The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Now, you must not give the prisoner false hope, either,” I cautioned her. “It is cruel to make her believe that she will be saved from her punishment.”

  “I hope I never say anything that I do not believe to be true,” she said reprovingly.

  I saw that she really believed this, and so I did not smile, but I was thinking that no one could exist for even a day in our carefully polite society by telling the unvarnished truth. I kept silent for the remainder of the ride, which was itself a lie, for she thought that I agreed with her.

  The Morganton jail was a two-story white house set in a well-kept lawn only a short distance from the courthouse. It was not the foul pit that one imagines for prisoners in Philadelphia or Boston-or even Raleigh, for that matter, but despite that, I suspected that it would seem terrible enough to my sisters-in-law. I wondered if I should prepare them for the scenes to come, but the set of Miss Mary’s jaw persuaded me to keep silent. The more unpleasant the experience, the more satisfaction the ladies would derive from having done their duty.

  The carriage stopped in front of the jail, and after I had assisted my companions in dismounting, I went to advise the jailer of his distinguished afternoon visitors. “Miss Mary has brought a basket of food to the prisoner,” I told Mr. Presnell. “You may, of course, search the contents, but I assure you that it contains only bread and cheese, and, I believe, a slab of blackberry pie. I smelled it baking this morning at Belvidere.”

  “Good wages for murder,” muttered Presnell, but I knew that he would not voice any complaints to the Erwin sisters, so I thanked him for allowing the visit and went back to fetch my sisters-in-law.

  Miss Mary marched into the jail like a wolf on the fold and advanced toward the staircase with a fearless and deliberate tread, but Catherine shrank back at the doorway, and I saw that she had gone pale.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said, touching her elbow. “Frankie Silver is no older than your nephew Waightstill, and she is neither coarse nor mad. It will be all right. I shall go with you upstairs.”

  Catherine whispered her thanks. “I thought…” she said. She took a deep breath and began again. “I came because I thought it might be a comfort to her to meet another woman who has lost her husband.”

  I nodded, for I did not trust myself to speak. She is a kind woman, and she deserved more happiness in this life than Providence has seen fit to give her.

  I indicated to Catherine that she should follow her elder sister up the narrow stairs, and that I would go last and carry the basket.

  Mr. Presnell, who had gone up ahead of us, was waiting at the prisoner’s cell. He unlocked the door, which was an ordinary wooden door made of stout oak, with a square of bars set at eye level in the middle of it, so that the prisoner could be observed by the guard. “Don’t be long in there,” he said softly to me as I went past him. “Lice.”

  We peered in at the straw-covered interior, which contained only a straw-filled mattress on a camp bed and two oaken buckets: a clean one for water and a foul-smelling one for waste. The prisoner was standing at the barred window looking out at the village, or perhaps at the mountains beyond.

  “She stands there hour after hour,” Presnell remarked. “Just staring out through the bars.”

  “So should I if I were forced to stay in this place,” said Miss Mary, who had overheard him. “At least the air from the window is fresher than the stench in here, and there is something to occupy the mind in the ever-changing view.”

  Presnell nodded. “Visitors for you, Mrs. Silver,” he said, adding as an aside, “I’ll be downstairs when you’re ready, Mr. Gaither.”

  Frankie Silver turned to face us, and I saw that she had been weeping. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she dabbed at her cheek with the back of one hand and stood there submissively, wondering, no doubt, what further tribulations she was to endure.

  I smiled, hoping to reassure her of the benign intentions of our visit. “Mrs. Silver, I am Burgess Gaither, the county clerk of Superior Court,” I said with careful politeness. “You may recall seeing me at your trial. My visit is not an official one, however. I am here as the escort to my wife’s sisters, who have come in Christian charity to visit you. May I present Miss Erwin and Mrs. Alfred Gaither? Ladies, this is Mrs. Charles Silver.”

  She turned her gaze from me to the two Erwin sisters standing uncertainly in the doorway. Her eyes widened, and she nodded, more to indicate that she understood than to convey a greeting. Miss Mary, as always, took charge. She strode forward and inclined her head, as courteously as she would have greeted a gentlewoman in a church pew.

