“WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?”—no one wished to ask.
With Edna Mae you took particular care. It had become so extreme that you could not even say “Daddy”—or “Chillicothe” (where Luther was incarcerated)—without upsetting her: Edna Mae pressing the palm of her thin blue-veined hand against her heart and her eyes swimming with pain.
Death Row.
Sentenced to death.
Lethal injection.
They avoided speaking of these matters. Even Luke.
To allude to the situation at all you might say the Trouble.
As in, before the Trouble. Or, after the Trouble.
Though it was not clear if the Trouble meant their father shooting the men at the Women’s Center, or only just their father being arrested and incarcerated; or whether the Trouble meant specifically the second trial, the verdict and the terrible sentence.
Two counts of homicide, first degree.
Condemned to death.
Appeal pending.
Definitely, there was hope in this appeal! A team of lawyers experienced in death penalty law were now involved in the case as well as Luther’s original public defender.
They were arguing not guilty by reason of (temporary) insanity.
Or were they arguing not guilty by reason of insanity.
(Luther Dunphy angrily refused to accept this defense strategy. But by a technicality some variant of the defense could be argued in a presentation to the Ohio State Court of Appeals with which the defendant was not required to concur.)
Among the Dunphys no one believed that the execution would ever really take place for the Republican governor of Ohio could commute Luther Dunphy’s sentence to life imprisonment if he wished and it was known that petitions were being sent to the governor by politicians supportive of the Right-to-Life cause as well as by Christian congregations in Ohio and the Midwest. It was believed too that a wealthy Ohio manufacturer was exerting pressure on the governor whose campaign he’d helped finance—the man’s name was “Bear” or “Beard”—Dawn had heard . . . Edna Mae did not like to speak of such matters because it made her anxious to be “hopeful” but Dawn wanted to know as much as she could for she wanted to have hope.
In fact there had been good news. Luther’s lawyer had called one day with good news.
The execution scheduled for April 16, 2002, had been rescheduled for October 29, 2002.
And there was a “strong probability” that the execution would be rescheduled again, to give the appeals team the opportunity to argue their case to the Court.
Each night Dawn X’d out another day on the calendar she kept hidden in a bureau drawer in her bedroom. Each morning noting how many days to October 29 . . .
It will not really happen, Jesus will intervene.
We know this. We have faith.
Edna Mae would have been upset if she’d seen Dawn’s calendar in which October 29 was marked with an ink-black cross. Even Mary Kay might have been upset.
So long as Luther Dunphy was alive, there was hope.
Luther was incarcerated in the Chillicothe State Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, Ohio. It was in Death Row he was incarcerated—the actual name of the unit was Death Row.
It was not so easy to visit Luther now, for Chillicothe was a three-hour drive from Mad River Junction. The detention facility at Muskegee Falls had been less than twenty miles away.
Visits had become difficult for other reasons as well. Edna Mae was so often unwell—and Luke was not always available to drive. And once, when they’d made the trip, Luke driving Mary Kay’s car that rattled and jolted on the interstate, Edna Mae in the front seat and Dawn and the younger children crammed into the rear, it was to discover that Luther Dunphy was himself unwell, suffering from some kind of “flu” that prevented him from seeing visitors. Another time, it was to discover that all of Chillicothe was in lockdown after the attempted stabbing of a prison guard.
“Your father knows that we are thinking of him and praying for him. Maybe that is enough for now”—so Edna Mae told them, with a brave smile.
LATE MARCH 2002. “Mud time”—so called in Mad River Junction, Ohio.
Melting snow, ice. Dripping roofs. Tall snowbanks slow-melting draining into gutters, ditches. Glistening pavement, puddles. Swaths of mud in fields and beside walkways. Everywhere the debris of winter—shattered tree limbs, rotted leaves, skeletons of Christmas trees abandoned in vacant lots, shredded papers, plastic. The sun shone brightly and fiercely at midday then began to fade by afternoon. The air turned cold and smelled of something metallic that made Dawn’s nostrils pinch.