The Sand Motor (453 words)

The Sand Motor



by



Ryan Fowler



02/26/15



453 words





Elke stood on the prow of the giant dredging barge, his broom held securely in his hands.  This would be their final trip out to the offshore replenishment locations to dredge sand for the sand motor. Elke had watched for years as his father Aldebert, toiled with the public works crew rebuilding the Zuid-Holland coast near Ter Hejde every five years or so.  As soon as they would finish they would start again it seemed.  His father loved the work though. 





Elke never understood his father’s love for physical labor, instead preferring to lose himself in a book or his own words as he wrote his journal and stories.  His father encouraged him to go outside and play football, he would wait for him patiently in the yard, but that never lasted long.  Now, Elke wished he had spent more time with his father.  Now, it was too late.  He kept his father’s ashes in tin with his meager belongings shoved in the small cubby that accompanied his bunk. 



This would be the last trip for some time.  A Professor at the university, Marcel Stive, had devised a plan to let the ocean do the work.  Instead of rebuilding the coast every five years as they had done as long as anyone could remember, they would place the sand in the right spot of the current and let the ocean redistribute it up and down the coast line.  They estimated this plan would keep the coastline healthy for at least twenty years, maybe more.  Elke had signed up as a deckhand, which mostly entailed sweeping and mopping.  Lots of sweeping and mopping, while more experience men did the real work.  Running the dredges, giant vacuum tubes stretching to the bottom of neptunes lair and pulling up the sand.  Elke often wondered about the homes that were being destroyed to protect his own.  He imagined crabs and fish scattering left and right as their homes disappeared into the giant tubes only to be deposited in the dark hull of the massive ship.  He wondered if any of them ever got caught in the tubes themselves only to be dumped into the hull and quickly buried.  Some nights, the nightmares would come, and it would be him in the hold, the sand filling up around him, unable to escape.  Other than that he spent his time thinking about leaving.  He imagined spreading himself across Europe, maybe eventually the United States, leaving little pieces behind, evenly distributed by the current.  His father had never understood this wanderlust, perfectly content to live his life on the Zuid-Holland coast, and that is where he would be forever Elke thought. as he slowly poured the ashes into the hold.