(Not a single notebook once belonging to Gus Voorhees had she destroyed. Not a single letter, postcard, Post-It, newspaper clipping, torn and creased snapshot. Not a single taped interview. All remained neatly labeled in files, folders, boxes in her room in Madelena Kein’s apartment in New York City.)
Why (in secret) she’d been tracking the career of “The Hammer of Jesus”—D.D. Dunphy.
It had been all new to her, a total surprise—that Luther Dunphy’s daughter had become a professional boxer. At first she’d been jeering, skeptical. For she disliked Dawn Dunphy, intensely.
She recalled the young girl’s sullen face in newspaper photos.
It had roused her, and Darren, to a kind of rage, that the children of Luther Dunphy existed.
After she’d returned from Muskegee Falls she’d researched “D.D. Dunphy” online and learned to her surprise (and something like chagrin) that Luther Dunphy’s daughter had acquired a solid reputation as a boxer since she’d begun fighting professionally in early 2009; Dunphy had won all of her fights except for a single draw, in venues in Cleveland, Dayton, East Chicago, Indianapolis, Gary, Scranton, Pittsburgh. She seemed to be fighting often. She was not yet a top contender for a title but on several lists “D.D. Dunphy” was ranked in the top ten in her weight division.
In some online sites she was called the female Tyson.
Naomi recalled how the desk clerk at the Muskegee Falls Inn had spoken of Luther Dunphy’s daughter as a boxer—the first time Naomi had heard of such a thing.
It had seemed bizarre to her then, repugnant. For she hated boxing—what she knew of boxing. She hated violent sports.
In this she was echoing Jenna, who had written about the exploitation of women in such violent entertainments as boxing, wrestling, mixed-martial arts. A kind of prostitution, Jenna Matheson had claimed. And as always, men were the ones who profited from this exploitation of women.
Jenna Matheson had written such feminist polemics long ago, in the 1990s. She was continuing to write, and to publish, but less frequently, so far as Naomi knew.
A coincidence: the following night, in the Muskegee Falls hotel, in the pub attached to the hotel called the Sign of the Ram, a TV had been on above the bar; and on the TV, a clip of a women’s boxing match. It was pure chance that Naomi had come into the pub for a late supper—the hotel dining room had closed. Though she hadn’t done more than glance at the TV screen she happened to overhear the bartender and several other men discussing the fight—That there is Luther Dunphy’s daughter. Jesus!
Luther Dunphy’s daughter! In an instant, Naomi’s attention was riveted.
It was not a broadcast of a live boxing match but rather a sports news program. The boxing clip had been brief. And there followed excerpts from a post-fight interview with the winning boxer who was still panting, smiling with childish excitement, covered in sweat, with heavy eyebrows and a coarse-skinned face mottled from her opponent’s stinging jabs—“D.D. Dunphy.”
Naomi stared. She would not have recognized this young woman.
How strange, how incongruous—there were streaks of crimson and green in Dunphy’s spiky dark hair. On the biceps of both her arms were lurid tattoos.
Naomi felt a sharp visceral dislike of Dunphy. What she most hated was the happiness of the female boxer, what she perceived as Dunphy’s childish gloating in victory.
Dunphy spoke excitedly but uncertainly. She faltered, stammered.
Clearly she was not accustomed to speaking with a microphone extended to her mouth—she was not accustomed to speaking at all. And she was being asked questions by an aggressive (male) interviewer that seemed to intimidate her and so repeatedly she glanced to the side, seeking help from someone off-camera.
“What’re my ‘plans for the future’?—I guess—training real hard—for—maybe—a title fight . . .”
“And when will that be, ‘D.D.’?”
“When? I—I don’t know—it’s up to . . .”
“Which title are you looking to, ‘D.D.’? Midwest Boxing League? World Boxing Association?”
“I d-don’t know . . .”
“Ready for the big time, eh? Atlantic City? Vegas?”
“ . . .d-don’t know . . .”
Naomi observed the TV screen covertly. How pathetic, this interview with “D.D. Dunphy”! She hoped that no one in the pub would notice her interest. Especially she didn’t want the bartender or the men drinking at the bar to note her interest and to draw her into their conversation.
The men murmured together, laughed. In their voices a grudging admiration.
That’s her—Dunphy. Wouldn’t recognize her.
They lived over on Front Street. Luther was a roofer like my dad.
Shit yes. Wouldn’t forget that poor bastard Luther Dunphy.
My brother hung out with her brother—what’s-his-name . . .
Jesus she is homely! But she can hit.
A female boxer, some kind of joke. Make you feel like puking. But there’s some that’re OK—like Muhammad Ali’s daughter.
“’SCUSE ME, MA’AM—”
“Sorry ma’am—”
“Shit! Sorry ma’am—”
Squeezing past her one of them spilled a dark frothy liquid and ice cubes onto her knees out of a giant Styrofoam cup.