  “Good day, Mrs. Silver. We have come to visit you,” she said briskly. “And to satisfy ourselves that you are well treated and in good health.”

  Frankie Silver nodded shyly. Her hair was lank and hung about her shoulders, for she had no means of binding it up, lest she should use a hairpin to pick the lock. She was not wearing the blue court dress, but a plain brown one that looked ancient and none too clean. She put her hands to her hair, as if to smooth it into a semblance of presentability, and as she edged forward a bit toward her visitors, we heard a clattering sound from the floor.

  Miss Mary peered down at the straw. “What was that noise?”

  “Chain,” said the prisoner softly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Frankie Silver lifted the hem of her skirt a few inches from the straw, revealing thick links of chain. She wriggled one small white foot and the chain rattled.

  I intervened with a discreet cough. “Mrs. Silver is in restraints. There is an iron shackle around her ankle, which is chained to a ring in the center of the floor.”

  Miss Mary rounded on me with a look of outrage suggesting that I was personally responsible for this indignity. I think she was on the verge of banishing me from the room when the prisoner spoke up softly, “It’s all right. I’m used to it. You can’t go too far in this cell anyhow.”

  Catherine left my side and went to put her hand on the prisoner’s arm. “We are very sorry to see a woman in such straits,” she said. “Are you well?”

  Frankie Silver shrugged. “Reckon I’ll live ’til September,” she said. September is the time of the next sitting of Superior Court, at which time the judge will set the date for her hanging.She is unlettered, but she is not stupid, I thought. Her answer had a pleasing irony that spoke well of her wits.

  “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  She hesitated for a moment before she whispered, “Can I see my baby?”

  They all turned to look at me, and I was forced to play the villain once again. “That is not within our power,” I said as gently as I could. “Your child is back up the mountain with her grandparents.”

  “Am I ever going to see her again?”

  “It is a long journey for a young child,” said Catherine gently. “I have a little daughter myself, and I would not care to have her travel so far in the summer heat.”

  “Let us hope that someday you will go home to her,” said Miss Mary.

  “She’ll forget me.”

  “Your family will not allow that,” I said, although I had no idea if this was true or not. I did not want to torment the wretched woman with false hopes, but neither did I want to add to her misery with agonizing thoughts of home.

  We stood there awkwardly, trying to think of something else to say to this poor creature. She could hardly know or care about politics or the fashions of the day, and her concerns for her home and family in the wilderness were equally foreign to ourselves.

  At last Miss Mary remembered the basket on my arm. “We have brought you some food,” she said, motioning for me to set it down on the straw mattress. “Are you hungry?”

  Frankie Silver looked away, and I fancied that her pride was struggling with her hunger. The mountain people are shy about accepting favors from anyone; they do not care to bebeholden, as they call it. A curious attitude, I have always thought, whereas we gentlefolk of the lowlands take care
that everyone in our circle of acquaintances should owe us a debt of gratitude for something, be it a dinner party given for a traveling gentleman, or a political appointment arranged for the son of a prominent neighbor. We take care to see that these loans of influence and hospitality are repaid in kind and issued again to a widening circle of acquaintances, for such is the currency of polite society. Frankie Silver would not understand the mechanics of a system of interlacing benevolences. But she was hungry.

  “I’m afraid you will have to eat it now,” I told her. “Mr. Presnell will not want us to leave the basket or its contents here when we leave.”

  “Please don’t worry about us,” said Catherine. “We have had our dinner.”

  We stepped away from the camp bed to let her approach it, much as one might leave scraps for a stray dog who was shy of people. Mrs. Silver sat down on the straw mattress and began to look through the contents of the basket. “Thank you,” she said softly, looking away from us. “You’re right kind to do this.” She balanced a chicken leg between her fingers and began to tear chunks out of its brown flesh. We fidgeted in silence, not wanting to stare but finding little else to do.

  “Do they feed you well in here?” asked Miss Mary.

