The Ballad of Frankie Silver (36 page)

“She wants to confess.”

It was the eleventh of June. Thomas Wilson had found me in McEntire’s, sharing a pint with young Dr. Tate, who is a learned and kindred spirit in our little country town. Wilson stood looming over my chair like a black-suited crow, as gawky and unsmiling as ever. It is of little wonder to me that Mr. Wilson’s political career was short and unpropitious. I stared up at him, endeavoring to make sense of his blast of words. I said stupidly, “She … wants…”

“The prisoner. Frankie Silver! The wretched girl has finally got it into her head that the state means to kill her, and she has been weeping for hours on end. The sheriff tells me that she has abandoned herself to despair, but that some of her friends have visited with her in the jail—” He paused here and gave me such a meaningful look that I knew at once who the prisoner’s friends were, although Mr. Wilson is too much of a gentleman to say the names of wellborn ladies aloud in a public tavern.

“I see.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said dryly. “Apparently, these friends have convinced the poor creature that her only hope of survival is to tell the truth about what transpired on the night of Charles Silver’s death. Her advisors think that if her story is brought to light, the governor can be persuaded to spare her life.”

“Do you think so?”

“It is possible, I suppose.” He said this with no apparent conviction. “It is worth trying. I have been summoned to hear Mrs. Silver’s narrative, and I want another witness. In this situation there should be two listeners to corroborate the testimony.”

“That seems fitting,” I said. “Will you ask Sheriff Boone?”

“I think not,” said Thomas Wilson, after a moment’s hesitation. “He is already suspected of being too lenient toward the prisoner. I think you would be the proper witness. As clerk of court, you are the ranking official in the county, since the circuit judge and the district solicitor are not from Morganton. Besides, I was one of Mrs. Silver’s attorneys, but you are a disinterested observer—a most desirable thing in a witness. Will you hear her confession?”

“I will, gladly,” I said, getting to my feet. “Shall I come with you now?”

“Now is as good a time as any. Bring writing materials with you. We shall want a record of the prisoner’s statement.”

I stopped by the courthouse to fetch ink and paper, and we proceeded across the lawn to the wood frame building that served as the county jail. John Boone was expecting us, it seemed, for he met us at the door himself and ushered us up the stairs to the prisoner’s cell with very little comment beyond a civil greeting.

She must have heard our footsteps on the stairs, for as we neared the second floor, I heard a clank of chain that indicated the prisoner was stirring in her cell. “Can you unchain her while we talk with her?” I asked the sheriff.

John Boone would not meet my eyes. “No,” he said.

I did not protest further, for I knew that the escape had forced him to be vigilant. He let us into the cell and locked it behind us, placing the iron key back on his belt. “Really!” I said to Wilson as the door slammed shut. “The sheriff can hardly think we mean to effect an escape with the prisoner.”

“He is taking no chances,” said Wilson. “I cannot fault him for that.”

I thought with sorrow of the pretty young woman who had prattled on about tomatoes and apples last summer. She was gone. The gaunt and haggard creature who huddled near the window of the cell bore no resemblance to that blue-eyed girl who had held her own against the Erwin sisters many months ago. She did not turn to look at us as we came in. I think she no longer cared for visitors.

Thomas Wilson said, “Good afternoon, madam. We have been summoned to speak with you. I believe you know Mr. Burgess Gaither?”

She nodded, and turned to look at me. “I remember him.”

“I was asked to witness your statement,” I told her. “Do you want to tell this story in your own words, Mrs. Silver, or would you like us to ask you questions?”

“I’ll just tell it straight out, I guess. It’s been bottled up inside me so long now, I feel like it’s poking out my stomach. Let me tell it.”

I sat down on the camp bed, took out my writing materials, and set my quill to paper. “Whenever you are ready,” I said, with what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

The tears flowed freely down her pale cheeks. “I killed him,” she said.

I drew in my breath. I knew, of course, that she must have done it, and the jury had pronounced her guilty more than a year ago, but there is still a chill that comes when one hears a murderer say quietly,
I killed him.
I waited for her to continue, but she simply sat there looking at us.

“We must know more,” said Thomas Wilson.

