“Yeah, and everythang quiet ’cept the crows.”
Glancing down between the steps, Steve said, “Whoa. What’s that?”
“Where?”
“See, there. Blue clothes, like somebody’s lyin’ in the mud.”
Benji called out, “Hey, you! Whatchadoin’?”
“I see a face, but it ain’t movin’.”
Arms pumping, they ran back to the ground and pushed their way to the other side of the tower’s base, greenish mud clinging to their boots. There lay a man, flat on his back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee. His eyes and mouth wide open.
“Jesus Christ!” Benji said.
“My God, it’s Chase Andrews.”
“We better git the sheriff.”
“But we ain’t s’posed to be out here.”
“That don’t matter now. And them crows’ll be snooping ’round anytime now.”
They swung their heads toward the cawing, as Steve said, “Maybe one of us oughta stay, keep them birds off him.”
“Ya’re crazy if you think I’m gonna stick ’round here by maself. And I’m bettin’ a Injun-head you won’t either.”
With that, they grabbed their bikes, pedaled hard down the syrupy sand track back to Main, through town, and ran inside the low-slung building where Sheriff Ed Jackson sat at his desk in an office lit with single lightbulbs dangling on cords. Hefty and of medium height, he had reddish hair, his face and arms splotched with pale freckles, and sat thumbing through a Sports Afield.
Without knocking, the boys rushed through the open door.
“Sheriff . . .”
“Hey, Steve, Benji. You boys been to a fire?”
“We seen Chase Andrews flat out in the swamp under the fire tower. He looks dead. Ain’t movin’ one bit.”
Ever since Barkley Cove had been settled in 1751, no lawman extended his jurisdiction beyond the saw grass. In the 1940s and ’50s, a few sheriffs set hounds on some mainland convicts who’d escaped into the marsh, and the office still kept dogs just in case. But Jackson mostly ignored crimes committed in the swamp. Why interrupt rats killing rats?
But this was Chase. The sheriff stood and took his hat from the rack. “Show me.”
Limbs of oak and wild holly screeched against the patrol truck as the sheriff maneuvered down the sandy track with Dr. Vern Murphy, lean and fit with graying hair, the town’s only physician, sitting beside him. Each man swayed to the tune of the deep ruts, Vern’s head almost banging against the window. Old friends about the same age, they fished together some and were often thrown onto the same case. Both silent now at the prospect of confirming whose body lay in the bog.
Steve and Benji sat in the truck bed with their bikes until the truck stopped.
“He’s over there, Mr. Jackson. Behind them bushes.”
Ed stepped from the truck. “You boys wait here.” Then he and Dr. Murphy waded the mud to where Chase lay. The crows had flown off when the truck came, but other birds and insects whirred above. Insolent life thrumming on.
“It’s Chase, all right. Sam and Patti Love won’t survive this.” The Andrewses had ordered every spark plug, balanced every account, strung every price tag at the Western Auto for their only child, Chase.
Squatting next to the body, listening for a heartbeat with his stethoscope, Vern declared him dead.
“How long ya reckon?” Ed asked.
“I’d say at least ten hours. The coroner’ll know for sure.”
“He must’ve climbed up last night, then. Fell from the top.”
Vern examined Chase briefly without moving him, then stood next to Ed. Both men stared at Chase’s eyes, still looking skyward from his bloated face, then glanced at his gaping mouth.
“How many times I’ve told folks in this town something like this was bound to happen,” the sheriff said.
They had known Chase since he was born. Had watched his life ease from charming child to cute teen; star quarterback and town hot shot to working for his parents. Finally, handsome man wedding the prettiest girl. Now, he sprawled alone, less dignified than the slough. Death’s crude pluck, as always, stealing the show.
Ed broke the silence. “Thing is, I can’t figure why the others didn’t run for help. They always come up here in a pack, or at least a couple of ’em, to make out.” The sheriff and doctor exchanged brief but knowing nods that even though he was married, Chase might bring another woman to the tower. “Let’s step back out of here. Get a good look at things,” Ed said, as he lifted his feet, stepping higher than necessary. “You boys stay where you are; don’t go making any more tracks.”
