A Book of American Martyrs Read online

  This night was not the first night that I had pondered my responsibility to my poor dear wife. Yet this was the first time that I dared to raise myself on my elbow, beside her, and removed my pillow from its place and considered how, to put the grieving mother out of her misery, it would be a mercy; and the words misery, mercy echoed in my mind as sometimes a popular song will seem to catch itself in your mind and resist expulsion like something sinewy caught between the teeth. Misery, mercy. Jesus seemed to be urging me, to this contemplation. For this could not be an accident—could it? The very sounds of the words, like music.

  For of all beings Jesus is most kind, and does not wish us to suffer as He suffered in our place. Tentatively I lifted the pillow to ease down against Edna Mae’s face, that would grow contorted as her breathing began again to slow, and a choking sensation seemed to grip her causing her mouth to twitch and grimace in a grin like a Hallowe’en pumpkin that is not like any expression on the face of my poor dear wife, that I have ever seen, and that filled me with dismay.

  She will not struggle long. For you are strong, and know what must be done.

  It is true, I am far stronger than Edna Mae. And yet, the strength of a smaller being, a child for instance, or a cat, can be considerable, and a surprise. And if the creature rakes your hands with her claws, your strength will be daunted.

  Still, if I pressed the pillow hard against her face, and pinioned her head against the other pillow, and that against the mattress, and if I did not weaken, Edna Mae would not struggle long. And it would be a mercy, to put the poor woman out of her misery.

  Edna Mae would not then grieve for our lost child, who is with the angels and with Jesus. It is wrong of Edna Mae to so mourn Daphne, if God has taken her to dwell with Jesus. In this she is a poor model for the children.

  It is not always clear what our duties are. I am the father, and I am responsible. If I were to put Edna Mae out of her misery, I would not be blamed. That is, I would not be blamed by God.

  Her eyes cast on me would not then blame me. She would not caution the children not to cry within their father’s hearing.

  In the morning Edna Mae will (probably) not recall where we were tonight. If I recollect for her, and repeat some of the remarks of Willard Wohlman, she will quickly say yes, she remembers. And indeed, she will remember something.

  The difference between true and false memories is not always clear.

  I had begun to press the pillow harder upon Edna Mae’s face. The entire face must be hidden (from my eyes) though it is only the mouth and nose that must be covered. Close in the darkness Jesus stood by to observe.

  If she resists, then you must take away the pillow at once. It will be her choice, Luther. Not yours.

  Yet the pressure of the pillow on the face was not extreme. It was as Jesus advised, the choice must be Edna Mae’s and not mine.

  The thought came to me also, with the force of a hammerstroke—“If I smother my wife it will be a clear sign that God does not favor me. God does not have a plan for me.”

  Similar thoughts, I had sometimes spoken aloud. On rooftops, where the hammering of nails into fresh lumber would disguise my words and no one would hear.

  When it had become clear to me that I would not be a minister in the St. Paul Missionary Church, despite the strong wish in my heart to be such, but only a lay minister, for there was doubt among the elders as to my ability to “capture the attention” of a congregation, and doubt regarding other aspects of the minister’s life. At first it was wounding to me, to realize this, but then, as it was explained to me by persons whom I admired, it was God’s decision and not theirs—It is the will of God, we have only to accept it.

  And then, when this explained to me, by an elderly minister whom I respected above all others, suddenly the scales fell from my eyes, and I understood.

  The will of God, we have only to accept.

  There are many ways to serve God, Luther. There is not only the way of ministry.

  This is the great wisdom of our lives. You do not struggle against God’s plan for you. Nor do you attempt to appropriate a plan for yourself, in pretense that it is God’s plan.

  The pillow was pressed a little harder against Edna Mae’s face, and now she began to move her head, and to struggle. And still, I pressed the pillow harder, and at this Edna Mae began to writhe as a cat might writhe, in a sudden eruption of panic, not clawing at my hands (as I’d feared) but gripping my wrists, to shove them away; and through the pillow I could hear muffled cries—No! No no . . .

  At once, I lifted the pillow from the contorted white face. Now spittle covered the lips and the eyes were blinking frantically.