She nodded, and looked back toward the window and the green mountains in the distance. “Charlie … I was sixteen when I married him. He was handsome enough, and I reckon that’s why I said yes when he asked me. Folks were always saying what a handsome pair we were. And I was wanting to get away from home anyhow. Seems like all there ever was to do was chores, and I thought, I may as well do the washing and the cooking for my own man in my own house instead of letting Mama boss me every whipstitch doing the selfsame tasks at home. I wish I hadn’t of now.” She looked at me. “You ain’t writing,” she said.

“No. I will only set down what pertains to the crime itself,” I told her. I could not write as fast as she spoke, and at any rate I thought this preamble would be of little value for our purposes. “You may say whatever you like, though, Mrs. Silver. I will read it back to you when we are done.”

She nodded. “Where was I? Oh, Charlie. You’d think with his mama dying a-borning him, that he wouldn’t be spoiled by his stepmother, but I reckon he was. Or else he was just naturally trifling. He didn’t hardly lift his hand to help with the work. He’d chop wood and feed the cattle, and he called himself hunting when he’d slip off for hours at a time while I tended to everything else.”

Thomas Wilson scowled at her. “Madam, did you kill your husband because he was lazy?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I didn’t mind him much most times, but the thing was, Charlie liked to get drunk, and the liquor turned him mean.”

“How so?”

“He’d come home cold-eyed and set in his jaw, looking for things to find fault with. I answered him back a time or two at first, but he’d hit me across the face with the back of his hand and split open my lip. Or he’d black my eye and say I’d earned it. I learned to keep out of his way when he was drinking. There’s many a woman does the same, sir.”

“He had been drinking on the night in question?”

“The night and most of the day as well. He went over to George Young’s to get liquor, and he must have put away a jugful before he ever started home. He came in after dark, toting his pistol and letting the cold wind in the cabin when he pulled the door open, and Baby woke up a-bawling.”

I wrote:
The prisoner avers that Charles Silver did come home intoxicated on the night of December 22, 1831.

“We had words then, sir, for I was fit to be tied that he had been gone so long, leaving me to tend the fire and the cattle. I reckon I hollered at him:
It’s about time you got home,
or some such words, and he shoved me away. I fell against the cradle, and the baby yelled even louder. Charlie scrunched up his face like the noise hurt his ears, and I was still talking too loud to make myself heard over the din. He pulled out his pistol then, and said,
I’m sick of both of you, by God I am!
I wouldn’t have taken much notice of that, for he was always full of talk, except for the look on his face, which wasn’t red like anger, but gray, like somebody who was cold all the way to the bone. He looked down at my baby then, sir, and he says to me,
Frankie, if you don’t shut that baby up, I reckon I will.
”

“He pointed a pistol at his own child?” I said. Mr. Wilson gave me a withering stare, and I mumbled an apology for forgetting myself and went back to setting down her testimony.

“Charlie pulled the hammer back, and I knew he meant to do it. He wasn’t himself at all. He was mad with drink, and we’d been shut up in that cabin most of the winter on account of the deep snow, with the baby colicky and crying day and night. Charlie likes a good time, sir. He wasn’t one to suffer bad times. He would have been sorry afterward, most likely, if he had killed the baby, but it wouldn’t have been no use then.”

Mr. Wilson said softly, “And what did you do?”

“Well, I didn’t have more than a heartbeat to think on it, for he was a-steadying that pistol at the baby’s head. Next thing I knew, the ax was in my hands and I was swinging at him with all my might. I had to stop him, you see, any way I could.”

Thomas Wilson and I looked at each other. There was sorrow in his face and anger in mine, but we said nothing to the prisoner except a calm “Continue, please.”

“I hit him. I reckon I did.”

“And then?”

“He went down, and there was blood around the side of his head, and he was twitching. I had me a white kitten once, and while it was playing by the hearth, my daddy’s hunting dog snapped at its little throat and shook it while I stood and screamed. When that dog dropped my kitten, it lay there twitching, blood coming out of its mouth, with its eyes like ice, staring without seeing. Took it a long, long minute to die. I cried for three days.” She looked up at us, as if she had suddenly remembered we were there. “It was like that with Charlie. It was quick.”

