Free The Sand Castle by Rita Mae Brown Page A

direction.
    â€œWorld War Two is still World War One.” Aunt Louise stared out the window, the lifting fog now bright pink.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œDidn’t settle the issues the first time.” Aunt Louise, not a keen student of history, paid attention to current affairs and for her these had been current.
    â€œWar will always be with us. People like to kill each other,” Mother stated flatly.
    â€œIf the peoples of the world accept Christ, war would end forever.”
    â€œAunt Wheezie, how can they accept Christ if they have their own God?”
    â€œThey’re wrong.” This was said with finality and conviction.
    â€œOh.” I didn’t press it mostly because religion fascinated me much less than horses, cars, and history.
    â€œLet’s go back to that place for lunch,” Mother suggested.
    â€œIt’s forty-five minutes from St. Mary’s.” Aunt Louise named the county at the southern tip of southern Maryland. The little town there was called St. Mary’s City.
    â€œYou’re right. Okay, Nick, you keep your eyes peeled for another sign like that and we’ll stop for lunch on the way home. We can’t stay here all day, which is why we started so early. Anyway,I love to see the Bay when the sun comes up and the birds are flying around and talking to one another. And you know it’s August and the coots will be flying in for a rest.”
    Coots were a type of duck that migrated. In wintertime other types of ducks stayed on the Bay, over a million of them.
    â€œJuts, birds don’t talk to one another.” Louise shook her head at her fanciful younger sister.
    â€œThey do. We don’t understand it, that’s all.” She breathed in, quickly changing the subject because Louise could be contrary and she was edging on it today. “Think Aunt Doney could make the trip?”
    â€œTo St. Mary’s County?”
    â€œWell, yes. We could fix up the back seat and she could sleep. There are folding wheelchairs.”
    â€œNo matter. They won’t push in the sand.”
    Mother sighed. “You’re right.”
    These words, more than any other, guaranteed happiness for Louise.
    â€œHow old is Aunt Doney?” I asked.
    â€œNinety-eight,” Louise replied.
    â€œOh.” I couldn’t fathom this but I did know that the maternal side of our family routinely lived a long time. We had Bibles going back to 1620 and written in various beautiful hands were the birthdays and death days of our forebearers. A lot of the men died in wars but those women who survived childhood seemed semi-immortal. As it was, Aunt Doney’s brother was still alive and he’d fought in the War Between the States, being not much older than myself at the time. He was in a wheelchair, too. It made me wonder if you could live too long.
    Mother checked the rearview mirror. “That boy can sleep through a thunderstorm.”
    â€œHe sleeps a lot since Ginny died.” Louise’s voice lowered.
    Ginny, her daughter, had died in February 1952, six months back, at age thirty-three. Leroy cried a lot. Everyone did, includingLeroy’s father, a marine with the Sixth Division, who had been a war hero at Okinawa. That shocked me, and scared me, too.
    â€œChildren are made of rubber. He’ll bounce back.” Mother kept a positive outlook.
    â€œI don’t know, Juts. I hope so. It takes a lot of living to understand death. He’s eight. Imagine if we’d lost Momma at eight.”
    â€œWe would have had each other.” Mother stopped herself from making light of it. “But I expect we would have cried ourselves to sleep for a long, long time.”
    â€œAnd the poor little guy has to live up to Ken. How can he do that? How do you live up to a father who won the Distinguished Service Medal for conspicuous bravery?”
    â€œSis, Leroy isn’t the first one of our family to have a hero father. One of us has been