One Door From Heaven

continuous travel that marks this phase of their lives. Regardless of what breaks or wears out, they can fix it, given the necessary spare parts, a basic supply of which they carry with them.
        "There's nothing better in this world," declares Polly, "than getting dirty, oily, greasy, and sweaty while working on your wheels- and in the end putting wrong right with your own hands."
        These women are the cleanest, most well-groomed, most sparkling, sweetest-smelling people whom Curtis has ever seen, and though he's hugely enamored of them in their current condition, he is intrigued by the prospect of seeing them dirty, oily, greasy, sweaty, wielding wrenches and power tools, confronting a recalcitrant 44,500-pound mechanical beast and, with their skill and determination, returning it to full operation.
        Indeed, a mental image of Castoria and Polluxia, in the throes of engine-repair delight, pulses so persistently through his thoughts that he wonders why it has such great appeal. Odd.
        Trailed by Old Yeller, Cass returns to report that she has finished ironing Curtis's clothes.
        Retreating to the bathroom to trade sarong for proper dress, he's saddened that his time with the Spelkenfelter twins is drawing to an end. For their safety, he must leave at the first opportunity.
        By the time he returns, fully clothed, to the co-pilot's seat, the last sullen red light of sunset constricts in a low arc along a portion of the western horizon, like the upper curve of a bloodshot eye belonging to a murderous giant watching from just beyond the edge of the earth. Curtis is settling into his seat when the arc dims from mordant red to brooding purple; soon the purple fades as if the eye has fallen shut in sleep, but still the night seems to be watching.
        If farms or ranches exist out in this lonely vastness, they are set so far back from the highway that even from the elevated cockpit of the Fleetwood, their lights are screened by wild grass, by widely scattered copses of trees, and primarily by sheer distance.
        Rare southbound vehicles approach, rocketing by at velocities that suggest they are fleeing from something. Even fewer northbound vehicles pass them, not because the northbound lane is less busy, but because Polly demands performance from the motor home; only the most determined speeders overtake her, including someone in a silver 1970 Corvette that elicits admiring whistles from the car-savvy sisters.
        Because of mutual interests in extreme skiing, skydiving, hard-boiled detective fiction, competitive rodeo bronc-busting, ghosts and poltergeists, big-band music, wilderness-survival techniques, and the art of scrimshaw among many other things, the twins are fascinating conversationalists, as much fun to listen to as they are to look at.
        Curtis is most interested, however, in their wealth of UFO lore, their rococo speculations about life on other worlds, and their dark suspicions regarding the motives of extraterrestrials on Earth. In his experience, humankind is the only species ever to concoct visions of what might lie in the unknown universe that are even stranger than what's really out there.
        A glow appears in the distance, not the headlamps of approaching traffic, but a more settled light alongside the highway.
        They arrive at a rural crossroads where a combination service station and convenience store stands on the northwest corner. This isn't a shiny, plasticized, standard unit allied with a nationwide chain, but a mom-and-pop operation in a slightly sagging clapboard building with weathered white paint and dust-frosted windows.
        In movies, places like this are frequently occupied by crazies of one kind or another. In such lonely environs, monstrous crimes are easily concealed.
        Since motion is commotion, Curtis wants to keep moving until they reach a well-populated town. The twins, however, prefer not to let the on-board fuel supply drop below fifty gallons, and they are currently running with less than sixty.
        Polly drives off the blacktop onto the unpaved service apron in front of the building. Gravel raps the Fleetwood undercarriage.
        The three pumps-two dispensing gasoline, one diesel fuel-are not sheltered under sun-and-rain pavilion, as in modern operations, but stand exposed to the elements. Strung between two poles, red and amber Christmas lights, out of season, hang over the service