Chase turned to her and said, “Thanks for comin’, Kya. For giving me another chance to say I’m sorry ’bout the other day. I was way outta line and it won’t happen again.”
She said nothing. Parts of her wanted to kiss him now, to feel his strength against her.
Reaching into her jeans pocket, she said, “I made a necklace with the shell you found. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.” She’d strung the shell on the rawhide the night before, thinking to herself she would wear it, but knowing all along she hoped to see Chase again and would give it to him if she had the chance. But even her wistful daydream had not envisioned them standing together on top of the fire tower overlooking the world. A summit.
“Thank ya, Kya,” he said. He looked at it, and then he put it on over his head, fingering the shell as it rested against his throat. “’Course I’ll wear it.”
He said nothing trite like I’ll wear it forever, till the day I die.
“Take me to your house,” Chase said. Kya imagined the shack hunkered under oaks, its gray boards stained with blood from the rusting roof. The screens more holes than mesh. A place of patches.
“It’s far,” is all she said.
“Kya, I don’t care how far or what it’s like. C’mon, let’s go.”
This chance of acceptance might go away if she said no.
“All right.” They climbed down the tower, and he led her back to the bay, motioning for her to lead the way in her boat. She cruised south to the maze of estuaries and ducked her head as she slipped into her channel, overhung with green. His boat was almost too big to fit in the jungle growth, certainly too blue and white, but it squeezed through, limbs screeching along the hull.
When her lagoon opened before them, the delicate details of every mossy branch and brilliant leaf reflected in the clear dark water. Dragonflies and snowy egrets lifted briefly at his strange boat, then resettled gracefully on silent wings. Kya tied up as Chase motored up to the shore. The great blue heron, having long ago accepted those less wild, stood stork-still only feet away.
Her laundry of faded overalls and T-shirts hung tatty on the line, and so many turnips had spread into the forests, it was difficult to tell where the garden ended and the wilderness began.
Looking at the patched screen porch, he asked, “How long ya lived out here by yourself?”
“I don’t know exactly when Pa left. But about ten years, I think.”
“That’s neat. Livin’ out here with no parents to tell ya what to do.”
Kya didn’t respond except to say, “There’s nothing to see inside.” But he was already walking up the brick-’n’-board steps. The first things he saw were her collections lining homemade shelves. A collage of the shimmering life just beyond the screen.
“You did all this?” he said.
“Yes.”
He looked at some butterflies briefly but quickly lost interest. Thought, Why keep stuff you can see right outside your door?
Her little mattress on the porch floor had a cover as worn as an old bathrobe, but it was made up neat. A few steps took them through the tiny sitting room, with its sagging sofa, and then he peeped into the back bedroom, where feathers in every color, shape, and size winged across the walls.
She motioned him into the kitchen, wondering what she could offer him. For sure she had no Coca-Cola or iced tea, no cookies or even cold biscuits. The leftover cornbread sat on the stovetop next to a pot of black-eyed peas, shelled and ready to boil for supper. Not one thing for a guest.
Out of habit she stuck a few pieces of wood into the stove’s firebox. Stoking it just so with the poker; flames jumping to instantly.
“That’s it,” she said, keeping her back to him, as she pumped the hand crank and filled the dented-in kettle—a picture of the 1920s propped up here in the 1960s. No running water, no electricity, no bathroom. The tin bathtub, its rim bent and rusted, stood in the corner of the kitchen, the stand-alone pie chest held leftovers covered neatly with tea towels, and the humped refrigerator gaped open, a flyswatter in its mouth. Chase had never seen anything like it.
He cranked the pump, watched the water come out into the enamel basin that served as the sink. Touched the wood stacked neatly