The Ballad of Frankie Silver (7 page)

“Who?”

Martha shrugged. “It’s an old murder case. North Carolina. It must be unsolved. Anyhow, he’s looking into it.”

“Oh. He must be bored if he’s looking for crimes to investigate.” He paused for a moment before he said, “Did you tell him about the current investigation?”

“No,” said Martha. “He’s fine where he is. And I’ve been keeping the newspaper away from him, too. Let him keep his nose in the history books for at least another week. I don’t want him to come back before he’s well enough to handle it.”

“But the similarities between the two incidents…”

Martha shrugged. “Coincidence. Anyhow, he’s too ill to concern himself with criminal investigation. We can handle it. I’ll get him his books on Frankie Silver. They will keep him busy, and if it keeps his mind off the execution and out of the office, so much the better.”

*   *   *

Fate Harkryder. Spencer didn’t want to think about him right now. He didn’t want to relive those hours at the floodlit campsite, and he didn’t want to think about the inevitable conclusion to that chain of events set in motion so long ago.

He stood at the sliding glass doors of his cabin, looking out on the folds of hills stretching away to North Carolina. The sight of the mountains in the morning sunshine always brought to mind the 121st Psalm:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help
, Usually he found that gazing out at the mountains soothed him and made the concerns of the day fade away into the haze of geologic time. It was a spiritual experience that he could not explain, except to say that the vista gave him perspective and made his problems seem insignificant when measured against the eternity of the land itself.

He found himself thinking instead about Frankie Silver.

It had been twenty years, but Spencer still remembered standing beside Nelse Miller at the grave in the mountain churchyard on that bright summer day and feeling a chill as the old man talked about the death of Charlie Silver. On the drive back to Hamelin, Nelse had rambled on for nearly an hour about the nineteenth-century murder case and the events that followed, making a tale of it as mountain storytellers instinctively do. Spencer had forgotten most of the details of the story—the names of the witnesses and the attorneys had passed from his mind almost as soon as Nelse uttered them. He had spoken fluently, from long familiarity with the case, with never a moment’s hesitation in his recital. What Spencer chiefly remembered was the passion of the sheriff’s interest in that one incident and the power of the spell woven by the tale on the long drive back over the mountain. Nelse Miller seldom talked about his own experiences in law enforcement, and he showed only a perfunctory interest in high-profile crimes reported in the national news. It was only this one obscure, seemingly insignificant case that held him in thrall.

Back then, Spencer Arrowood had thought the story of Frankie Silver was only a captivating folktale, entertaining enough to pass the time on the way home, but nothing that he ever needed to think about again. The story held no lessons about criminal investigation that he could see, since forensic detection was all but nonexistent in those days, and despite Nelse Miller’s obsession with the case, he saw no chance of resolving its mysteries after so many years had passed. Spencer had forgotten about Frankie Silver. Sheriff Nelse Miller, by then retired and crippled with arthritis, died in 1984, his book about Frankie Silver unwritten, his questions unanswered.

He could have forgotten all about that little-known murder case if it weren’t for one thing that Nelse Miller had said. “There’s only two cases of mountain justice that I’m not happy with. One is that fellow you put on death row, and the other is Frankie Silver.”

And now she haunted him. It was nothing he wanted to talk about with anybody—except Nelse Miller, who was long dead. He would have understood the fascination of the story.

Three graves in a mountain churchyard.

Spencer wondered if his sudden interest in the case was merely a product of the boredom of an active man forced to sit still for the first time in his adult life, or if it was a displacement of his own anxiety about the approaching death of Fate Harkryder. His great-aunt Til would have said, “You are called to solve the mystery,” and he smiled at the memory of an old mountain woman and her simple faith. He would look into the case, he told himself, and of all the whys he had to consider in the matter of Frankie Silver, the one he resolved not to look into was the why of his own interest in her story.

*   *   *

Dr. Alton Banner was checking up on his patient in an after-hours visit to the sheriff’s mountain cabin. “I don’t generally make house calls these days,” he remarked as he examined the stitches on the wound. “It frightens the younger members of my profession. I made an exception in your case, however, because any man who is fool enough to get himself shot for trespassing is probably fool enough to try to drive himself into town for his doctor’s appointment.”

