Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

He woke up then. The same place in the dream that he always awakened, to the same six-paces-by-nine-paces cell, filled with his books and his calendar pictures of mountains.

“Hey, Milton, you out there?” It was two o’clock in the morning, but nobody sleeps soundly on death row. Fate was shivering, even in the breathless heat of a Nashville summer night. It was not completely dark. It is never completely dark here. He listened for a sound from beyond the wall. “Milton?”

Milton, his neighbor, a skinny young junkie from Memphis, who copped the death sentence in a drug hit, didn’t answer. Fate didn’t like Milton much-but maybe, he reasoned, that was the point. Nobody that you could like very much ever made it to death row these days, because a jury wouldn’t ask for the death penalty if they could find any redeeming qualities in the accused. In the old days, maybe, but not now. Public opinion and liberal lawyers were making it harder and harder to execute prisoners, so it was mainly career criminals and second-time killers who made it into Pod Five now. Fate wondered if a new trial would get him taken off the list, but that didn’t seem likely now, as the dream reminded him.

“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.”