13.

The Wharf

Yet with all its newness, and appreciation steaming out of her spirit-gray body, there were no seaside shops to window shop, or for that matter bars or cafes to rest one's weary feet from long walks, no, oh no, it was a simple but productive pier: as dingy and dirty and rat infested trap as any on earth, and possibly worse. The river was quite wide, some say forty-miles at certain areas, like the Amazon, and still at other spots, possibly one to four miles. Hour after hour, day after day, millennium after millennium, the soot, dark grunge, yellowish foam waves slapped against the wooden beams tied against the wharf, the dock area. At times the waves pushed against the earth so hard it rocked the whole pier, that was when—when (usually) when Satan, Himself was present, for seldom did he come down to this miserable domain, but when he did, He presented a pacific-titanic, awakening for all, an upheaval in the earth's crust, making it swell, and everyone made noticed to it, as I'm sure was His purpose.

—Said Ms Rice in despair on her eighth-year in hell, her anniversary day of the 8th -year that is: she said, mumbling to herself: 'I wish a wave would come, a hundred feet high and wipe all this misery away,' ill tempered she was on this day, but how else could she be, and that day she simply sat on the pier, looking out, buried her face facing whatever was beyond the waves, the great river had to offer. There she sat like a forlorn goat, looking, looking, just looking, and just looking at the water.

1

Remembering

Ms Alexandra Rice thought [remembering would be more like it] thought, 'Ms Rice—now you've passed close to that tower a number of times, that there tower [pointing to it as she sat on the pier kicking the stonework with her feet].' —another year had passed, this being her ninth year now. Then looking about, standing up, she commented again to herself: but putting more thought into it this time— 'Remember someone said the gulf was forty miles wide? if so, there must be something on the other side something indiscernible, perhaps weary and dreary: possibly, but so what, so what, it can't be worse—I think—worse than here, and why not go see what may lie beyond?' Yes, yes, indeed yes, why not, she concluded, we must have a neighbor of sorts, on the other side of this impoverished road, this rusty tin can of a harbor: so she invented.

Again, she completed her new thoughts, with her result of having a lapsed year, one whole year before this came back to haunt her mind, the tower the tower was what was coming back to her mind, not sure why, but possibly she was not looking at what the young man told her: '…look at the face of things.'

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