Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Read Free Book Online

reeds.
    “Which way you headed, anyhow?” he asked. “Not out, I hope. That storm’s comin’.”
    “No,” she said, looking down at the water.
    “You okay?”
    Her throat tightened against a sob. She nodded but couldn’t speak.
    “You lost?”
    She bobbed her head again. Wasn’t going to cry like a girl.
    “Well, then. I git lost all the time,” he said, and smiled. “Hey, I know you. You’re Jodie Clark’s sister.”
    “I used ta be. He’s gone.”
    “Well, you’re still his . . .” But he let it drop.
    “How’d you know me?” She threw a quick, direct look at his eyes.
    “Oh, I’ve been fishin’ with Jodie some. I saw you a couple a’ times. You were just a little kid. You’re Kya, right?”
    Someone knew her name. She was taken aback. Felt anchored to something; released from something else.
    “Yeah. You know my place? From here?”
    “Reckon I do. It’s ’bout time anyhow.” He nodded at the clouds. “Follow me.” He pulled his line, put tackle in the box, and started his outboard. As he headed across the estuary, he waved, and she followed. Cruising slowly, he went directly to the right channel, looked back to make sure she’d made the turn, and kept going. He did that at every bend to the oak lagoons. As he turned into the dark waterway toward home, she could see where she’d gone wrong, and would never make the mistake again.
    He guided her—even after she waved that she knew her way—across her lagoon, up to the shore where the shack squatted in the woods. She motored up to the old waterlogged pine and tied up. He drifted back from her boat, bobbing in their contrary wakes.
    “You okay now?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, storm’s comin’, I better git.”
    She nodded, then remembered how Ma taught her. “Thank ya.”
    “All right, then. My name’s Tate ’case ya see me again.”
    She didn’t respond, so he said, “Bye now.”
    As he headed out, slow raindrops splattered the lagoon beach, and she said, “It’s gonna rain bullfrogs; that boy’ll get soaked through.”
    She stooped to the gas tank and stuck in her reed dipstick, cupping her hands around the rim, so rain wouldn’t drop in. Maybe she couldn’t count coins, but she knew for sure, you can’t let water get in gas.
    It’s way low. Pa’s gonna know. I gotta tote a can to the Sing Oil ’fore Pa gits back.
    She knew the owner, Mr. Johnny Lane, always referred to her family as swamp trash, but dealing with him, the storms, and tides would be worth it, because all she could think of now was getting back into that space of grass and sky and water. Alone, she’d been scared, but that was already humming as excitement. There was something else, too. The calmness of the boy. She’d never known anybody to speak or move so steady. So sure and easy. Just being near him, and not even that close, had eased her tightness. For the first time since Ma and Jodie left, she breathed without pain; felt something other than the hurt. She needed this boat and that boy.
----
    •   •   •
    T HAT SAME AFTERNOON , holding his bike by the handlebars, Tate Walker strolled through town, nodding at Miss Pansy in the Five and Dime, and past the Western Auto to the tip of the town wharf. He scanned the sea for his dad’s shrimp boat, The Cherry Pie , and spotted its bright red paint far out, the wide net-wings rocking with the swells. As it neared, escorted by its own cloud of gulls, he waved, and his father, a large man with mountain shoulders and thick red hair and a beard, threw his hand in the air. Scupper, as everyone in the village called him, tossed the line to Tate, who tied up, then jumped on board to help the crew unload the catch.
    Scupper tousled Tate’s hair. “How’s it, son? Thanks for coming by.”
    Tate smiled, nodded. “Sure.” They and the crew busied about, loading shrimp into crates, toting them to the wharf, calling out to one another about grabbing beers at the Dog-Gone, asking Tate about school.