Impatient With Desire Read online

  George took him aside.

  “Mr. Donner, I don’t want to go out there,” Walter Herron said.

  “For a man alone, it’s a death sentence,” George said. “Two men have a chance.” And after a moment, “You’re his teamster, Walter.” And another moment, “There’s nobody else.”

  James Reed and Walter Herron, sharing one horse, rode west.

  Jan 11th 1847

  The swelling and inflammation has spread above George’s wrist. He’s in evident pain, but never mentions it. I cleanse the wound daily with warm compresses, which seem to comfort him.

  I forgot to write down about Elitha’s smoking the other day. When I had finished bathing George’s wound, I fixed a pipe for him, tamped down the tobacco, lit it, drew deeply, and handed it to him.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.

  “I used to do it for my father,” I said. “I love the smell of pipe tobacco.”

  “Your mother never fails to amaze me,” George said to the children. He smoked his pipe and watched me write a new name.

  DEATHS IN THE MOUNTAINS

  Baylis Williams 25, d. Dec 15th 1846 at the lake camp. From Springfield, the Reeds’ handyman, brother of Lizzie Williams.

  Jacob Donner, 58, d. Dec 16th 1846 at Alder Creek. Born in North Carolina, recently of Springfield, Illinois, beloved husband, father, brother.

  Samuel Shoemaker, 25, d. Dec 17th 1846 at Alder Creek. Donner teamster from Springfield. Calf-lifting champion.

  James Smith, 25, d. Dec 20th 1846 at Alder Creek. Reed teamster from Springfield.

  Joseph Reinhardt, 30?, d. Dec 20th 1846 at Alder Creek. From Germany, partner with Augustus Spitzer?

  Charles Burger, 30?, d. Dec 29th 1846 at the lake camp. Donner teamster.

  “Dutch Charley,” George said. “He was a good teamster. He respected the animals and they responded in kind.”

  I nodded, closed the Bible, and spread out the calendar. “Your turn to mark the date today, Elitha.”

  Elitha lay listlessly on the platform. She has stopped reading. “Elitha,” I repeated.

  “Someone else can have it,” she said.

  “No, it’s your turn. I don’t want to get it all mixed up.” I waited until she finally came to the table, then I said, “George, give Elitha a little puff.”

  George looked at me in surprise. When I nodded, he said, “Knock me over with a feather.” He handed the pipe to Elitha, who was also surprised and perked up almost instantly. “Now don’t draw too deeply, Elitha,” George said, “or it’ll make you cough.”

  All her sisters watched Elitha closely as she drew too deeply and coughed. The second time she drew more shallowly without coughing and looked pleased with herself.

  “Now can I have a puff?” Leanna said.

  “You’re too young,” I said. “That’s enough, Elitha. Give the pipe back to your father and mark the day.”

  After Elitha had marked the big red X on January 8, I pointed back to January 4 and said, “Jean Baptiste said that Margret and Virginia Reed, Milt Elliott, and their cook, Lizzie, set out here to cross the mountains on foot.”

  I’ve thought of them constantly in the last seven days, Godspeed, Milt and Margret. They may already have reached the valley.

  That night on our platform, George asked, “Why did you let Elitha smoke?”

  “She’s barely able to stomach the hides,” I said. “She tries, but they make her nauseated. Tobacco takes the edge off the appetite.”

  He lay there thinking, then asked, “Is that why you started smoking?”

  I pretended to be asleep. He moved close to me and spooned his body about mine. His legs are so long that the first time he did that, shortly after we were married, I said, “You’re more than a spoon. You’re a whole cutlery set.” He thought that was the funniest thing imaginable. Now he whispered in my ear, “More than a spoon.” Even though I was supposed to be asleep, I moved into the curve of his body.

  Jan 12th 1847

  I was too upset to write last night.

  We heard a noise outside, and it was Milt and the Reeds’ cook, Lizzie. It was a terrible disappointment to see them. I could barely hide it as I led them to the fire and fixed them a cup of hot water.

  “Lizzie gave out the first day and went back,” Milt said.

  “Oh, Mrs. Donner, it was terrible,” Lizzie said. “The wild beasts howled…” She started howling herself.

  “On the fifth day Virginia’s feet froze and we turned back,” Milt said. “When I couldn’t carry Virginia anymore, Mrs. Reed and I dragged her. Then she crawled. Thank God we came back. The storm that night would have killed us. The Breens took in Mrs. Reed and the children.” He looked from George to me, then back to George, and said, “I’m sorry, Uncle George.”

  Milt is 28 and very strong, but George says that even as a boy he was all limbs, and he has never outgrown that touching gangliness. His hands were red and mottled on the cup of hot water, and I stopped thinking of my own disappointment and started thinking of his.

  “Please don’t make me eat hides, Mrs. Donner,” Lizzie said. “Mrs. Reed told me to live or die on them. I can’t stomach hides, I can’t…” She started wailing again.