We sat there in silence for a moment; both Wilson and I were waiting for her to pick up the threads of the story again, for she was no longer weeping, but the silence continued. At last Thomas Wilson said softly, “And then what, Mrs. Silver?”

She stared up at him. “I killed him,” she whispered. “And I told you how. That’s all I can say.”

“But how did you come to burn his body?”

She shrugged. “Just did.”

“Surely you realize that it is the destruction of the body that has caused the greatest outrage concerning your crime?”

She nodded. We waited another long minute in silence, but it was clear that the prisoner would say no more.

Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “Very well then, madam,” he said. “Let us proceed. Tell us what transpired on the night you escaped.”

She took a deep breath. “Will them that helped me get in trouble for it, Mr. Wilson?”

“They deserve to,” he replied. “They have set the governor’s feelings very much against you, for he thinks now that you are an outlaw. You may save yourself, however, if you will hand over those who effected your escape.”

“That wouldn’t be right,” said Frankie Silver.

“It would save you.”

“If I told on them that helped me … would they hang?” She was looking not at Mr. Wilson, but at me.

“We cannot say what punishment the jury would fix upon them,” he said primly, but my expression must have told her my thoughts: they would hang, as surely as I’m sitting here.

“I can’t say,” she whispered, huddling back against the wall.

Wilson tried to persuade her to confide in us, but she would say nothing further. At last he fairly shouted at her, “Mrs. Silver, without your testimony these people cannot be convicted!”

At that she smiled and shook her head again. I wondered if she really understood what her refusal would cost her.

*   *   *

We left the cell then, for it was clear that nothing more could be got out of badgering the poor creature. She had made up her mind to keep silent. As we descended the stairs, I murmured to Wilson, “She should not be hanged for this crime, sir! It was self-defense.”

“I know it,” he said. “I thought it must have been, but as she could not testify in court, we could not present that defense to the jury. It is not the killing of Charlie Silver that will hang her, anyhow.”

“No, it isn’t. It is the cutting up of the body that has outraged the community, and she will not explain that point away. It was panic, I suppose. She wanted to hide the evidence of her crime, for she does not understand legal shadings like ‘self-defense’ or ‘manslaughter.’ Poor ignorant girl! What will you do now?”

Thomas Wilson sighed. “I will write to Governor Swain yet again. I must tell you, though, that he is reluctant to intercede. I received a letter from him only last week, and he shows no inclination to mercy. As for the persons who helped Mrs. Silver escape, the governor wants them hanged as well.”

“But she should not have been convicted!”

“She was, though. And the state says that verdicts are to be honored, just or unjust. I have shared the governor’s letter with the prisoner’s father, Isaiah Stewart. I hope it will serve as a warning to him, lest he should get the whole family hanged instead of only the daughter.”

“Poor Mr. Stewart. His daughter is wrongly convicted, and he is powerless to save her. Can you wonder that he is driven to desperate measures?”

“I have no sympathy to spare for the relatives,” said Thomas Wilson. “It is their meddling that will get her hanged. They should have trusted in the law the moment that Charlie Silver died, instead of now, when it is all but too late.” He shook his head. “Well, I will do what I can. I will advise the governor of Mrs. Silver’s confession. I must impress upon him that the act was self-defense. Perhaps he will not hang her when he knows the facts of the case. But the escape—that was ill-judged. She is indeed an unfortunate woman.”

“You must save her, Wilson.”

“Well, I will try. You would oblige me by making several fair copies of Mrs. Silver’s confession. We shall need them to accompany the petitions we must circulate around the county. The governor will want reassurance that he is making a popular decision.”

“I will write them out tonight,” I said.

“Good. Time is short. I will write to Woodfin in Asheville myself. I think when he hears of this new evidence, he will assist us as well.”

Downstairs we said our farewells to Sheriff Boone. “I have witnessed her confession,” I told him. “And it is a sad tale indeed. I hope that this document will spare you the terrible duty of hanging her.”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “With all my heart. Though I reckon it would disappoint half the county to be deprived of the spectacle.”