A Book of American Martyrs(189)

She did not know these strangers. She did not know any of them. She could not bring herself to ask if anyone had known, or had even heard of, her father Gus Voorhees.

And why here, why these scattered and random sights recorded in her camera, she could not have said. Except that he had been here in 1999, or in the vicinity. And she was recording what she could of Muskegee Falls in the (desperate, quixotic) hope that out of these scattered and random sights at some future time she could extract a meaning that eluded her now.

The Israeli filmmaker Yael Ravel whom she’d so admired had said you must accumulate hours, days, weeks of video material to extract from it just a few precious minutes to preserve—if you are lucky.

She wanted to believe this. She had no option.


IN THE LOBBY of the Muskegee Falls Inn, est. 1894. Handsome old “historic” hotel, faded Tudor facade. Lobby very quiet at this hour of mid-afternoon. Dimly lighted, wood-paneled walls, staid leather couches, chairs. Fireplace piled with (unlit) birch logs. Ornate chandelier with tall slender white faux candles.

Through a doorway a large room, banquet room, with myriad round tables, empty.

Through another doorway, an entrance to the dim-lit Sign of the Ram Pub.

He’d stayed in this hotel sometimes, she had reason to think. Before he’d rented a place of his own in town.

Or had he stayed with friends, initially? Newly acquired friends here in Muskegee Falls. Colleagues in public health work. Planned Parenthood, abortion providers.

The comaraderie of the beleaguered. The threatened, despised.

Baby killers. Your souls will burn in Hell.

She knew that Jenna had stayed in the Muskegee Falls Inn for the duration of the first trial.

Alone, as Jenna had preferred.

Newly widowed, and in dread of sympathy. The swarm of sympathy-bearers with their plaintive cries—Oh Jenna I feel so sad about Gus, just terrible about Gus . . . Terrible, terrible!

They’d laughed wildly together. Jenna, Darren, Naomi. A kind of drunken revelry. The stress of so much (well-intentioned) sympathy. For a long time fearful of going outside (Jenna had said) without wearing a veil or a mask or a paper bag over your head, so that no one could recognize you and clamp you in an embrace.

“Miss? May I be of assistance?”

The big-haired woman behind the check-in counter cast her voice across the lobby at Naomi, with a thin slice of a smile.

Skilled in assessing strangers, seeing that the young woman who’d entered the lobby in rumpled khakis, sneakers, baseball cap pulled low over her forehead was carrying just a shoulder bag and a camera and did not have a suitcase with her.

Politely Naomi asked if there was a room available for the night.

The thin-sliced smile turned to a frown. “A single room?”

“Yes. A single room.”

It was perceived to be just slightly strange, was it—that Naomi was alone? Obviously a traveler, a stranger to Muskegee Falls, wanting a single room.

“For how many nights, miss?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe two, or three.”

The big-haired woman smiled at Naomi with an expression of frank curiosity. “D’you have family here?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Here on business?”

“No.”

“Friends?”

“No.”

“Just traveling then? Passing through?”

“Not really.”

Confounded, the desk clerk could think of no further inquiry. With a deeper frown she checked her computer, yes there was a room. Non-smoking, double bed, river view, fourth floor.

There was an air of reluctance in this disclosure. Naomi wondered if there were, in fact, many rooms available in the stolid old Muskegee Falls Inn. Many vacancies mid-week.

At the interstate exit some miles away there’d been a cluster of motor hotels, motels, fast-food restaurants, gas stations. These facilities seemed to have been laid upon bare, scoured earth as one might set similar facilities upon the most barren landscape, the moon for instance, or Mars, with no attempt at fixing them in place. They were generic, interchangeable. Yet she’d thought it might be better for her (emotionally) to drive back to the exit, to stay the night in such a place and to return to Muskegee Falls in the morning, than to stay in a hotel in Muskegee Falls.

Naomi asked the price of the room. It was not so high as she’d expected.

The desk clerk seemed to misunderstand her silence: “There’s a room on the second floor, without a river view, if you’d prefer a room at a lower price . . .”

Politely Naomi said that she would prefer a room with a window view. “But I would like to see the room first, please.”

“Of course! I can show you.”

In the elevator the big-haired woman asked Naomi if she’d ever visited Muskegee Falls before. Naomi told her no.

“But my mother visited here. About ten years ago.”

“Did she!” The woman seemed stymied by Naomi, uncertain how to interpret her tone. The affable exchange of banal pleasantries to which she was accustomed as a hotel employee was thwarted here and the result was awkward. “She had relatives here, did she?—your mother?”

“No.”

The room was high-ceilinged but not large: at once, Naomi felt a shiver of claustrophobia.

Quickly she went to the window—the room had but a single window—to draw back dark purple velvet drapes and let in sunshine.