  I looked at her, Betsey, and all I could see was a fleshy version of her standing outside the Reed family wagon, pouring a cascade of luscious wild blackberries onto huge, steaming golden biscuits, ladling mounds of fresh cream on top…

  “Please, Mrs. Donner,” she begged. “Just give me a bit of meat.”

  “If we had meat, we would be eating it, Lizzie,” I said. “I wish to God we had more hides.”

  She slept on a hide by the fire and fretted all night long.

  This morning, I was braiding Eliza’s hair and keeping my eye on Lizzie, perched uneasily on a stool, wringing her hands.

  Elitha, who never misses her daily tobacco puffs, was telling a Bible story to Frances and Georgia. “And when Daniel was taken out of the den of lions, not one mark was found on him…”

  On his platform, George, wrapped in blankets, talked intently to Milt. I heard him say, “Jean Baptiste and I figure we can relay the children…”

  Leanna, who considers Elitha’s smoking disgusting, unless she can have a puff too, was shaking out bedding. Through a gap in her blanket, I saw Mrs. Wolfinger lying perfectly still on her rack, her little, gulping sobs constant as ever.

  “Not one mark at all, because Daniel had trusted in his God. Then the king rounded up all the wicked people”—suddenly Elitha burst out—“who had done this to Daniel like Lansford Hastings and cast them into the lions’ den, and they did not even reach the bottom before the lions fell upon them and crushed all their bones to pieces—”

  “The important part, Elitha,” I said, “is that Daniel lay down with the lions and rose up unharmed. And he did that with the help of God. Just as we are.”

  Suddenly Lizzie cried, “God has cursed us for leaving that old man on the trail. We’re all gonna die. We’re cursed, cur—”

  I flew across the room, seeing the children’s scared, shocked faces before I grabbed Lizzie, her cries cutting off abruptly, her face stunned as I propelled her to the stairs and turned to Milt. “Milt, you and Jean Baptiste take Lizzie back to the lake camp now.”

  After they left, I finished Eliza’s hair, Elitha finished her story, and Frances, Georgia, and Eliza went to their platform to play their card game. An hour later, Frances shuffled the cards, dealt them out, looked over at me, and asked, “Is that true what Lizzie said, Mother?” Her tone was matter-of-fact, so accepting it pierced my heart.

  “No, Frances,” I said. “God doesn’t curse people. People do that to themselves.”

  Hardcoop Left Behind

  The nearly impenetrable Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert behind us, John Snyder dead, James Reed banished, he and Walter Herron specks on the horizon, and then the specks too gone, we waited in dismay and agitation for the rest of the company to catch up with us. Ge
orge, very much the Captain then, looked sternly around the campfire at the tense, defensive faces. “Reed said it was self-defense—”

  “It was, Uncle George—” Milt began.

  “It was murder,” Graves said, “and we were lenient.”

  “Snyder attacked him—” George began.

  “You weren’t there, Donner.”

  I searched the crowd again, interrupting the chorus of arguments. “Where’s Hardcoop?”

  The faces turned guilty, eyes averted, except for William Eddy, who said, “Ask Keseberg. Or Breen or Graves.”

  When no one volunteered more, I looked questioningly at Margret Reed.

  “Everyone had to walk to spare the oxen,” Margret said. “James was gone. We abandoned our last wagon. Everything. Even Mother’s rocking chair that Father made. She nursed all my brothers and me in it, I nursed all my children—” Margret started crying.

  “Margret, gather yourself and tell us where Hardcoop is.”

  But she kept crying and looking at the ground.

  Finally Lewis Keseberg said, “He couldn’t keep up.”

  And this is the story they told us in blurts, sobs, defiance, and defense. We could easily picture it.

  A rocking chair sits in the sun. Margret Reed and her children cry as they walk away from their big family wagon that Sarah Keyes died in.

  Ahead in the line, Keseberg finds the old Belgian Hardcoop hiding inside his wagon and angrily pulls him out.

  “I won’t be able to keep up,” Hardcoop says.

  “Everyone must walk,” Keseberg says.

  Hardcoop, crying, goes to William Eddy, who’s helping with Graves’s third wagon. “Please let me ride,” he says.

  “Wait’ll we get over this sandy stretch,” Eddy says, “and I’ll see what I can do.”

  The sand sifts around the wheel rims. The men grasp the rear wheel spokes and try to wrestle the wagon forward. It doesn’t budge. Sweaty silt pours into their red, burning eyes, as they heave again.

  Again.

  And again, until it finally moves.

  Then they start on the next wagon.

  At the campfire that night, Eddy suddenly jumps up and says, “Where’s Hardcoop?”

  Antonio, the Mexican herder, says, “He was sitting in the road when I came by with the cattle.”

  Eddy and Milt Elliott, who share the night watch, build a large fire on the side of a hill, stoke it all night long, hoping that somewhere in the darkness Hardcoop will see it and take direction and heart.

  At dawn, Eddy goes to Lewis Keseberg. “Hardcoop never came in. I’ll go with you to get him.”

  “Go back?” Keseberg says. “Are you crazy?”

