The Ballad of Frankie Silver (28 page)

“Milton? You up?”

Milton would stab his grandmother in the back and take bets on which way she’d fall, but at least he was there, and awake, and alive, and if anybody could understand what it feels like to dream you’re dead and know that the dream is going to come true real soon, it would be another condemned man on the row. He was better than nothing.

“What’s eating you, La-fay-ette?” The singsong drawl flowed out of the shadows; made him wonder if Milton could sing.

“Just wanted some company. Bad dream is all.”

Silence, and then a rumbling laugh. “Time is getting short, ain’t it? You dream you were in Virginia, La-fay-ette?”

“Dreamed I was dead. Buried alive. Couldn’t get out. Couldn’t scream for help.”

“Yeah, you musta been in Virginia all right, then,” said Milton. “They been killing prisoners right and left over there. You dead, you must be in Virginia, ’cause they damned sure ain’t killed nobody in Tennessee in thirty-some years. I don’t reckon they’ll start now with your sorry ass.”

“The appeals have all been denied.”

“I got money riding on your continued existence, homeboy. Well, cigarettes, anyhow. Two packs of Marlboros says you’ll be alive and kicking come New Year’s Eve.”

Fate took a long breath and waited to see if he felt any better. He didn’t. “Milton? I want to be cremated.”

“After you gone to the electric chair?”

“It’s the dream. I’m in a box and I’m dead but I’m still conscious, and it’s dark and I can’t get out. My mouth is sewn shut.”

Milton was silent for some minutes, and Fate had begun to think that he had drifted off to sleep, but then he laughed and said: “Cremated. Don’t you beat all?” He laughed again. “
Cremate your ass.
Man, you know what I heard about Old Sparky? They say that the death squad has to wait half an hour before they even touch the body, it gets so hot. It’s cooked from all that juice they run through you. Sometimes the skin catches fire, they say, and the eyeballs fry right on your face. And you think you’re gonna stay conscious through that, homeboy? You won’t have nothing left to think with by the time they put you in the ground to cool off.”

“I want to be cremated. If they’re going to burn me, they might as well finish the job.”

BURGESS GAITHER

Appeal

My carefully written appeal went off to Raleigh on Newland’s stagecoach, as did Judge Donnell himself. Both would reach the state capital in three days’ time, but I knew that many weeks would pass before I received a reply from the North Carolina Supreme Court regarding the fate of Frankie Silver.

I watched the stagecoach lurch along the pike, churning up black mud in its wake, until at last it disappeared into the pines in the distance. I wondered if Mrs. Silver could see the road from the window of her cell. It is a high, barred window, and perhaps she is too small even to be able to reach it, but at least it will afford her a glimpse of the sky, and I must keep reminding myself that it is more than her poor young husband will ever see again. At least she has another summer yet to live, while the learned jurists in Raleigh deliberate. It should not take them long to consider the matter, for my summary of the trial consisted of a single page, simply stating the facts of the case and the nature of the defense’s objection to the verdict. I had not written very many appeals in my brief career as clerk of court, but the judge had read over it carefully, affixed his signature to the document, and informed me gruffly that it would do. I did not care to ask him if he thought that my eloquence would win the prisoner a new trial.

I had not seen Frankie Silver since the close of the trial, but I had heard her weeping.

On Friday, when the business of court had ended for the day with the conviction and sentencing of Frankie Silver, I had occasion to walk outside, for the day was mild and sunny, and I was grateful for the arrival of spring, however tenuous its hold on the weather in late March. The crowds had dispersed now, some to make the long ride home, but far too many others would pack into the taverns, celebrating the triumph of justice, or at least their own good fortune in knowing that it was not they who would be hanged. I could hear the sounds of shouting and raucous laughter far off down the street, and I resolved to go straight home tonight, for I did not want to mingle with the revelers. I thought that the sight of spring’s new leaf, almost golden in the sunlight, and deep breaths of brisk mountain air would do me more good than all the ale in McEntire’s.

The prisoner had been led away by the jailer, still in that walking stupor she had effected since hearing her death sentence pronounced. Now she was locked away in the upstairs jail cell reserved for female prisoners, where she would spend the remaining weeks of her brief life. I wondered if a clergyman had called upon her, for surely she would be in need of spiritual comfort on this bitter day.

