Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

I glanced about the courtroom. Although the hour of nine was already upon us, the judge had not yet appeared, which meant that we all must wait upon his pleasure with but little to do. I left the day’s notes and papers at my desk and strolled over to Wilson, extending my hand as if it had been days since I had seen him instead of hours.

“Good morning, sir! I hope you and Mrs. Wilson are keeping well.”

“Tolerable,” said Wilson. A flicker of bewilderment crossed his face at my sudden effusiveness, but he shook my hand with perfect civility.

I inclined my head in the direction of Mrs. Silver to acknowledge her presence. To do more, I felt, would be unseemly, given the sad purpose for which we were assembled. She stared back at me without interest for a moment, and then she looked away, directing her gaze to the courtroom window, as she had throughout most of the trial.

“What do you hear from Mr. Woodfin these days?” I asked Thomas Wilson. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shoulders stiffen, and although she looked away quickly, I knew she was listening now.

“Nicholas Woodfin?” Wilson blinked, wondering no doubt what had possessed me to inquire of him. “Why, I believe that he is well. I have not heard otherwise.”

“Nor have I,” I said heartily for the prisoner’s benefit. “No doubt he is very busy with his legal practice these days, for he is an excellent trial lawyer. I think that we shall not see him today, though. I have the court docket, and I know that none of those who stand trial here today are represented by him.” I paused to make sure my words had sunk in. “For those who have already been convicted, no doubt Mr. Woodfin can help them more effectively outside the courtroom, with his letters and his influence.”

“No doubt,” said Wilson with a trace of asperity. “Good day, then.” Thomas Wilson is an able lawyer, but not much given to subtlety, and I am sure he thought my conversation was the babble of an eccentric. His client understood, though, for she gave me the faintest smile, and I took my leave of them.

I resumed my place at the front of the courtroom, and we waited for the circuit judge. That dour Scotsman John R. Donnell, who had presided over the trial of Frankie Silver, had served out his tenure in the Western District, and he had been replaced by a newly designated judge who was no stranger to the far reaches of the piedmont: Mr. David Lowry Swain of Asheville. I had never met him, but I knew him by reputation as an able and ambitious man. In anticipation of his visit to Morganton, I had overheard several persons in town mention the story of his naming that I had heard from Elizabeth: Swain was called David Lowry in memory of his mother’s first husband, who had been killed by Indians on the Georgia frontier. I remembered, too, that when David Swain was an up-and-coming young attorney in Asheville, Nicholas Woodfin had read law under him before passing the bar himself.

I wondered what Mr. Swain would make of this fragile young woman who waited to be sentenced to death. Had the judge heard about her case from his former associate Mr. Woodfin? I did not see what difference it could make, though. The jury had spoken, the State Supreme Court had upheld their decision, and the judge-whoever he was-would have no choice but to set the date for the execution.

I looked at my watch. Nearly half past. Where was Mr. David Swain? Had anyone seen him in town? I searched the faces in the courtroom until I found Will Butler at the back, near the oak doors, talking with one of the constables. The look on the sheriff’s face told me that he was as mystified as the rest of us. I slipped away from my desk and went to confer with him.

“Is there any news of the judge, Mr. Butler?”

He shook his head. “Yesterday’s stage brought me no letters. I am at a loss to know what has become of him. The weather is not to blame.”

I glanced at the sun-glazed windows above us. The day was fine, as its predecessors had been for a long stretch of Indian summer. No storms had flung down tree limbs in the path of the Raleigh stagecoach, and no swollen rivers had made the fords impassable. “Perhaps His Honor is ill,” I said to Butler.

“ His Honor is thirty-one years old,” said the sheriff. “I doubt if his health prevents his coming. It is more likely to be his ambition that trammels him. Something must be afoot in the state capital.” He looked at his pocket watch. “I will give him until the hour, and then we will adjourn for the day on my authority. Does that meet with your approval?”

“We can hardly do otherwise,” I said. “If there is no judge to preside, the cases cannot go forward.”

The voices rose higher and higher as the hour drew nearer, and I could hear people wondering aloud over the judge’s absence. At last Will Butler’s voice crested the roar, and he bellowed out: “I hereby declare this session of the Superior Court adjourned until tomorrow, due to the absence of the judge.”

There were a few groans of protest, probably from those who had ridden great distances to attend the session, and who would now have to pay for a night’s lodging or sleep rough in order to come to court tomorrow. We waited while the spectators dwindled away, until finally only the sheriff, the prisoner, Thomas Wilson, and I were in the courtroom. In the doorway a constable was waiting for the signal to escort Mrs. Silver back to her cell.

I could see that she was puzzled over this turn of events. She touched the sleeve of Mr. Wilson’s black coat. “Why didn’t he come?”

The lawyer smiled. “Oh, some trifling delay upon the road, like as not, madam. A lame horse, a broken carriage wheel. It is a long way to Morganton, you know. He will turn up this evening, I do not doubt.” He meant to be reassuring to the prisoner; no doubt he had not considered the implications of the judge’s arrival.

“What if he don’t come?”

Thomas Wilson gave her an oily smile. “But I am sure that he will.”

The next day the courtroom was again filled with anxious prisoners and idle spectators awaiting justice at the pleasure of the lowland bureaucracy. This time, when the hour of nine had come and gone, there were murmurings about the courtroom. “I suppose the judge has better things to do than to come to our neck of the woods!” someone called out.

“Probably afraid of the Indians!” someone else called, and the laughter overcame the grumbling, for one might as well be afraid of the Phoenicians in these parts nowadays.

Will Butler paced the floor, taking out his watch and glancing at it so often that I wondered why he bothered to put it away. Inevitably a fistfight broke out in the back of the room: bored farmers with a few drinks in their bellies are not the most patient of men. When the sheriff saw that the fright was in earnest, and that it bid fair to spreading among the rest of the congregation, he rapped on the bench for order and bellowed out, “I declare this court adjourned until the spring term- dammit .” That last word was uttered under his breath, so that only I overheard him, and I did not have time to discuss his ruling before he plunged into the melee wearing a curious look of satisfaction that made me think that quelling the insurrection would serve as a tonic to his own frayed nerves.

It was Butler’s last significant act as sheriff of Burke County, for within weeks John Boone would assume the post of peace officer of the county, a duty for which he now had scant enthusiasm. Will Butler’s continuance of the case of Frankie Silver ensured that his successor, not he, would have to hang the prisoner. I think, though, that both of them were playing for time, believing that the petitions and letters to Governor Stokes would surely result in a pardon, so that the dreadful sentence would not have to be carried out by anyone.