Where the Crawdads Sing

Kya spends two months in jail awaiting trial before she finally meets with her court-appointed lawyer, Tom Milton, whom no choice but to trust. On the first day of the court proceedings, Milton asks to have the trial moved. The prejudice against Kya is so high that he believes she cannot get a fair hearing. The judge dismisses his request, reads the charge to Kya, and explains that the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty.

The court completes jury selection, and Kya recognizes most of the people selected. Some of them are friendly faces, like the Piggly Wiggly cashier, but others are hateful people like the Methodist minister’s wife who snatched her little girl away from being near Kya all those years ago.

Kya is birdwatching in Cypress Cove one morning in August 1969 when Chase happens upon her. Chase is verbally and physically aggressive with Kya, but she angrily resists him. He seems incapable of understanding that she no longer wants to be with him and insists that regardless of her wishes, she belongs to him. When he wrestles her to the ground to rape her, she fights back. He punches her in the face and takes off her pants. She manages to get him off her, knock him down, and kick him multiple times once she gets up. She flees to her boat. Two fishermen see her as she runs away.

The prosecution calls Rodney Horn as their first witness. Rodney and his fishing partner were the two men who witnessed Kya running away from Chase after the rape attempt, and his testimony establish a motive for Kya to kill Chase. When Rodney calls Kya “Marsh Girl,” the judge tells him to refer to her by her given name. Rodney tells the prosecutor that they overheard a fight, saw Kya come out from the cove pulling up her pants, and heard her threaten to kill Chase if he bothered her again. The defense lawyer’s questions emphasize that Kya was likely defending herself from being attacked by Chase, a former football player. The prosecutor instead highlights Kya’s extreme anger at Chase.

After escaping from Chase, Kya feels a sense of dread because she knows he will come after her. She knows going to the law is useless because they will never believe her story over Chase’s, or else they will think she somehow provoked the sexual assault—the assumption at the time was that a sexual assault can be provoked by the behavior of the victim.

Afraid to go home, she goes to ground in the old reading shack where she and Tate used to meet. Like the deer nearby, she is on edge. She berates herself for bringing the attack on by being promiscuous. She is sure Chase told everyone, and she feels “unfit, disgusting” (273).

She finally goes home that afternoon, and her whole body is a mass of bruises. She feels great sympathy for Ma, whose decision to leave she now understands. She swears to herself that she “will never live like that—a life wondering when and where the next fist will fall” (273). Kya watches a female praying mantis bite the head off a male whose body continues to fertilize her eggs as they copulate, a scene that reminds her that women are not entirely powerless.

Back in the present, Kya sits in her cell, which feels like a cage to her. She overhears other inmates gossip about her trial. She is frightened of being killed methodically by another person, but not of death itself. Unable to sleep, she comforts herself with Amanda Hamilton poems.

A month after Chase’s attack, Kya runs into Tate as she considers an invitation she has received from her editor, who wants to meet with her in Greenville. Tate shows Kya his new microscope and she is astonished by the complex but tiny life she sees on the slide. Tate is puzzled by Kya’s guardedness, but then he sees her bruised face. She lies when he asks how she got them, but he knows someone—likely Chase—hit her. He gives her his red cap before she leaves. Kya feels close to Tate but warns herself that she cannot afford to fall in love with him again.

As she heads home, she sees Chase head into the channel to her house. She feels wary. Her years with Pa taught her that brutal men always “had to have the last punch” (282). Since her counterassault humiliated Chase, he likely thinks she “had to be taught a lesson” (283). She waits him out, but concludes that Chase will never give up his efforts to get back at her, which will mean living constantly in terror: “Being isolated was one thing […] living in fear, quite another” (284). She imagines sinking into the sea, dead but safe, and wonders, “Who decides the time to die?” (284). She has come to a decision about how to confront the challenge posed by Chase.

Kya concludes that the decisions of loved ones who abandoned her have landed her in her jail cell. For just a moment before the arrest, she thought that maybe she and Tate could be together again, but she has once again closed herself off, denying Tate permission to visit her in jail. Now more than ever, she feels that she is on her own. Milton suggests that she consider the possibility of a plea bargain. She refuses—she will not do anything that places her in prison. She begs Milton to get her out of jail.

Later, she receives a package of shells, paints, paper, and items from the marsh in a package from Jumpin’ and Mabel. She comforts herself by cozening the jailhouse cat, Sunday Justice, to stay in her cell that night. Tate visits again and she agrees to see him, but when he asks her to imagine a life after the trial, she warns him off because she cannot bear to be close to anyone again. Everyone including Tate abandoned her so she has learned to deal with being alone and to protect herself. Tate promises to come again.

In court on Monday, Mabel and Jumpin’ cause a stir when they sit in the white section of the segregated court. The judge allows it, and the trial proceeds. The testimony covers the cause of death and the red fibers found at the crime scene that match the cap from Kya’s cabin. However, Tom Milton maneuvers the coroner into testifying that the red fibers could have been at the crime scene for years.

Kya goes to Jumpin’s to see if he has a bus schedule. She has decided to meet with her editor, Robert Foster, because she has developed a bond with him through their long correspondence about her work. When Jumpin’ sees her face, he knows that someone has hurt her and asks if it was Chase. Jumpin’ is incensed and thinks something needs to be done to deflate Chase, who thinks he is “King of the World” (302). Kya tells him getting justice is hopeless. Her efforts to do so would be met with the same disbelief as if an African-American woman from “Colored Town” accused Chase.

Jumpin’ agrees but asks Kya how she plans to stay safe. She tells him that now that she knows to be wary of Chase, she can protect herself by staying in the reading cabin. Jumpin’ asks her to check in with him, especially if she goes out of town. If she doesn’t show up, he and a whole lot of people are going to turn up at her cabin to make sure she is okay.