The Ballad of Frankie Silver

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of locked doors at short intervals, the place had a peaceful, rural look about it, as if the menace of the old days had been replaced by a brisk, impersonal efficiency.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.

A guard checked Spencer’s name badge and stamped his hand with the fluorescent code word of the day. No one was permitted in or out of the prison grounds without the code word on the back of his hand, illuminated by a sensor gun pointed at the spot by yet another guard.

The code words were short. They changed every day. Today’s code word wasowl. Very appropriate, Spencer thought, studying the three glowing letters on his hand. The call of a hoot owl was considered a sign of death by the old-timers up home. The hoot owls should be calling tonight. There was death in the air.

A pleasant-looking man, who might have been the vice principal of an elementary school for all his lack of menace, accompanied the sheriff through the metal detector, past the checkpoint, through the two electric gates that opened consecutively, and into the compound.

Fate Harkryder had sent back word that he would see Sheriff Arrowood of Wake County. Spencer wondered if the name meant anything to him after all these years.

“How many inmates are here?” asked Spencer, who was tired of the silence.

“Six hundred and sixty-eight,” his guide answered. “Ninety-nine on death row. There are six units housing prisoners. That small building to your far left as we passed through the gates is the industry building, Two-A. There the inmates who are qualified to work put in their hours at assigned jobs.”

“Like what?”

“Printing. Data entry. Decals. If you buy a car in the state of Tennessee, the registration is sent to you by an inmate on death row. To your right is Building Nine: Food Services and Laundry.” They had reached the one-story brick building beyond the second electronic gate. “Building Eight,” said the guide. “We’ll check in again here.”

“What is Building Eight?”

“Security, and visitation. It looks like an airport waiting room.”

Spencer nodded. “I’ll see him in there?”

“No. The execution chambers are just behind the back wall of the visiting room.”

Spencer held up his hand to the electronic sensor.Owl flashed green in the light, and then vanished.Owls, thought Spencer. Once, when he was nine, Spencer and his older brother Cal had talked an old mountain man named Rattler into taking them owling, because they were still too young to hunt. Rattler walked the Arrowood boys across every ridge over the holler, teaching them to look for the sweep of wings above the tall grass in a field and to listen for the sound of the waking owl, ready to track his prey by the slightest rustle, the shade of movement. He taught them how to make owl calls, and they became so good at it that they could not tell if an owl was calling to them out of the forest or one of their own.Look out, Rattler had told them.When the owl calls your name, it means death.

Later on we became owls,Spencer thought. Cal went to Vietnam and died in a jungle of screeching birds, and Spencer grew up to be a lawman, hunting prey of his own by the slightest sound or by one false move. A lot of people had heard him call their name.

He stared at the tile floor, the institutional cinder-block walls, and at the display case of carved ship models made by inmate craftsmen. “I thought Mr. Harkryder would be on death row.”

“He was housed in Unit Two. It’s directly behind this building. But in the days