One Door Away from Heaven

Outside once more, he tells the dog to sit. The pooch settles obediently beside the diner door. The boy hunkers in front of the mutt, pets him, scratches behind his ears, and says, “You wait right here. I’ll be back. With food.”

A man looms over them—tall, with a glossy black beard, wearing a green cap with the words DRIVING MACHINE in yellow letters above the bill—not the customer who was at the cash register, but another who’s on his way into the restaurant. “That’s sure a fine tailwagger you have there,” the driving machine says, and the dog obligingly swishes his tail, sweeping the pavement on which he sits. “Got a name?

“Curtis Hammond,” he replies without hesitation, using the name of the boy whose clothes he wears, but at once wonders if this is a wise choice.

Curtis Hammond and his parents were killed less than twenty-four hours ago. If by now the Colorado authorities have realized that the fire at the farmhouse was arson, and if autopsies have revealed that the three victims were savagely assaulted, perhaps tortured, all dead before the fire was set, then the names of the murdered have surely been heard widely on news broadcasts.

With no apparent recognition of the name, the bearded trucker, who may be only what he appears to be, but who may also be Death with facial hair, says, “Curtis Hammond. That’s a powerfully peculiar name for a dog.”

“Oh. Yeah. My dog,” the boy says, feeling stupid and dismally incompetent at this passing-for-nobody-special business. He hasn’t given a thought to naming his four-legged companion, because he’s known that eventually, when he bonds better with the animal, he’ll arrive at not just any name, but at the exactly right one. With no time to wait for better bonding, scratching the dog under the chin, he takes inspiration from a movie: “The name’s Old Yeller.”

Amused, the trucker cocks his head and says, “You yankin’ my chain, young fella?”

“No, sir. Why would I?”

“And what’s the logic, callin’ this beauty Old Yeller, when there’s not one yellow hair from nose to tail tip?”

Abashed at his nervous bumbling in the face of this man’s easy and nonthreatening conversation, the boy tries to recover from his foolish gaff. “Well, sir, color doesn’t have anything to do with it. We like the name just because this here is the best old dog in the world, just exactly like Old Yeller in the movie.”

“Not exactly like,” the driving machine disagrees. “Old Yeller was a male. This lovely black-and-white lady here must get a mite confused from time to time, bein’ called a male name and a color she isn’t.”

The boy hasn’t previously given much thought to the gender of the dog. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He remembers his mother’s counsel that in order to pass for someone you’re not, you must have confidence, confidence above all else, because self-consciousness and self-doubt fade the disguise. He must not allow himself to be rattled by the trucker’s latest observation.

“Oh, we don’t think of it as just a male name or a female name,” the boy explains, still nervous but pleased by his growing fluency, which improves when he keeps his attention on the pooch instead of looking up at the trucker. “Any dog could be a Yeller.”

“Evidently so. I think I’ll buy me a girl cat and call her Mr. Rover.”

No meanness is evident in this tall, somewhat portly man, no suspicion or calculation in his twinkling blue eyes. He looks like Santa Claus with a dye job.

Nevertheless, standing erect, the boy wishes the trucker would go away, but he can’t think of a thing to say to make him leave. “Where’s your folks, son?” the man asks.

“I’m with my dad. He’s inside getting takeout, so we can eat on the road. They won’t let our dog in, you know.”

Frowning, surveying the activity at the service islands and the contrasting quiet of the acres of parked vehicles, the trucker says,

“You shouldn’t stray from right here, son. There’s all kinds of people in the world, and some you don’t want to meet at night in a lonely corner of a parkin’ lot.”

“Sure, I know about their kind.”

The dog sits up straighter and pricks her ears, as if to say that she, too, is well informed about such fiends.

Smiling, reaching down to stroke the lovely lady’s head, the trucker says, “I guess you’ll be all right with Old Yeller here to take a chunk of meat out of anyone who might try to do you wrong.”

“She’s real protective,” the boy assures him.

“Just don’t you stray from here,” the driving machine warns. He tugs on the bill of his green cap, the way a polite cowboy in the movies will sometimes tug on the brim of his Stetson, an abbreviated tipping of the hat, meant as a sign of respect to ladies and other upstanding citizens, and at last he goes inside.

