Life's Golden Ticket

A nurse had given me Mary’s jacket—it was crusted with blood. Linda and Jim looked at it fearfully as I fidgeted with it.

  “Are you sure you should be going anywhere right now?” Jim asked, giving me a look of concern.

  “I, uh . . . I made a promise to Mary. I have to do something for her right now. I’ll be back in a few hours. I know it’s crazy, but I gave her my word. I’ve got to go.” I couldn’t tell them where I was going. How could I tell them I was going to Bowman’s Park, where their first child had died?

  Linda’s mouth parted slightly to speak, but neither of them said anything. I kept wringing Mary’s jacket in my hands.

  After an awkward moment, Jim said, “Okay, son. If Mary wanted you to do something, go do it.”

  Linda looked surprised. She looked at Jim, then back at me. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t understand. I mean, right now? I just don’t see . . .”

  Jim turned quickly, hugging her. He looked back at me. “Do what you have to do,” he said. “We’ll handle things here. We’ll see you at the house?”

  I nodded, then embraced each of them.

  As I opened the exit stairway door, I heard Linda crying, asking God why all of this had happened.

  I wanted to go back and explain. But then, I didn’t understand either.

  I sneaked out the back of the hospital to avoid the news cameras.

  2

  ADMISSION CHARGES

  The pickup jolted as I pulled off the highway and onto the gravel road leading to the park. The white, dollar-sized envelope from Mary’s jacket slid along the dash as I wheeled around a curve. The crinkled paper was blotched red with drops of her blood.

  A cloud of dust billowed in my rearview mirror. I drove fast, anticipation making my foot heavy. The sun was sinking in the sky, and I wanted to get in and out of the park before nightfall. I had been thinking on the trip up—maybe I should visit the old Ferris wheel where Todd was killed and bury the envelope there. She wanted him to have it.

  As I approached the park, I drove under a thick canopy of pine branches that hung above the road, blocking the last rays of sun. The narrow lane, pocked with potholes and littered with dead branches, looked as though no one had traveled it since the flurry of news features had caused all the speculation a year and a half ago. Before that, almost no one had come out here since Todd’s death, nearly twenty years ago.

  I pounded over the rutted road for four more miles until I reached the broad clearing at the end. Squinting through the dusty windshield, I saw an enormous, overgrown field of grass bordered by pine trees. A few hundred yards away, the entrance archway still stood. A rotting fence ran from the pillars supporting the archway all the way out to the woods bordering the field. From the archway hung a laminated wood sign: BOWMAN’S PARK.

  Beyond the entrance stood six dilapidated ticket booths, a listing flagpole, some rickety park benches, and, a hundred yards farther in, the circular skeleton of the old Ferris wheel. I remembered that soon after Todd’s accident the Bowman company went bust and wasn’t even able to clean up the site. I also remembered Jim once telling me he had requested that the Ferris wheel be left standing as a memorial. Bowman obliged, though they removed the carriage seats so that no one would get hurt climbing on them after the park closed.

  I eased my foot off the brake, letting the pickup roll softly onto the field of grass and out from under the canopy of pine and fir. The fading sun warmed the left side of my face, and I turned toward it. Then I froze at the sight, about fifty yards away, of Mary’s car.

  I parked next to the Honda and got out. The mountain air was crisp, and the sounds of birds and insects filled my ears. I got out and tried her car door—locked. Odd. Maybe she had locked herself out and tried to walk home.

  I grabbed her jacket from the truck and went through the pockets. Her keys were there. Maybe her car wouldn’t start.

  I unlocked the Honda, slid into the driver’s seat, and put the keys in the ignition. It started right up.

  Why had she left her car here? How had she ended up on the other side of the mountain?

  As I got out of her car, the birds stopped singing. It was quiet for a moment—unnaturally so. Then the sounds of children and laughter filled the air.

  I scrambled out of the car in surprise and peered back toward where I had entered the field.

  Four little boys played tag just in front of the archway leading into the park.

