Erosion Control by Daniel Rousseau

Casey drives his yellow loader down an empty beach on the Atlantic side of the Cape. The rig’s raised bucket holds three tons of sand, and the four-foot tires leave ribbed tracks that the lapping tide will erase before nightfall. He parks below a twenty-foot bluff. A modest cedar-shingled house sits atop it, vacant for the off-season. Casey is expanding a small dune to block storm surges from further eroding the bluff’s face.

He grips the lift and tilt levers by his right hip and scans his fingertips—they’re square like his dad’s. He also inherited the dimpled chin, though he hides it behind a burly beard. Casey pushes the levers forward so the bucket pours. He can’t shake last night’s dream: the warped stairs leading to his childhood basement, the ratty flower-print couch, Tom and Jerry on the rabbit-eared TV, those goddamn fingertips. The load is spent. Casey returns the levers to neutral, spins the steering wheel, and heads back a quarter mile.

A wave at the break line catches a lopsided gray object and carries it shoreward. Casey hopes it’s a clump of gillnet and seaweed—anything but another dead seal, another cold stare. “Don’t look at me.” His dad’s gravelly voice echoed in the dream. “Watch the cartoon.” Casey obeyed. He had always obeyed, often equally afraid and hopeful for approval.

He enters the oceanfront lot beside the boarded ice cream shack. The overturned trash barrels bear chipped paintings of vanilla cones with extra sprinkles. His son’s birthday party was yesterday at an arcade—Casey loitered by Street Fighter while his ex-wife sliced and served the R2-D2 cake, her slender hands steady, nails neon green. He manipulates the levers, pressing the bucket’s lip into a sand mound that occupies six parking spaces. The boy is seven, the age Casey was when it first happened. At least, he remembers it starting then. Sand cascades from the mound’s peak as the bucket ascends. His dad died a decade ago in a rusted Mustang with tobacco-stained windows. Casey gave a eulogy at the sparse funeral, mostly about fishing. His mom didn’t laugh at his tuna joke. The bucket is full. He thinks she knows.

He chews his tongue and eases the loader onto the beach. The horizon is fading from blue to orange. His dad called it “medicine.” Casey imagines veering toward the surf, ramming wave after wave, then clearing the shelf. The steel would survive the descent, but the pressure at the bottom would collapse him, spill his insides, incite a feeding frenzy.

The gray object seizes Casey’s attention as it lands at the water’s edge. He parks several feet away and climbs down. His leather boots sink an inch into the silt. Of course, it’s a seal—the third in a month. This one’s a pup, less than three feet long, belly up, flippers splayed, eyes like obsidian beads. Its darkly speckled silver coat shows no bite marks or propeller gashes. Casey bends at the waist and guides his right index finger across the tufted neck, parting fine hairs. The softness torments him. He clenches his jaw and draws a deep breath through his nose. At the birthday party, he blew twenty-five bucks on a claw machine. He promised his son the Pikachu plush; it just wouldn’t budge. Casey squats and slides his arms beneath the seal’s body. In one motion, he stands and lifts it to his broad chest, dampening his canvas coveralls. His son said, “Don’t worry, Daddy.” Casey struggles up into the cab, relying on his elbows for support. “Stuffed animals are for little kids anyway.”

Casey drives with the find on his lap, his mind stretched thin, his limbs switching to autopilot. He’d never doubted his son’s innocence, but he can’t help projecting his damaged self onto him. Casey worries that he won’t be able to hide his unease—that he’ll spoil gentle moments with scowls and darting eyes, that the boy will take it personally, that resentment will lead to distance: an arm’s length at first, then opposite sides of the house, and eventually miles only bridged by holiday phone calls that never stray beyond surface details and end in charged silence.

A cold wind swirls at the crux of the bluff as Casey arrives. He brings out the seal, careful not to bump its snout on the loader’s frame, and rests it at the foot of the dune. In the dream’s closing, Tom and Jerry dissolved into static, and Casey’s skin gradually numbed from head to toe—it was no longer his to feel. Back at the controls, he slowly exhales and pushes the levers. The remains disappear under three feet of sand, a blip on the bronze landscape. Good as gone. Casey nods twice. Has to be.

Buoys light up along the shallows. A gull settles on the bluff house’s chimney. Then Casey centers the levers, spins the wheel, and departs before the tide claims the way.

Daniel Rousseau’s work—twice noted in The Best American Essays—has appeared in The Baltimore Review, The Florida Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from VCFA and lives near Philadelphia with his wife and daughter. “Erosion Control” is his fiction debut. 

6 February 2026