Делия Оуэнс - Where the Crawdads Sing

By now, the money was gone, so he accepted a job from his father-in-law in the shoe factory. Jake assumed he would be made manager, but Mr. Jacques, a man not easily taken in, insisted Jake learn the business from the bottom up like any other employee. So Jake labored at cutting out soles.

He and Maria lived in a small garage apartment furnished with a few grand pieces from her dowry mixed with flea-market tables and chairs. He enrolled in night classes to finish high school but usually skipped out to play poker and, stinking of whiskey, came home late to his new wife. After only three weeks, the teacher dropped him from the classes.

Maria begged him to stop drinking, to show enthusiasm for his job so that her father would promote him. But the babies started coming and the drinking never stopped. Between 1934 and 1940 they had four children, and Jake was promoted only once.

The war with Germany was an equalizer. Boiled down to the same uniform-hue as everyone else, he could hide his shame, once again play proud. But one night, sitting in a muddy foxhole in France, someone shouted that their sergeant was shot and sprawled bleeding twenty yards away. Mere boys, they should have been sitting in a dugout waiting to bat, nervous about some fastball. Still, they jumped at once, scrambling to save the wounded man—all but one.

Jake hunched in a corner, too scared to move, but a mortar exploded yellow-white just beyond the hole, shattering the bones of his left leg into fragments. When the soldiers tumbled back into the trench, dragging the sergeant, they assumed Jake had been hit while helping the others rescue their comrade. He was declared a hero. No one would ever know. Except Jake.

With a medal and a medical discharge, he was sent home. Determined not to work again in the shoe factory, Jake stayed only a few nights in New Orleans. With Maria standing by silently, he sold all her fine furniture and silver, then packed his family onto the train and moved them to North Carolina. He discovered from an old friend that his mother and father had died, clearing the way for his plan.

He’d convinced Maria that living in a cabin his father had built as a fishing retreat on the coast of North Carolina would be a new start. There would be no rent and Jake could finish high school. He bought a small fishing boat in Barkley Cove and motored through miles of marsh waterways with his family and all their possessions piled around them—a few fine hatboxes perched on top. When they finally broke into the lagoon, where the ratty shack with rusted-out screens hunkered under the oaks, Maria clutched her youngest child, Jodie, fighting tears.

Pa assured her, “Don’t ya worry none. I’ll get this fixed up in no time.”

But Jake never improved the shack or finished high school. Soon after they arrived, he took up drinking and poker at the Swamp Guinea, trying to leave that foxhole in a shot glass.

Maria did what she could to make a home. She bought sheets from rummage sales for the floor mattresses and a stand-alone tin bathtub; she washed the laundry under the yard spigot, and figured out on her own how to plant a garden, how to keep chickens.

Soon after they arrived, dressed in their best, she hiked the children to Barkley Cove to register them in school. Jake, however, scoffed at the notion of education, and more days than not, told Murph and Jodie to skip school and bring in squirrels or fish for supper.

Jake took Maria for only one moonlit boat ride, the result of which was their last child, a daughter named Catherine Danielle; later nicknamed Kya because, when first asked, that’s what she said her name was.

Now and then, when sober, Jake dreamed again of completing school, making a better life for them all, but the shadow of the foxhole would move across his mind. Once sure and cocky, handsome and fit, he could no longer wear the man he had become and he’d take a swig from his poke. Blending in with the fighting, drinking, cussing renegades of the marsh was the easiest thing Jake ever did.

17. Crossing the Threshold

1960

One day during the reading summer when she motored to Jumpin’s, he said, “Now, Miss Kya, there’s sump’m else. Some men been pokin’ ’round, askin’ ’bout ya.”

She looked right at him instead of off to the side. “Who, what d’they want?”

“I b’lieve they’re from the Sochul Services. They askin’ all kinds of questions. Is yo’ pa still ’round, where ya ma is, if ya goin’ to school this fall. An when ya come here; they ’specially wanta know what times ya come here.”

“What’d you tell ’em, Jumpin’?”

“Well, I done ma best to put ’em off ya. Told ’em ya pa just fine, out fishin’s all.” He laughed, threw his head back. “Then I told ’em I neva know when ya boat in here. Now, don’t ya worry none, Miss Kya. Jumpin’ll send ’em on a snipe hunt if they come again.”

“Thank ya.” After filling her tank, Kya headed straight home. She’d have to be on guard more now, maybe find a place in the marsh where she could hide out some until they gave up on her.

Late that afternoon, as Tate pulled up to the shore, the hull crunching softly on sand, she said, “Can we meet somewheres else, ’sides here?”

“Hey, Kya, good to see you.” Tate greeted her, still sitting at the tiller.

“What d’ya think?”

“It’s besides , not ’sides , and it’s polite to greet people before asking a favor.”

“You say ’sides sometimes,” she said, almost smiling.

“Yeah, we all got magnolia mouth, being from the North Carolina sticks, but we have to try.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Tate,” she said, making a little curtsy. He caught a glimpse of the spunk and sass somewhere inside. “Now, can we meet somewhere besides here? Please.”

“Sure, I guess, but why?”

“Jumpin’ said the Social Services are lookin’ for me. I’m scared they’ll pull me in like a trout, put me in a foster home or sump’m.”

“Well, we better hide way out there where the crawdads sing. I pity any foster parents who take you on.” Tate’s whole face smiled.

“What d’ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that.” Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: “Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.”

“Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters. Now, you got any ideas where we can meet?”

“There’s a place I found one time, an old fallin’-down cabin. Once you know the turnoff, ya can get there by boat; I can walk there from here.”

“Okay then, get in. Show me this time; next time we’ll meet there.”

“If I’m out there I’ll leave a little pile of rocks right here by the tyin’-up log.” Kya pointed to a spot on the lagoon beach. “Otherwise, I’m ’round here somewhere and will come out when I hear yo’ motor.”

They puttered slowly through the marsh, then planed off south through open sea, away from town. She bounced along in the bow, wind-tears streaming across her cheeks and tickling cool in her ears. When they reached a small cove, she guided him up a narrow freshwater creek hung low with brambles. Several times the creek seemed to peter out, but Kya motioned that it was okay to go on, and they crashed through more brush.

Finally they broke into a wide meadow where the stream ran by an old one-room log cabin, collapsed on one end. The logs had buckled, some lying around the ground like pick-up sticks. The roof, still sitting on the half wall, sloped down from high end to low like a lopsided hat. Tate pulled the boat up onto the mud and they silently walked to the open door.

Inside was dark and reeked of rat urine. “Well, I hope you don’t plan on living here—the whole thing could collapse on your head.” Tate pushed at the wall. It seemed sturdy enough.