The Sand Castle

[Amazing]

It was August, and my girlfriend Cindy and I had rented a
condominium for a week on the outer banks of North Carolina. The
condo complex was separated by a big sand dune from the national
seashore park - a strip of white sandy beach that seemed to go on
for miles. It was pretty deserted; the condominiums were about
the only thing around. You had to drive five miles just to get to
a convenience store. But we liked it that way - quiet and
serene. That's because we both work at high-pressure jobs in New
York City - Cindy is news director of a middle-sized cable TV
station and I'm an account manager at a large ad agency. We have
constant stress and way too many people around us for 50 weeks a
year, which made a deserted beach sound just about ideal.

We got down to North Carolina on a Saturday, and immediately
settled into a very lazy routine: long walks along the surf, a
little sailing on the bay, an hour or so in the pool at the
condo, another hour on the tennis courts, a little swimming in
the ocean, and catching some rays and reading on the beach. Most
nights, we just cooked some fresh fish or scallops for dinner,
shared a bottle of wine, and maybe took a long a walk in the
moonlight. And of course we made love a lot, relaxed,
unburdened, and very slowly. It was great, and also very
uneventful, until Wednesday afternoon.

The weather was cool and cloudy that day. We had been lying on a
big blanket, just reading and feeling the cool wind around our
bodies, when Cindy suggested a walk. We decided to leave the
blanket where it was, but Cindy of course took her little video
camera - she went everywhere with it. When she started out in TV
news she had done a stint (non-union of course) as a TV
camerawoman/reporter, and I think it got into her blood. She
bought herself a small and very expensive state-of-the-art
digital camera, and took endless tapes of everything she saw. By
the time she finished editing the tapes and dubbing the sound
track, all of our vacations tended to look like a travelogue, and
seemed much more glamorous than they really were. This time,
though, Cindy didn't need to edit the tape to achieve dramatic
effect.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, and we had walked
about a mile down the beach without seeing more than a dozen
people - some families and a few kids. The only sounds were the
surging of the surf and the crying of the seagulls. As we
walked, we saw in the distance, about 30 feet from the surf line,
a big mound rising from the sand. Approaching it, we saw that it
was a huge sand castle, and not only huge, but elaborate, with a
wall, a moat, an inner wall, and then, in the center, a tall
square castle tower. The whole complex was round, about six or
seven feet in diameter, and the tower was nearly four feet tall.
Cindy put her camera to her eye and began filming it.

A young girl came running up from the water line, carrying a big
pail filled with wet sand. She looked about nine, and was
wearing a one-piece light-green knit bathing suit that nicely
complemented her golden-tan skin. She had short light-brown hair
and green eyes, and a bright little smile set in a squarish face.
She also had a solid little body with just a hint of muscle in
her calves and arms - the very picture of a cute, athletic little
tomboy. We said "Hi" and she responded in kind, making the one-
syllable word sound like three - definitely a southerner. We
asked if we could film her working on the castle, and she said it
was fine, so Cindy stepped back with her camera and recorded
while the girl worked at sculpting one corner of the square
tower. The beach was deserted except for us, the young girl,
another young girl collecting shells at the waterline, and two
boys walking along the beach from the opposite direction.

For some reason, I happened to notice the boys before they got
very close to us. I think it was the way they looked. The
taller one, about 14, had straight light-blond hair that hung
down over his eyes, very smooth tan skin and a build that looked
athletic at a distance, but soft as he got closer. He must have
been around 5'5" and perhaps 130, and while he wasn't fat, he
didn't have any sign of muscle either. From a distance, it had
looked like he had pecs, but as he got closer I could see that it
was just soft flesh and not muscle. His stomach also had the
same look - not fat or paunchy, but not firm either. His face
was just a little short of handsome because of the slackness in
it. The boy next to him had to be his brother - a smaller
version of the other, a few inches shorter and about 110 pounds.
He had the same light blond hair and the same softness in his
face and body.

The boys were walking straight towards the sand castle. Without
saying "excuse me" or anything, they walked in between Cindy and
the castle that she was still taping. As they passed in front of
Cindy, the older boy, quite on purpose, suddenly pushed the
younger one sideways, onto the castle. The boy fell on top of
the walls, crushing both the outer and inner walls that
surrounded the moat.

"Hey," the little girl shouted, her face flushed red, "watch what
you're doin."

The older boy looked at her. "The tide's gonna git it anyways,"
he said. "Y'all can build another one tomorrow." With that, he
started kicking at the wall, knocking it down, and then took a
couple of hard kicks at the tower, knocking off a good chunk from
one of the corners. He had an obnoxious, cocky expression on his
face now, and I didn't like him at all.

Neither did the young girl. She walked over to the much larger
boy and pushed him away from the castle. He grabbed her wrists,
and in a couple of seconds they were doing more than pushing each
other, and it was starting to turn into a real fight. Cindy, the
camera addict, still kept recording, now shooting the scuffle. I
was watching it too, when I saw the other young girl come
charging up from the water. As she came closer, it was clear
that she was the sister of the girl who was being picked on -
perhaps a year or so older, two or three inches taller and maybe
ten pounds heavier than her younger sibling. They had the same
hair and eyes, and the same athletic, but not stocky build. She
was wearing a medium blue two-piece bathing suit with green
piping around the edges, and her legs and arms showed some muscle
and her tummy was flat and solid. With a smile on her face she
would have looked exceptionally cute, but she certainly wasn't
smiling now.

She came up to the older boy at a full run and charged right into
him with her shoulder, knocking him off balance and down to the
ground. She came down on top of him and they proceeded to
grapple on the sand. While they grappled, the younger boy
started to get into it with the younger girl, locking fingers
with her and trying to force her to her knees. This clearly
wasn't going to be your standard kids' pushing match with a
little name calling thrown in for good measure. This was going
to be a real fight! Cindy was recording it avidly, having
stepped back a little to focus on both sets of combatants.

I said to Cindy "I think I should break it up." But she wasn't
going to forgo the chance to tape her "breaking news." "Leave
'em alone, Tommy," she said, "they're not gonna kill each other

and I really want to tape this - it's interesting." Having
offered my good advice and had it rejected, I decided to stop
being a responsible adult and settled down to my role of being
the audience. I sensed that this was going to be quite a little
show.

The older girl now had the older boy in a headlock, and they were
both lying on the sand, the girl to the right of the boy with her
left arm wrapped tightly around his head and her right hand
gripping her right forearm. She was squeezing hard, and the boy
was unable to pry her arm off his head. She was doing
surprisingly well. Meanwhile her little sister was also doing
much better than anyone would have expected against the younger
of the two boys. In their contest of strength, she had not only
resisted the boy, who must have had a 40-pound weight advantage,
but was actually beginning to force his wrists back. I watched
in amazement, and Cindy recorded, as the girl stood there toe-to-
toe with the boy, pressing him down with all her might. His legs
slowly began to bend, and in a few more seconds she had forced
him down to the sand on his knees. This boy, about 12 years old,
had just lost a strength contest to a girl who must have been at
least three years younger!