1956

The year 1956 marks a decisive break in Kya’s childhood: at ten, she is left without her father’s visits or the money he had brought, and must turn the marsh’s resources into a means of survival. His absence does not bring the same grief she felt when her mother left; instead, it makes her fear both hunger and discovery by the authorities.

A Father’s Disappearance

In the winter of 1956, Jake Clark came to the shack less and less often. Weeks passed without the whiskey bottle, his body sprawled on the bed, or the Monday money. After one full moon and then another passed without seeing him, Kya imagined that he might have been beaten after a poker-game fight and left in the swamp, or that he had wandered drunk into the woods and fallen into a bog. She concluded that he was gone for good, though she did not know what had happened to him. The loss landed differently from her mother’s departure. Kya struggled to mourn Jake, but the prospect of being entirely alone seemed immense. She believed the authorities would discover his absence and take her away, so she decided to pretend, even to Jumpin’, that he was still around. The pretense could not restore his visits or the money, but it reflected the danger she associated with being found without an adult at home.

Hunger and a New Means of Survival

Without Jake’s Monday payments, Kya had stretched her last few dollars for weeks. Her food was grits, boiled mussels, and occasional eggs left by the hens; her remaining supplies amounted to a few matches, a small nub of soap, and a handful of grits. The matches mattered as much as the food: without them she could not boil the grits she prepared for herself, the gulls, and the chickens. Her fear of running out of this staple gives the hardship a sharply practical measure. Kya considered leaving, but could not abandon the gulls, the heron, or the shack. She regarded the marsh as all the family she had. The next morning, at low tide, she took a bucket, a claw knife, and empty tow bags out to the sloughs, collecting mussels in the manner her mother had taught her. After four hours of crouching and kneeling, she had filled two croker sacks. She then motored through dense fog to Jumpin’s Gas and Bait, bringing the harvest to the place where she could seek supplies.

Waiting and Watching

The months after Jake’s departure were marked not only by work but by continued expectation. When ravens cawed, Kya looked up in case they had seen him moving through the woods; strange sounds in the wind made her listen for somebody—anybody. Even the possibility of the truant officer’s sudden arrival could seem like a diversion from the silence. More than anyone, she searched the waterways for the fishing boy who had guided her home through the marsh three years earlier, when she was seven. She had seen him at a distance a few times since, but had not spoken with him again. In 1956 he remained one of the very few people she knew, alongside Jumpin’ and a few saleswomen. The year thus joins practical self-reliance to a persistent search for human contact: Kya learns to gather what she needs while continuing to scan the marsh for someone who might return.