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Sharyn McCrumb

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

The fifth book in the Ballad series, 1998

THERE WERE THREE FACETS TO THE STORY

OF FRANKIE SILVER. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

WITH THANKS TO MY GUIDES ON THOSE THREE ROADS:

Carolyn Sakowski for Morganton

Wayne Silver for Kona

Jay Brandon for 1830s criminal law

The rich never hang; only the poor and friendless.

– Perry Smith

executed in Kansas, 1965,

for the murder of the

Clutter family

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

This dreadful, dark and dismal day Has swept my glories all away; My sun goes down, my days are past, And I must leave this world at last. Oh! Lord, what will become of me? I am condemned, you all now see; To heaven or hell my soul must fly, All in a moment when I die. Judge Donnell my sentence has passed, These prison walls I leave at last; Nothing to cheer my drooping head Until I’m numbered with the dead. But Oh! That awful judge I fear, Shall I that awful sentence hear: “Depart, ye cursed, down to hell And forever there to dwell.” I know that frightful ghosts I’ll see, Gnawing their flesh in misery; And then and there attended be For murder in the first degree. Then shall I meet that mournful face, Whose blood I spilled upon this place; With flaming eyes to me he’ll say, “Why did you take my life away?” His feeble hands fell gently down, His chattering tongue soon lost its sound, To see his soul and body part It strikes with terror in my heart. I took his blooming days away, Left him no time to God to pray; And if sins fall upon his head, Must I not bear them in his stead? The jealous thought that first gave strife To make me take my husband’s life, For months and days I spent my time Thinking how to commit this crime. And on a dark and doleful night I put the body out of sight, With flames I tried to him consume, But time would not admit it done. You all see me and on me gaze, Be careful how you spend your days; And never commit this awful crime, But try to serve your God in time. My mind on solemn subjects rolls, My little child, God bless its soul; All you that are of Adam’s race, Let not my faults this child disgrace. Farewell, good people, you all now see What my bad conduct’s brought on me; To die of shame and disgrace Before the world of human race. Awful indeed to think of death, In perfect health to lose my breath; Farewell my friends, I bid adieu, Vengeance on me you must now pursue. Great God! How shall I be forgiven? Not fit for earth, not fit for Heaven; But little time to pray to God, For now I try that awful road.

A rumor was prevalent in Burke County that Silver wrote some verses which were tantamount to a confession of her guilt and read them while on the scaffold to the surrounding throng just before she was executed.

The mind of Squire Waits A. Cook, a highly respected justice of the peace in the Enola section, was a veritable storehouse of legends and events of Burke County’s earlier days. He told me that the verses Frankie had allegedly written were composed by a Methodist minister whose surname was Stacy.

– Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

Burke County Courthouses and Related Matters

Prologue

I WANT TO show you a grave,” the sheriff said.

Three rocks stood alone in the little mountain graveyard: smooth stubs of granite, evenly spaced about four feet apart. The stone pillars were uncarved, weathered from more than a century’s exposure to the elements and farthest away from the white steepled church in the clearing at the top of the mountain.

Tennessee deputy sheriff Spencer Arrowood wondered why Nelse Miller had made a detour up a corkscrew mountain road to stop in this country churchyard. He could see nothing out of the ordinary about the old white frame church or the surrounding array of tombstones, ranging from newly carved blocks of shining granite to older markers, tilted askew in the dark earth, scarcely readable anymore. Nearly every burying ground had stones like these.

It was pretty enough up here, Spencer allowed. The view of Celo Mountain across the valley and the blue haze of more distant peaks beyond made a fine sight on a summer morning, but Sheriff Miller wasn’t much on admiring scenery no matter how magnificent the vistas before them. He barely glanced at the view. On a hot summer day like this, Nelse was more likely to be in search of a cold drink and a shade tree, and in truth Spencer Arrowood would have preferred such a rest stop to this peculiar excursion to a little mountaintop graveyard. He was twenty-four, and impatience was pretty much a permanent state of mind for him. They could have stopped in the store in Red Hill instead of heading off up Route 80, past Bandana, North Carolina, and up another couple of elliptical miles that spiraled to nowhere. Or they could have headed back across the Tennessee line to Hamelin and got on with the day’s work. Spencer was still new enough at the post of deputy sheriff to relish every hour of duty, every moment of patrol in his shiny new ’74 Dodge. Much as he respected the old sheriff, he often found himself impatient with Nelse Miller’s unhurried serenity. The sheriff, in turn, sometimes seemed to be amused by his eager young deputy, as if he were a new puppy barking at sunbeams.

Spencer looked at his watch. Nearly noon. This old cemetery couldn’t have anything to do with business. They were still on the North Carolina side of the mountains, at the Dayton Bend in the Toe River, according to the map. Just over the state line the Toe River would change its name to the Nolichucky and the two sightseers would change into peace officers on duty instead of idlers looking at golden hills on a pleasant summer day.

Their morning’s errand had been the delivery of a fugitive to the jail in Bakersville, a little courtesy exchange between peace officers on different sides of the state line. The prisoner hadn’t been much in the way of a felon-a car thief, barely old enough to register for the draft. Since he had sobered up after a night in a Tennessee jail cell, the boy had seemed overwhelmed by the consequences of his joy ride. He had wrecked the car in a high-speed chase, and had come out bruised but otherwise uninjured. “God protects fools and drunks,” Nelse Miller declared, with some disgust.

The prisoner was handcuffed and shackled in the back of a patrol car, filthy, unshaven, and fighting back tears of panic. The two officers transporting him were not ungentle, but their lack of interest in his predicament was evident.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” the young man kept asking.

“You’re going to the jail in Bakersville,” Nelse Miller had told him. “And after that, we’re done with you.”