  I looked for other cars in the clearing. Nothing.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Kids! Hey! Where are your parents?”

  They kept playing as though they had never heard me.

  I ran around to the truck cab, threw Mary’s jacket inside, grabbed the envelope from the dash, and shoved it into my back pocket. I trotted to the archway. The kids didn’t seem to notice my approach.

  “Hey!” I said again as I neared them. “Where are your folks?”

  One of the boys looked at me and smiled. Then he and the others ran through the arch and vanished.

  I stopped dead.

  The boys’ laughter echoed.

  I spun around, scanning the field. I was alone. I stood in surprised silence for a few moments.

  “Hello? Hello-o? Anybody around?”

  No reply.

  I took a few steps toward the archway, looking up at it as if it were going to tell me where the boys had gone. Two steps. Three. Four. I stepped under the archway and was hit by a cacophony of sound: kids laughing, rides whirring, cars honking, barkers shouting.

  I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them, I couldn’t believe it. All around me were hundreds of people, surging and streaming into six lines, one for each ticket booth. The booths looked freshly painted. Past the booths and rising above them, the Ferris wheel spun, lights twinkling brightly. Large red-and-white-striped tents flapped softly in the evening breeze. Clowns walked this way and that, selling cotton candy and balloons. A Loop-de-Loop rattled in the distance, its riders screaming with glee. Barkers hollered to young men, encouraging them to win a stuffed bear “for the little lady.” “Step right up, folks, to the greatest game on the planet!”

  This couldn’t be.

  I shook my head in disbelief, but nothing changed. Turning about, I was met with another inconceivable sight: the parking lot was full of cars, parking, pulling out, honking, waiting. The entire empty, overgrown field was packed. I strained to see my truck. It was still there, next to Mary’s car, in a row of thirty or more vehicles.

  I staggered backward, awestruck. Several people walked past, looking at me with concern—as if I were the one out of place. I took a few more steps back and tripped on something. I crashed to the ground, landing on my tailbone for the second time in a matter of hours. A knifing pain shot up my back.

  “Hey, mister, are you okay?”

  I looked up to see an elderly man with a long, kind face. He wore faded blue zip-up coveralls and beaten brown work boots. He leaned on a broom.

  “I didn’t see you there. I’m sorry, son. Let me help you up.” He extended a hand and pulled me to my feet.

  He asked again, “You okay?”

  I couldn’t speak. My tongue was trapped in a mouth stunned with surprise. The groundskeeper looked a little like my grandfather, only older. Grandpa had passed away when I was twelve. He was seventy-six when he died.

  “I . . . uh . . . I’m sorry I kicked your broom, sir,” I mumbled. “Are you . . . do I know you?”

  “Don’t think so. Name’s Henry,” he said, drawing his left forefinger across the name patch on his coveralls. He smiled at me and bent down to pick up a dustpan and a small garbage bag. “Oh, and don’t worry about the broom—people are always in a hurry to get inside. I’m used to getting bumped.”

  Then he turned and, with an arcing swoop of the broom, called back, “You have yourself a good time, sonny.”

  I watched him go back to sweeping, then cried out, “Wait—Henry!” I was immediately embarrassed by the desperate tone in my
voice.

  Henry turned back with a puzzled look.

  I took a few steps toward him. “So, uh, you say everyone’s always in a hurry. You . . . work here long?”

  A smile stretched across his face. “Oh, long enough, I suppose.” He held up his callused hands.

  I continued to stumble along. “Is this place . . . uh . . . is it . . . are you for real?”

  Henry laughed heartily. “Ha! For real! Well, tell you what, the missus used to tell her friends I was too good to be true, but she’d always tell me something different when the dishes weren’t done!” He slapped the leg of his coveralls with delight.

  I smiled politely, so confused and stunned that I couldn’t feel anything resembling a laugh anywhere within me.

  Henry picked up on my confusion. “Now, why the long face? We all want a return to the summers of our childhood, don’t we? Here’s your chance,” he said, waving toward the park. His voice was deep, rhythmic, and warm.