Before I could think better of it, I directed my steps toward the frame house that served as the jail. I knocked on the door—just a tentative tap, for I was already thinking better of my impulse and wishing I had not come, but as I turned to leave, Gabriel Presnell himself opened the door with a thundering scowl that eased when he saw that it was I.

“Evening, Mr. Gaither,” he said. I saw that he was holding a pistol at his side, and he lowered it sheepishly as he recognized me. “I thought you might be one of them no-account sightseers wanting a look at the prisoner. Offered me money, one of ’em did.” He looked as if he wanted to spit.

Presnell opened the door wide enough to let me in, and as I stepped inside the narrow entryway, I could hear a low-pitched wail from above the stairs.

“I didn’t mean to trouble you,” I said hastily. “Is Mr. Butler here?”

“No. There didn’t look to be trouble after the verdict, so he left the watch to me. He’s up home, if you’re wanting him.”

Suddenly I felt foolish. “I just thought I’d inquire—that is, I wondered whether the parson has been to see her. Mrs. Silver, that is. To say a prayer with her, perhaps. It would be a kindness, wouldn’t it?”

Gabe Presnell jerked his head in the direction of the keening noise. “She won’t be seeing nobody tonight. She’s crouched up there in a ball underneath the window in her cell, bawling like a branded calf.”

“Has she said anything?”

“No. Just wailing. My wife is up there trying to calm her down, so’s we can all get a bit of rest tonight.”

“That’s kind of her,” I said, backing toward the door. “I’m glad to know that the prisoner isn’t left alone right now.”

“It’s more than she deserves,” said Presnell.

“Well, I suppose it is,” I said, not wanting to debate the matter on the threshold. “But we are bidden to be merciful, except in that last measure of justice which she must shortly undergo.”

“That’s as may be,” said Presnell, “but charity is hard to come by with all these rowdy sots a-knocking on the door every whipstitch, and that caterwauling from herself up yonder to be borne.”

“It will all be over soon enough,” I told him.

*   *   *

I rode home in the chill March wind, taking no joy in the signs of spring around me. It had been a long, wearying day, and I found that I could not rejoice in the verdict, whether justice had been done or not. The red-tipped branches of the budding oak trees made me think of fingers dripping blood in the forest, and I shuddered, thinking of Charlie Silver’s red hand lying in a clump of snow, clutching at nothing. The trial was not over for me. I had yet to write the appeal. I dreaded an evening of toil by lamplight, while my wife and her family enjoyed a pleasant conversation by the fireside.

Five of the Erwin sisters and their young cousin Miss Eliza Grace McDowell were waiting for me in the great hall at Belvidere, sipping tea and taking turns pacing with anticipation. One of the younger sisters was making a halfhearted attempt to piece out a tune upon the rosewood piano. When I appeared in the doorway, they stopped and stared at me openmouthed, waiting for a sign.

I shook my head and they shrank back with soft cries of distress, but while I saw dismay upon some of their faces, and polite regret on others, I did not detect surprise. We knew, we all knew, what was coming.

I sank down wearily on the sofa and stretched my hand out for a cup of tea before I let them prevail upon me to tell what had happened at the trial.

“Please, Mr. Gaither,” said pretty little Eliza McDowell. “Mr. Woodfin seemed so eloquent and so … noble. Could he not persuade the jury to be merciful?”

“He tried, Miss Eliza, but to no avail,” I said, suppressing another spark of irritation at Woodfin’s pervasive charm. The Erwin ladies grouped around me so that I felt like a honeybee smothered in the petals of a dozen silk frocks as I told my tale. They all looked so concerned, but so puzzled, over the turn of events we had examined in the courtroom that day. How could a young woman kill her husband? How could a poor woman receive second-best justice? They knew no more of Frankie Silver’s frontier existence than hothouse flowers know of ditch lilies. How could I stem their questions when I had no intention of enlightening them about the realities of the world past Belvidere?

