Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Spencer admired the man for his poise in the face of the media. He’d had the microphone shoved in his face a few times during the course of the trial, and he knew that projecting an image of courageous intelligence was harder than it looked. The old sheriff, though, wanted nothing to do with the Stantons. More than once he refused their offers to take the officers to lunch.

“That man is a creature of vengeance,” Nelse Miller remarked to his deputy, after court recessed on the third day. “Lafayette Harkryder might just as well have killed one of the Disney Mousketeers and been done with it, because this smooth-talking snake-oil man is going to hound him to the outskirts of hell. If you ever kill anybody, Spencer, make sure that they don’t have a damn bloodhound for a daddy.”

“That’s how I’d want my kin to act if I had been murdered,” Spencer replied. “Stanton has a right to demand justice.”

“I know he does. I’m just not sure that you can take one day of a person’s life, draw a line, and judge him on it.”

“We do it every day,” said Spencer. “Yesterday I gave a speeding ticket to a member of the church choir.”

Nelse Miller shook his head. “I’m getting old,” he said. “I keep thinking the world would be a better place if there were less justice and more charity.”

Nelse Miller had fulminated through the entire trial, prompting Spencer to ask more than once, “Which side are you on?” One day the old sheriff might be carping about Colonel Stanton holding court before the media. Another time he remarked: “Have you ever noticed that you can tell which side a person is on in this case by the way they’re dressed?”

That was true enough.

The Stantons and their supporters always dressed in what Nelse Miller called “Episcopal uniforms,” while the Harkryders, who had no notion of showing their respect for the court-or perhaps they were-turned up in clothes that Spencer wouldn’t have worn to a yard sale: old stained work clothes, T-shirts with rude sayings printed on the front, and occasionally camouflage hunting outfits. Fate Harkryder’s mother was dead, but various other female relatives turned up from time to time, usually in bright print slacks and cheap blouses laden with dime-store beads. The jury wasn’t supposed to notice such things, but inevitably they did.

Spencer’s clearest memory of the trial was the solemn, chiseled features of Colonel Stanton on one side of the courtroom, and sullen, scraggly Fate Harkryder on the other. Every day his two older brothers sat near the front of the courtroom, almost within touching distance of the defendant. They, too, glowered throughout the proceedings, muttering ominously when they disagreed with the witness testimony. Spencer kept his eye on them throughout the trial, watching for the bulge of a weapon in their clothing, or some sign that they meant to cause trouble.

When the verdict was announced, one of the brothers shouted, “It’s a damned lie!”

Spencer and the bailiff hurried to put themselves between the prisoner and his family, anticipating more than a shouting match, but Fate Harkryder had simply looked at his brothers for a long moment and shaken his head.

They subsided once more into smoldering resentment. “We’ll fight this, boy,” one of them muttered.

“You hang tough,” said the other one.

Fate Harkryder nodded.

By the time he was led handcuffed from the courtroom, his brothers were already gone. Spencer wondered if he had ever seen them again. Whatever happened to the Harkryder brothers, anyhow?

Fate Harkryder had twenty years’ experience in not letting his feelings show. He sat impassively in the blue padded chair, studying the man in the green necktie who sat across from him. He was a stocky fellow in his early forties, with unruly dark hair and a tendency to perspire. He was smiling uncertainly, and creasing the corners of his paperwork. Fate was trying to decide why the man was nervous. Some people felt uneasy in the company of a convicted murderer, but since this man was a state psychologist who often studied prisoners, his current subject didn’t think the anxiety stemmed from that particular source. Race was not a factor, either. Fate decided that the man must be uneasy because he was talking to someone who would be dead in a few days’ time. Death is considered bad taste in polite society. People do not care to be reminded of it. Now that Fate had an execution date, even some of the guards had stopped looking directly at him, as if they were embarrassed by the presence of someone so close to the abyss.

The psychologist managed a tentative smile as he pushed his glasses farther back along the bridge of his nose. “Now, Mr. Harkryder,” he said, “my name is Dr. Ritter. I don’t wish to alarm you in any way. I just wanted to have a talk with you to see if there are any concerns you’d like to voice.”

“Concerns?” Fate blinked at him. He had found that playing dumb was an asset in prison life. It gave you more time to evaluate your opponent, and sometimes it caused him to underestimate you, which was even more useful.

“Yes. As you know, your-er-your execution is scheduled for later this month, and barring any unforeseen developments, it will take place at that time. I wondered if you’d like to express your feelings.”

“I’m innocent, sir.”

The psychologist looked away. “I know nothing whatever about the details of your case, Mr. Harkryder. I find it easier to counsel prisoners if I am not apprised of what they have done. My only concern is your peace of mind at this point in time.”

“Well, sir, they’re going to kill me. How do you think I feel?”

Ritter was ready for that one. “There are many possibilities, Mr. Harkryder. You might feel relief that your long stay in prison is at an end. You might embrace the opportunity to atone for your misdeeds. You might take solace in religion and look forward to peace and joy beyond this life.”

“Or I might think that this life is all there is, and I’ve been cheated out of it by a state that framed me for a murder I didn’t commit.”

“I had hoped you might be beyond that,” sighed the psychologist. “I realize that death is a very difficult thing to accept. That’s why we tend to concentrate on the little rituals that precede it as a way of distracting ourselves from the prospect of the death itself. Would you like to discuss some of those items?”

“Like what?”

“Well, to begin with a trivial one-why don’t you tell me what you’d like as a last meal?”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. He had, of course. Back in Building Two, discussions of his last meal had been going on for weeks. After a while he began to notice that the suggestions from the other men tended to fit a pattern. They urged him to ask for steak and a milk shake; country-style steak, french fries, and strawberry shortcake with double whipped cream; a large pizza and a banana split. It was all comfort food-the dream menus of teenage boys, or of men whose last memories of happiness stretched that far back in their lives. It was food rich in grease, salt, and sugar, proposed by men who had lived for years on a bland, starchy diet that never quite filled them up.

Other suggestions were a poor man’s idea of a high-class meal. The farm boy who had suggested a pound of shrimp, a pound of lobster, and a pound of prime rib had never tasted any of those things. Fate had no better ideas about what he should ask for on the night of his execution, and he was by no means sure that he could swallow a single mouthful of whatever was brought to him, but at least he prided himself on knowing why his comrades suggested the menus they did. After twenty years in confinement, he thought he might be as much of a psychologist as the perspiring man who sat across from him now.