A Book of American Martyrs(81)

She felt the need to explain to Gus: “No matter where I go, you aren’t here. You are—nowhere.”

Or, rather—“Reduced to ashes.”

She had not brought Gus’s ashes to the cemetery where she’d purchased a plot. (Only just a single plot because as she reasoned her body too would be cremated, eventually; a double plot is not required when husband and wife have been reduced to ashes.) She had had too much to think about though she had not (yet) given in to Darren, that Gus’s ashes should be scattered at Katechay Island.

One thing she’d have wished to keep from Gus—(though surely Gus wouldn’t have been surprised)—was the fact that many individuals attending the trial, as elsewhere in the country, supported the man who had murdered him. This was painful to realize, though it should not have been surprising.

Since the arrest of Luther Dunphy there had been much publicity about the case. And now with the onset of the trial, yet more publicity.

A wealthy Midwestern manufacturer named Baer, associated with right-wing politics, had taken out TV advertisements extolling Dunphy as a “martyr” for the Right-to-Life movement. An evangelical preacher was exhorting his millions of viewers on cable TV to pray for Luther Dunphy’s release. On Fox News, which was covering the trial as “breaking news,” a popular commentator named Tom McCarthy whom Jenna had never seen, or wished to see, frequently praised Dunphy as a “soldier of God” and excoriated Gus Voorhees and the pro-choice movement as a “pack of atheist-socialist baby killers.”

Of course, Tom McCarthy always paused to make it “abundantly clear” that he did not believe in, condone, or in any way encourage violence.

The single time that Jenna had forced herself to watch the terrifying Tom McCarthy Hour she’d had the impression that, as Tom McCarthy said these words, he’d all but winked at the television audience.

Violence? Noooo. Not me!

Anti-abortion organizations—or, as they called themselves, Right-to-Life organizations—had rallied to provide a defense fund to replace Dunphy’s court-appointed attorney with a high-profile attorney but—unexpectedly—Dunphy had refused to accept a new attorney, and had refused to cooperate with the defense fund. He had not denied having shot the “abortion doctor” but he would not enter a plea of either guilty or not guilty; his attorney had entered the plea in his place, not guilty. The defendant’s position seemed to be that he would submit to a trial but he would not actively defend himself for he did not accept that he had committed any crime, “in the eyes of God”—killing Voorhees was not a “crime.”

Indeed, having killed Voorhees was a matter of pride for him while having killed Barron was a matter of shame.

(Timothy Barron had been a native of Muskegee Falls. From what Jenna knew of him he’d been an exceptional person. Gus had spoken of him warmly; of course, Jenna had never met him. She had supposed that, in Muskegee Falls, where she was staying at a hotel, she might have been invited to visit with the Barrons during the trial, and might have befriended them; but they had not expressed much interest in meeting Gus Voorhees’s widow. She’d been introduced to them in the prosecutor’s office—wife, adult daughters, adult son, a brother of the deceased man—but to her surprise they’d been stiffly polite and not at all friendly. Jenna was made to realize that of course, they blamed Gus for Timothy Barron’s death: if not for Gus, Timothy Barron would still be alive.)

Each evening after the trial Jenna called the children. This was a high point of her day—though it was not an easy hour or so, and left her shaken.

Always she spoke with Melissa first. For it was her youngest child who most needed her, and missed her.

Melissa never asked about the trial for Melissa was acutely sensitive to her mother’s wishes, even over a telephone; but Darren and Naomi wanted to know how the trial was going, and all Jenna could tell them was, “It seems to be going well. Each day is exhausting.” Darren had said several times that he wanted to attend the trial and Jenna had told him without hesitation No.

“I should be there, if something goes wrong. If they find that bastard not guilty.”

Jenna flinched at her son’s casual profanity—bastard. It had not been like Gus to speak with casual profanity, only if he’d been seriously annoyed or angry. But Darren seemed more frequently angry. Or rather, Darren seemed infrequently not-angry.

“Please don’t think that way, Darren. I’ve been assured the trial will turn out—as it should. There’s nothing we can do about it in any case except wait, and hope.”

“Right. It’s the other side that prays.”

Darren handed over the receiver to Naomi who spoke to her mother in a lowered voice, almost inaudibly. Almost it seemed to Jenna that her once-articulate daughter had acquired a speech impediment.

After a few frustrating minutes on the line with Naomi, Jenna felt an impulse to scream at her.

Don’t! Damn you! Don’t do this. We are all trying not to be crazy, don’t you dare give in.

“Naomi? What did you say? I’m having trouble hearing you, this line is poor.”

“Yeh. OK.”

“‘OK’—what?”

“‘This line is poor.’” Naomi paused, and then said, with startling clarity, words Jenna had never heard from her before, “This line is shitty.”