The boy watches through the glass door and the windows as the hostess greets the trucker and escorts him to a table. Fortunately, he is seated with his back toward the entrance. With his cap still on, he appears to be at once enthralled by the offerings on the tall, two-fold menu.

To the faithful canine, the boy says, “Stay here, girl. I’ll be back soon.”

She chuffs softly, as though she understands.

Out in the vast parking area, where cones of dirty yellow light alternate with funnels of shadow, there’s no sign of the two silent men who wouldn’t stoop to pick up five dollars.

Sooner or later, they’ll come back here, run a search through the diner, around the motel, and wherever else their suspicion draws them, even if they’ve searched those places before. And if not those same two men, then two others. Or four. Or ten. Or legions.

Better move.

Chapter 11

GENEROUS SLICES of homemade apple pie. Simple white plates bought at Sears. Yellow plastic place mats from Wal-Mart. The homey glow of three unscented candles that had been acquired with twenty-one others in an economy pack at a discount hardware store.

This humble scene at Geneva’s kitchen table was a fresh breeze of reality, clearing away the lingering mists of unreason that the chaotic encounter with Sinsemilla had left in Micky’s head. Indeed, the contrast between Geneva polishing each already-clean dessert fork on a dishtowel before placing it on the table and Sinsemilla waltzing with the moon was less like a mere refreshing breeze than like sudden immersion in an arctic sea.

How peculiar the world had grown if now life with Aunt Gen had become the sterling standard of normalcy.

“Coffee?” Geneva inquired.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Hot or iced?”

“Hot. But spike it,” Micky said.

“Spike it with what, dear?”

“Brandy and milk,” Micky said, and at once Leilani, who was not drinking coffee, suggested, “Milk,” speaking in her capacity as self-appointed temperance enforcer on assignment to Michelina Bell-song.

“Brandy and milk and milk,” Aunt Gen noted, taking the order for Micky’s complex spike as she poured the coffee.

“Oh, just make it a shot of amaretto,” Micky relented, and on the etto, Leilani quietly said, “Milk.”

Ordinarily, nothing made Micky bristle with anger or triggered her stubbornness more quickly than being told she couldn’t have what she wanted, unless it was being told that her choices in life hadn’t been the best, unless it was being told that she would screw up the rest of her life if she wasn’t careful, unless it was being told that she had an alcohol problem or an attitude problem, or a problem with motivation, or with men. In the recent past, Leilani’s well-meaning murmured insistence on milk would have jammed down the detonation plunger, not on all these issues, but on enough of them to have assured an explosion of respectable magnitude.

During the past year, however, Micky had spent a great many hours in late-night self-analysis, if only because her circumstances had given her so much time for contemplation that she couldn’t avoid shining a light into a few of the rooms in her heart. Until then, she had long resisted such explorations, perhaps out of fear that she’d find a haunted house within herself, occupied by everything from mere ghosts to hobgoblins, with monsters of a singular nature crouched behind doors from the attic to the subcellar. She’d found a few monsters, all right, but she’d been more disturbed by the discovery that in the mansion of her soul, a greater number of rooms than not were unfurnished spaces, dusty and unheated. Since childhood, her defenses against a cruel life had been anger and stubbornness. She’d seen herself as the lone defender of the castle, ceaselessly prowling the ramparts, at war with the world. But a constant state of battle readiness had held off friends as well as enemies, and in fact it had prevented her from experiencing the fullness of life, which might have filled those vacant rooms with good memories to balance the bad that cluttered other chambers.

As a matter of emotional survival, she had recently been making an effort to keep her anger sheathed and to let her stubbornness rest in its scabbard. Now she said, “Just milk, Aunt Gen.”

This evening wasn’t about Micky Bellsong, anyway, not about what she wanted or whether she was self-destructive, or whether she would be able to pull her life out of the fire into which she herself had cast it. This evening had become all about Leilani Klonk, if it had not actually been about the girl from the start, and Micky had never in her memory been less focused on her own interests or needs—or resentments.

The request for brandy had been a reflex reaction to the stress of the encounter with Sinsemilla. Over the years, alcohol had become a reliable part of her arsenal, as useful for keeping life at bay as were anger and pigheadedness. Too useful.

Returning to her chair, Geneva said, “So, Micky, will we all be getting together for a neighborly barbecue anytime soon?”

