Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

When cornered, desperate, or isolated, man reverts to those instincts that aim straight at survival. Quick and just. They will always be the trump cards because they are passed on more frequently from one generation to the next than the gentler genes. It is not a morality, but simple math. Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.

Above the roar of pounding waves, Kya called to the birds. The ocean sang bass, the gulls sang soprano.

Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.

Kya didn’t stop or they would bolt, a lesson she’d learned from watching wild turkeys: if you act like a predator, they act like prey.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

His dad was right—poems made you feel something.

Before the feather game, loneliness had become a natural appendage to Kya, like an arm. Now it grew roots inside her and pressed against her chest.

“‘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?”

“I ain’t scared of bears.” “I’m not scared of bears.”

“Then Mr. Daddy Long-legs And Mr. Floppy Fly Rushed downward to the foamy sea With one sponge-taneous cry; And there they found a little boat, Whose sails were pink and gray; And off they sailed among the waves, Far, and far away.”

She sensed that the words clinched a powerful meaning, but she couldn’t shake it free. If she ever became a poet, she’d make the message clear.

AUTUMN WAS COMING; the evergreens might not have noticed, but the sycamores did.

Staring into each other’s eyes, they broke off bites and stuffed them in their mouths. Smacking loudly. Licking fingers. Laughing through icing-smeared grins. Eating cake the way it should be eaten, the way everybody wants to eat it.

That’s my job, so don’t get huffy about it.” “I know,” Tate mumbled while buttering a biscuit. Feeling very huffy.

Alone for hours, by the light of the lantern, Kya read how plants and animals change over time to adjust to the ever-shifting earth; how some cells divide and specialize into lungs or hearts, while others remain uncommitted as stem cells in case they’re needed later. Birds sing mostly at dawn because the cool, moist air of morning carries their songs and their meanings much farther. All her life, she’d seen these marvels at eye level, so nature’s ways came easily to her. Within all the worlds of biology, she searched for an explanation of why a mother would leave her offspring.

Their squeals made Kya’s silence even louder. Their togetherness tugged at her loneliness, but she knew being labeled as marsh trash kept her behind the oak tree.

After she moved away, he got into his boat and motored back toward the ocean. Swearing at the coward inside who would not tell her good-bye.

A simple hope of being with someone, of actually being wanted, of being touched, had drawn her in. But these hurried groping hands were only a taking, not a sharing or giving.

She laughed for his sake, something she’d never done. Giving away another piece of herself just to have someone else.

Here, the bed loomed as the centerpiece, but the room didn’t look like love.

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.

If anyone understood loneliness, the moon would.

In another time and place, an old black man and a young white woman might have hugged. But not there, not then.

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.

Faces change with life’s toll, but eyes remain a window to what was, and she could see him there.

“I’ve read a lot about this since. In nature—out yonder where the crawdads sing—these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation.

“Maybe some primitive urge—some ancient genes, not appropriate anymore—drove Ma to leave us because of the stress, the horror and real danger of living with Pa. That doesn’t make it right; she should have chosen to stay.

Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.

Two men swung into her boat as the deputy said, “Miss Catherine Clark, you’re under arrest for the murder of Mr. Chase Andrews. Ya have the right to remain silent . . .” She didn’t hear the rest of it. No one hears the rest of it.

Folks had made a stir when they walked in with Tate and sat downstairs in the “white area.” But when the bailiff reported this to Judge Sims, still in his chambers, the judge told him to announce that anybody of any color or creed could sit anywhere they wanted in his courtroom, and if somebody didn’t like it, they were free to leave. In fact, he’d make sure they did.

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.

We called her the Marsh Girl; now scientific institutions recognize her as the Marsh Expert.

A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.

as she passed the windowsill, reached out and touched Sunday Justice’s tail. He ignored her, and she admired his perfected pretense of not needing good-bye.

Scupper would have understood tracking love through mud.

She had lived long enough to see the bald eagles make a comeback; for Kya that was long enough.

Kya had been of this land and of this water; now they would take her back. Keep her secrets deep.