Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

He remembered what Nelse Miller had told him long ago. You could have looked into Fate Harkryder’s cradle and told that he was going to end up in prison. If it wasn’t one thing, it’d be another.

He sat through that movie and two others before it was time to return to the prison. By then the sun had set, but it was still July in middle Tennessee, a breathless, shimmering heat unlike the cool evenings on the mountain up home. As he turned onto Cockrill Bend, he could see the lights of the prison, augmented now by the blaze of the broadcasters’ lights in the parking lot. As Spencer got out of the car, he took the visitor’s pass out of his pocket, but he didn’t put it on. He didn’t want the reporters to know who he was. A gaggle of protesters with picket signs and candles stood in the far corner of the parking lot, but they did not call out to him as he made his way toward the building. One of the reporters had approached them with a cameraman trailing after him, and their attention was focused on their few minutes of fame. At one of the mobile television units, Charles Wythe Stanton stood in a spotlight, speaking into the interviewer’s microphone. “This is not about revenge,” he was saying. “It’s about closure. The final chapter of the Trail Murders takes place tonight. My thoughts are with my daughter.”

It was a few minutes past ten o’clock. The execution was scheduled for 11 P.M., more to discourage demonstrators than to afford the prisoner every possible minute of his last day on earth. In the administration building, Spencer went through the same check-in procedure as before, and when the word owl was illuminated in his hand, he was ushered through the sally port in the wake of the others attending the execution.

The witnesses walked through the empty visitors’ hall, to the door against the back wall. They were silent and walked alone, except for two young men, who seemed to know each other, and who spoke together in a low undertone. Spencer realized that they must be reporters sent to cover the execution. Colonel Stanton, fresh from his interview, was the last to enter. He had come alone.

No pleasantries were exchanged by the witnesses. They stood uneasily, like strangers in an elevator, unwilling to acknowledge one another’s presence. After a few moments’ hesitation, they took their seats in the metal chairs facing the plate-glass window, on which the blinds were now shut.

A uniformed guard came in behind them and stood near the door, obviously positioned to make a speech. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “We are scheduled to begin in approximately fifteen minutes, so let me just go over a few things with you. First of all, I’d like to repeat: no cameras, no recording devices. Any questions?”

There were none. The witnesses stared at the guard uneasily, but their eyes kept straying to the closed blinds that covered the plate-glass window.

“Electrocution is the only form of execution used in the state of Tennessee. This chair has never been used in an execution, but it has been thoroughly tested. You should know what will take place when the time comes. In an electrocution, the prisoner is given an initial shock of two thousand volts, reduced seconds later to about six hundred volts, and keeping the current steady at that rate for fifty-seven seconds. The process is repeated a second time, followed by a third and final charge of two thousand volts, and then the current is shut off. The doctor will check for vital signs, and if he finds that life is extinguished, the body will be left in place for thirty minutes, checked again, and then transferred to a gurney to be wheeled out of the building for the subsequent autopsy and burial. Or disposal of remains, I should say. I believe Mr. Harkryder has requested cremation.”

“Where is Harkryder?” someone asked.

“The prisoner has not yet left the quiet cell,” the guard replied. As if anticipating their thoughts, he added, “However, his head has been shaved earlier this evening, and he has had his last meal.”

One of the reporters called out, “What was his last meal?”

The guard consulted his notes. “Two cheeseburgers, a milk shake, and a slice of blackberry pie.”

“Did he eat it?”

“I believe so.”

Charles Stanton narrowed his eyes. “My daughter had her last meal twenty years and ten months ago. Let’s get on with it.”

The guard looked startled at this outburst. It was his first execution, of course, and he had been unprepared for emotional reactions from the witnesses. He decided to ignore the comment. He cleared his throat and resumed his speech. “About ten minutes from now, the ‘tie-down team’-a group of officers in helmets and black body armor-will enter Mr. Harkryder’s cell. They will manacle his legs, cuff his wrists in front of his body, and attach a belly chain to the handcuff links. At that time, the prisoner will be marched the forty paces or so from the quiet cell to the room beyond that wall, where he will be seated in the electric chair. At that time I will open the blinds on the observation window. Are you with me so far? If anyone wants out, now is the time to leave.”

No one stirred. The two young men in dress shirts and running shoes were making notes on pads of lined paper.

Spencer was sitting on the left aisle of the second row, with a good view of the door that led to the hallway where the quiet cell was located. He wondered if the area was soundproof. He could hear no murmur of voices, no sounds of doors closing or footsteps. If there had been screams, would he have been able to hear them?

He looked at his watch. Two minutes had passed since the last time he checked it. He looked around at the other witnesses, wondering if any of them would be unable to handle the strain of watching a man die in the electric chair. Would the doctor standing by attend to fainting witnesses, as well as checking to see that the condemned man was dead?

Spencer could feel his heart beating, and his breath was coming in gulps. He wondered if he had overtired himself too soon after surgery, or whether he was feeling the anxiety that Sheriff John Boone had felt when the time came to hang Frankie Silver. He thought that Boone’s anguish must have been worse: in 1833 the Burke County sheriff had been executing a nineteen-year-old girl whom he knew to be innocent of first-degree murder. In those days, innocent people could and did go to the gallows, but nowadays, only the most heinous of crimes is punished by the death penalty: rarely a first offender or a single-victim killer, rarely an upstanding citizen driven beyond emotional endurance. With few exceptions, today’s death row is the pit of the sadist and the psychopath, the paid assassin, and the refuse of the drug world. No innocent young girl defending her child would ever reach death row today. It was harder to feel charitable toward these men than to feel sorrow for the plight of Frankie Silver. Their appeals for mercy were not the shining arguments of innocence but the specious claims of technicalities, loopholes, and political maneuvers. He could wish mercy for some of them, but he could not pity them, even as he grieved for a girl who died a century before he was born. She was not one of them.

Spencer heard the two reporters in the front row whispering to each other. “This is way cheaper, man,” one of them was saying. “North Carolina claims that it costs $346.51 to kill a prisoner by lethal injection. But the chair uses only thirty-two cents’ worth of electricity.”

“It’s more painful, though,” the other reporter said.

“Nah. Two thousand volts. You’re unconscious in two seconds. You never know what hits you.”

“You sure about that?”

“Guess we’ll find out tonight. See if he yells or anything.”