OCEAN
35
all scorched and askew, dangling from their davits, and other fallen
rigging hanging down across the rows and rows of portholes,
charred and smoking still after thirty hours....
Tomorrow's Castle:
bigger than the whale in the Museum of Natural History, bigger
than an apartment house and stronger than an armory, but dying
now, lying on its side, coughing smoke and bleeding lead, destroyed
and dying in the ocean ... awful, awful ocean ... Stephen reached
out his hand to console the ship, but Mommy, unable to support
his weight any longer, lowered him into the forest of trousered legs.
The next day Stephen begged Mommy to take him back to
Asbury Park, but she refused. "You know how car-sick you got
yesterday. You know how bad the traffic was. I'll take you to the
beach, sweetheart. Maybe you'll be able to see the
Morro Castle
from
there."
When they reached the stairhead Stephen looked toward Asbury,
and down on the beach below he looked again, but from neither
place could he see
Tomorrow's Castle.
To ease his disappointment,
Mommy suggested he build something big-a fortress or a castle–
so the beach would have something to remember him by when he
went away for the winter. Stephen thought Mommy's idea a good
one and decided to build the biggest castle in history. He surveyed
the sand and chose a spot ten yards from the water's edge. He
cleared the site of stones and shells, and set to work carrying
handfuls of wet sand up from the water and mixing them with
the drier sand, creating a kind of cement. By noon, when Mommy
came to take him to lunch, he had amassed a solid block of sand
the size of a steamer trunk.
"Oh Mommy, I can't stop now. Can't you bring me back a
sandwich?"
"But isn't it finished, darling? It looks finished to me."
"Oh no! I have to put the turrets on. I have to. build the
wall. I have to dig the moat."
When Mommy returned with his lunch, Stephen was still working
feverishly, setting jagged fragments of shells around the perimeter
of his castle's roof. He could scarcely spare the time to gobble
down his sandwich before he began to build the walls. Harriet
turned her backrest toward the sun and watched Stephen as he
scurried to and from the waterfront, carrying scoops of dripping
