The Ballad of Frankie Silver

before his execution, a prisoner is moved to a holding cell in the back of Building Eight. We’ve never done an execution before at Riverbend, but the procedures have all been outlined so that we would be ready.”

They walked through the door and into the empty visitation hall, past a series of functional sofas and chairs of plastic and steel arranged in conversational groupings so that twenty or thirty sets of visitors could have a few feet of privacy with the inmate they came to see. They stopped at another metal door on the back wall. The guide unlocked it. “There’s another way in,” he said, “but I thought we’d go this way, since Mr. Harkryder is already in his cell. This is where you’ll be tonight.”

The witness room. Rows of metal conference-room chairs facing a plate-glass window covered by blinds. Straight in front of them was another door. The pleasant-looking man pushed it open. “You might as well see it now, Sheriff.” He stepped over the threshold and stood aside so that Spencer could look into the bright, empty room.

Almost empty.

A plain wooden chair sat in the center of the room.

The guide motioned him to the door on the left wall. “This leads to the hallway,” he said. “You know: the last mile. The other way is the control room, where the machinery is located, and there’s also a room there for the equipment of the prison telephone system. Would you like to see it?”

The guide had given this tour many times before, and an execution had never happened yet, so perhaps the air of unreality about this place still lingered for him. Spencer declined the invitation to see the other rooms. There was too little time.

They emerged in a tiled corridor that reminded Spencer of the Sunday school building of a modern church. The open door on the left revealed a small kitchen. You could have had a wedding reception or a Scout meeting in the bright empty room beyond-except for the wooden chair in the center.

A few paces past the kitchen doorway, Spencer saw the only three barred cells in Riverbend. The ordinary prisoners’ rooms had blue metal doors that they could lock with their own keys. Building Four, where the troublemakers were kept, had solid cell doors with pie flaps for food to be taken to the prisoner, and bars enclosing the various areas of that building as a security precaution, but no cells like these. These were jail cells, much more familiar to a county sheriff than to a modern prison guard.

Inside the last barred cell, a man in jeans and a blue cotton work shirt sat on the metal bunk, writing on a yellow legal pad. An armed guard sat on a folding chair in the hall, watching the cell with an air of uneasy boredom.

Spencer stepped up to the bars. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

Fate Harkryder looked up. His hair was gray now, and there were lines in his face, but his eyes were unchanged. He set aside the legal pad and walked over to the bars.

The guide touched Spencer’s arm. “I’ll be at the end of the hall,” he said. “Don’t be long.” The guard in the metal folding chair contrived to look as if he were oblivious to the scene in front of him.

“I needed to talk with you,” said Spencer.

The prisoner nodded. “Frankie Silver,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about her in years. My daddy’s sister married a man from over in Mitchell County. My Uncle Steve. He used to sing that old song sometimes when he wasn’t too drunk to remember the words.This dreadful, dark and dismal day/ Has swept my glories all away… ” Fate Harkryder smiled bitterly. “Sure fits the mood for today, don’t it?”

“I think so,” said the sheriff.

“And then they can play ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.’ That’s a real tearjerker.”

“I didn’t really come here to talk about music.”

“Yeah, I know. You came for the show, didn’t you? You want to make sure they kill me. You’re the one who put me here. You think I don’t remember that? A man don’t forget much in twenty years if there’s nothing to look at but cinder block.”

“I came because I finally figured out the Harkryder case,” said Spencer. “Thanks to Frankie Silver. For a hundred and sixty-four years, people have been wondering what Frankie’s father meant when he stopped her gallows speech by saying:Die with it in you, Frankie. When I figured that out, I knew what was bothering me about your situation.”

“Am I supposed to care what you think?”

“Well, I think you should get clemency.”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “Sign a petition then. There are dozens of them. The Pope sent a nice letter to the governor on my behalf, and the anti-death penalty people are staging a vigil tonight, I hear. Candles and everything. A couple of movie stars have sent faxes to me pledging their support, only they’re not exactly sure what it was I’m supposed to have done. Seems like all of a sudden nobody wants me to die. I wonder if that’s because they’re all pretty sure it’s going to happen.”

“It doesn’t have to happen,” said Spencer. “Not if you tell them what really happened that night on the mountain.”

“I thought you knew that, Mr. Arrowood. You seemed mighty sure of yourself at the trial.”

“I was sure. But I was a kid then. So were you.”

“And now you know different?”

“Now I do.”

“So you came charging up here to save my life, did you?”

“I’m willing to try. Tell the truth about the Trail Murders. You can stop this.”

Fate Harkryder smiled. “Oh, we’re already trying to stop it, Sheriff. That’s what lawyers are for. Allan is at the governor’s office right now, trying to get in to see him to plead for a stay. I forget the grounds. Doesn’t matter. Whatever comes into his head, I guess. And the other one, that would be Justin, I believe-hell, they’re both kids-Justin got on a plane this morning and flew to Washington to talk to the Supreme Court. I’m famous, Mr. Arrowood. Everybody has heard of me.”

“Right. But nobody has heard of Tom and Ewell, have they?”

Fate Harkryder stared up at him for one frozen moment. Then he shrugged and turned away. “I guess they haven’t,” he said casually. “The black sheep of the family gets all the attention.”

“Not this time. I’ve been doing some checking. At the time of the Trail Murders, you were a minor. Your brothers were both over eighteen. You had no criminal record. They did. So-what did they tell you when you got arrested for the killings?Take the rap, Lafayette. You’re underage. You’ll do a couple of years at the most. Just don’t implicate your brothers. You can save us. Just don’t ever tell. Was it something like that?”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “It’s your story, mister.”

Spencer nodded. “Die with it in you, Frankie.It’s the same old story. Mountain families stick together, no matter what. You were willing to die to keep from betraying them.”

Fate Harkryder said nothing.

“That’s why the blood at the crime scene matched yours. Same family. Nowadays, with DNA, we could have got a closer match, but back then the results were less exact. We were close, but not close enough.”

Silence.

“Tom and Ewell did it, but they gave you the jewelry to sell. All the evidence that linked you to the crime scene would also link them. Brothers. Same blood type. All secretors. There are just two things I don’t know: Why did your brothers kill those two kids with such violence, and why didn’t you ever tell the truth about what happened-especially after you were sentenced to death?”

Fate Harkryder was staring at a blank wall, where a window ought to have been but wasn’t. Somewhere beyond the cinder block was the river and an elm-covered hill. The hill would be deep green now, a canopy of trees leading you on from ridge to ridge, as if the green wave of forest would carry you home. He sighed. “Who’d believe me, Sheriff?”