I looked into the sweet, childish face of Eliza Grace McDowell, so similar in age and feature to Frankie Silver herself, and found myself wondering what seeds of murder might lie in that child’s innocent heart. Eliza Grace is the granddaughter of the two McDowell brothers, one a colonel and the other a general in the Revolutionary War, and the old folks tell tales of Miss Eliza’s great-grandmother Margaret O’Neil McDowell, who faced down the Tory soldiers as they were sacking her very home. With such ruthlessness in her bloodlines, surely Eliza Grace should be capable of the same ferocity that the jury found in Frankie Silver, and yet I could not imagine this cosseted young woman striking anyone in anger, or summoning up any passion that would unleash a whirlwind of violence. That patriot lady Margaret O’Neil McDowell might have understood the hardship and danger of the frontier, but she had lived generations ago, and since then her descendants had known only wealth and privilege.

Is it their upbringing, and the fine character of the aristocrat, that separates them from the sins of the murderess, I wondered, or is it only a matter of simple good fortune? Is Eliza Grace as capable of violence as any murderess, but innocent only because she has never suffered whatever torments led Frankie Silver to her crime? I put the thought aside. The law is my profession, and it must judge people by what they have done, without concerning itself with whether or not life has treated them fairly, for to do so would be questioning God’s will. There are some things we are not given to understand. But I did not pity Frankie Silver any the less for it. She was a fair and tender young creature, and she would have a hard life and an early death, while the fine ladies here before me lived measured, ornamental lives, innocent of drudgery or danger. They were no more beautiful or clever than the defendant, but they were wellborn, and that counted for everything. I could find no justice there. Perhaps there is a different kind of justice in heaven.

“Do tell us what happened, Burgess,” said my wife Elizabeth, tapping my arm. “You seem quite dazed, my dearest.”

“I am weary,” I said. I took a sip of my tea and withdrew from my reverie. “The trial was most unusual. Instead of a quick session convened to hear the verdict and set the sentence, there was more testimony this morning.”

“Surely that is most irregular.” Miss Mary Erwin was watching me closely, and I hoped she would not ask me what I thought of the day’s events.

“Well,” I said, “it is unusual.” They pressed me for more details, and although I hesitated to discuss such delicate matters with gentlewomen, their demand for the particulars overcame me, and I told them as best I could what had happened today in the courtroom.

“The witnesses changed their stories?” said Miss Mary when I had finished. “But this is monstrous!”

“Surely the testimony was a lie,” said Elizabeth. “They cannot hang the poor girl on the basis of false witness, can they?”

“What did Mr. Woodfin say about their treachery?” Eliza McDowell wanted to know.

I shook my head. “The witnesses claimed that they had reconsidered their testimony, and that upon reflection they had remembered the events more clearly. This may, of course, be true.”

“So they found her guilty,” said Miss Mary Erwin. “I feared that they would. Was judgment passed?”

“Yes. Mr. Donnell pronounced the death sentence. In a case of murder, there is no other remedy. Of course, it may not come to that,” I added hastily, seeing their stricken faces. “I am writing the appeal myself, and I shall take care to stress the change of testimony and the unsequestered witnesses.”

Elizabeth looked around the room triumphantly. “There!” she said. “I told you it would be all right! Burgess will save her!”

Her sisters, undeluded by wifely affection, looked as doubtful as I felt. Juries’ decisions are rarely overturned by the State Supreme Court unless grievous errors have been made in the trial procedure. The Erwin sisters, wives and daughters of attorneys, would know this as well as I when they put sentiment aside, but no one contradicted my loyal wife. We found ourselves talking at cross-purposes in our haste to change the subject.

Miss Mary sat in glowering silence for a good while, and then she said, “We must not forget this poor creature who languishes in the jail. We must visit her.”

I had opened my mouth to protest this outrageous suggestion when my sister-in-law added, “Did our Lord not instruct us to visit those in prison as well as those who are sick?”

Mary Erwin can cite Scripture for her purpose.

*   *   *

The summer passed uneventfully in Morganton. We reveled in the hot weather, cast our woolen clothes aside, and savored the June tomatoes, glad to be released from the confinement of winter. Then, just when we had put the bitter cold and snow out of our minds as if December would never come again, the flies, the choking red dust, and the breathless heat drove us back indoors once more to wait for the cooling winds of autumn.