Where the Crawdads Sing(34)

“I will. Thank you.”

Jumpin’ hurried up the wharf and disappeared as Kya waited, glancing out in the bay every few seconds, dreading another boat coming in. But in no time he was back, saying some kids had gone to get Mabel; Kya should “just wait a spell.”

Jumpin’ busied himself unpacking packets of chewing tobacco on the shelves and generally doing around. Kya stayed in her boat. Finally Mabel hurried across the boards, which shook with her swing as if a small piano were being pushed down the wharf. Carrying a paper bag, she didn’t bellow out a greeting, as she would have otherwise, but stood on the wharf above Kya and said quietly, “Mornin’, Miss Kya, what’s all this ’bout, child? What’s wrong, hon?”

Kya dropped her head more, mumbled something Mabel couldn’t hear.

“Can ya get out of that boat, or should I get in there with ya?”

Kya didn’t answer, so Mabel, almost two hundred pounds’ worth, stepped one foot, then the other into the small boat, which complained by bumping against the piling. She sat down on the center bench, facing Kya at the stern.

“Now, child, tell me what’s wrong.”

The two leaned their heads together, Kya whispering, and then Mabel pulled Kya right over to her full bosom, hugging and rocking her. Kya was rigid at first, not accustomed to yielding to hugs, but this didn’t discourage Mabel, and finally Kya went limp and slumped against the comfort of those pillows. After a while, Mabel leaned back and opened the brown paper bag.

“Well, I figured what’s wrong, so I brought ya some things.” And there, sitting in the boat at Jumpin’s wharf, Mabel explained the details to Kya.

“Now, Miss Kya, this ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of. It ain’t no curse, like folks say; this here’s the startin’ of all life, and only a woman can do it. You’re a woman now, baby.”



* * *



? ? ?

WHEN KYA HEARD TATE’S BOAT the next afternoon, she hid in thick brambles and watched him. For anyone to know her at all seemed strange enough, but now he knew about the most personal and private occurrence of her life. Her cheeks burned at the thought of it. She would hide until he left.

As he pulled onto the lagoon shore and stepped out of the boat, he carried a white box tied up with string. “Yo! Kya, where are you?” he called. “I brought petite cakes from Parker’s.”

Kya had not tasted anything like cake for years. Tate lifted some books out of the boat, so Kya moseyed out of the bushes behind him.

“Oh, there you are. Look at this.” He opened the box, and there, arranged neatly, were little cakes, each only an inch square, covered in vanilla icing with a tiny pink rose perched on the top. “Come on, dig in.”

Kya lifted one and, still not looking at Tate, bit into it. Then pushed the rest of it into her mouth. Licked her fingers.

“Here.” Tate set the box next to their oak. “Have all you want. Let’s get started. I brought a new book.” And that was that. They went into the lessons, never uttering a word about the other thing.



* * *



? ? ?

AUTUMN WAS COMING; the evergreens might not have noticed, but the sycamores did. They flashed thousands of golden leaves across slate-gray skies. Late one afternoon, after the lesson, Tate lingering when he should have left, he and Kya sat on a log in the woods. She finally asked the question she’d wanted to ask for months. “Tate, I appreciate your teaching me to read and all those things you gave me. But why’d you do it? Don’t you have a girlfriend or somebody like that?”

“Nah—well, sometimes I do. I had one, but not now. I like being out here in the quiet and I like the way you’re so interested in the marsh, Kya. Most people don’t pay it any attention except to fish. They think it’s wasteland that should be drained and developed. People don’t understand that most sea creatures—including the very ones they eat—need the marsh.”

He didn’t mention how he felt sorry for her being alone, that he knew how the kids had treated her for years; how the villagers called her the Marsh Girl and made up stories about her. Sneaking out to her shack, running through the dark and tagging it, had become a regular tradition, an initiation for boys becoming men. What did that say about men? Some of them were already making bets about who would be the first to get her cherry. Things that infuriated and worried him.

But that wasn’t the main reason he’d left feathers for Kya in the forest, or why he kept coming to see her. The other words Tate didn’t say were his feelings for her that seemed tangled up between the sweet love for a lost sister and the fiery love for a girl. He couldn’t come close to sorting it out himself, but he’d never been hit by a stronger wave. A power of emotions as painful as pleasurable.

Poking a grass stalk down an ant hole, she finally asked, “Where’s your ma?”

A breeze wandered through the trees, gently shaking branches. Tate didn’t answer.

“You don’t have to say nothing,” she said.

“Anything.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“My mother and little sister died in a car wreck over in Asheville. My sister’s name was Carianne.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry, Tate. I bet your ma was real nice and pretty.”