Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens Page 0,25

Joe pointed to a large pattern of disturbed sand crystals that fanned into an almost perfect half circle. “Could be the imprint of a round-bowed boat that was pulled on shore.”

“No. See where the wind blew this broken grass stalk back and forth through the sand. Drawing this half circle. That’s just grass in the wind.”

They stood looking around. The rest of the small half-moon beach was covered in a thick layer of broken shells, a jumble of crustacean parts, and crab claws. Shells the best secret-keepers of all.

11.

Croker Sacks Full

1956

In the winter of 1956, when Kya was ten, Pa came hobbling to the shack less and less often. Weeks passed with no whiskey bottle on the floor, no body sprawled on the bed, no Monday money. She kept expecting to see him limping through the trees, toting his poke. One full moon, then another had passed since she’d seen him.

Sycamore and hickories stretched naked limbs against a dull sky, and the relentless wind sucked any joy the winter sun might have spread across the bleakness. A useless, drying wind in a sea-land that couldn’t dry.

Sitting on the front steps, she thought about it. A poker-game fight could have ended with him beat up and dumped in the swamp on a cold, rainy night. Or maybe he just got fall-down drunk, wandered off into the woods, and fell face-first in the backwater bog.

“I guess he’s gone for good.”

She bit her lips until her mouth turned white. It wasn’t like the pain when Ma left—in fact, she struggled to mourn him at all. But being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed, and the authorities were sure to find out and take her away. She’d have to pretend, even to Jumpin’, that Pa was still around.

And there would be no Monday money. She’d stretched the last few dollars for weeks, surviving on grits, boiled mussels, and the occasional remnant egg from the rangy hens. The only remaining supplies were a few matches, a nubbin of soap, and a handful of grits. A fistful of Blue Tips wouldn’t make a winter. Without them she couldn’t boil the grits, which she fixed for herself, the gulls, and the chickens.

“I don’t know how to do life without grits.”

At least, she thought, wherever Pa had disappeared to this time, he had gone on foot. Kya had the boat.

Of course, she’d have to find another way to get food, but for right now she pushed the thought to a far corner of her mind. After a supper of boiled mussels, which she had learned to smash into a paste and spread on soda crackers, she thumbed through Ma’s beloved books, play-reading the fairy tales. Even at ten she still couldn’t read.

Then the kerosene light flickered, faded, and died. One minute there was a soft circle of a world, and then darkness. She made an oh sound. Pa had always bought the kerosene and filled the lamp, so she hadn’t thought much about it. Until it was dark.

She sat for a few seconds, trying to squeeze light from the leftovers, but there was almost nothing. Then the rounded hump of the Frigidaire and the window frame began to take shape in the dimness, so she touched her fingers along the countertop until she found a candle stub. Lighting it would take a match and there were only five left. But darkness was a right-now thing.

Swish. She struck the match, lit the candle, and the blackness retreated to the corners. But she’d seen enough of it to know she had to have light, and kerosene cost money. She opened her mouth in a shallow pant. “Maybe I oughta walk to town and turn myself in to the authorities. At least they’d give me food and send me to school.”

But after thinking a minute she said, “No, I cain’t leave the gulls, the heron, the shack. The marsh is all the family I got.”

Sitting in the last of the candlelight, she had an idea.

Earlier than usual, she got up the next morning when the tide was low, pulled on her overalls, and slipped out with a bucket, claw knife, and empty tow bags. Squatting in mud, she collected mussels along the sloughs like Ma had taught her, and in four hours of crouching and kneeling had two croker sacks full.

The slow sun pulled from the sea as she motored through dense fog up to Jumpin’s Gas and Bait. He stood as she neared.

“Hello, Miss Kya, ya wantin’