  I glanced at the smiling faces of people passing by. “I’m afraid I’m not here for fun, Henry. I’m here to find out what happened to my fiancée.”

  “Oh,” Henry said. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she was here. Her car’s parked outside. But something happened. She was in an accident. She’s in the hospital. She made me promise to come here. She told me to find out what she experienced, and give her brother an envelope.”

  Henry’s brow furrowed with compassion. “An accident? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is, she must have been here. She ended up on the other side of that mountain,” I said, gesturing at the wooded mountain rising behind the park. “She wound up on a highway road over there, and she was . . . she was hit by a truck.” I paused, and my eyes started to burn with tears. “Anyway, she made me promise to come here.”

  Henry seemed genuinely saddened. He said softly, “I’m so sorry.” He looked to the ground, as if searching for the right words, and then shot me a look of confusion. “I just realized what you said a second ago. Let me understand something, son. Are you saying you don’t know what she experienced here?”

  “No, I don’t understand. She just told me to take an envelope from her jacket, come here, find out what happened to her, and deliver the envelope to her brother.”

  Henry looked at me intently. “What was your fiancée’s name?”

  “Mary. Mary Higgins.”

  “Do you have the envelope on you now?” Henry asked, holding his gaze on me tightly.

  “Uh, yeah. I do.”

  He held out his hand. “Can I see it?”

  It seemed an odd request, but I pulled the envelope from my hip pocket and offered it to him.

  Henry took it and said, “Oh, my. She never opened it.”

  His words unnerved me. “What?”

  “Something went wrong,” he said uneasily.

  My mind raced. “What went wrong? Do you know Mary? Did you see her here? What happened to her?” As I blurted the questions, Henry didn’t take his eyes off the envelope.

  “Hold on,” he said, “let me think.”

  A painful minute of anticipation went by.

  “You were engaged to Mary?” Henry asked.

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “I do not,” he said flatly. “I don’t know Mary, and I don’t know exactly what happened to her. Everyone comes here for different purposes, and everyone experiences something different. But I do know something went wrong. If she never opened this envelope,” he said, turning it over in his hands, “then something inside the park went badly wrong.” He looked at me and shook his head, as if deciding something. “I’m going to help you find out what happened,” he said. “There’s just one problem.”

  “What?”

  Henry stared at the ticket booths and asked, “You don’t have an invitation to get in, do you?”

  The sky’s amber hues faded into the heavier colors of dusk. The lights of the park blinked on, and each soon had a squadron of moths orbiting it. A faint strip of blue still bordered the tree-lined horizon. The night brought a pleasant coolness to the air. I stood behind Henry in the ticket line, hoping his plan would work.

  “Just remember,” he said as the woman in front of us walked to the booth window, “you can’t get in here on your own. So keep quiet once I start talkin’.”

  The woman in front of us passed something through a hole in the ticket booth. I couldn’t see the booth attendant, but the woman smiled at the person inside. Then she walked through the metal turnstile that separated us from the inside of the park.

  “Next, please!” a booming female voice called out from the ticket booth.

  Henry motioned me forward. I stepped up to the window and, on seeing its occupant, stopped immediately. She was massive, occupying almost the entire booth. Her jaw was working on a hot dog, and her left hand held a gigantic Slurpee. Ketchup and mustard leaked out of the hot dog, staining her tentlike yellow sundress. The window of the booth was clouded with steam. A small fan blew inside, but beads of sweat still formed on her wide brow. She grunted as she shoved more of the hot dog into her mouth.

  “What can I do for you, kid?” she said around the mouthful of hot dog.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been called “kid.” I continued to gawk until Henry gave me a gentle nudge in the ribs.

  “Oh. Hi. Uh, I’m here to enter the park.”

  “That’s novel,” she said sarcastically, more interested in her Slurpee than in me. “Where’s your invitation?”

  Henry gave me another elbow, this time to move me out of the way. He centered himself in front of the glass. “Betty, my dear, how are we today?”

