One Door From Heaven

response, but none earns a cigar.
        Leilani gives the answer according to Geneva, which everyone in the family can recite to the word. "If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way. But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people who, like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them. None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light."
        Time passes as time does, and the campfire subsides to a mound of glowing coals. People and dogs drift home to bed.
        Other than Curtis, the last two to leave are Micky and Leilani. Larry, Curly, and Moe have gone home with Aunt Gen. The campsites are about two hundred yards from these picnic grounds, and Micky lights the way with a Coleman lantern, held high. Woman and girl walk hand in hand, into a darkness that holds no fear for them. The murmur of their voices and their gentle laughter drifts back to him, all the music anyone could ever need. If this were a movie, and if Curtis were a film director, he would make this the final scene: woman and girl, saviors of each other, walking away from the camera into a future that together they have redeemed. Indeed, the movie would be called Redemption. Having seen 9,658 films and then some, he knows that in this final scene, as they walk away, the screen would fade to black; however, this is reality, and neither Micky nor Leilani will ever fade to black but will go on forever.
        Curtis remains behind to extinguish the hot coals with river water and to stir the ashes, although he doesn't do so at once. He sits with sister-become at his side, just the two of them enthralled by the mystery of the stars and by the pearl-perfect moon, together enjoying the rightness of all things.
        He is no longer being Curtis Hammond, for he has become Curds Hammond. This world is his destiny, and he can't imagine a finer home or one more beautiful. Oh, Lord, he is a Gump, all right, but he's finding his way well enough in spite of that.
        A sudden whirl of wind spins up a twist of fallen leaves, sends them dancing slowly, slowly around the perimeter of the smoldering campfire until they reach Curtis, whereupon the wind expires in a puff, casting the greenery in his face. Leaves stick in his hair, dangle from his ears. He spits one out of his mouth.
        Dogs laugh. At least most of them do, and this one is always ready to be amused. The playful Presence must love her even more than He loves others of her kind, and He sees in Curtis not merely one who will save a world, but also a perfect foil for His jokes.

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    One door away from Heaven,
    We live each day and hour.
    One door away from Heaven,
    But it lies beyond our power
    To open the door to Heaven
    And enter when we choose.
    One door away from Heaven,
    And the key is ours to lose.
    One door away from Heaven,
    But, oh, the entry dues.
        
    -The Book of Counted Sorrows

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    AUTHOR'S NOTE
        
        Utilitarian bioethics as portrayed in One Door Away from Heaven is unfortunately not a figment of my imagination, but a real threat to you and to everyone you love. This philosophy embodies the antihuman essence of fascism, expresses the contempt for individual freedom and for the disabled and the frail that has in the past marked every form of totalitarianism. One day our great universities will be required to redeem themselves from the shame of having honored and promulgated ethicists who would excuse and facilitate the killing of the disabled, the weak, and the elderly.
        Serendipitously, as I was finishing this novel, Encounter Books published a nonfiction work offering the best survey of utilitarian bioethics written for a general audience that I have yet seen. If, for your own protection and for the sake of those you love, you want to know more about the subject than I've covered herein, I highly recommend Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America by Wesley J. Smith. You will find it more hair-raising than any novel you've ever read.
        For the second time the first having been as I worked on From the Corner of His Eye, I have written a novel while listening to the singular and beautiful music of the late Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. When I mentioned Bruddah Iz in that previous book, a couple