Where the Crawdads Sing(69)

    The Compass



1969

One July afternoon in 1969, more than seven months after Jodie’s visit, The Eastern Seacoast Birds by Catherine Danielle Clark—her second book, a volume of stark detail and beauty—appeared in her mailbox. She ran her fingers over the striking jacket—her painting of a herring gull. Smiling, she said, “Hey, Big Red, you made it to the cover.”

Carrying the new book, Kya walked silently to the shady oak clearing near her shack, searching for mushrooms. The moist duff felt cool on her feet as she neared a cluster of intensely yellow toadstools. Midstride, she halted. There, sitting on the old feather stump, was a small milk carton, red and white, just like the one from so long ago. Unexpectedly, she laughed out loud.

Inside the carton, wrapped in tissue paper, was an old army-issue compass in a brass case, tarnished green-gray with age. She breathed in at the sight of it. She had never needed a compass because the directions seemed obvious to her. But on cloudy days, when the sun was elusive, the compass would guide her.

A folded note read: Dearest Kya, This compass was my grandpa’s from the First World War. He gave it to me when I was little, but I’ve never used it, and I thought maybe you would get the best out of it. Love, Tate. P.S. I’m glad you can read this note!

Kya read the words Dearest and Love again. Tate. The golden-haired boy in the boat, guiding her home before a storm, gifting her feathers on a weathered stump, teaching her to read; the tender teenager steering her through her first cycle as a woman and arousing her first sexual desires as a female; the young scientist encouraging her to publish her books.

Despite gifting him the shell book, she had continued to hide in the undergrowth when she saw him in the marsh, rowing away unseen. The dishonest signals of fireflies, all she knew of love.

Even Jodie had said she should give Tate another chance. But every time she thought of him or saw him, her heart jumped from the old love to the pain of abandonment. She wished it would settle on one side or the other.

Several mornings later, she slipped through the estuaries in an early fog, the compass tucked in her knapsack, though she would not likely need it. She planned to search for rare wild flowers on a wooded tongue of sand that jutted into the sea, but part of her scanned the waterways for Tate’s boat.

The fog turned stubborn and lingered, twisting its tendrils around tree snags and low-lying limbs. The air was still; even the birds were quiet as she eased forward through the channel. Nearby, a clonk, clonk sounded as a slow-moving oar tapped a gunwale, and then a boat emerged ghoul-like from the haze.

Colors, which had been muted by the dimness, formed into shapes as they moved into the light. Golden hair beneath a red cap. As if coming in from a dream, Tate stood in the stern of his old fishing boat poling through the channel. Kya cut her engine and rowed backward into a thicket to watch him pass. Always backward to watch him pass.

At sundown, calmer, heart back in place, Kya stood on the beach, and recited: “Sunsets are never simple.

Twilight is refracted and reflected But never true.

Eventide is a disguise Covering tracks,

Covering lies.


“We don’t care That dusk deceives.

We see brilliant colors, And never learn

The sun has dropped Beneath the earth

By the time we see the burn.


“Sunsets are in disguise, Covering truths, covering lies.

“A.H.”





36.


    To Trap a Fox



1969

Joe walked through the opened door of the sheriff’s office. “Okay, got the report.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Both men scanned quickly to the last page. Ed said, “That’s it. A perfect match. Fibers from her hat were on Chase’s jacket as he lay dead.” The sheriff slapped the report across his wrist, then continued. “Let’s review what we have here. Number one, the shrimper will testify that he saw Miss Clark boating toward the fire tower just before Chase fell to his death. His colleague will back him up. Two, Patti Love said Miss Clark made the shell necklace for Chase, and it disappeared the night he died. Three, fibers from her hat were on his jacket. Four, motive: the woman wronged. And an alibi we can refute. That should do it.”

“A better motive might help,” Joe said. “Being jilted doesn’t seem like enough.”

“It’s not like we’re finished with the investigation, but we have enough to bring her in for questioning. Probably enough to charge her. We’ll see how it goes once we get her here.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? How? She’s outrun everybody for years. Truant officers, census takers, you name it, she’s outwit ’em all. Includin’ us. We go out there chasin’ her through swamp grass, we’ll make fools of ourselves.”

“I’m not afraid of that. Just because nobody else could catch her doesn’t mean we can’t. But that wouldn’t be the smartest way of doing it. I say we set a trap.”

“Oh yeah. Well,” the deputy said, “I know a thing or two ’bout trappin’. And when you go to trap a fox, it’s usually the trap that gets foxed. It’s not like we have surprise on our side. We been out there knockin’ on her door enough to scare off a brown bear. What about the hounds? That’d be a sure thing.”