Taken with permission from Mountain Springs About a week later, the entire town was called out to fight a fire that suddenly and without explanation engulfed a barn we owned on another property. Then one heartstopping night, my mother was awakened by stealthy footsteps entering our yard. Looking from an upstairs window, she saw a man creeping along the side of our house toward the back, lugging something that appeared heavy and cumbersome. Silently moving downstairs in the dark, my mother took our dog, Mike, by the collar and went down the second set of stairs to the basement. With only the thickness of the outside wall between them, my mother and the intruder moved on a parallel course that converged at the basement door. Then, counting on timing and Mike’s territorial affront, she unlatched the door, unleashed the dog, and hoped for the best. Outside, the night came alive with Mike’s frenzied barking, a startled shriek, and the sound of retreating footsteps as Mike gave chase. In the morning, when we opened the basement door, there beneath our cascading grapevine, as though thrown down hurriedly, was a five-gallon can of gasoline. Once more, my mother had put herself on the line for family, and once more she had won the draw. As I grew up and away, my life took its independent course, but I discovered that I, too, alternated between certain forms of advance and retreat. While I moved on my unsteady balancing act toward maturity, I continued to regard my mother as a safety net. Even in my mother’s later years, when it seemed we had switched roles, she was still my rock. Some nights, far away from her, even in the closeness of my own new family, I wondered, “What will life be like without that timid but tough woman?” When it came to the terrible moment when her telephone rang and rang, when I unlocked her door and found silence and the chain still latched, and when, with help, I had knocked the door molding off and run trembling into her kitchen and found her there, I had to summon reserves I could only hope had been instilled by my unusual upbringing. Her purse flung to one side, her glasses to the other, my mother lay where she had fallen backwards. Ready for church in her rosy knit cap and gloves and her one elegant coat, she had pushed forward until the end in her own gentle but formidable way. I had a vision then of the warrior my mother truly was. Looking every bit the dowager lady, here was the shy woman who had braved an abusive husband, rattlesnakes, school boards, and murderers, and had come out ahead. What came through then, and what was to sustain me through those first empty hours and in the years ahead was the most important and compelling of all her confusing messages and the edge she had given me: “Look death in the eye and don’t blink. It’s always darkest before dawn.” Mountain Springs can be purchased at the Downieville Historical Museum, Sierra Country Store in Sierra City, Bassett’s Station, Graeagle Store, or directly by emailing lcrosen@yahoo.com.
Mabel and Calvin Cartwright, c. 1976