OCEAN
39
shifting whitecaps. He singled out a special wave and tried to
observe its progress as it traveled toward the shore, but half way
in it drowned or got mixed up with another wave, and he lost
sight of it. He tried again, but the same thing happened, until
finally he settled for watching the general movement of the in–
coming tide. He watched it crash on the beach in front of him
and eat away the sand beyond the spot on which he sat. He
watched it ebb back into itself, taking with it yet another portion
of his already unrecognizable castle.... Tomorrow there won't
even be a trace of it, he thought. By tomorrow the ocean will have
taken all of it, even the turrets, giving me back in exchange a
broken shell, a blue crab claw, a little piece of coral-all sorts
of unfair things! Nothing like a seahorse or an ocean liner. No!
That would be too valuable. The most I can expect is a dead or
dying fish ... a woman's hand.... "But where's her body?" Stephen
cried aloud. "What have you done with her body?"
The tide had reached its flow now, and Stephen was sitting up
to his waist in water. Feeling it caress his limbs, Stephen had to
weewee. Cautiously he glanced up and down the beach. There
wasn't a soul in sight, not even Bruce; the summer was over.
As
it flooded out of him, his weewee hot against his thighs, Stephen
felt a great release. He loved the idea of sitting there in his own
water, mixing his own water with the ocean's, mixing the ocean
with himself. How many times had Mommy said "You'll turn into a
fish"? Well, now at last the time had come.... Who cares? he
thought, lying back and letting the tide tow him into the sea. Who
cares about the things on shore? . . .
As
if he were going to sleep,
Stephen shut his eyes deliberately. Deliberately he abandoned his
resistance. He longed to be unconscious now, longed to leave the
world behind and turn into a fish. More than anything, he longed
for the ocean to work its will and ravage him the way it had ravaged
Tomorrow's Castle
until there was nothing left of him but a little
brittle fingernail lying on the sand.... Who cares about those dead
and broken things when there is this-the turbulence, the touching!
. . . "Goodbye, Clarry! Goodbye, Mommy!" Stephen cried as he
drifted out to sea. "I love you, ocean, love you!" he confessed, feeling
the water under him.
Stephen's lover responded vigorously, pulling
him
down, rolling
