Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

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 any more 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.