One Door From Heaven

little place, an' when we finally gets ready to dig us a foundation, the gov'ment says we can't. The gov'ment says this here butt-ugly, bandy-shanked stink bug what lives on the property might be disturbed by us movin' in, which would be what the gov'ment calls an ecological tragedy, because this sticky-footed, no-necked, crap-eatin' stink bug maybe exists on only a hundred twenty-two tracts of land in five Western states. So me and the missus have ourselves this sweet property we can't build on, an' no jackass ever born ain't crazy enough to buy it from us if they can't never build it, neither. But, oh, it sure do give me a special fine fuzzy-good feelin' in my heart to know the dung-eatin', flame-fartin' stink bug is all snug and cozy and AIN'T NEVER COIN' TO BE DISTURBED!"
        By now Old Yeller is hiding behind Curtis.
        In the east, the chop-chop-chop of the helicopter grows louder, and this ceaseless cutting sound echoes off the hard land, back into the wounded air. Steadily, rapidly closer.
        "Iffen they catch you, what they plannin' to do, boy?"
        "The worse ones," says Curtis, "will kill me. But the government… most likely they'll first try to hide me someplace they think is safe, where they can interrogate me. And if the worse scalawags don't find me where the FBI's hidden me… well, then sooner or later the government will probably do experiments on me."
        Although his claim sounds outrageous, Curtis is describing what he genuinely believes will happen to him.
        Either the caretaker hears truth resonating in the boy's voice or he is prepared to believe any horror story about a government that values him less than it does a stink bug. "Experiment! On a child!"
        "Yes, sir."
        Gabby doesn't need to know what type of experiments Curtis would be subjected to or what purpose they would serve. Evidently he's able to stir up endless hideous possibilities in the pot of paranoia that is ever boiling on his mental stove. "Sure, why the blazes not, what better them dirty bastards got to do with my taxes but go torture a child? Hell's bells, them is the type what would hack you up, cook you in some rice, serve you with salsa to the damn stink bugs if they thought that might make the damn stink bugs happy."
        Beyond the eastern crest of the valley, a pale radiance blooms in the night: the reflected beams of headlamps or searchlights from the two SUVs and the helicopter. Flowering brighter by the second.
        "Better move," Curtis says, more to himself and to the dog than to the caretaker.
        Gabby glares at the rising light in the east, the frizzles of his beard seeming to bristle as if enlivened by an electric current. Then he squints so intently at Curtis that his sun-toughened face crinkles and twills and crimps and puckers like the features of an Egyptian mummy engaged in a long but losing battle with eternity. "You ain't been shovelin' horseshit, have you, boy?"
        "No, sir, and my ears aren't full of it, either."
        "Then, by all that's holy and some that's not, we're gonna feed these skunks our dust. Now you stay on me like grease on Spam, you understand?"
        "No, sir, I don't," Curtis admits.
        "Like green on grass, boy, like wet on water," the caretaker explains impatiently. "Come on!" In that quick but hitching gait familiar from his grandfather's many movies, Gabby runs past the front of Smithy's Livery toward the hotel next door.
        Curtis hesitates, puzzling over how to be grease, green, and wet.
        He's still a little damp from playing at the pump, though the desert air has already more than half dried him out.
        In spite of her previous reservations about the caretaker, Old Yeller trots after him. Apparently instinct tells her that her faith is well placed.
        Trusting his sister-becoming and therefore Gabby, Curtis lights out after them, past the livery and onto the boardwalk in front of Bettleby's Grand Hotel. Bettleby's is a forty-foot-wide, three-story, shabby clapboard building that could no more satisfy a taste for grandness than a cow pie could satisfy when you wanted a slice of grandma's deep-dish apple.
        Suddenly the chop of the helicopter rotors explodes into a boom-boom-boom, no longer muffled by the valley wall.
        Curtis senses that if he looks to his right, across the street and over the roofs of buildings on the other side of town, he will see the aircraft