Mountain Girl

The knock at the door sent me clawing for the ceiling. Like Sylvester, the cat, after one of his encounters with the baby kangaroo he thinks is a giant mouse. That was me -- all arched back, hair standing on end, nails gripping the ceiling. If I’d had a tail, it would have been bushed out like a bottle brush.

See, people don’t just “drop by” up here on Mount Charleston. Given that our nearest neighbor is a good half-mile away, it’s not like we get many -- any -- random taps at the door from neighbors asking for a cup of sugar or just to trade gossip. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who lives around us. Frankly, I’m hesitant to knock on the mobile home doors up here, mostly because I’m more than a little wary of what I might find on the other side. Crystal meth lab? Pit bulls? Twelve-gauge double-barrel shotgun?

The few people around us, camped out amongst the yucca and Joshua trees, moved to this empty stretch of mountain desert to be left alone, and they aren’t terribly receptive to impromptu visits. Up here, that’s not called “being neighborly,” it’s called trespassing. And though I loved that I had a How ya doin’? acquaintance with dozens of people in my Brooklyn nabe, people whose names I didn’t know, but whose faces were familiar from standing in line together for coffee, shopping in the stores along Court Street or just waiting for the subway, here on the mountain, I was starting to appreciate the If you’re not expected, you shouldn’t be here attitude.

The first inkling that this new, shall we say, xenophobic attitude, was evolving, like a new callous forming on my social graces, came early one Saturday, before what I’ve come to call The Knock. Stewart and I were lounging around in our PJs, catching up on CNN, when a strange car pulled into our gravel drive.

“Maybe they’re interested in the land,” was Stewart’s hopeful guess. Recently, he’d put part of his five-acre parcel up for sale. Maybe they were prospective buyers. Maybe they were just lost day-trippers.

Stewart went out to investigate while I kept an eye out from the window. A woman got out of the white compact. Then a man. It was his getup that got my attention: White short-sleeved shirt, skinny black tie, dark trousers, the kind my trig teacher in high school wore. And in his hands -- magazines. Those were the dead-giveaway. These folks weren’t lost. They were here because they thought we were. And unbelievably, they’d driven all the way out to the hinterlands of Mount Charleston to lead us back down the path to righteousness.

In the time it took my brain to put it all together, I was barreling out the door in my slippers. If you’re not expected, you shouldn’t be here. Few things really get my ire up like being told I’m going to burn in hell for all eternity unless I ditch my cultural/religious beliefs -- secular as they are. And early on a Saturday morning! Before I’d finished my coffee! According to my people, this was a Day Of Rest. These guys were disturbing my peace.

“Are you -- ” I shouted.

My brain hiccupped. I couldn’t remember the name of the profoundly annoying door-to-door proselytizers. But in my addled-pre-coffee state, I did recall their Brooklyn offices were emblazoned with the name of their magazine, The Watchtower. And this early in the morning, that was the best I could come up with.

“Are you Watchtower People?!” I demanded. “Get off our property! Get off immediately! You’re not welcome here!”

And then the kicker: “Stewart! Where’s the shotgun??!!!”

It even shocked me as I said it.

Where’s the shotgun?

Where’d that come from? I’m not a gun-slinger. I believe in gun control. I relied on New York’s Finest to protect me in Brooklyn. Before moving into Stewart’s house, the closest I’d ever even come to a firearm was watching Law & Order.

Where’s the shotgun?

Living in the Wild West was clearly starting to rub off on me.

Oh, I knew Stewart had a couple of pistols, a shotgun, an assault rifle and a .22 rifle in the house. “For protection,” he’d told me. It seemed logical. If we relied on 911 to stop an intruder, we could be julienned before the cops ever made it up the mountain. But I’d staked my own little liberal ground by making a point of not knowing where they were stashed . . . or how to use them. And though periodically Stewart would offer to take me gun shopping, I wasn’t interested in getting a slender, pink Lady Smith & Wesson to slip in my Louis Vuitton bag. Then suddenly I was Rambette, brandishing a virtual shotgun to wave unwanted guests off our property.

My unlikely transformation probably started when I locked myself out of the house -- in my underwear, naturally, and without my cell phone. In my frantic attempt to find a way back in, I discovered that our house was -- shocking! -- about as secure as the tents I’d slept in at Girl Scout camp. I’d merely touched the screen on one of our living room windows, and it fell away in my hand, leaving a wide open space for me to crawl in through. Essentially, my four-year-old nephew Dylan could break in without breaking a sweat. That got me thinking. Since I’m often home alone, maybe I did need something more substantial than biting sarcasm to defend myself against uninvited guests.

And then came The Knock.