Делия Оуэнс - Where the Crawdads Sing

“You got that right. Well, let’s get to work.”

“What ya got so far?”

Ed moved farther from the boys. “Well, obviously, on the surface, it looks like an accident: he fell from the tower and was killed. But so far I haven’t found any of his footprints walking toward the steps or prints from anybody else either. Let’s see if we can find any evidence that somebody covered ’em up.”

The two lawmen combed the area for a full ten minutes. “You’re right, not one print ’cept for the boys,” Joe said.

“Yeah, and no signs of somebody brushing them out. I just don’t get it. Let’s move on. I’ll work on this later,” Ed said.

They took pictures of the body, of its position relative to the steps, close-ups of head wounds, the leg bent wrong. Joe made notes as Ed dictated. As they measured the distance from the body to the trail, they heard the sides of the ambulance scratching the thick bushes along the lane. The driver, an old black man who’d taken the wounded, ill, dying, and dead under his charge for decades, bowed his head in respect and whispered suggestions: “A’right den, his’n arms ain’t gwine tuck in much, so cain’t roll ’im onta the gunny; hafta lift ’im and he’s gwine be heavy; Sheriff, sir, ya cradle Mr. Chase’s head. Dat’s good. My, my.” By late morning, they’d loaded him, complete with clinging sludge, into the back.

Since Dr. Murphy had by now informed Chase’s parents of his death, Ed told the boys they could go on home, and he and Joe started up the stairs, which switched to the top, narrowing at each level. As they climbed, the round corners of the world moved out farther and farther, the lush, rounded forests and watery marsh expanding to the very rims.

When they reached the last step, Jackson lifted his hands and pushed open an iron grate. After they climbed onto the platform, he eased it down again because it was part of the floor. Wooden planks, splintered and grayed with age, formed the center of the platform, but around the perimeter, the floor was a series of see-through square grates that could be opened and closed. As long as they were down you could walk on them safely, but if one was left open, you could fall to the earth sixty feet below.

“Hey, look at that.” Ed pointed to the far side of the platform, where one of the grates stood open.

“What the hell?” Joe said as they walked to it. Peering down, they saw the perfect outline of Chase’s misshapen form embedded in the mud. Yellowish goo and duckweed had splashed to the sides like a splatter painting.

“This doesn’t figure,” Ed said. “Sometimes folks forget to close the grate over the stairs. You know, on their way back down. We’ve found it open a few times, but the others are almost never left open.”

“Why would Chase open this one in the first place? Why would anybody?”

“Unless somebody planned to push somebody else to their death,” Ed said.

“Then why didn’t they close it afterward?”

“Because if Chase had fallen through on his own, he couldn’t have closed it. Had to be left open to look like an accident.”

“Look at that support beam below the hole. It’s all bashed in and splintered.”

“Yeah, I see. Chase must’ve banged his head on it when he fell.”

“I’ll climb out there, look for blood or hair samples. Collect some splinters.”

“Thanks, Joe. And take some close-ups. I’ll go get a rope to spot you. We don’t need two bodies in this muck in one day. And we have to take fingerprints off this grate, the grate by the stairs, the railing, the banisters. Everything anybody would’ve touched. And collect any hair samples, threads.”

• • •

MORE THAN TWO HOURS LATER, they stretched their backs from the leaning and stooping. Ed said, “I’m not saying there was foul play. Way too early. But besides that, I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill Chase.”

“Well, I’d say there’d be quite a list,” the deputy said.

“Like who? What’re you talking about?”

“C’mon, Ed. Ya know how Chase was. Tom-cattin’, ruttin’ ’round like a penned bull let out. ’Fore he was married, after he was married, with single girls, married women. I seen randy dogs at a bitch fest better behaved.”

“C’mon, he wasn’t that bad. Sure. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man. But I don’t see anybody in this town committin’ murder over it.”

“I’m just sayin’ there’s people didn’t like him. Some jealous husband. It’d have to be somebody he knew. Somebody we all know. Not likely Chase’d climb up here with some stranger,” Joe said.

“Unless he was up to his navel in debt with some out-of-towner. Something like that we didn’t know about. And a man strong enough to push Chase Andrews. No small task.”

Joe said, “I can already think of a few guys up to it.”

6. A Boat and a Boy

1952

One morning, Pa, shaved fresh and dressed in a wrinkled button-down shirt, came into the kitchen and said he was leaving on the Trailways bus for Asheville to discuss some issues with the army. He figured he had more disability due him and was off to see about it and wouldn’t be back for three or four days. He’d never told Kya his business, where he was going, or when he was coming back, so, standing there in her too-short bib overalls, she stared up at him, mute.

“Ah b’leeve ya deaf and dumb as all git-out,” he said, the porch door slapping behind him.

Kya watched him gimp along the path, left leg swinging to the side, then forward. Her fingers knotted. Maybe they were all going to leave her, one by one down this lane. When he reached the road and unexpectedly looked back, she threw her hand up and waved hard. A shot to keep him tethered. Pa lifted an arm in a quick, dismissive salutation. But it was something. It was more than Ma had done.

From there, she wandered to the lagoon, where early light caught the glimmer of hundreds of dragonfly wings. Oaks and thick brush encircled the water, darkening it cavelike, and she stopped as she eyed Pa’s boat drifting there on the line. If she took it into the marsh and he found out, he’d take his belt to her. Or the paddle he kept by the porch door; the “welcome bat,” Jodie had called it.

Perhaps a yearning to reach out yonder pulled her toward the boat—a bent-up, flat-bottomed metal skiff Pa used for fishing. She’d been out in it all her life, usually with Jodie. Sometimes he’d let her steer. She even knew the way through some of the intricate channels and estuaries that wandered through a patchwork of water and land, land and water, finally to the sea. Because even though the ocean was just beyond the trees surrounding the shack, the only way to get there by boat was to go in the opposite direction, inland, and wind through miles of the maze of waterways that eventually hooked back to the sea.

But, being only seven and a girl, she’d never taken the boat out by herself. It floated there, tied by a single cotton line to a log. Gray grunge, frayed fishing tackle, and half-crushed beer cans covered the boat floor. Stepping in, she said out loud, “Gotta check the gas like Jodie said, so Pa won’t figure I took it.” She poked a broken reed into the rusted tank. “’Nough for a short ride, I reckon.”

Like any good robber, she looked around, then flicked the cotton line free of the log and poled forward with the lone paddle. The silent cloud of dragonflies parted before her.

Not able to resist, she pulled the starter rope and jerked back when the motor caught the first time, sputtering and burping white smoke. Grabbing the tiller, she turned the throttle too far, and the boat turned sharply, the engine screaming. She released the throttle, threw her hands up, and the boat eased to a drift, purring.