  The prisoner gulped down a morsel of chicken before she answered. “Tolerable,” she said. “A deal of corn mush, and sometimes a little meat in a stew. Hardly nothing fresh, though.” She sighed. “I dream about tomatoes and onions. I used to tend the tomato vines up home, and keep the deer out by pelting rocks at ’em, and pick the bugs off the tomato leaves, and I’d watch the little green bobs get bigger every day, until finally they’d get red and soft and you could eat them. I reckon I could eat a bushel of them now. Eat ’til I foundered and my sides swole up with gas, like an old horse in a corncrib.”

  My sisters-in-law exchanged glances. This was not the sort of discourse they expected to have with a condemned prisoner, and since they had never been hungry in their lives, I am sure that they could find little to add to the conversation. I had been hungry, though, a few times after my father died, and I remembered well that feeling of emptiness that crowded all other thoughts out of one’s head.

  “With me it was always the apple harvest,” I said, smiling. “Sometimes I couldn’t wait for them to get ripe, and I’d eat the green ones and be sick as a pup.”

  She smiled and nodded, “Apples, too!” She looked like a child when the smile illuminated her features, and I thought for a brief moment that some mistake had been made. Surely this little girl was not the wicked murderess everyone talked about? She found the blackberry pie just then, and took a great bite out of the side of it, spilling purple juice down her chin and onto her breast. She wiped the stain away with the back of her hand and blushed. “I ask your pardon,” she said. “But it’s been a long time since I had pie.”

  She ate for a few more moments in silence, and then, the edge taken off her hunger, she began to study her visitors. She swallowed a mouthful of food and said to Miss Mary, “That is one pretty dress, ma’am. I always wanted me a white dress with lace on’t. Reckon I oughtn’t to have one now.” She nodded toward Catherine, in her widow’s weeds. “Ought to wear black like you, ma’am.”

  Miss Mary and I glanced at each other, neither of us daring to enter into a discussion on the proper mode of etiquette for a widow who has become one by her own hand, so to speak. Catherine said gently, “Did you have a white dress for your wedding?”

  The prisoner shook her head. “We got married after harvest, Charlie and me. We waited ’til the circuit rider came to meeting so we could stand up before him and make it all legal. Mama cut up one of her old calico dresses from back in Anson County and made me a new frock for the wedding. And Charlie’s sisters Margaret and Rachel helped me weave leaves and daisies into a garland for my hair. It was over so quick, I hardly had time to think on it. They give a picnic supper for us, though, after. Folks brought beans, and yams, corn bread, and the last of the summer tomatoes. Silvers killed one of their cows for a barbecue. They roasted it on a spit over an open fire.”

  “Who butchered it?”The words rose unbidden to my mind, and I said them before I was even aware of it.

  Frankie Silver’s wide blue eyes turned on me with a careful stare. “I don’t believe I’ve eat that much before or since,” she said.

  One blazing July day, when the air shimmered like creek water, distorting the shapes of the trees and hills in the distance, a letter arrived for me from Raleigh. It was addressed toB. S. Gaither, Clerk of Sup. Court, Burke County, Morganton, in the spidery copperplate script that is the hallmark of professional scribes and minions of the law. I knew exactly what it was, and I took a deep breath before slitting open the envelope, for it is a solemn thing to hold someone else’s life in your hands.

  A few lines in black ink, nothing more. I stood there in the red dust of the road, reading those words, for, unseemly as it was, I could not wait to walk back to the courthouse to read the verdict contained in that missive.

  It is considered by the Court that the judgment of the Superior Court of Law for the county of Burke be affirmed. And it is ordered that the said Superior Court proceed to judgment and sentence of death against the defendant, Francis Silver. On motion judgment is granted against Jackson Stuart and Isaiah Stuart, sureties to the appeal, for the cost of this court in the suit incurred.

  Jno. L. Henderson

  Clerk of Supreme Court of North Carolina

  I folded the letter and put it back among the other letters that had come for me that day. There’s an end to it, I thought, but I could not help feeling saddened at this turn of events.