  “Edna Mae, dear you are having a nightmare . . . You have been choking in your sleep.”

  It was true, Edna Mae had been making strangulated noises in her sleep. Her breath came in quick spurts as if she’d been running. Now she was sitting up in bed frightened and confused like one who has no idea where she is.

  As Edna Mae was panting, and half-sobbing, gently I gripped her thin shoulders and shook her, to steady her.

  “Edna Mae! Stop! It was only a bad dream—you’re safe now.”

  I groped for the bedside lamp, that seemed to have become overturned as if in a struggle. Carefully I set it upright and switched on the light. In the dim light Edna Mae stared at my face as if trying to identify me.

  The pupils of her eyes were dilated and appeared all black. On the little table beside Edna Mae’s side of the bed was Edna Mae’s well-worn Bible (which she had had since she’d been a girl) and one of Daphne’s small stuffed toys, that looked like the fuzzy cinnamon-colored bear I had disposed of weeks ago.

  “You were sleeping on your stomach, Edna Mae, with your face in the pillow. You panicked when you couldn’t breathe. See, the pillow is wet from your mouth . . .”

  With something of her former fastidious distaste Edna Mae shuddered. It is embarrassing to her to be reminded of such behavior, or any kind of personal slovenliness. I would not reproach her.

  My way with the family and with any young person is to speak gently and kindly and without any harsh judgment for that was a key insight from my training as a (lay) minister.

  A Christian is one who makes others feel good about themselves, and hopeful. Not ashamed, or sad, or anxious.

  Edna Mae stared now at the bedside clock. The numerals were 2:11 A.M. which she did not seem to comprehend, for the hour was so late for us it did not seem real. Both windows of the room showed only darkness outside pressed flat against the glass like a face so close you cannot see its features.

  “Oh, Luther! I’m sorry. I’ve been keeping you awake . . .”

  I told my dear wife not to be silly, she had not been keeping me awake.

  With a murmur of apology Edna Mae pushed herself from the bed.

  Through the cotton nightgown the vertebrae of her spine were outlined, the poor woman had grown so thin. When I offered to help her she pushed away my hand with a little laugh of chagrin. For it seemed now that she was fully awake. With some effort she made her way unsteadily out into the hall and into the bathroom just outside the door.

  So softly she moved, barefoot, I could not hear her footfall. I hoped that she would not collapse, and I would run to her, and the children would be wakened and hurry from their rooms . . . By this time I was sweating profusely, and wiped my face on an edge of the sheet.

  A sensation of sickness deepened in my bowels, I could not believe what I had contemplated doing to my dear wife—smothering Edna Mae? Putting her out of her misery?

  “But that is not allowed. I know, that is not allowed.”

  These words I spoke aloud in a kind of childlike wonder. If Jesus was a witness I wanted him to hear.

  From the bathroom I could hear a toilet flush, and I could hear the faucet. The pipes are old in this house and should be replaced, soon. I could hear the click! of the medicine cabinet when it was opened, and I could hear the shaking of pills out of a small con
tainer, onto the palm of my wife’s hand.

  Almost, I could see my dear wife’s hand shaking.

  And yet, so tired had I become, and how heavy-lidded my eyes, I understood that I could not really see Edna Mae shaking her white pills into the palm of her hand, through the wall.

  Then, there was another sound. Pills slipped through Edna Mae’s fingers onto the floor. There came a sharp little intake of her breath—“Oh! Oh God”—as she stooped to grope for the small white pills and to pick them up one by one from the linoleum floor, that was not a clean floor.

  Again now there came a running of water, and a moaning sound of pipes. And the click! this time of a glass being set upon the porcelain sink just a little too hard.

  When Edna Mae returned to our bed she was yet more unsteady on her feet. Her face was papery-white but mottled a rough red in the cheeks as with hives. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot and yet (I saw) there was something sly in those eyes, the stubbornness of secrecy. Her hair was matted and sticking up in tufts like the feathers of a scrawny chicken.

  My beloved Edna Mae! My heart was suffused with love for her, not as she was now but as she had been, when I had first seen her in the church at Mad River, at the age of seventeen in another lifetime it seemed, before she’d lifted her shy eyes to see me.