Pointing to some footprints that led from the staircase, across the bog, to within eight feet of Chase, Ed asked them, “These your prints from this morning?”
“Yessir, that’s as far as we went,” Benji said. “Soon as we seen it was Chase, we backed up. You can see there where we backed up.”
“Okay.” Ed turned. “Vern, something’s not right. There’s no footprints near the body. If he was with his friends or whoever, once he fell, they would’ve run down here and stepped all around him, knelt next to him. To see if he was alive. Look how deep our tracks are in this mud, but there’re no other fresh tracks. None going toward the stairs or away from the stairs, none around the body.”
“Maybe he was by himself, then. That would explain everything.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing that doesn’t explain. Where’re his footprints? How did Chase Andrews walk down the path, cross this muck to the stairs so he could climb to the top, and not leave any footprints himself?”
4.
School
1952
A few days after her birthday, out alone barefooting in mud, Kya bent over, watching a tadpole getting its frog legs. Suddenly she stood. A car churned through deep sand near the end of their lane. No one ever drove here. Then the murmur of people talking—a man and a woman—drifted through the trees. Kya ran fast to the brush, where she could see who was coming but still have ways to escape. Like Jodie taught her.
A tall woman emerged from the car, unsteadily maneuvering in high heels just like Ma had done along the sandy lane. They must be the orphanage people come to get her.
I can outrun her for sure. She’d fall nose-first in them shoes. Kya stayed put and watched the woman step to the porch’s screen door.
“Yoo-hoo, anybody home? Truant officer here. I’ve come to take Catherine Clark to school.”
Now this was something. Kya sat mute. She was pretty sure she was supposed to go to school at six. Here they were, a year late.
She had no notion how to talk to kids, certainly not to a teacher, but she wanted to learn to read and what came after twenty-nine.
“Catherine, dear, if ya can hear me, please come on out. It’s the law, hon; ya gotta go to school. But ’sides that, you’ll like it, dear. Ya get a hot lunch every day for free. I think today they’re havin’ chicken pie with crust.”
That was something else. Kya was very hungry. For breakfast she’d boiled grits with soda crackers stirred in because she didn’t have any salt. One thing she already knew about life: you can’t eat grits without salt. She’d eaten chicken pie only a few times in her life, but she could still see that golden crust, crunchy on the outside, soft inside. She could feel that full gravy taste, like it was round. It was her stomach acting on its own that made Kya stand up among the palmetto fronds.
“Hello, dear, I’m Mrs. Culpepper. You’re all grown up and ready to go to school, aren’t ya?”
“Yes’m,” Kya said, head low.
“It’s okay, you can go barefoot, other chillin do, but ’cause you’re a li’l girl, you have to wear a skirt. Do you have a dress or a skirt, hon?”
“Yes’m.”
“Okay then, let’s go get ya dressed up.”
Mrs. Culpepper followed Kya through the porch door, having to step over a row of bird nests Kya had lined up along the boards. In the bedroom Kya put on the only dress that fit, a plaid jumper with one shoulder strap held up with a safety pin.
“That’s fine, dear, you look just fine.”
Mrs. Culpepper held out her hand. Kya stared at it. She hadn’t touched another person in weeks, hadn’t touched a stranger her whole life. But she put her small hand in Mrs. Culpepper’s and was led down the path to the Ford Crestliner driven by a silent man wearing a gray fedora. Sitting in the backseat, Kya didn’t smile and didn’t feel like a chick tucked under its mother’s wing.
Barkley Cove had one school for whites. First grade through twelfth went to a brick two-story at the opposite end of Main from the sheriff’s office. The black kids had their own school, a one-story cement block structure out near Colored Town.
When she was led into the school office, they found her name but no date of birth in the county birth records, so they put her in the second grade, even though she’d never been to school a day in her life. Anyhow, they said, the first grade was too crowded, and what difference would it make to marsh people who’d do a few months of school, maybe, then never be seen again. As the principal walked her down a wide hallway that echoed their footsteps, sweat popped out on her brow. He opened the door to a classroom and gave her a little push.