Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"Good Lord, no, sir."

"That there your dog?"

"Yes, sir."

"He be vicious?"

"She be not, sir."

"Say what?"

"Say she, sir."

"You stupid or somethin'?"

"Somethin', I guess

"I ain't afeared of dogs."

"She ain't afeared of you neither, sir."

"Don't you go tryin' to bullyrag me, boy."

"I wouldn't even if I knew how, sir."

"You some sassy- assed, spit-in-the-eye malefactor?"

"As far as I can understand what you might mean, sir, I don't think l am."

Curtis is comfortable with a lot of languages, and he believes that he could conduct conversation easily in most regional dialects of English, but this one is challenging enough to rattle his self-confidence.

The stranger lowers the flashlight, focusing it on Old Yeller. "I seen dogs sweet like this here, then you dares turn your back an' they bite off your co-jones."

"Jones?" Curtis replies, thinking maybe they're talking about a person named Ko Jones.

With the bright beam out of his eyes, Curtis sees that this man is none other than Gabby Hayes, the greatest sidekick in the history of Western movies, and for a moment he's as delighted as he's ever been. Then he realizes this can't be Gabby, because Gabby must have died decades ago.

Frizzles of white hair, a beard like Santa's with mange, a face seamed and saddle-stitched by a lifetime of desert sun and prairie wind, a body that appears to be composed more of leathery tendons and knobby bones than of anything else: He is your typical weathered and buzzard-tough prospector, your weathered and cranky but lovable ranch hand, your weathered and comical but dependable deputy, irascible but well-meaning and weathered saloonkeeper, crotchety but tender-hearted and banjo-playing and weathered wagon-train cook. With the exception of a pair of orange-and-white Nikes that look as big as clown shoes, his outfit is totally Gabby: rumpled baggy khakis, red suspenders, a cotton shirt striped like mattress ticking; his squashed, dusty, sweat-stained cowboy hat is slightly too small for his head and is parked on his grizzled skull with such desert-rat insouciance that it looks like a growth that has been with him since birth.

"She goes after my co-jones, I'll plug her, so help me Jesus."

Just as you would expect of any cranky citizen of the Old West, regardless of his profession, this man has a gun. It's not a revolver of the proper period, but a 9-mm pistol.

"Maybe I ain't so well-appearanced, but I sure ain't no useless codgerdick, like you might think. I'm the night caretaker for this here resurrected hellhole, and I can more than do the job."

Although he's old, this man isn't old enough to be Gabby Hayes even if Gabby Hayes somehow could still be alive, and he isn't dead, either, so he can't be Gabby Hayes brought back to life as a flesh-eating zombie in another kind of movie altogether. Nevertheless the resemblance is so strong that he must be a descendant of Gabby's, perhaps his grandson, Gabby Hayes III. Flushed with excitement and awe, Curtis feels as humbled as he might feel in the presence of royalty.

"I can shoot me a man around the corner, by calculated ricochet, if I got to, so you keep that flea hotel in check, and don't you try to run nowheres."

"No, sir."

"Where is your folks, boy?"

"They is dead, sir."

Bushy white eyebrows jump toward his hat brim. "Dead? You say dead, boy?"

"I say dead, yessir."

"Here?" The caretaker worriedly surveys the street, as though hired guns have ridden into town to shoot down all the sheep ranchers or the homesteading farmers, or whoever the evil land barons or the greedy railroad barons currently want to have shot down. The pistol wobbles in his hand, as if it is suddenly too heavy to hold. "Dead here on my watch? Well, ain't this just an antigodlin mess? Where is these folks of yours?"

"Colorado, sir."

"Colorado? I thought you said they was dead here."

"I meant they was dead in Colorado."

The caretaker looks relieved, and the gun doesn't shake as much us it shook before. "Then how'd you and this biscuit-eater come to be here after closin' time?"

"Runnin' for our lives, sir," Curtis explains, because he feels that he can tell at least a portion of the truth to any descendant of Mr. Hayes.

The caretaker's wrinkle-garden face sprouts a new crop where you would have thought he had no room to plant the seeds for any more. "You ain't tellin' me you run all the way here from Colorado?"

"Run at the start of it, sir, then hitched most of the time, and run this last piece."

Old Yeller pants as if in confirmation.

"Who's the damn scalawags you been runnin' from?"

"Lots of scalawags, sir. Some nicer than others. I guess the nicest would be the government."

"The gov'ment!" declares the caretaker, and his wrinkles rise like hackles, pulling his face into a surprisingly taut bristle of pure disgust. "Tax collectors, land grabbers, nosey do-gooders more self-righteous than any Bible-poundin' preacher ever born!"

Curtis says, "I've seen the FBI, whole SWAT teams of them, and I suspect the National Security Agency's in on this, plus one special-forces branch of the military or another, and probably more."

"Gov'ment!'" The caretaker is so beside himself with outrage that if beside himself could be taken literally, there would be two of him standing before Curtis. "Rule-makin', power-crazy, know-nothin' bunch of lily-livered skunks in bald-faced shirts! A man an' his wife pays social-security tax out the ass all their life, an' she dies just two checks into retirement, an' the gov'ment keeps all she paid, greedy bastards, she ain't really got her no account with 'em like they tell you. So here's me gettin' one monthly check no bigger than a brush-rabbit turd, hardly enough to buy me the makin's of a good long beer piss, while Barney Colter's worthless lazy donkey-wit son, who never worked a day in his useless life, he collects twice what I get 'cause the gov'ment says his drug addiction's left him emotionally disabled. So the doped-up little slug sits on his saggy ass, scarfin' Cheez Doodles, while to make ends meet, I haul myself out here to this historical hellhole five nights a week an' listen to blowsnakes blow, waitin' to be turned into buzzard brunch when my ticker pops, an' now facin' down dangerous wild dogs what wants to chew off my co-jones. You see the idea I'm gettin' at, boy?"

"Not entirely, sir," Curtis replies.

Because of all the excitement of trying to get Curtis's shoe and the fun of splashing in the outfall of well water, and also because Gabby's angry rant has frightened her, Old Yeller whines, squats, and pees on the pump platform.

Curtis perfectly understands her feelings about the caretaker. They have heard a lot of crankiness but not much lovableness, have been doused with buckets of crotchety talk but not with one teaspoon of tender-hearted sympathy; plus as yet there's no sign whatsoever of a banjo.

"What's wrong with your dog, boy?"

"Nothing, sir. She's just been through a lot lately."

And here comes more trouble for dog and boy: the giant-dragonfly thrum of the huge helicopter throbbing across the desert.

The caretaker cocks his head, and Curtis half expects the man's unusually large ears to turn toward the sound like the data-gathering dishes of radio telescopes. "Holy howlin' saints alive, that thing sounds big as Judgment Day. You mean them egg-suckin' bastards is chasin' you in that?"

"That and more," Curtis confirms.

"Gov'ment must want you bad as a damn gopher snake wants to get its snout in warm gopher guts."

"I'm not so happy to hear it put that way, sir."

Pointing the flashlight at the ground between them, Gabby asks, "What they want you for, boy?"

"Mostly the worse scalawags wanted my mother, and they got her, and now I'm just sort of a loose end they have to tie up."