“The woman is either nuts or higher than a Navajo shaman with a one-pound-a-day peyote habit.”

Poking her pie with a fork, Leilani said, “It’s both, actually. Though not peyote. Like I told you—tonight it’s crack coc**ne and hallucinogenic mushrooms, much enhanced by old Sinsemilla’s patented brand of lunatic charm.”

Micky had no appetite. She left the pie untouched. “She really was in an institution once, wasn’t she?”

” I told you yesterday. They shot like six hundred thousand volts of electricity through her head—“

“You said fifty or a hundred thousand.”

“Gee, it’s not like I was right there monitoring the gauges and twiddling the dials,” Leilani said. “You’ve got to allow me a little literary license.”

“Where was she institutionalized?”

“We lived in San Francisco then.”

“When?”

“Over two years ago. I was seven going on eight.”

“Who did you live with while she was hospitalized?”

“Dr. Doom. They’ve been together four and a half years now. See, there’s even kismet for crackpots. Anyway, the headshrinkers shot like nine hundred thousand volts through old Sinsemilla’s noggin, unless you want to nitpick my figures, and it didn’t help her any way whatsoever, though the feedback of lunacy from her brain probably blew out power-company transformers all over the Bay Area. Great pie, Mrs. D!”

“Thank you, dear. It’s a Martha Stewart recipe. Not that she gave it to me personally. I took it down from her TV show.”

Micky said, “Leilani, for God’s sake, is your mother always like that—the way 1 just saw her?”

“No, no. Sometimes she’s simply impossible.”

“This isn’t funny, Leilani.”

“You’re wrong. It’s hilarious.”

“The woman is a menace.”

“To be fair,” Leilani said, forking pie into her mouth as she talked, “my dear mater isn’t always drugged out of her mind the way you just saw her. She saves that for special evenings—birthdays, anniversaries, when the moon is in the seventh house, when Jupiter is aligned with Mars, that kind of thing. Most of the time, she’s satisfied with takin’ on a joint, keeping a nice light buzz, maybe floating on a Quaalude. She even goes clean and straight some days, though that’s when the depression sets in.”

Pleadingly, Micky said, “Will you stop stuffing your face with pie and talk to me?”

“I can talk around the pie, even if it isn’t polite. I haven’t belched all evening, so I ought to have some etiquette points to my credit. I’m not going to miss out on one bite of this. Old Sinsemilla couldn’t bake up anything this good if her life depended on it—not that she’s ever likely to face a pie-or-die threat.”

“What sort of baking does your mother do?” Geneva asked.

“She made an earthworm pie once,” Leilani said. “That was when she was deep in a passionate natural-foods phase that stretched the definition of natural to include things like chocolate-covered ants, pickled slugs, and crushed-insect protein. The earthworm pie sort of put an end to all that. I’m absolutely sure it wasn’t a Martha Stewart recipe.”

Micky finished her coffee in long swallows, as though she had forgotten it wasn’t spiked, and though she most definitely didn’t need a caffeine jolt. Her hands were shaking. The cup rattled against the saucer when she put it down.

“Leilani, you can’t go on living with her.”

“With who?”

“Old Sinsemilla. Who else? She’s psychotic. As they say when they commit people to the psychiatric ward against their will she’s a danger to herself and others.”

“To herself, for sure,” Leilani agreed. “Not really to others.”

“She was a danger to me in the yard, all that screaming about hag of a witch bitch and spellcasting and not being the boss of her.”

Geneva had risen from her chair to fetch the pot from the Mr. Coffee machine. She poured a refill for Micky. “Maybe it’ll settle our nerves, dear.”

With no pie left on her plate, Leilani put down her fork. “Old Sinsemilla scared you, that’s all. She can be as scary as Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and Big Bird all rolled into one, but she’s not dangerous. At least as long as my pseudofather keeps her supplied with drugs. She might be a terror if she ever went into withdrawal.”

Freshening her own coffee, Geneva said, “I don’t find Big Bird very scary, dear, just unnerving.”

“Oh, Mrs. D, I disagree. People dressing up in big weird animal suits where you can’t see their faces—that’s scarier than sleeping with a nuclear bomb under your bed. You have to figure people like that have real issues to resolve.”