It had been a shock to the Dunphy brothers that their youngest brother Luther had done such a thing—acted so publicly. There was consternation among the Dunphy relatives, most of whom lived in Sandusky and the surrounding countryside, that Luther had done something so extreme to cast all the family in the “public spotlight.”
Edna Mae listened for an opening in her brother-in-law’s incensed speech to ask, in her meek abashed voice, a voice pleading not to be brushed away like an annoying gnat, if any one of them had had a chance to speak to Luther in the courthouse; and Norman said impatiently, no—“They don’t like you to try that. You can’t get close. They figure, somebody could pass a weapon to the ‘defendant.’ If you could get past the metal detector with some kind of plastic knife, maybe that’s what they’re figuring.”
“Did he seem—well? Did he . . .”
“Did he seem well? What the Christ is that—well? The man is on trial for his life, he’s been locked up for a year, you’re asking does he seem well? What the fuck do you think, ‘Edna Mae’!”
No mistaking the contempt in Norman’s way of pronouncing Edna Mae. The word fuck was so utterly shocking, possibly Edna Mae had not even heard it. (Dawn hoped so.)
Quickly Jonathan said, “He’s doing OK, Edna. He’s holding up. We’ll go see him next Saturday—some of us. He knows it’s hard for you. Try not to worry.”
Try not to worry. Edna Mae blinked away tears, this was the kindest thing anyone in the Dunphy family had said to her since the trouble began.
One thing different about the trial, there were not so many Right-to-Life people in the courtroom or outside on the steps. Not so many demonstrators with picket signs. “It’s like people are forgetting Luther. Some other ‘soldier of God’ is taking his place.”
Norman spoke ironically. But it was so: an anti-abortion protester had been arrested recently for shooting up a women’s medical clinic in Wichita, Kansas. Jake Rachtel too was aligned with the Army of God and Operation Rescue and spoke of himself as a “soldier of God.” Just a few nights before Tom McCarthy of The Tom McCarthy Hour had praised the “brave martyr” who’d held more than one dozen women and girls hostage in the clinic, had wounded (but not killed) three medical workers, getting himself wounded by law enforcement with a bullet lodged near his spine.
Dawn was listening to the adults’ conversation. She had not gone to school that day: rather, she had approached the school building but had been unable to force herself to enter. It was terrifying to her, her daddy was being tried and she could do nothing about it . . . Much of the day she’d spent wandering at the scrubby outskirts of town and in the partly abandoned train yard, at one point descending into a steep ravine littered with debris where, in overturned rusted oil drums, puddles of stagnant water had accumulated and each puddle had glittered excitedly as if both welcoming her and excluding her.
Jesus, are you here? Jesus please—help my daddy!
Badly Dawn wanted to ask her uncle Norman more about her father but she knew from past experience that her uncle would reply to her curtly without so much as glancing at her. Norman was friendly to Luke and the younger children but didn’t seem to like Dawn, and did not trouble to disguise the fact.
Why, she didn’t know. Because Uncle Norman thought she was homely?
Homely was a word the men used. Homely referred exclusively to girls and women.
It made her feel bad, to be homely. But after a while, it made her feel angry and wanting to hit somebody, hard.
What was unfair was that Dawn had often felt invisible in the family when Luke had been present; but now that Luke lived somewhere else, Dawn was still invisible.
“There’s nobody has forgotten Daddy! Not in our church either. They talk about him and pray for him all the time.”
(This was not true, maybe. Edna Mae hadn’t taken Dawn and the younger children to Muskegee Falls to Reverend Dennis’s church for some time for they only went if Luke or Mary Kay was willing to drive them. Edna Mae rarely drove at all now.)
Norman regarded Dawn and Edna Mae with a look of pity.
“Well. Good. But there’s a problem, I think.” Norman had changed the subject, and was looking shrewd now. “About money.”
It had long been a troubled issue among the Dunphys, what to do about the defense fund sponsored by the Army of God. So far as Edna Mae knew there had been contributions to the fund from “all across the United States and some foreign nations as well”—as the website boasted. But Luther had been adamant that he did not want and would not accept charity. Repeatedly he’d refused to dismiss the lawyer appointed for him by the Broome County public defender’s office and hire a private lawyer. It seemed to be Luther’s belief that God would care for his family, somehow. Nobody needed to stoop to begging.