There was a body of water beyond the ticket booth. It stretched out to the horizon, until it met an all-consuming darkness. A hand-painted arrow sign pointed beyond the booth, and the Stranger was not surprised to see it said, this way to the egress.

“I’d like a ticket, please.”

“Then you must pay the price,” the ticket seller said.

“What is the price?” the Stranger said.

“Something precious.”

The Stranger pulled a handful of ducats from his pocket and the ticket seller laughed. The Stranger dropped the ducats to the ground. A small boat, he saw, bobbed on the water, waiting.

“What is the price?”

“What is the most precious thing you have?”

The Stranger thought about a day in early spring. They had been to the park. The sun shone down and green parakeets laughed in the high branches of the trees. They found a log and sat down with their backs against it, their faces to the sun. And the boy came up to him, unexpectedly, and put his arms around his neck and gave him a wet noisy kiss on the cheek. He said, I love you, Dad. It was the first time he’d ever said it.

“No,” the Stranger said. “Not that. Anything but that. Please.”

The ticket seller did not answer. The moment lengthened.

The Stranger reached deep within himself and plucked out a bit of his heart.

The Plant of Heartbeat

TWELVE:

THE PLANT OF HEARTBEAT

On the shores of the Great Salt Lakes the ferryman waited.

The Stranger kept having the discomforting feeling that he’d forgotten something. But since he couldn’t remember what it was, he thought that it couldn’t have been that important.

The air smelled of bromide and the sun hung in the sky. No fish frolicked in that dead sea and no waves disturbed its shores, and when the ferryman’s oars sank into the water they pushed hard against the heavy salt.

As they journeyed across the Great Salt Lakes the sun traversed the half globe of the sky, from one horizon to the other. From high above, the Great Salt Lakes seemed infinite, and only a tiny black dot moved across the surface of the water.

But from the point of view of the Stranger the lake was merely a lake, the boat large enough if uncomfortable, and his purpose clear.

As for the old ferryman, he spoke not a word, but pushed the boat ever onwards, with the Stranger dozing in the hold, and the sun traversing the sky until it leaned to kiss the far horizon. The mountains rose above the Great Salt Lakes. With nightfall the ferry docked on the far side of the lake and the Stranger disembarked.

The ferryman watched him go.