Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

He picked up the phone and dialed a number in Kentucky. He wished he had time to go in person, but there were only hours remaining. “Tom Harkryder, please,” he said when the ringing stopped. “Mr. Harkryder, this is Sheriff Arrowood from Wake County, Tennessee. I’d like to talk to you about your brother.”

There was an intake of breath at the other end of the phone, and then a sigh. “I can’t help you with Ewell,” drawled the voice. “Bailing him out is a waste of money. Let him sleep it off.”

“I meant your other brother, Tom. Lafayette. Remember him?”

After another pause, Tom Harkryder said, “I can’t help him, either.”

“I think you could,” said the sheriff. “I think you could save his life-if you told what really happened on the mountain that night twenty years back.”

“Fate said he was innocent. The damned jury didn’t believe him.”

“I believe him-now. He’s scheduled to die tomorrow night. If you meet me in Nashville, I can get us in to see the governor, and we can stop the execution.”

“By telling them what?”

“Tell them who killed Mike and Emily. It’s your brother’s only chance.” The silence dragged on so long that Spencer finally said, “Mr. Harkryder-Tom-are you there?”

The voice whispered, “I don’t believe I can help you,” and the line went dead.

S O NOW WE KNEW.

Spencer Arrowood wondered if Constable Charlie Baker had known the truth back in 1832, and if he had ever been tempted to use that knowledge to save Frankie Silver.

Maybe the constable had known a lost cause when he saw one.

The six-hour drive to Nashville had never seemed longer, but at least the sheriff knew where he was going. Someone from Riverbend had faxed him directions with his final instructions for attending the execution (“no cameras, no recording devices…”). The sheriff did not play the radio for fear that every country song would sound like an omen. Instead he tried to concentrate on I-40, rather than on the jangle of possibilities that crowded his mind. He had finally received the information he’d asked LeDonne to find for him, and he had spent much of the previous evening making telephone calls and assembling the paperwork on the case. He was already weak from his injury, and he got little enough rest, but he told himself that he would not have been able to sleep anyhow.

It was 7A.M. By the time he reached Nashville, Spencer Arrowood would have nine hours to save a life.

From I-40W, he took the Robertson Road exit, turning right onto Briley Parkway, and onto Centennial Boulevard. The exit from Centennial put him in sight of “The Walls,” Tennessee’s Gothic-looking old prison, a nightmare in red brick, which had closed its doors to real prisoners in 1989, when the new penitentiary was completed. Now only movie stars in shapeless prison garb walked its corridors while the cameras rolled. The state rented out the old facility on a regular basis to film producers, so that the old building spent its declining years in a grotesque parody of its former existence. Now people only pretended to die there.

The real maximum-security prison of the state of Tennessee did not look like Hollywood’s idea of a penitentiary. The new prison, Riverbend, would never look the part.

Centennial Boulevard led to Cockrill Bend Industrial Road, past the MTRC (Middle Tennessee Reclassification Center), where new prisoners were evaluated and assigned to various state facilities-and finally, on a wide bend in the Cumberland River, for which it was named, lay Riverbend itself. Riverbend Maximum Security Institution might have been a community college or a prosperous modern elementary school except for the high chain-link fences and the loops of razor wire surrounding the inner compound. Once past the repetitive, ironclad security of code words stamped on one’s hand and a succession of locked doors at short intervals, the place had a peaceful, rural look about it, as if the menace of the old days had been replaced by a brisk, impersonal efficiency. The one-story brick buildings were connected by concrete pathways set in a green lawn, and the view, glimpsed from between buildings, was of the bend in the river and the high wooded hill on the other side.

Spencer parked in the lot outside the main entrance and sat for a few moments in his car, collecting his thoughts and wishing he’d stopped for coffee somewhere along the way. It was past one o’clock, and he still hadn’t eaten anything. He couldn’t spare the time, he thought. The execution was scheduled for eleven o’clock that night. He wondered how persuasive he would have to be to get them to let him in early. The badge should do it, though; badges opened a lot of doors.

At the glass-covered reception booth, he had to give his name and show them the paperwork relating to his being summoned as a witness to the execution, but no one seemed to think it odd that he wanted to meet the warden. He told them that he was unarmed, and they gave him a clip-on red badge and told him to wait. After only a few minutes, he was taken down the left-hand hallway and ushered into the warden’s office, past an outer room containing a wall-sized aerial photo of Riverbend and its surroundings.

“I’d like to speak to the prisoner,” he said, as soon as the preliminary greetings were out of the way.

The warden raised his eyebrows. “You’re one of the witnesses, aren’t you, Sheriff?”

Spencer Arrowood nodded. “Wake is Mr. Harkryder’s home county. In fact, I was the arresting officer.”

“That was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Twenty years.”

“And you want to see him today?”

The sheriff nodded. “Today.” They both knew there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow for Fate Harkryder.

In the long silence that followed, Spencer studied the walls of the warden’s office. The room might have belonged to a college president or an official in a small-town bank except for the two framed drawings on the wall, childlike renderings of the prison, with little stick-figure guards manning large, carefully drawn weapons from the rooftop. The sketches were signed “James Earl Ray.”

“I see. You want to talk to Mr. Harkryder now.” The warden was watching him closely, waiting for the explanation to tumble out, but Spencer said nothing. Interrogation was an old game to him, easier than chess.

“Fate Harkryder is going to die tonight, Sheriff,” the warden said at last. “And I want him to go peacefully. He’s been a good prisoner here. No trouble. Kept to himself. I owe him the courtesy of death with dignity. So if you have some old score to settle…”

“No. I’d just like to talk to him.”

“Well, it’s up to him. It’s his last day on earth, and a man ought to have a say in who he sees or doesn’t see at a time like this. You arrested him. You’ve come to watch him die. In his place, I don’t believe I’d relish the sight of you, Sheriff. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll send one of the guards in to ask Mr. Harkryder if he wants to see you or not, and we will both abide by his decision. Agreed?”

Spencer nodded. “Can I send a message with the guard?”

“All right,” said the warden. “A verbal one. Make it short. What do you want us to say to Mr. Harkryder?”

“Tell him I’ve been talking to Frankie Silver.”

The forty acres of Riverbend were nestled into the curve of the Cumberland River: fourteen buildings, encircled by a road and surrounded by two twelve-foot fences whose separate electronic systems for detection of movement and vibration secured the area. The fences were separated by a no-man’s-land of gravel and razor wire. There were no guard towers at the facility, but a twenty-four-hour mobile unit patrolled the perimeter. Only Building Seven, the administration building, lay outside the fences, but its sally port, the one entrance to the prison itself, was the focus of intense security.