A Book of American Martyrs(31)

The particular smells of a tavern, even the smells of a filthy lavatory, urinals, puddled floors, bluish smoke of cigarettes and cigars—tears sprang to my eyes, these were so wonderful. On the mirror behind the bar, a light film of dust. High above the bar a television set perched at an angle and its screen bright with color as a child’s coloring book and even the advertisements were thrilling to me, as they were mysterious and forbidden.

H’lo friend. What’ll you have?

Anything on tap. Ale?

At the bar I would sit on a stool with a worn cushion, that seemed to fit my buttocks. I would sit and lean forward onto my elbows and observe the flickering TV and see in the facing mirror the grinning Satan-face friendly to me and no judging.

Live around here?

Muskegee Falls.

Where’s that?

North of Springfield.

What brings you to Toledo?

The call of Jesus.

Eh? Call of—?

Jesus.

In time it happened that the bartender and certain of the other patrons came to know who I was—a student at the min’stry school whom they called Rev’rend. This made me smile for it was flattering, though I knew they were joking, yet their joking carried with it an awareness of the seriousness of my mission and some respect for me, I think.

Sometimes without intending it I would fall into a conversation with a woman. For always there was at least one woman in the bar, it did not matter which of the several bars for always in the bar there was a woman who might recognize me, and call me Rev’rend. She would buy me a drink, or I would buy her a drink. She would lay her hand lightly on my arm and if it was dusk, on overcast days as early as 6:00 P.M., she would ask if I would like to come home with her for a meal. And I would thank her and explain that I had to drive to Muskegee Falls very soon, to eat supper with my family.

How far is that, to your home?

Eighty miles.

Eighty miles! Isn’t it already too late for supper, Rev’rend?

But then, as time passed so quickly, it was no longer dusk but dark, and somehow it happened, I would find myself with the woman, in her house, or an upstairs half of a house, and a terrible weakness would overcome me in all my limbs, and a roaring in my ears, that I could not resist the woman offering me another beer, or ale; at last, touching me in a way to greatly arouse me, as I would touch her; inviting me into her bedroom, and into her bed that was unmade, and smelled of the woman’s body. And so it came about, not once but several times, more times than I wish to recall, in the spring of 1987 when the shame of my behavior was like an oily rag rubbing across a clean mirror-surface, to cloud it.

Though I was married and rejoiced in my marriage, as in my beloved young children, and though I was determined that I would become a minister of the St. Paul Missionary Church, yet I was with whores often in the city of Toledo, when the weakness came upon me. With just a hurried call to Edna Mae with an excuse that my car had broken down, or had a tire needing to be repaired, I would stay overnight in one of these places; often, I would make the call from the woman’s phone as she stood behind me stroking my back with her warm hands. In my dear wife’s voice a fear of me, and in the background a child’s cry—Dad-dee? Where is Dad-dee?

A woman will believe you, for a woman will want to believe you.

This is the wisdom of Satan. Yet it is true wisdom, though it is of Satan.

Soon, in the spring of 1987, though it was rare that Edna Mae and I were together in that way, Edna Mae found herself pregnant again. But in the agitation of those months, when often I stayed away overnight in Toledo, and missed work the next morning in Muskegee Falls, with no convincing excuse to my employer, and Edna Mae understood that I was not telling the truth to her, yet would not accuse me—she became stricken with cramps one day, when I was not with her, and lost the baby after three months of pregnancy.

In the bedroom of our house this was. So terrible an experience, and so much blood lost, the mattress and box springs would have to be replaced. So awful, Edna Mae would not be well for some time.

And such fear instilled in our young children, seeing their mother swathed in blood, and blood-clots on the bathroom floor, and their mother screaming in agony and despair and their father nowhere near as a husband and father should have been.

The women in Toledo were cast from me in disgust, after I had made use of them. That they did give themselves to me so readily and yet expressed surprise and even hurt when I recoiled from them—this was surprising to me.

On my knees I prayed in secret.

I am ashamed, Jesus. I have used whores, and I have betrayed my dear wife and children.

And Jesus would say, so quietly I could almost not hear—The women are not whores, Luther. They are your sisters in my name. But it is true you have used them, and you have betrayed your dear wife and children.


AT THE MINISTRY SCHOOL they seemed to know, how Luther Dunphy had become a troubled man. For my grades in the second term were lower than in the first term, for often I did not hand in my assignments at all. Reading was ever harder for me, and caused darting pains behind my eyes. If I slipped away to a tavern at noon, and returned for my afternoon class, a smell of ale emanated from me, and my appearance might have been flushed and disheveled and all in the classroom knew what a sinner I was, what a failure. There was a satisfaction in this, in the eyes of the others. For even a Christian does not know himself blessed unless he knows how another is not-blessed.