The Ballad of Frankie Silver - By Sharyn McCrumb Page 0,59

talk about this case, have you made up your mind whether the defendant is innocent or guilty?”

David Hennessee shook his head. “No, sir. Don’t rightly know.”

Judge Donnell nodded to the prosecutor. “I am satisfied, Mr. Alexander,” he said. “You may ask your own questions now.”

William Alexander approached the nervous young man. “I shall be brief,” he assured him. “Are you aware that the defendant in the case is a young woman?”

David Hennessee blinked. “I reckon everybody knows that, sir.”

A trickle of laughter punctuated his statement.

“Well, would you have any difficulty sitting in judgment of a woman?”

The young man hesitated. “It’s got to be done. It’s the law.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Alexander with a faint smile. “And if the evidence presented convinces you of this woman’s guilt, could you vote to condemn her? Could you vote guilty—knowing the consequences?”

“You mean, that they’d hang her?” said Hennessee.

“Very likely.”

“If I thought she done what they said she done, then . . . yes, sir, I could see my way clear to make her pay for it. With her life. Yes, sir.”

William Alexander turned to me. “He will do.”

This process was repeated nearly two dozen times, until satisfactory jurors were settled upon by the court. Judge Donnell thanked the fourscore freeholders who had answered the summons to jury duty. “You may stay and watch the proceedings if you wish,” he told them. Constable Pearson asked the chosen jurors to remain near the front of the court. The others filed out to mingle with the waiting crowd, and we were left with a dozen solemn citizens who knew that a young woman’s life rested in their hands.

The jury selection took a little more than an hour. Afterward we took a short recess to stretch our legs, but we were all back in place in the courtroom before Pearson let the rabble in. I was at my table in proximity to the judge’s bench, surrounded by the books of North Carolina laws and statutes, with my late brother’s leather-bound copy of Principles of Criminal Lawat the ready. The state’s attorney sat reviewing his notes of the case, seemingly oblivious to the noise of the milling crowd waiting beyond the double oak doors, but after a courteous nod in his direction, I barely spared him a glance.

I was watching Frankie Silver.

In my record of the proceedings, I would of course write the defendant’s name as Frances Stewart Silver, but she had been known as “Frankie” in the mountain community she came from, and whenever her crime was discussed these past few months, it was that nickname that had been bandied about in the streets and taverns of Morganton. By now I had come to think of her this way.

The name suited her, I thought. It had a suggestion of boyishness about it that went well with her slender frame and the alert angular face that seemed forever watchful. She seemed little more than a child sitting in the dock, overshadowed by the dark elegance of Nicholas Woodfin. She was unfettered, for the law forbids the use of irons or shackles of any kind on a prisoner during trial, unless there is evident danger of escape. She was wearing a shabby blue dress that seemed far too large for her slender frame, and too long at the sleeve ends to have been her own apparel. Sarah Presnell must have done what she could to make the girl presentable for trial. Her pale hair was clean and pinned up into a knot at the nape of her neck, and she looked too well scrubbed to have emerged unwashed from ten weeks in a prison cell. I wondered if the ill-fitting dress had been a gesture of charity from some Morganton lady, or if it were her own property, and a testimony to the rigors of her confinement. She was unnaturally pale, and though she stared straight ahead without expression, she twisted her hands in her lap, knotting and unknotting her fingers in a continuous display of anxiety. Surely she knew what people were saying about her, and how little sympathy there was for her in that room.

Nicholas Woodfin, by contrast, seemed serene. It was difficult to believe that the Asheville attorney was only three years older than his client. He was as calm and self-assured as a man twice his age. His notes lay in front of him on the small oak table, but he did not glance at them. Once I saw him lean over to his