The Seawall

Reese Van Putten

The orange rays of the sunrise shone through the cracks in the clouds to give the horizon an appearance of a bright Hellish portal. The same sun struck the surface of the sea, but the impermeable water remained dark and deep. As impenetrable as the ocean, the Seawall stood gray and tall casting a long shadow across the city. Accompanied with each crashing wave was a terrifying echo that shook every rivet, weld, and beam holding the wall together. Lisa stood atop the Seawall. At 200 feet up, the ground was the only perspective that did not stretch forever. She looked forward and gazed upon the endless charges of waves, behind her was the city shrouded in smoke and smog, above were the shifting Heavens hiding secrets, and on either side was the wall. The wall, the Seawall, was the most endless of all. Even the largest cranes were crumbs on a plate when attached to the vast expanse of the wall. Lisa, along with all the other men and machines mulling as ants, stood atop the wall. Looking at the ocean gave Lisa a lump in her throat. She did not know if the feeling was sea sickness or vertigo, but she always felt disgusted with the ocean. Or the appearance of the ocean. She could not tell. She swallowed her nausea ans slapped her welder mask back on. All her surroundings became black save the white flame of her torch. Though Lisa could still hear the intimidating whirring and hammering and yelling, she only listened to the satisfying hiss of melting metal caused by her own hands. Lisa was able to complete an entire day of work without thought, she preferred it that way. She preferred to feel calm and bored. Her hands moved subconsciously as if separate from her actual body. When she first started welding on the Seawall a few years back, she was more attentive and careful not to make mistakes. After months of stressful yet monotonous work, she started to pay less attention and let the beads make themselves instead. The motion of emotionlessly kissing the metal with the torch and back off continued for hours until the lunch siren rang.

26

For lunch, Lisa took the long and rattly elevator down from the wall and made her way to the park where she usually sat with Harold. Harold was another Seawall worker but on a separate section than Lisa. She did not know much about him other than he was 47 years old, about 20 years older than her, and he still drove a gas-powered car, but nonetheless his company was nicer than none. When Lisa arrived at the park Harold was not sitting on their bench, so she decided to start lunch without him. She watched the trees while slowly gnawing on a dry sandwich. The branches were still and the park was quiet. The sun emanated a drab gray light beyond the dark haze of the city, but the leaves still glittered a contrastive green. Lisa liked the park because it was one of the few places in the city with real trees. The rest of the city had syntrees- tall towers donning metallic limbs and stiff tendrils that functioned the same as trees but better. One syntree had the oxygen output of an acre of real trees, but to Lisa they were not better. Syntrees were cold and simple, none could match the handsome complexity of a realtree. Lisa felt secure surrounded by crisp bark and knotty imperfections. She wished she could plant a tree on top of the Seawall, but that was no place for one. Lisa became so mesmerized by a hanging bough that she almost did not notice Harold approaching her. He shuffled towards her and his expression looked especially aged. She simply gave him a nod and he sat next to her. They did not speak for several minutes, neither of them were very talkative, but then again no one really was anymore. Harold broke the silence with a sigh and said, “I have a son.” Lisa halted her grazing to wait and see if more solemn words would exit his narrowly-opened mouth. After another sigh he said, “He told me polar bears shouldn’t live in the city because they got small ears. It’s torture to them.” Lisa was taken aback by this quizzical statement, “What?” She questioned. She almost felt more shocked with the pitch in her voice as she had not spoken all day. “I told him there aren’t any more polar bears in the wild and they need to be in the zoos in the cities, otherwise they would all die and go extinct. He said they got tiny ears because they keep the heat in and with the heat of the city they get too hot inside. I told him they couldn’t go anywhere cold and he had a tantrum at the zoo.” Harold explained. He stared numbly and unblinking at his lunch box.

27

“I didn’t know you had a son. How old is he?” Lisa asked after an awkward silence. “He’s young, he’s 9 but smarter than I ever was and ever will be.” Harold finally made an effort to open his lunchbox but did not pull anything out. “Y’know, it made me think of back when I was around his age. Everyone knew the world was changing and it was our faults, but the politicians denied it and no one acted on it. And then when we did start acting it was too late. We didn’t have no skyscraper-high Seawall protecting the cities from rising tides when I was a kid. We were told it was coming and we knew it but only a little bit did we know it. Maybe it couldn’t be stopped.” Lisa thought she could hear a shake in Harold’s voice but she could not tell. She had never seen him act like this before. Her heart hurt for him.

Harold finally turned to his lunch after he shook his head and murmured, “I just don’t know.” They ate in reticence until Harold stood, gave a lazy wave, and walked off. Lisa left shortly after to return to her station. For the remainder of her shift she felt uneasy. Her eyes were shifty and she felt hot in her overalls, and with the constant crashing of machines and waves she wanted to crumple up like an aluminum can. She was able to relax a little by focusing on her torch, but the flame was blinding even behind the mask. She felt this way for a long eternity before the siren rang at the end of the workday, in which she hastily returned her tools and boarded the elevator for the fourth time that day. When she finally made it to her car and started driving away she realized how exhausted she felt. Her muscles were finally able to relax in the worn-out driver seat of her hybrid, but her mind could not rest. ‘The polar bears have small ears, it’s torture to them,’ she kept thinking. Those words and every other word Harold said was ringing in Lisa’s skull, along with the ocean and the hammers and the syntrees - so cold and gray. Amongst a dense cluster of slow-moving cars on the highway, she drove around a bend and then came to a complete stop due to the sitting traffic. In between the smokestacks and skyscrapers that bumped against the highway, she saw the setting sun. There was no color. The sun smoldered amidst the smoke and smog, casting black rays like Persian arrows. And she wept. She wept as cars crawled past and

28

struck their horns at her unmoving vehicle. She knew they should all be filled with despair too. If they are not blind now, they will be soon. The sun is setting, what is left of it.

29