Делия Оуэнс - Where the Crawdads Sing

Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers.

After a few days, she boated into the marsh, exploring areas Chase wouldn’t know, but was jumpy and alert, making it difficult to paint. Her eye was still puffed around a thin slit, and the bruise had leached its nauseated colors across half her face. Much of her body throbbed with pain. At the chirp of a chipmunk she whirled around, listened keenly to the caws of crows—a language before words were, when communication was simple and clear—and wherever she went, mapped an escape route in her mind.

42. A Cell

1970

Murky shafts of light streamed through the tiny window of Kya’s cell. She stared at dust motes, dancing silently in one direction as though following some dreamy leader. When they hit the shadows, they vanished. Without the sun they were nothing.

She pulled the wooden crate, her only table, under the window, which was seven feet above the floor. Dressed in a gray jumpsuit with COUNTY INMATE printed on the back, she stood on the crate and stared at the sea, just visible beyond the thick glass and bars. Whitecaps slapped and spat, and pelicans, heads turning for fish, flew low over the waves. If she stretched her neck far to the right she could see the dense crown of the marsh’s edge. Yesterday she had seen an eagle dive and twist toward a fish.

The county jail consisted of six twelve-by-twelve cells in a cement-block, one-story building behind the sheriff’s office at the edge of town. The cells were in a row down the length of the building—only on one side, so inmates couldn’t see one another. Three of the walls were damp cement blocks; the fourth was made of bars including the locked door. Each cell had a wooden bed with a bumpy cotton mattress, a feather pillow, sheets, one gray wool blanket, a sink, and a wooden-crate table, plus a toilet. Over the sink was not a mirror but a picture of Jesus, framed there by the Ladies’ Baptist Auxiliary. The only allowance made for her, the first female inmate—other than overnighters—in years, was a gray plastic curtain that could be pulled around the sink and toilet.

For two months before the trial, she’d been held in this cell without bail because of her failed attempt to escape the sheriff in her boat. Kya wondered who started using the word cell instead of cage . There must have been a moment in time when humanity demanded this shift. Self-scratched red webbing streaked her arms. For untracked minutes, sitting on her bed, she studied strands of her hair, plucking them like feathers. As the gulls do.

Standing on the crate, craning her neck toward the marsh, she recalled an Amanda Hamilton poem:

Broken Gull of Brandon Beach

Winged soul, you danced the skies,

And startled dawn with shrilling cries.

You followed sails and braved the sea,

Then caught the wind back to me.

You broke your wing; it dragged the land

And etched your mark upon the sand.

When feathers break, you cannot fly,

But who decides the time to die?

. . .

You disappeared, I know not where.

But your wing-marks still linger there.

A broken heart cannot fly,

But who decides the time to die?

Even though the inmates couldn’t see one another, the only other occupants—two men at the far end of the row—spent much of each day and evening jabbering. Both were doing thirty days for starting a fight, which ended in broken bar mirrors and a few bones, over who could spit the farthest at the Dog-Gone Beer Hall. Mostly they lay on their beds, calling to each other from their adjoining cells, sounding like drum squatters. Much of the banter was gossip they’d heard about Kya’s case from their visitors. Especially her odds of getting the death penalty, which had not been issued in the county for twenty years, and never to a woman.

Kya heard every word. Being dead didn’t bother her; they couldn’t scare her with threats of ending this shadow life. But the process of being killed by another’s hand, planned out and set to schedule, was so unthinkable it stopped her breath.

Sleep avoided her, slinking around the edges, then darting away. Her mind would plunge along deep walls of sudden slumber—an instant of bliss—then her body would shudder her awake.

She stepped down from the crate and sat on the bed, knees tucked under her chin. They’d brought her here after court, so it might be six by now. Only one hour passed. Or maybe not even that.

43. A Microscope

1969

In early September, more than a week after Chase attacked her, she walked down her beach. The wind ripped at a letter in her hand, so she held it against her breasts. Her editor had invited her to meet him in Greenville, writing that he understood she didn’t come to town often, but he wanted to meet her, and the publisher would pay her expenses.

The day stood clear and hot, so she motored into the marsh. At the end of a narrow estuary, she rounded a grassy bend and saw Tate squatting on a wide sandbar, dipping up water samples in little vials. His cruiser–cum–research vessel was tied to a log and drifted across the channel, blocking it. She heaved on the tiller. Some of the swelling and bruising on her face had diminished, but ugly green and purple splotches still circled her eye. She panicked. She could not let Tate see her battered face and tried to turn her boat around quickly.

But he looked up and waved. “Pull in, Kya. I’ve got a new microscope to show you.”

This had the same effect as the truant officer calling to her about chicken pie. She slowed but didn’t answer.

“Come on. You won’t believe this magnification. You can see the pseudopods on the amoebas.”

She’d never seen an amoeba, certainly not its body parts. And seeing Tate again brought a peace, a calmness. Deciding that she could keep her bruised face turned away from him, she beached her boat and walked through the shallow water toward his. She wore cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt, her hair free. Standing at the top of the stern ladder, he held out his hand and she took it, looking away from him.

The cruiser’s soft beige blended into the marsh, and Kya had never seen anything as fine as the teak deck and brass helm. “Come on down,” he said, stepping below into the cabin. She scanned the captain’s desk, the small kitchen outfitted better than her own, and the living area that had been converted into an onboard laboratory with multiple microscopes and racks of vials. Other instruments hummed and blinked.

Tate fiddled with the largest microscope and adjusted the slide.

“Here, just a minute.” He touched a drop of marsh water onto the slide, covered it with another, and focused the eyepiece. He stood. “Have a look.”

Kya leaned over gently, as if to kiss a baby. The microscope’s light reflected in her dark pupils, and she drew in a breath as a Mardi Gras of costumed players pirouetted and careened into view. Unimaginable headdresses adorned astonishing bodies so eager for more life, they frolicked as though caught in a circus tent, not a single bead of water.

She put her hand on her heart. “I had no idea there were so many and so beautiful,” she said, still looking.

He identified some odd species, then stepped back, watching her. She feels the pulse of life , he thought, because there are no layers between her and her planet .

He showed her more slides.

She whispered, “It’s like never having seen the stars, then suddenly seeing them.”

“Would you like some coffee?” he asked softly.

She raised her head. “No, no, thank you.” Then she backed away from the microscope, moving toward the galley. Awkwardly, keeping her brown-green eye turned away.