Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

If you don’t shut that baby up, I will, Frankie!

“He picks up the gun.” Spencer was staring at the ground now, at the forlorn slab of hearthstone lost in a thicket of weeds. “He doesn’t mean it, really. He’s drunk and cold and the crying has driven him past reason. But he would have killed her. I’ve seen a dozen Charlie Silvers. A hundred, maybe. He would have cried all the way to town in the patrol car. He would have found God in the jail cell before the trial. But as sure as I’m standing here, he would have killed them both. He has a gun. It’s over in a second. You can’t take it back.”

He paced the black earth between the stone and the beech trees. “So she takes him out. She has to. He has the gun pointed at-her? At the baby? She has a split second to react, and she does. She picks up the first thing to hand, and she takes him out.” He looked at Nora Bonesteel, doubtful for the first time. “An ax?”

She nods. “I think it must have been. It’s metal and heavy.”

“So he goes down, like a poleaxed steer. She gets him just above the ear. That’s in the indictment. He’s lying there on the floor, not moving. It’s quiet all of a sudden. Even the baby has stopped wailing. And Frankie looks down at the body of her husband, and she feels-what?” Spencer looked at Nora Bonesteel, unsure of his ground now that emotions were called into play.

The old woman shook her head. “I’d be guessing,” she told him. “I think she would be feeling shock first. And then mortal terror. She has killed a man. But I’m not feeling anything from her in this place. She’s not here.”

Spencer looked at her, interested, suspending disbelief. He had role-played scores of crime scenes, but he sensed that what Nora Bonesteel was talking about was a different kind of seeing. Every mountain family had someone with the Sight, but if your job is modern law enforcement, you prefer to overlook the old ways. You deal in facts and evidence and cold reason: things that will stand up in court. Still, what could it hurt to ask her about the Silvers-this case had been closed for more than a century. He simply wanted to know. “What do you feel?”

Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes for a moment and nodded, as if confirming an earlier impression. “Sorrow,” she said. “Deep, wordless sorrow. Great loss felt but not spoken.”

Spencer blinked. Sorrow. Someone grieving? “Not Frankie?”

“No.”

“Charlie, then.”

“I don’t think so.” Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes, shutting out the here and now and reaching for that remnant of past emotion. “It feels, but it has no words,” she said. “I think it is the child.”

Spencer dismissed the thought. “Oh, the baby. Nancy. It can’t be her. She lived to grow up.”

“Yes, but on that night, little Nancy Silver was a toddling child without any words for what she had seen. That is what has been left here, burned in the air. It doesn’t matter what became of her later on. What I’m getting is the emotion she felt on the night her daddy died. A deep, wordless sorrow. The anger from that night is gone. I feel no fear anymore. Just that great, heavy sadness.”

“The baby saw it happen,” murmured Spencer, taking up the thread again. “Of course, she did. She had to. It was a one-room log cabin, and her parents are shouting loud enough to wake her.” He nodded to himself, recapturing the feeling of being there. “The baby is watching. Mama and Daddy are arguing, and then suddenly Daddy falls down and he doesn’t get up. He’s asleep. What happens then? What does Frankie do?”

Nora Bonesteel said softly, “Frankie is only eighteen years old. A likely little woman, folks said. Not five feet tall. Not ninety pounds.”

“Right.” Spencer nodded, picturing the girl in his mind. “She can’t handle this alone. She’s in over her head. She’ll want her daddy.”

“Daddy is in Kentucky on a long hunt.”

“Her mother, then. Someone who will believe her; someone who will be on her side. She goes home to mother. I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident, Mama. ” Spencer looked around at the tangle of woods. “The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. Where is the river?”

“Across the paved road,” said Nora Bonesteel. “Did you see the dirt road across from the logging trail? Likely that takes you down to the river. From where we’re standing it might be a mile or more.”

“The Stewarts lived on the other side of the river. The land on this side belonged to the Silvers. There’s no bridge. It’s the dead of winter.”

“She can walk it. The river is frozen. The snow is knee-deep.”

Spencer nodded. He felt cold in the pale sunlight that filtered through the Silvers’ woods. “It’s night. Bitterly cold and dark. Frankie has to walk through the deep snow and across the frozen river to reach her mother’s cabin. It will take her more than an hour, but she has to go. She’s terrified. But…but…”

“She can’t take the baby,” Nora Bonesteel finished softly.

“No. The night is too cold, and the snow is deep. She must hurry. She can’t take the child with her. It would slow her down. So she leaves it in the cabin in the woods. No one will hear it cry while she’s gone. The baby is alone and afraid-”

“Because Daddy won’t wake up.” The old woman shivered. “Even now I can feel that little child’s bewilderment and sorrow.”

It felt right. Spencer could see things falling into place. It must have happened this way, he thought. Of course Frankie would go for help. She was eighteen years old. I’ve killed Charlie, but it was an accident. What must I do? He began to pace again. “And what does her mother say? She’s shocked at first, but she’s angry, too, that Charlie would get drunk and try to kill Frankie and the baby. Barbara Stewart doesn’t waste any tears over him. If only her husband were home. What a time for him to be gone! But Kentucky is days and days distant. There’ll be no help from him. They must see to things themselves.”

“If Mr. Stewart had been home, we wouldn’t be here now,” said Nora Bonesteel.

“Right. We wouldn’t be out here because there’d have been no legend of Frankie Silver to draw us in. She’d have got away with it! She would have said that Charlie didn’t come home from the Youngs’ place, and no trace of him would ever have been found. Her father would have seen to that. A strong adult man-a trapper and a woodsman-would have been able to hoist up Charlie Silver’s body like a sack of flour and haul him away. Into the deep woods perhaps. Or he could have broken the frozen ground and buried the body whole. But Isaiah Stewart wasn’t there that night. Neither was the oldest son, Jack. All Frankie has to rely on is her mother, and her brother Blackston, who can’t be more than thirteen.”

“But they have to do something.” Nora Bonesteel understood what the sheriff was doing now. She saw that she needed only to nudge his thoughts along and he would reach the conclusion on his own. It was all there. You had only to picture the scene and it all came clear, whether you had the Sight or not.

He nodded. “They have to do something. They don’t trust the law, and they don’t understand that self-defense isn’t considered murder. They think they have to hide the evidence that the death ever took place. Two women and a young boy can’t lift the dead body. At least not easily.”

Nora Bonesteel said, “The snow is knee-deep and the river is frozen.”

“Lord, yes. If they try to take the body out of that cabin, they’ll leave tracks through the snow that a blind man could follow. Besides, there’s no way to dispose of the body once they get him outside. The river is solid ice. They don’t have shovels-a pick, maybe, but it’s hard to dig frozen ground with a pick. It would take too long. Even the wild animals and the scavengers can’t be counted on to devour the remains in deepest winter. So the Stewarts are limited to what they can do with Charlie’s body inside the cabin.” Spencer ticked off the impossibilities on his fingers. “Can’t drag him away to the woods without leaving tracks. Can’t bury him. Can’t dump him in the iced-over river. Burn him! ”