1961

In 1961, a July 4 vigil for Tate Walker ends in absence, and Kya Clark’s hope turns into a grief that pulls her away from the marsh. The date anchors a sudden change in her emotional life: books and a dress associated with the relationship remain, but the expected boat never appears.

July 4 and the missed rendezvous

Kya walks barefoot to the lagoon wearing a peach chiffon dress that has become too short. She waits on the reading-log, listening for Tate’s boat and reading the books he had given her. The day’s heat and humidity make breathing difficult; from time to time she kneels at the lagoon to splash cool water on her neck. As the sun seems to stall overhead, she moves from the log to the ground, leaning against a tree.

Hunger briefly draws her back to Kya’s Shack for leftover sausage and a biscuit, but she eats quickly, afraid Tate will arrive while she is away. The afternoon brings mosquitoes, not the boat. At dusk she stands silently beside the empty channel, then steps out of her dress and swims in the dark lagoon to cool herself. She sits on the bank until she is dry and the moon has slipped beneath the earth, then carries her clothes inside. After another hour of waiting, she finally walks toward the shack.

The next morning

The following morning, Kya returns to the lagoon despite the pain of renewed hope. She listens for a boat coming down the channel or across the distant estuaries. At noon she cries, “TATE, TATE, NO, NO,” and drops to her knees with her face against the mud. Beneath her, she feels a familiar pull: the tide. The scene sets the reliability of the marsh’s rhythms against the silence of the person she is waiting for.

Three days of withdrawal

After giving up on Tate, Kya stays in bed for three days. Heat and despair leave her tossing among sweat-damp clothes and sheets, searching with her toes for a cool patch and finding none. The passage registers her distress through bodily discomfort and a loss of ordinary attention: she no longer marks the moonrise or watches the marsh’s daily signs from her bed.

The withdrawal also interrupts her lifelong response to the natural world. She hears blackbird wings lifting beyond the bed and gulls calling above the beach, but does not go to them. She hopes that ignoring the gulls’ cries will displace the tear in her heart; it does not. In 1961, the failed wait is thus more than a missed meeting: Tate’s absence briefly severs Kya from the marsh’s consolations as well as from the future she had expected with him.