Spencer did not reply. Useless to argue that in “trespassing” he had been in the line of duty, enforcing a court order, or to protest that he felt well enough to end his convalescence. The old man had his own opinions on everything, and he was unlikely to be deterred by the facts as his patient saw them.

“I don’t know why you live up here anyhow,” Banner went on, as he continued to poke and prod his patient. “The road up this mountain is a sheet of glass in the wintertime. I wouldn’t even try it in a four-wheel drive. It’s damned near vertical, that’s what it is. You’re like all the rest of these mountaineers. Moonstruck over these hills, and willing to sacrifice damn near anything to stay in them. It’s incurable, though. Forty years in an east Tennessee medical practice has taught me that right enough. Incurable.”

“Well, aside from that, how am I?” asked the sheriff.

Alton Banner peered at Spencer over the top of his glasses. “That depends,” he said. “If you were planning to take a couple of weeks off and go to Wrightsville Beach, then I’d say you were making satisfactory progress, considering your age and your indifferent attitude toward your own health, but if you’re angling to get back in that patrol car, I would be forced to downgrade your condition to critical. Now, which is it?”

“Neither one at the moment. It’s just that they want me in Nashville six weeks from now.”

“Six weeks! Well, then. If you continue to progress as you have been, I see no problem with that. You won’t be prancing around like Garth Brooks, mind you, but I’d say that if you just want to drive over to the state capital for a meeting with the bureaucrats sometime next month, I could in good conscience allow that.”

“I see.”

The toneless reply made Banner look up. “What’s the matter?” he said, peering at his patient. “Did I give you the wrong answer? If you want to skip a budget hearing, just say the word.”

“It’s more than that.” Spencer handed him the letter from the Department of Corrections.

Alton Banner scanned the letter. “Summoned … execution … six weeks—my God! Fate Harkryder! Hearing that name is like a goose walking over my grave. I haven’t thought about him in years.”

The sheriff nodded. “You remember, though, don’t you? You were there.”

“I was. I never will forget it.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, thinking back on a night that they both would have preferred to forget.

“That was the night of Emily Stanton’s murder. Gone before I got there, poor thing. You had to break the news to her parents, but I saw them at the trial. I remember her father asking me,
Did she suffer?
—and God help me, I took a deep breath and I lied to that man, because I couldn’t stand to utter the truth anymore than he could stand to hear it.”

Spencer nodded. “They drove over from Wilmington the next day. So did the Wilson boy’s mother, but I can’t remember her very well. Just the Stantons.”

The flash of headlights on the front window and the crunch of gravel indicated that another visitor had arrived at the sheriff’s ridgetop home.

Dr. Banner pushed aside the curtain and peered out. “You’ve got visitors. Looks like Martha’s car,” he grunted. “Shall I make myself scarce?”

“No,” said Spencer. “She’s probably just bringing up some more mail from the office.”

“She’s got some woman with her,” the doctor announced.

“My mother?”

“No. About her age, though.” Spencer struggled to his feet, but Alton Banner motioned for him to sit back down. “You’re an invalid. You stay put. I’ll answer the door. Do-gooders! I reckon it’s too late to put the lights out and pretend we’re not here.”

Spencer laughed. “Who’s being a mountaineer now?”

A moment later Alton Banner put on a welcoming smile and flung open the door. Martha Ayers ushered in a timid-looking older woman whose tinted blond hair did nothing to disguise her age.

“I brought you a visitor,” said Martha. “This is Mrs. Helen Honeycutt.”

Spencer’s greeting was almost cordial enough to hide his bewilderment. He had never seen the woman before in his life.

“I could make you some coffee,” Dr. Banner said, ushering them to chairs after the introductions had been made. “Since I’m a doctor, though, it is traditional for someone else to go and boil the water.”

“None for me, thanks.” Martha smiled at the sheriff. “I’m here to report on my assignments.”

“Your assignments—?”

Martha smiled and handed him a coffee-stained manila folder. “Here’s the case file you asked me about. Took me forever to find it.”

Spencer resisted the urge to sit down and open it immediately. He waited for Martha to explain the rest.

