38
SANFORD FRIEDMAN
The following day, the last Stephen spent in Seaside, Mommy
and Clarry were up at dawn. He could hear them clattering in
the kitchen. After breakfast Mommy said, "Clara and I have a
lot of work to do today. Do you think you can play by yourself?
... Or with your brother?" she added as an afterthought.
"But I have to go down to the beach and say goodbye to my
castle," Stephen said.
"That's all right, if Roger'll go with you. Otherwise, I want
you to stay around the house. Oh! and find a shoebox for those
shells and things. I don't want to have to be worrying about them
at the last minute."
Stephen knew, before he asked, that Roggie would refuse to
take him to the beach, so he put on his bathing suit, sneaked
out of the house, and went by himself, running all the way. When
he got to the stairhead, he looked for his castle, but he couldn't
see it. He rushed down the steps toward the spot where he had
worked all the previous day, but the spot had disappeared. Both
the castle and the sand on which it stood had disappeared. Half
the beach in fact had disappeared, and Stephen was frantic. He
knew he had built it
tq
the right of the stairhead, and he searched
farther and farther south but found nothing. He retraced his steps
and ran toward the cliffs-back and forth between the ocean and the
cliffs-but found nothing. Finally, at the water's edge, he discovered
the ocean lapping at a little gray amorphous mound of sand and
recognized the bits of seashell he had used for turrets. He sat down
beside the shapeless ruin, supporting his chin in his hands, but he
couldn't cry. It demanded something more than that, the ocean,
more than tears, he thought.... Maybe once a woman wept the
ocean and then it turned into a man....
Suddenly, not five feet from his toes, creeping up the pebbles,
he saw that hand again, the hand of the woman who had drowned
aboard
Tomorrow's Castle.
...
So it wasn't a glove after all.
It
couldn't
be! It was still alive, trying again and again to crawl out of the
ocean, but the tide refused to let it. That was the trouble with
the ocean: it wouldn't let go of your hand-even after
it
had eaten
your entire body.
Stephen raised his head and gazed out to sea, where the
ocean seemed to overflow into the horizon. He looked at the
