Делия Оуэнс - Where the Crawdads Sing

Also by Delia Owens

WITH MARK OWENS

Secrets of the Savanna

The Eye of the Elephant

Cry of the Kalahari

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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Copyright © 2018 by Delia Owens

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Excerpts from “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students” from Three Books by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 1993 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

“Evening” from Above the River: The Complete Poems © 1990 by Anne Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Owens, Delia, author.

Title: Where the crawdads sing / Delia Owens.

Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018010775| ISBN 9780735219090 (hardback) | ISBN 9780735219113 (epub)

Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION / Contemporary Women.

Classification: LCC PS3615.W447 W48 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010775

p. cm.

Map and illustrations by Meighan Cavanaugh

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

To Amanda, Margaret, and Barbara

Here’s to’d ya

If I never see’d ya

I never knowed ya.

I see’d ya

I knowed ya

I loved ya,

Forever.

Contents

Also by Delia Owens

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

PART 1 | The Marsh

Prologue

1. Ma

2. Jodie

3. Chase

4. School

5. Investigation

6. A Boat and a Boy

7. The Fishing Season

8. Negative Data

9. Jumpin’

10. Just Grass in the Wind

11. Croker Sacks Full

12. Pennies and Grits

13. Feathers

14. Red Fibers

15. The Game

16. Reading

17. Crossing the Threshold

18. White Canoe

19. Something Going On

20. July 4

21. Coop

PART 2 | The Swamp

22. Same Tide

23. The Shell

24. The Fire Tower

25. A Visit from Patti Love

26. The Boat Ashore

27. Out Hog Mountain Road

28. The Shrimper

29. Seaweed

30. The Rips

31. A Book

32. Alibi

33. The Scar

34. Search the Shack

35. The Compass

36. To Trap a Fox

37. Gray Sharks

38. Sunday Justice

39. Chase by Chance

40. Cypress Cove

41. A Small Herd

42. A Cell

43. A Microscope

44. Cell Mate

45. Red Cap

46. King of the World

47. The Expert

48. A Trip

49. Disguises

50. The Journal

51. Waning Moon

52. Three Mountains Motel

53. Missing Link

54. Vice Versa

55. Grass Flowers

56. The Night Heron

57. The Firefly

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PART 1 The Marsh

Prologue

1969

M arsh is not swamp. Marsh is a space of light, where grass grows in water, and water flows into the sky. Slow-moving creeks wander, carrying the orb of the sun with them to the sea, and long-legged birds lift with unexpected grace—as though not built to fly—against the roar of a thousand snow geese.

Then within the marsh, here and there, true swamp crawls into low-lying bogs, hidden in clammy forests. Swamp water is still and dark, having swallowed the light in its muddy throat. Even night crawlers are diurnal in this lair. There are sounds, of course, but compared to the marsh, the swamp is quiet because decomposition is cellular work. Life decays and reeks and returns to the rotted duff; a poignant wallow of death begetting life.

On the morning of October 30, 1969, the body of Chase Andrews lay in the swamp, which would have absorbed it silently, routinely. Hiding it for good. A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin. But this morning two boys from the village rode their bikes out to the old fire tower and, from the third switchback, spotted his denim jacket.

1. Ma

1952

The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. The palmetto patches stood unusually quiet except for the low, slow flap of the heron’s wings lifting from the lagoon. And then, Kya, only six at the time, heard the screen door slap. Standing on the stool, she stopped scrubbing grits from the pot and lowered it into the basin of worn-out suds. No sounds now but her own breathing. Who had left the shack? Not Ma. She never let the door slam.

But when Kya ran to the porch, she saw her mother in a long brown skirt, kick pleats nipping at her ankles, as she walked down the sandy lane in high heels. The stubby-nosed shoes were fake alligator skin. Her only going-out pair. Kya wanted to holler out but knew not to rouse Pa, so opened the door and stood on the brick-’n’-board steps. From there she saw the blue train case Ma carried. Usually, with the confidence of a pup, Kya knew her mother would return with meat wrapped in greasy brown paper or with a chicken, head dangling down. But she never wore the gator heels, never took a case.

Ma always looked back where the foot lane met the road, one arm held high, white palm waving, as she turned onto the track, which wove through bog forests, cattail lagoons, and maybe—if the tide obliged—eventually into town. But today she walked on, unsteady in the ruts. Her tall figure emerged now and then through the holes of the forest until only swatches of white scarf flashed between the leaves. Kya sprinted to the spot she knew would bare the road; surely Ma would wave from there, but she arrived only in time to glimpse the blue case—the color so wrong for the woods—as it disappeared. A heaviness, thick as black-cotton mud, pushed her chest as she returned to the steps to wait.

Kya was the youngest of five, the others much older, though later she couldn’t recall their ages. They lived with Ma and Pa, squeezed together like penned rabbits, in the rough-cut shack, its screened porch staring big-eyed from under the oaks.

Jodie, the brother closest to Kya, but still seven years older, stepped from the house and stood behind her. He had her same dark eyes and black hair; had taught her birdsongs, star names, how to steer the boat through saw grass.

“Ma’ll be back,” he said.

“I dunno. She’s wearin’ her gator shoes.”

“A ma don’t leave her kids. It ain’t in ’em.”

“You told me that fox left her babies.”

“Yeah, but that vixen got ’er leg all tore up. She’d’ve starved to death if she’d tried to feed herself ’n’ her kits. She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good. Ma ain’t starvin’, she’ll be back.” Jodie wasn’t nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.