Where the Crawdads Sing Read Online Free PDF

“And lots better than them. Even with all them fine shoes.”
----
    •   •   •
    O NE MORNING , a few weeks after her day at school, the sun glared white-hot as Kya climbed into her brothers’ tree fort at the beach and searched for sailing ships hung with skull-and-crossbones flags. Proving that imagination grows in the loneliest of soils, she shouted, “Ho! Pirates ho!” Brandishing her sword, she jumped from the tree to attack. Suddenly pain shot through her right foot, racing like fire up her leg. Knees caving in, she fell on her side and shrieked. She saw a long rusty nail sticking deep in the bottom of her foot. “Pa!” she screamed. She tried to remember if he had come home last night. “HELP me, Pa,” she cried out, but there was no answer. In one fast move, she reached down and yanked the nail out, screaming to cover the pain.
    She moved her arms through the sand in nonsensical motions, whimpering. Finally, she sat up and looked at the bottom of her foot. There was almost no blood, just the tiny opening of a small, deep wound. Right then she remembered the lockjaw. Her stomach went tight and she felt cold. Jodie had told her about a boy who stepped on a rusty nail and didn’t get a tetanus shot. His jaws jammed shut, clenched so tight he couldn’t open his mouth. Then his spine cramped backward like a bow, but there was nothing anybody could do but stand there and watch him die from the contortions.
    Jodie was very clear on one point: you had to get the shot within two days after stepping on a nail, or you were doomed. Kya had no idea how to get one of those shots.
    “I gotta do sump’m. I’ll lock up for sure waitin’ for Pa.” Sweat rolling down her face in beads, she hobbled across the beach, finally entering the cooler oaks around the shack.
    Ma used to soak wounds in salt water and pack them with mud mixed with all kinds of potions. There was no salt in the kitchen, so Kya limped into the woods toward a brackish slipstream so salty at low tide, its edges glistened with brilliant white crystals. She sat on the ground, soaking her foot in the marsh’s brine, all the while moving her mouth: open, close, open, close, mocking yawns, chewing motions, anything to keep it from jamming up. After nearly an hour, the tide receded enough for her to dig a hole in the black mud with her fingers, and she eased her foot gently into the silky earth. The air was cool here, and eagle cries gave her bearing.
    By late afternoon she was very hungry, so went back to the shack. Pa’s room was still empty, and he probably wouldn’t be home for hours. Playing poker and drinking whiskey kept a man busy most of the night. There were no grits, but rummaging around, she found an old greasy tin of Crisco shortening, dipped up a tiny bit of the white fat, and spread it on a soda cracker. Nibbled at first, then ate five more.
    She eased into her porch bed, listening for Pa’s boat. The approaching night tore and darted and sleep came in bits, but she must have dropped off near morning for she woke with the sun fully on her face. Quickly she opened her mouth; it still worked. She shuffled back and forth from the brackish pool to the shack until, by tracking the sun, she knew two days had passed. She opened and closed her mouth. Maybe she had made it.
    That night, tucking herself into the sheets of the floor mattress, her mud-caked foot wrapped in a rag, she wondered if she would wake up dead. No, she remembered, it wouldn’t be that easy: her back would bow; her limbs twist.
    A few minutes later, she felt a twinge in her lower back and sat up. “Oh no, oh no. Ma, Ma.” The sensation in her back repeated itself and made her hush. “It’s just an itch,” she muttered. Finally, trulyexhausted, she slept, not opening her eyes until doves murmured in the oak.
    She walked to the pool twice a day for a week, living on saltines and Crisco, and Pa never came home the whole time. By the eighth day she could circle her