  Betty stopped chewing at the sound of his voice. “Henry? What are you doing here?” She put the hot dog down and tried to wipe the condiments from her mouth and dress. By her tone, I got the impression Henry had some pull at the park.

  Henry slid Mary’s envelope to Betty and waited for her to examine it. He also positioned his body so I was out of her view. Standing to the side of the booth, I couldn’t see Betty’s face anymore, just her puffy white hands as they turned the envelope over.

  “This is serious, Henry,” she said.

  Henry stared at her intently.

  “I bet you want to get to the bottom of this,” she said, her voice dropping to a deeper tone. “But you know the consequences of sponsoring this kid. Are you sure you’re ready? Are you sure he’s the right one?”

  Henry nodded slowly.

  A long moment passed, and Betty leaned forward, peering at me.

  “Okay, kid. Big Betty will go easy on you today, even if you are a little ugly.”

  She burst out laughing at her joke, rattling the entire booth. Then she struggled to turn her bulk, to snatch a paper form from a bin above her right shoulder.

  “Read this,” she said. “Sign it. That’s it.”

  She pushed the form through the window. Her hands were twice the size of mine.

  The form was a simple piece of paper entitled “PRICE OF ADMISSION.” The form had four check boxes down the left side, with a statement next to each one. At the bottom was a line for my signature. The statements read:

  I agree to give up my dependency on my present experience and be open to possibility.

  I agree to give up my defense mechanisms and face the truth.

  I agree to give up my belief that change equals pain.

  I agree to give up my impulses to quit or leave my host’s side.

  What kind of amusement park made you sign a contract to get in?

  I read the statements and looked at Henry. “This is it?”

  “That’s it,” he said. “Take it seriously.”

  Betty added, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have met Henry, kid.”

  Henry nodded for me to sign. Once I did, I slid it back to Betty. She picked up a rubber stamp, but hesitated before touching the paper.

  “Henry,” I heard her whisper, “you really sure
about this one?”

  Henry leaned in and said something inaudible.

  She looked once more in my direction, her eyes narrowing, then stamped the form and slid Mary’s envelope back to the caretaker. He handed it to me, and I put it back in my hip pocket.

  “Kid,” she said to me, “you’re in. You’re the last one today, I guess.” She pointed behind me; strangely, there wasn’t a soul in sight. I looked into the park and saw an open square with a flagpole in the center. There were no people there either.

  “You be good to Henry,” Betty commanded. “We love him here, and he just vouched for you, so be thankful. Now get going.”

  With considerable effort, Betty stood up. She bumped up against the walls as she turned to leave her post.

  As Henry gestured for me to follow him through the turnstiles, I glanced back at the booth to see Betty huffing and squirming to reach for the door.

  Henry and I entered the park, and just a few feet inside we were stopped by a loud crashing. I turned around to see the door of Betty’s ticket booth swing open and a little girl jump out.

  She couldn’t have been more than eight. She wore a cute, bright yellow sundress. Smiling, she skipped into the open square and disappeared behind one of the red-and-white-striped tents.

  I looked back at the booth, openmouthed.

  Empty.

  I turned to Henry. “Did she just . . . did you . . . did I just see . . . ?”

  Henry waited patiently for me to find my words.

  “Did I just . . . see what I think I saw?”

  He touched my shoulder softly and smiled. “Maybe it’s time I told you what goes on here in the park.”

  3

  THE TRUTH BOOTH

  The open square just inside the park was about eighty feet on a side. A soft breeze slapped the lanyard against the hollow pole. The walls of the tents that bordered the square moved gently in the breeze. Other than that, the square was eerily silent—no more shuffling, jostling people, calling barkers, or spinning Ferris wheel.

  “What is this place, Henry?”

  Henry looked around the square thoughtfully. “That I can’t quite explain. It’s where miracles happen. It’s a place where people become what they’ve always dreamed of being. I s’pose that’s why you saw Betty become a beautiful, happy, healthy little girl—so you could see this is a place where people can transform themselves.”