  So young, both of us! By then, I had dropped out of high school. I had decided to make my own way and not to work with my father as my father had wished and instead to spend the summer with my uncle and aunt in Mad River thirty miles south of Muskegee Falls working on their dairy farm.

  If I had not gone to stay in Mad River that summer.

  If I had not gone to that church service, that Sunday morning.

  But it was decreed by the Lord, this would happen. It was decreed that Edna Mae Reiser and Luther Amos Dunphy would meet in that place and at that time in June 1977, that our children would be born each in time. For in no other way could our lives have progressed, that these children would be born as they were, and baptized in Jesus.

  The Edna Mae that is, and the Edna Mae that was. Hardly would you think that the woman of thirty-six or -seven (I was not absolutely certain of Edna Mae’s age as I am not ever certain of the children’s exact ages for they are changing all the time, and so the family laughs at their Dad-dee who is always being corrected and scolded) could even be the mother of the seventeen-year-old Edna Mae Kaiser with her round face and shy eyes.

  Not of the same type, you would think. Not the same blood.

  In my memory, Edna Mae is wearing a white dress in the church. (For she was a nurse’s aide, I would discover.) Yet, Edna Mae has always laughed at me, saying no, she had not been wearing any white dress that day!—she had certainly not been wearing a uniform to church. What she’d been wearing was a pink flower-print dress, and white ballerina slippers.)

  Now Edna Mae was complaining of something I could not fully comprehend, how tired it made her, to drive at night. How selfish it was, that I should make her drive, when she hated to drive at night, and was afraid to drive at night, on the interstate especially, and now she had a headache, and needed to take some medication and get back to sleep right away.

  This was a surprise! For Edna Mae had not driven any vehicle since the shock of January of this year. I was sure of this. Luke or Dawn would have told me. Never would I have asked my dear wife to drive on the interstate at night even when she’d been in good health. But I did not refute her now which would only make matters worse.

  “Have you taken more of those damn pills, Edna Mae? When you have to get up in a few hours?”

  It was like a slap, to utter damn to Edna Mae. But it was a light sort of slap, to get her attention, and not to insult her as a harsher word would have done.

  The shock of hearing our daughter Dawn mutter the f-word a few weeks ago, in the kitchen slamming drawers talking to herself when she’d thought no one was within hearing. F—k you, f—kface just f—k you, got it?—laughing in contempt imagining an exchange with one of her school classmates.

  The shock of it had been such, I backed away into the garage. And reentered the house dazed a few minutes later, to avoid a confrontation with the child.

  Of course, I knew that Edna Mae had taken one or more pills in the bathroom. I knew that Edna Mae would not be able to get up in the morning before the children left for school, and I left for work. The older children would help the younger as they had been doing since January and it would not be surprising to them, to return home from school in the afternoon to discover their mother groggy and slurred of speech still in her nightgown.

  I know, these are said to be “addictive” pills the doctor has prescribed for my dear wife. I know that there is a problem of “dependency.” But the doctor has insisted, Edna Mae would be “severely depressed” without them.

  It is a sin against Jesus, to be depressed. If you are in despair, it is an insult to Jesus who died for your sins, as if Jesus is not adequate for you, but I do not want to tell Edna Mae this fact for fear of making things worse for her.

  In a woman, the weaknesses of a man are doubled, or trebled. Their will to withstand the temptation of despair is like the muscles of their shoulders and upper arms, lacking in development.

  Quickly I rose from the bed, that badly needed changing. (I did not want to see if, in her moment of panic, when it seemed that she might be suffocating, my poor dear wife had wetted herself and the bedclothes.) I helped Edna Mae back into bed, and adjusted her pillow beneath her head, and sat for a while with her, caressing her hand that was strangely hot and dry.

  “Which time is this, Luther?”

  “Which time?”

  “I know where we are but—when . . .?”

  Our minister has said, there is a time beyond time. You will have no words to speak of it. This is a thought that has come to me too, when I stand up, lifting my head, seeing quickly the arrangement of clouds in the sky, and the types of clouds—their particular shapes, colors, thicknesses.