  David Newland, the owner of the stagecoach line, stood nearby, watching me. Since he brings most of the news to Morganton, it is not unnatural that he should take an interest in it. “Bad tidings, Mr. Gaither?” he said, ambling over to join me.

  “It is very bad indeed for Mrs. Silver,” I said. “Her appeal has been denied.”

  He frowned. “So Mr. Woodfin was not able to persuade the justices to show her mercy?”

  I hesitated, but I could see no way to evade the question, and I told myself that it was no business of mine anyhow. “According to the letter, Mr. Woodfin was not there.”

  “But who presented her case to the justices, then? Mr. Wilson has not left town these past weeks.”

  I could not meet his gaze, for I knew that I would see the outrage I myself felt mirrored in his eyes. “No one appeared on her behalf before the Supreme Court. The case was judged only on the merits of the written appeal.” A document of some three and a half hundred words, cribbed together by me in weariness and haste on the night following the trial. Her life had depended on this brief and colorless cluster of words, and it had failed her.

  David Newland’s eyes widened. “She had no lawyer to plead her case in Raleigh? No one?”

  I studied the wagon tracks in the red dust at my feet. “It’s a long way to Raleigh,” I murmured.

  “Don’t I own the stagecoach, by God? I know how far it is, Mr. Gaither. I know exactly. And if I had been hired by that poor girl’s family to see her through her troubles, I would have kept my word, so help me I would, even if Raleigh was halfway to hell and stank of brimstone.”

  I could think of nothing to say that would not cast aspersions on my fellow attorneys, so I merely patted him on the arm and tried to summon a smile.

  “Well, what must be done now?” asked Newland.

  “Done?” I stared at him. “There is nothing to be done. The jury ruled, and the State Supreme Court has upheld their decision. It is all over now, except for the sentencing, which will come in the fall term of court, and then the execution that must follow.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Newland said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He sighed. “You know, Mr. Gaither, when we had that trial back in March, tempers were high around here, and I don’t mind telling you that I was as eager as the rest to see that young woman hang
ed for her crime, but there has been talk around town lately. People are saying that Charlie Silver didn’t amount to much, and maybe he got what was coming to him. They’ve been mulling this case over, and now I hear folks saying that a decent woman doesn’t turn to violence but for one reason: to defend herself, or more likely her child. They had a little baby girl, as I recall.”

  “A daughter,” I murmured. “Just over a year old when the murder took place.”

  Newland nodded triumphantly. “There you are. That set me to thinking, all right. Why didn’t her lawyers admit she killed Charlie Silvers and then explain why?”

  I sighed. It is difficult to explain the law to laymen. They seem to think that justice has to do with right and wrong, with absolutes. Perhaps when we stand before our Maker on Judgment Day, His court will be a just one, but those trials held on earth are not about what happened, but about what can be proven to have happened, or what twelve citizens can be persuaded to believe happened. Sometimes I think that the patron saint of lawyers ought to be Pontius Pilate, for surely he said it best:What is truth?

  David Newland tugged at my sleeve. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Gaither. Why didn’t they just tell us what happened instead of stonewalling with a plea of not guilty?”

  I sighed. “It would have been a great gamble to have admitted her guilt in open court. There was no proof of self-defense, for there is only Mrs. Silver’s word for it, and she was not at liberty to testify. Her attorneys must have felt it was safer to make the state prove her guilt on the circumstantial evidence, rather than admit that she did it, with no means to show provocation.”

  “Someone should have explained the situation to those judges in Raleigh.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. The Supreme Court does not decide guilt or innocence. They rule on procedural matters. They cannot pardon as a governor can.”

  “A governor?” Newland winced. “I had occasion to meet Mr. Montfort Stokes in Wilkesboro last April. The trial was still fresh in our minds, and when I discussed the matter with him, I was dead set against a pardon. I told him she would deserve what she got, and I said the rest of the county was pretty much to my way of thinking. I believe I misspoke, though, and now I must put things right. The governor can be appealed to, and if Montfort Stokes can be made to see reason, she might yet be saved.”