Where the Crawdads Sing(61)

Pulling back into her lagoon at dusk, she had a talk with the heron. “It’s all right. That spot’s your’n!”



* * *



? ? ?

THE NEXT NOON there was a note from Tate in her mailbox, which seemed strange and somehow formal since he’d only ever left messages for her on the feather stump. He thanked her for the invitation to stop by her place for a copy of her book and added that he’d be there that very afternoon.

Carrying one of the six copies of her new book the publishers had given her, she waited on the old reading-log. In about twenty minutes she heard the sound of Tate’s old boat chugging up the channel and stood. As he eased into view from the undergrowth, they waved and smiled softly. Both guarded. The last time he’d pulled in here, she’d hurled rocks in his face.

After tying up, Tate stepped up to her. “Kya, your book is a wonder.” He leaned slightly forward, as if to hug her, but the hardened rinds of her heart held her back.

Instead she handed him the book. “Here, Tate. This is for you.”

“Thank you, Kya,” he said as he opened it and paged through. He didn’t mention that, of course, he’d already bought one at the Sea Oaks Bookshelf and marveled at every page. “Nothing like this has ever been published. I’m sure this is just a beginning for you.”

She simply bowed her head and smiled slightly.

Then, turning to the title page, he said, “Oh, you haven’t signed it. You have to inscribe it for me. Please.”

She jerked her head up at him. Had not thought of that. What words could she possibly write to Tate?

He took a pen from his jeans pocket and handed it to her.

She took it and, after a few seconds, wrote:


To the Feather Boy


Thank you


From the Marsh Girl

Tate read the words, then turned away, staring far across the marsh because he couldn’t hold her. Finally, he lifted her hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you, Kya.”

“It was you, Tate,” she said, and then thought, It was always you. One side of her heart longing, the other shielding.

He stood for a minute, and when she didn’t say more, he turned to go. But as he got into his boat, he said, “Kya, when you see me out in the marsh, please don’t hide in the grass like a spotted fawn. Just call out to me and we can do some exploring together. Okay?”

“All right.”

“Thanks again for the book.”

“Good-bye, Tate.” She watched until he disappeared in the thicket and then said, “I could have at least invited him in for tea. That wouldn’t hurt anything. I could be his friend.” Then with rare pride she thought of her book. “I could be his colleague.”



* * *



? ? ?

AN HOUR AFTER TATE LEFT, Kya motored to Jumpin’s wharf, another copy of her book tucked in her knapsack. As she approached, she saw him leaning against the wall of his weathered shop. He stood and waved to her, but she did not wave back. Knowing something was different, he waited silently as she tied up. She stepped up to him, lifted his hand, and put the book in his palm. At first he didn’t understand, but she pointed to her name and said, “I’m okay now, Jumpin’. Thank you, and thank Mabel for all you did for me.”

He stared at her. In another time and place, an old black man and a young white woman might have hugged. But not there, not then. She covered his hand with hers, turned, and motored away. It was the first time she’d seen him speechless. She kept on buying gas and supplies from him but never accepted a handout from them again. And each time she came to his wharf, she saw her book propped up in the tiny window for all to see. As a father would have shown it.





32.


    Alibi



1969

Low dark clouds raced over a steel sea toward Barkley Cove. The wind hit first, rattling windows and hurling waves over the wharf. Boats, tied to the dock, bobbed up and down like toys, as men in yellow slickers tied this line or that, securing. Then sideways rain slammed the village, obscuring everything except the odd yellow form moving about in the grayness.

The wind whistled through the sheriff’s window, and he raised his voice. “So, Joe, you had something to tell me?”

“Sure do. I found out where Miss Clark will claim she was the night Chase died.”

“What? Did you finally catch up to her?”

“Ya kiddin’? She’s slipperier’n a damn eel. Gets gone ever’ time I get near. So I drove over to Jumpin’s marina this morning to see if he knew when she’d be coming next. Like everybody else she hasta go there for gas, so I figured I’d catch her up sooner or later. You won’t believe what I found out.”

“Let’s have it.”

“I got two reliable sources say she was outta town that night.”

“What? Who? She never goes out of town, and even if she did, who’d know about it?”

“Ya remember Tate Walker? Dr. Walker now. Works out at the new ecology lab.”

“Yeah, I know him. His dad’s a shrimper. Scupper Walker.”

“Well, Tate says he knew Kya—he calls her Kya—quite well when they were younger.”

“Oh?”

“Not like that. They were just kids. He taught her to read, ’parently.”