The Ferryman

by Justin Cronin

that loss was love’s accounting, its unit of measure, as a foot was made of inches, a yard was made of feet.

It’s been my experience that a lot of human interaction comes down to just these sorts of exchanges, less an actual conversation than a form of parallel confession—the two parties performing their interior monologues, not really listening to each other but merely taking turns. I do not mean this cynically or as a statement of personal superiority; I’m as guilty as the next guy.

The mind works wondrously; it is capable of astonishing feats. It is the only machine in nature capable of thinking one thing while knowing its opposite.

Why do certain arbitrary images stay with us, branded upon the walls of memory, while others sink forever into time’s abyss?

And suddenly it hits me, like a blow to the chest. My father is going; my father is nearly gone. And once he’s gone—when I stand on the pier and watch the ferry churn away—I will be the last of us. All the memories of the things that happened will be mine and mine alone.

I stood for a moment at the threshold of the living room, trying to inspect it with fresh, neutral eyes, which proved difficult: everything I saw was so laden with memories that it was like trying to view them through a cloud of past events.