One Door From Heaven

extruded on the floor behind her like the finished product of a snake-making machine.
        Whether the serpent moved slowly because it was hurt or because it was being cautious to deceive, Leilani didn't know, didn't care. Just as the full length of it oozed from the hollow cudgel, she seized it by the tail. She knew that snakehandlers always gripped immediately under the head to immobilize the jaws, but fear for her one good hand caused her to choose the nether end.
        Slick it was, wet-slick and therefore injured, but still lively enough to wriggle fiercely in a quest for freedom.
        Before the snake could wind back on itself and bite her hand, Leilani shot to her feet faster than her braced leg had ever before allowed, playing cowgirl-with-lariat as she rose from the floor. Swung like a rope, stretched long by centrifugal force that thwarted its inward-coiling efforts, the reptile parted the air with a swoosh louder than its hiss. She swung it twice as she stumbled two steps toward the chest of drawers, the bared fangs missing her mother's face by inches on the first revolution, and then during the third swing, the serpent met the furniture with a crack of skull that took all the wriggle out of it forever.
        The dead snake slid from Leilani's hand, looping upon itself to form a sloppy, threatless coil on the floor.
        Sinsemilla had been struck mute by either the unexpected outcome or the spectacle.
        Although she could let go of the broken serpent and use the pivoting trick with her braced leg to turn her back on the scaly mess, Leilani couldn't turn away as easily from the mental image of herself in a fit of grunting, gasping, snake-killing rage and terror. Like a foxtail bramble, this hateful picture would work its way deep into the flesh of her memory, beyond the hope of excision, and prickle as long as she lived.
        Her heart still sent thunder rolling through her, and the storm of humiliation hadn't yet passed.
        She refused to cry. Not here. Not now. Neither fear nor anger, nor even this unwanted new knowledge of herself, could wring tears from her in front of her mother. The world didn't have enough misery in it to force her to reveal her vulnerability before Sinsemilla.
        Her usual ease of movement still eluded Leilani; however, when she thought through the movement of each step before taking it, like a patient learning to walk again after spinal injury, she was able to proceed to the open bedroom door with a measure of dignity.
        In the hall, a violent fit of the shakes overcame her, rattling teeth to teeth, knocking elbows against ribs, but she willed steel into her good knee and kept moving.
        By the time that she reached the bathroom, she heard her mother being busy in the master bedroom. She looked back just as a pulse of icy light filled that open doorway. The flash from a camera. The snake wasn't road kill, but apparently the artist in Sinsemilla had been inspired by the grisly grace of the serpentine carcass resting on a grave cloth of orange shag.
        Another pulse.
        Leilani went into the bathroom, switched on the light and the fan. She closed the door and locked her mother out.
        She turned on the shower, as well, but she didn't undress. Instead, she lowered the lid on the toilet and sat there.
        With the hum of the fan and the noise of the running water as cover, she did what she had never done in front of her mother or Preston Maddoc. Here. Now. She wept.

Chapter 22
        
        AS TASTY AS FRESH orange juice is when lapped out of a shoe, Old Yeller nevertheless loses interest in her drink when the siren grows as loud as an air-raid warning in the immediate wake of the motor home. Curtis's concern becomes her concern, too, and she watches him, ears pricked, body tensed, ready to follow his lead.
        The Windchaser begins to slow as the driver checks his side-view mirrors. Even serial killers who keep collections of victims' teeth at bedside for nostalgic examination will evidently pull over without hesitation for the highway patrol.
        When the police cruiser sweeps past and rockets away into the night, the motor home gains speed once more, but Old Yeller doesn't return to her juice. As long as Curtis remains uneasy, the dog will stay on guard, as well.
        First the helicopter tracking the highway toward Nevada and now this patrol car following: These are signs and portents