The Sand Castle by Rita Mae Brown

soft-shell crabs I ever ate.”
    He lingered, flirting with Mother—men always did that. Then he left.
    â€œHow come men always talk to you?” Leroy carefully folded his napkin, unaware that such a question might hurt Louise’s feelings.
    â€œOh, I pretend I’m interested in everythingthey say. That’s the secret to men.” She took Leroy’s plate and napkin. “Actually, that’s the secret to people. Listen.”
    â€œI’m not listening to Nickel. She gets me in trouble.” He looked earnestly from Mother to Louise. “She told me if I took my pants off a big bird would swoop down and grab my pecker.”
    â€œNickel?” Mother reached for my plate, too.
    â€œIt would.”
    â€œWhy?” Louise also tidied up.
    â€œBecause the bird would think Leroy’s part was a juicy worm.”
    Louise frowned, “I don’t know what gets into your head but you shouldn’t talk like that. It’s not proper.”
    â€œYes, Ma’am.”
    Leroy gloated.
    Mother stood up but she hadn’t yet folded up our plates, and I snatched one of the big claws off the softshell crab carcass. With stealth I moved it up to Leroy’s eye.
    â€œPlucked a dead man’s eye right out of his head.”
    Leroy screamed, knocked my hand up so the claw sailed upward then landed in the crushed shells of the parking lot. “Did not.”
    â€œMmm, yummy.”
    â€œYou leave me alone.”
    The two sisters, accustomed to children bouncing from tears to laughter to rage, were unfazed, and the exchange instantly died down when they stared at us.
    Since neither Mother nor Louise had seen the claw fall I picked it up when Leroy headed back to the car. I wiped it off, wrapped it in a napkin that had been sitting on another table, and secreted it in my shorts pocket.
    Back in the car, Louise slid onto the folded towel and turned on the car. “Juts, let’s go back just for a minute and see if our castle is still standing.”
    â€œSure. As long as we’re home by seven.”
    â€œUnless there’s an accident, we should be.” Louise backed out.
    Small clapboard houses, most of them set back off the road, decreased in number as we headed back to the Point. Painted shutters adorned each building, testimony to the storms that would roar off the Bay.
    People had begun to leave the beach as the afternoon light lengthened.
    â€œLeroy, before we drive home I want you to change out of those trunks, wash off, and put your shorts on. All right?”
    â€œYes, Ma’am. After we come back from the sand castle.”
    The castle stood, not even a pennant removed.
    â€œHow about that?” Mother touched Leroy’s hand.
    â€œThis is our best one.”
    â€œYou say that every year.” Mother slipped her arm through Louise’s.
    â€œFunny. I wonder how many sand castleswe’ve built since we were kids? It goes so fast, Juts, so fast.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œScares me.”
    â€œMe, too.”
    They stood there as Leroy knelt down to study the drawbridge.
    â€œYou can raise and lower it but you have to be careful. Have to use your hand because I didn’t build a winch,” Mother told him.
    I knelt down beside him as he slid his fingernails under the top of the drawbridge, which he then lowered.
    Inside the castle, a small crab had dug in the sand. We hadn’t noticed but then she wasn’t advertising her presence. The lowered drawbridge roused her and she dashed sideways across it and right over Leroy’s hand. He screamed and fell back and the small crab fell back with him darting into the wide leg of his bathing trunks.
    â€œOww,” Leroy hollered, tears in his eyes.
    I paid him no mind figuring he was being a big baby because he had fallen. How can he hurt himself in the sand?
    Then he really started to scream.
    Mother and Louise came over to lift him up but he grabbed his trunks.
    Mother