workers, where she’d fallen down a flight of stone steps at Terrace Place which was a dead end of vacated buildings. Blood coagulated at her mouth and in a hard little trickle on her forehead. Snow covered her motionless body like a shroud.

She was not dead: though she was suffering from hypothermia there remained a heartbeat.

Medical workers found a pulse, detected a breath, checked her blood pressure and partly revived her, lifted her onto a stretcher and bore her by ambulance to the emergency room of the University Hospital where once as a young man decades ago Gus Voorhees had been a resident physician.

Her fingers and toes were stiff with cold. Her temperature was 95.2°F.

Mistaken for a homeless person, maybe. A mentally ill person, of about twenty, Caucasian and weighing approximately 108 pounds.