The children were told that this was good news. For Daddy could not return home to them, it seemed, except if there was another trial to clear his name.
This trial would be held in the Broome County Courthouse as the first trial had been held and the judge would be the same judge and the prosecutor would be the same prosecutor and the court-appointed defense attorney would be the same defense attorney and when Dawn heard this she laughed scornfully asking what was the point of a second stupid trial if everything was the same as the first?—and her aunt Mary Kay said with smug satisfaction, for she did not like her niece’s brash mouth, “Oh no, Dawn. You are wrong. Not everything will be the same. The jurors will be different—all of them.”
COULD NOT BREATHE. Could not sit still. In the overheated classrooms her body oozed oily sweat and at the nape of her neck her heavy hair was damp. Her brain was awake but like a TV on mute. She saw teachers’ mouths move but did not hear words.
It was soon after the news had come to them, that there would be a second trial in Muskegee Falls.
This news had been in the newspaper and on TV and there was nowhere to hide.
Photograph of Luther Amos Dunphy. Photograph of Augustus Dunphy, MD. Side by side like estranged brothers and each gazing somberly into the camera eye.
“Didja know that ladies kill their own babies?”—like accusations these remarks leapt from the lips of Dawn Dunphy in the girls’ gym locker room or in the girls’ lavatory where some of the older girls congregated between classes. Eagerly, with a terrible earnestness, Dawn Dunphy proffered information no one wished to hear: “They toss them out with the garbage or flush them down the toilet, then.”
And, “Didja know, a baby is up inside you, like right here”—(pushing the palm of her hand against her belly)—“until it gets big enough to breathe by itself, and it comes out? And sometimes a lady will kill it, when it comes out.”
They shrank from her in disgust and in dismay. The girls with the cut-glass eyes and mouths smeared scarlet. And shyer girls, Christian girls like herself who knew little of what Dawn Dunphy knew and were frightened by her words as by the vehemence of an Old Testament prophet speaking a crude and indecipherable tongue.
As they shrank from her not meeting her eye in haste pushing out the door to escape from Dawn Dunphy a wild anger and despair rose in her: “You don’t believe me? You think I am lying? You will find out, then—it will happen to you.”
She had no idea what she was saying. Her tongue swelled like a demon-tongue, like (she’d sometimes seen) her brother Luke’s thing between his legs swelling red and rubbery-stiff like a living thing possessed by a demon. To Dawn’s chagrin these strange words that leapt from her, that could not be retracted.
She was reported to the school principal Mrs. Morehead. But when the principal spoke to her Dawn was silent and abashed and stared at the floor between them slowly shaking her head as if she could not remember or rather as if there were something unwieldy inside her head which she had to shake loose, that it might resettle more comfortably.
“Are you denying that you said these things, Dawn? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”—Mrs. Morehead spoke cautiously.
You could not trust them, Mrs. Morehead was thinking. White trailer-trash.
Dawn was very still, though breathing audibly. Mrs. Morehead perceived that the girl’s sparrow-colored hair had very likely not been combed or brushed in days and a shivery sensation came over her of visceral dread, that the girl’s head was infested with lice; and that a single louse would leap from Dawn Dunphy’s head to her, and infest her.
Mrs. Morehead knew whose daughter Dawn Dunphy was. All of Mad River Junction knew of Luther Dunphy who had been born and raised less than seven miles away and had brought national shame upon this part of Ohio taking instructions from the Lord.
“Dawn? Did you hear me? Please answer.”
The words seemed to float upward harmless and mildly silly like the down of feathers.
The silence between Mrs. Morehead and the girl grew strained. The principal believed herself to be something of a force for enlightenment and reform in this rural county of Ohio but she could not hope to reason with a “mentally disabled” girl though she understood that it was her duty to educate the girl, or to try, at taxpayers’ expense. What was crucial was to keep a discreet distance from the girl so no lice could leap onto her and scuttle up her neck to hide, nest, breed in her hair; and so with a seasoned administrator’s wary but hopeful smile Mrs. Morehead said, “Well. You won’t say these upsetting things again, I hope. Or—I will have to speak with your mother, Dawn.”
At last Dawn glared up at the principal. Mrs. Morehead was shocked to see the flat yellow cat-eyes of derision.
“It’s Mawmaw who told me these things right out of the Bible. They are true and you know it. Why’d she be surprised?”