  In silent reply to her question I gripped Edna Mae’s hand tight.

  We have faith, that meaning will come to us from above. Like a light-falling warm rain that blesses.

  It was a blessing now, soon then Edna Mae lapsed back into sleep. I was confident that she would not recall any of her nightmare of choking, in the morning.

  That is a blessing of bad dreams, they are quickly forgotten.

  While Edna Mae slept in our bed, with opened mouth, and damp hoarse breath, but less agitation than before, I felt my own agitation gradually subside; and a feeling of gratitude filled my heart. For it seemed to be decided, I was not meant to put my dear wife out of misery. And it was not so clear, that God did not have a special destiny for Luther Dunphy.

  Quietly I switched off the light and slid beneath the covers beside the female body.

  “Thank you, God. You have shown me the way as I have prayed You would.”

  SOON AFTER THIS, without informing my dear wife I became a member of Operation Rescue, which I discovered through the Army of God newsletter. In all, I would attend only three meetings and at these, I would not speak. But, with the others, I would vow to lay my life on the line for Jesus.

  THE LOST DAUGHTER

  In January 1998 it happened. Though I saw the other vehicle turning out onto the highway I could not brake my vehicle in time.

  In a lightly falling snow it happened. And the highway beginning to glaze over with a thin glittering film of ice.

  This too was a turn in my soul. Jesus, forgive me!

  Some distance ahead saw the pickup continuing out onto the highway through the stop sign. At the County Line Road this was, just outside town. Where I would drive sometimes, to the county landfill. It is not a much-used road and so there is no traffic light only just a stop sign. In a lightly falling snow the pickup was not so visible as it would have been in bright sunshine for the chassis was of no-color like stone worn smooth.

  When you are driving on the state highway north of Muskegee
Falls the speed limit is fifty-five miles an hour. There are few traffic lights.

  So suddenly this happened, the pickup in the farthest-right lane.

  Always there is a refusal to see what your eyes are seeing, when it is a terrible sight. When another has dared to behave so willfully and in violation of the law. For this was what’s called a rolling stop and it is in violation of the law.

  Returning home from a morning of Saturday chores, and less than a mile from home. And in my distracted state—(for there is much to think about when your workhours have been cut back by one-third and in a family of five children of whom one has been diagnosed with a neurological condition)—seeming to hesitate for just a moment, a fraction of a moment, thinking—No. You are not going to push out onto the highway. Not in front of me.

  It is not like me, to think in such a way. Except sometimes behind the wheel of my vehicle when others seek to cut me off or take advantage. And even then, when turning at a light, a left-turn for instance, it is (usually) my custom to allow the driver in the opposite lane to turn first, out of friendliness; for a young minister who was much admired, in Toledo, had behaved in such a way, in imitation of Jesus, and had made an impression upon me. Also it is rare for me to speed on any road, for “anger management” has taught me to master such aggressiveness, as it is called, on the road as elsewhere.

  Turning the other cheek as Jesus bade us is just good sound advice, we were told. The person who is hurt by anger, is you.

  But it seemed, the pickup at County Line Road had scarcely slowed its speed before continuing out into the busy highway. Whoever was at the wheel of the vehicle could see how traffic in the farthest-right lane was speeding toward him and could gauge (it is to be supposed) that there was (probably) not sufficient time for him to turn onto the highway and increase his speed to prevent a collision, yet boldly he proceeded just the same.

  He would be a young man, I guessed. A teenager.

  Possibly a man of my age. But not a woman, and not an elderly man.

  From somewhere close by came a terrible sound of a horn, or horns. And even as my foot leapt to the brake, to press down hard, it was too late to avoid a collision with the vehicle directly in front of me, that was traveling at a speed more or less identical to my own, but now was being braked by its driver, to avoid hitting the pickup in the lane ahead; and without thinking, for there was no time to think, I turned the wheel of my vehicle sharply to the left, and pressed down the brake pedal even as the tires were skidding on the ice-film. Within seconds there was a three-vehicle collision even as—(as we would afterward learn)—the pickup continued on the highway, in the right lane, speeding away without (it seemed) a backward glance; and the guilty driver never apprehended.