“Frankie Silver,” she prompted him. “You asked me, remember? The library said that there aren’t any books about her. Apparently nobody has ever written one. I’ve got the Book Place in Johnson City double-checking, and the librarian said she’d see if she could find some articles in local history books, but while we were talking about the case, Mrs. Honeycutt here came up to the desk and said that she’d heard that story as a child from her relatives over in North Carolina.”

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” the older woman assured the sheriff, as if she expected him to scold her for it. “But I heard the name Frankie Silvers, and of course, being from a Mitchell County family, I know all about her, so I thought I’d offer to help.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Spencer, with the carefully cultivated courtesy of an elected official. He didn’t like to deal in hearsay, though. He yearned for a concise listing of facts bound, printed, and documented.
I will go to the library myself
, he thought, but he wasn’t well enough to go yet, and he couldn’t discourage Martha or hurt this woman’s feelings. At least this was a start. Aloud he said, “I’d be grateful for anything you could tell me.”

“It’s a true story that happened in Mitchell County, North Carolina. At the Dayton Bend in the Toe River is a place called Kona. It wasn’t called that when Frankie Silvers lived there in the 1830s, but that’s its name now. It wasn’t in Mitchell County back then, either. In those days Burke County hadn’t been subdivided, and its territory stretched all the way to Tennessee. That’s not part of the story, Sheriff. I just know that on my own, from looking up census records. I’m tracing my family back to the American Revolution. The Overmountain Men.”

Spencer nodded. “That must take a lot of research,” he said politely, and waited. He hoped he wasn’t going to hear a discourse on Mrs. Honeycutt’s glorious ancestors.

She blushed. “Well, I’ll just tell it straight out then,” she said. “My grandmother made a tale out of it, and I’ll tell it like she did, best I can remember. We’re not used to tale-telling anymore, what with the TV and all, but I will try.”

Dr. Banner sat down on the sofa beside his patient and smiled encouragingly. “I’ve heard something of this story. I’d like to listen, too, if I may.”

Spencer reached for the notepad beside the telephone. “Do you mind if I ask you questions as you go along?”

Mrs. Honeycutt looked startled. “My goodness! You’d better wait ’til I’ve finished, or I might forget where I was. Being questioned by a sheriff is bound to make me nervous. And when you do ask me questions, I don’t know if I’ll know the answers, but I’ll try to help you as best I can.”

Spencer smiled reassuringly at his guest. “Go ahead, then,” he said. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Helen Honeycutt perched nervously on the edge of the sofa, toying with the leather strap of her handbag. “I’m not a storyteller or anything like that,” she warned her audience. “I’m just going to say it as I was told it.”

“I’d be most grateful if you would,” said Spencer. On the lined message pad he wrote: “Frankie Silver, testimony of Helen Honeycutt, resident of Mitchell County.” He had already begun a file on the case as if it were one of his current investigations.

“Well, the way I heard it … at the Dayton Bend of the Toe River—which in Tennessee we call the Nolichucky—well, you know that.… Anyhow, in a little log cabin at Kona in the 1830s, there lived a young couple named Charlie and Frankie Silvers. Now, Charlie was a handsome boy, fond of dancing, and fonder still of the ladies, but he and Frankie had married young, and by now he was nineteen years old, and already they had a little baby, who had just passed her first birthday.”

Spencer scribbled notes on his legal pad. All of that information sounded either verifiable or not relevant. Nothing he wanted to quibble about. He nodded for her to continue.

“They say Frankie was a pretty little blonde, but she was the jealous type, and they say that Charlie had a sweetheart. He didn’t care to be stuck at home with a nagging wife and a crying baby. Maybe he was planning to leave them both for good. Anyhow, one winter day, Frankie and Charlie had words about the other woman, and then when they’d wore themselves out with arguing, Charlie lay down on a pallet beside the fire to go to sleep. And he held the little baby Nancy in his arms.”

Spencer Arrowood opened his mouth to speak, remembered that he had promised not to interrupt, and closed it again.

“Frankie saw him sleeping there by the fireplace, and she picked up an ax. Some say her daddy was there a-visiting in the cabin with them, and that he told her to do it. He might even have threatened to kill her if she didn’t murder Charlie. Family honor, I suppose. Like it says in the song,
He was her man, and he was doing her wrong
.”