The film follows a day in the life of a troubled elderly gentleman facing fear of death and visions of his late father who he gets mixed up with his favorite figure of fiction, Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. He has visions of rubber shoes in the sewer where he works leading him to think back on his childhood and the origins of his bizarre work of art for which he has sacrificed even his marriage. His masterpiece is a bizarre fence along a black beach which he tends to with tenderness but dreads to complete.