A Book of American Martyrs(188)

“Because there was a trial here, in 2000. A man named Luther Dunphy was tried for murder. Two murders. Do you remember that?” Naomi heard herself speak less matter-of-factly than she’d intended.

“‘Luther Dunphy.’ Yes . . .”

The deputy spoke uncertainly, frowning. Naomi had to wonder what Dunphy might mean to him, who had no recollection of Voorhees.

She told him that there had been two trials. The first had been a mistrial.

“What was the name again?”

“‘Luther Dunphy.’ He lived in Muskegee Falls . . .”

“‘Dunphy’—the name is kind of familiar. But I wasn’t here then. I didn’t move to Broome County until 2002.”

The murders had occurred in November 1999, Naomi said. A man named Luther Dunphy had killed two people, with a shotgun, at the Women’s Center here. “At the second trial Dunphy was sentenced to death and he died—he was executed—in 2006.”

So strangely, her voice faltered. The deputy stared at her. She wondered if he was thinking that she might be related to Luther Dunphy.

Returning to the courthouse where he’d been sentenced to death—and with what intention? To do damage? Set off a bomb?

But she’d been allowed through the metal detector. Her camera bag had been examined. She had to be harmless.

Feeling sorry for me, that Luther Dunphy was my father!

“What’s wrong, miss? What’s going on?”

“Nothing is ‘going on.’ Excuse me.”

He was distrustful of her. He didn’t like her so much now.

Clutching her camera, forcing herself to smile, Naomi made an attempt to walk away; but the deputy blocked her passage.

“Miss? Let me see that camera, please.”

“But why? It’s just a camera . . .”

“I said, miss—let me see that camera.”

Naomi handed it over. Adrenaline flooded her body, she felt almost that she might faint. How she hated this person!—this uniformed bully with a gun on his hip, a shiny badge. His initial interest in her had been casually sexual, not exactly intimidating but not altogether benign, either; yet she could have made no complaint about him. And now she said nothing further, she did not want to antagonize him. Self-importantly he examined the camera, turned it over in his hands, roughly; asked to see the camera bag as well, and examined the interior of the bag. Examined lenses, shaking the cases. What did he expect to find? What did he hope to find? It was a craven thought—how fortunate for her, she was white-skinned. A person of color, a person whose skin tone might suggest foreignness, “terrorism”—how would the Broome County, Ohio, deputy have treated him, or her? A skirmish might be made to occur; as the law enforcement officer laid hands on her, and instinctively she resisted, he might respond with force; even if she did not resist, she might not have been able to comply quickly enough to spare herself rough treatment. And how quickly this might happen! In the corner of her eye Naomi saw passersby in the foyer glancing at her and at the deputy who’d detained her. At least, there were witnesses.

When the deputy was finished with his examination, grudgingly satisfied that there was nothing suspicious inside the camera or in the bag, and he had no choice but to release her, Naomi did not say a word, not a murmur of displeasure, not a murmur of gratitude, but only took her things from the deputy and walked quickly away.

Of this encounter, she had no video recording. No memory, and no proof. As if it had never been.


INVISIBLY AFOOT in the “city center” of the old Ohio river town.

Camera eye restless in continuous motion.

Broome County Family Services. Broome County Senior Center. Broome County Board of Education.

How she’d come to hate the very words—Broome County!

Years she’d hated these words. Feared these words.

Fountain Square bounded by sparsely leafed young trees. Open paved area, salmon-colored flagstones. Park benches newly painted bright green. Pedestrian mall—but few pedestrians. Bus stops with new-looking plastic awnings where elderly persons, some of them dark-skinned, sat patiently awaiting buses or shuttles.

Unless these were homeless persons simply sitting amid shopping bags, boxes, laundry baskets heaped with possessions.

Solitary figures in the “city center” motionless as statues in a tableau of blight. Though this part of Muskegee Falls had undergone an ambitious urban renewal (evidently) it did not appear renewed but rather enervated, eviscerated. The camera eye dwelled upon open, near-empty “plazas” with fountains sparkling giddily in the sun, and no one to see, as in a painting of de Chirico. Patches of burnt-out grass. Spindling trees seemingly abandoned to die in the dry sunny heat of autumn.

At the edge of the sandstone square a smart, new-looking building where there was a flurry of activity—Broome County Public Library.

Her hands were less shaky now, gripping the camera. She was feeling a delayed rush of fear, anger, dismay—how helpless she’d have been, if the deputy had confiscated her camera, or smashed it . . . Was it an exaggeration, to imagine this happening? Had she misread the man’s hostility to her, that had seemed to come on so swiftly? She didn’t want to think that, if he’d known her identity, not Dunphy but Voorhees the daughter of the murdered abortion provider, he might have been even more hostile to her.

With her camera she drifted like a ghost. Strangers glanced at her, some of them with quizzical smiles. Do I know you, miss? Do you know me?