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When the footstep of death is near.
Barkley Cove served its religion hard-boiled and deep-fried.
Pa never took her fishing again. Those warm days were just a thrown-in season. Low clouds parting, the
sun splashing her world briefly, then closing up dark and tight-fisted again.
“Just forget it. No god’s gonna come to this garden.”
They stood looking around. The rest of the small half-moon beach was covered in a thick layer of broken shells, a jumble of crustacean parts, and crab claws. Shells the best secret-keepers of all.
But being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed,
if a bird becomes different from the others—disfigured or wounded—it is more likely to attract a predator, so the rest of the flock will kill it, which is better than drawing in an eagle,
who might take one of them in the bargain.
A large female clawed at the bedraggled hen with her large, horny feet, then pinned her to the ground as another female jabbed at her naked neck and head. The hen squealed, looked arou...
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There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’”
“Well, we better hide way out there where the crawdads sing. I pity any foster parents who take you on.” Tate’s whole face smiled. “What d’ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that.” Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: “Go as far as you can—way out yonder where the crawdads sing.” “Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters. Now, you got any ideas where we can meet?”
Suddenly lost and cold, I knew the yard lay bare, I longed to touch and hold My child, my talking child, Laughing or tame or wild . . . Trees and the sun were gone, Everything gone but us. His mother sang in the house, And kept our supper warm, And loved us, God knows how, The wide earth darkened so.
Within all the worlds of biology, she searched for an explanation of why a mother would leave her offspring.
She never collected lightning bugs in bottles; you learn a lot more about something when it’s not in a jar.
Evil was not in play, just life pulsing on, even at the expense of some of the players. Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.
How much do you trade to defeat lonesomeness?
Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a release. And a strength.
Finally the fear came. From a place deeper than the sea. Fear from knowing she would be alone again. Probably always. A life sentence.
She knew it wasn’t Chase she mourned, but a life defined by rejections.
As the sky and clouds struggled overhead, she said out loud, “I have to do life alone. But I knew this. I’ve known a long time that people don’t stay.”
As she pushed off, she knew no one would ever see this sandbar again. The elements had created a brief and shifting smile of sand, angled just so. The next tide, the next current would design another sandbar, and another, but never this one. Not the one who caught her. The one who told
her a thing or two.
Kya knew it wasn’t so much that the herd would be incomplete without one of its deer, but that each deer would
be incomplete without her herd.
Just at that moment she noticed a female praying mantis stalking along a branch near her face. The insect was plucking moths with her articulated forelegs, then chewing them up, their wings still flapping in her mouth. A male mantis, head high and proud as a pony, paraded along to court her. She appeared interested, her antennae flailing about like wands. His embrace might have been tight or tender, Kya couldn’t tell, but while
he probed about with his copulatory organ to fertilize her eggs, the female turned back her long, elegant neck and bit off his head. He was so busy humping, he didn’t notice. His neck stump waved about as he continued his business, and she nibbled on his thorax, and then his wings. Finally, his last foreleg protruded from her mouth as his headless, heartless lower body copulated in perfect rhyme.
Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them; mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thoug...
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Kya heard every word. Being dead didn’t bother her; they couldn’t scare her with threats of ending this shadow life. But the process of being killed by another’s hand, planned out and set to schedule, was so unthinkable it stopped her breath.
She feels the pulse of life, he thought, because there are no layers between her and her planet.
Dreams of escape—even through death—always lift toward the light. The dangling, shiny prize of peace just out of grasp until finally her body descends to the bottom and settles in murky quiet. Safe. Who decides the time to die?
Leaning on someone leaves you on the ground.
It seemed that now, Kya being more vulnerable than ever, was reason to trust others even less. Standing in the most fragile place of her life, she turned to the only net she knew—herself.
“I don’t need to think about it. I won’t stay in jail.” “Well, we don’t have to decide now. We have some time. Let’s see how it goes. Before I leave, is there anything you want to discuss with me?” “Please get me out of here. One way or—the other.”
She closed her eyes at such easy acceptance. A deep pause in a lifetime of longing.
The sweeping up the heart, And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity.
“Never underrate the heart, Capable of deeds The mind cannot conceive. The heart dictates as well as feels. How else can you explain The path I have taken, That you have taken The long way through this pass?”
Yet Kya saw similarities in their natures. The judge, obviously the alpha male, was secure in his position, so his posture was imposing, but relaxed and unthreatened as the territorial boar. Tom Milton,
too, exuded confidence and rank with easy movements and stance. A powerful buck, acknowledged as such. The prosecutor, on the other hand, relied on wide, bright ties and broad-shouldered suit jackets to enhance his status. He threw his weight by flinging his arms or raising his voice. A lesser male needs to shout to be noticed. The bailiff represented the lowest-ranking male and depended on his belt hung with glistening pistol, clanging wad of keys, and clunky radio to bolster his position.
Dominance hierarchies enhance stability in natural populations, and some les...
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It seemed that the village—not Kya—awaited
awaited judgment, and few felt the salacious joy they had expected at this juncture.
Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected
her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving
differently, then they too we...
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of life’s fundamen...
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She was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.