  Eddy goes to Graves. “Lend me your horse to get Hardcoop.”

  Graves shakes his head no.

  Breen stands nearby with no already on his face. “Use your wits, Eddy,” Breen says. “We can’t risk our horses to lug in a dead man.”

  The wagons roll on.

  George managed to speak first. “Why didn’t any of you help Eddy?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said.

  Margret Reed and Philippine Keseberg wept. Most looked furtive and ashamed. Only Mr. Keseberg looked steadily at me.

  Inside our wagon, I opened the Bible the missionary gave us in Independence “for the heathens.”

  DEATHS ON THE TRAIL

  Underneath

  Sarah Keyes, 70, d. May 26th 1846 at Alcove Springs, Kansas. Margret Reed’s mother. Peacefully of old age, her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren around her.

  Luke Halloran, 25, d. Aug 25th 1846 on the south side of Salt Lake, of tuberculosis, traveling in our wagon from Little Sandy, the “Parting of the Ways.”

  John Snyder, 25, d. Oct. 5th 1846 in Nevada territory. Franklin Graves’s teamster, “Driver par Excellence,” accidentally killed by James Reed.

  I wrote,

  Hardcoop, 60?, d. Oct

  I stopped writing and looked up. “I don’t even know what date to put. How long did it take him to die?” When George didn’t answer, I said, “We don’t know these people at all. Even Margret Reed is not herself. George! We’re starting a new country and already it’s tainted.”

  George shook his head, as if still in disbelief. “We weren’t there, Tamsen. None of us knows what we’ll do until we’re tested.”

  “I know I wouldn’t leave somebody to die alone if I could help it!”

  We went to bed in silence. No matter how tightly I closed my eyes, all I could see was the same debased image: an old man crawling toward disappearing wagons.

  Hardcoop, 60?, d. Oct 7–8th? 1846 in the desert. Originally from Belgium, one daughter there, name unknown. Abandoned.

  What I Know About Hardcoop

  Perhaps the daughter someplace in Belgium will go to her grave wondering what happened to her father, or she may have stopped thinking about him long ago. Even if I knew her address, I could not tell her much.

  He joined us in Independence, Missouri. I never heard his given name and never thought to ask. He was always called Hardcoop, never Mr. Hardcoop. From the beginning, everyone thought of him as an old man. Frances, Georgia, and Eliza called him Grandpa, as they have been taught to call aged people.

  He was from Belgium, having one last adventure before going back home to live with his daughter. (Had he told her this plan? Did she prepare? Does she wait?)

  He had been in the US for many years, had worked as a cooper—on the Trail he repaired our wooden water cask better than new. I thought later that maybe Hardcoop was only a nickname and not his real name at all.

  He spoke English with a heavy accent; he and Mr. Keseberg conversed in German, Hardcoop told me the day he fixed our cask. “We don’t converse much,” he said drily. Then, though he was hardly taller than I, Hardcoop stood like a Prussian soldier, making me laugh as he imitated Mr. Keseberg: “I know German, French, and English, and I will soon know Spanish. I do not nor will I ever speak Flemish, which is a ridiculous language, and it hurts my ears the way you massacre English. We shall speak in German if we need to speak.”

  Even I thought of Hardcoop as an old man, though he and George were nearly the same age.

  He weakened fast in the Wasatch. One day when the men were wrestling with a huge boulder, he nearly pitched over. “Bumbler!” snarled a teamster a third his age. Ashamed, Hardcoop approached me. “I need to rest a little,” he said. “I can watch the children.”

  “Can you sit with Mr. Halloran?” I asked. “He’s not well.”

  For two days, Hardcoop sat with Luke and cared for the young man as tenderly as ever I could. He said he had twin grandsons Luke’s age that he hadn’t seen since they were little boys. “I will be glad to see them,” he said. “I hope they’ll be glad to see me—”

  “Hardcoop! Get out here!” angry voices called from outside our wagon. “You too, Halloran.”

  I wrenched the curtain back. “Go away,” I said to the fuming men.

  “We’ve made six miles in five days! Get out here now, shirkers, or we’ll drag you out!”

  Luke Halloran, deathly pale, and Hardcoop, red with shame, climbed down.

  Lewis Keseberg stared steadily back at me, unashamed.

  William Eddy said that since Hardcoop had paid Keseberg to ride with him, Keseberg had a particular responsibility. Well, didn’t he? The others too! Hardcoop was a member of the Party!

  The Party.

  “We shouldn’t have gone ahead,” George said again last night. “I’m the Captain. I should have been with the company.”

  “Were we still a company?” I asked. He didn’t answer.

  I’ve lived years on farms, and know incontestably that the strong survive, the weak die off. That is the way of nature, but I used to argue that we can improve on nature, or at least not be as brutal as nature. I don’t have the luxury of theoretical debates anymore, nor am I as sentimental as I once was. Although I want to believe I would have gone back for Hardcoop, I realize now that M
r. Keseberg knew his first imperative was to save himself and his family before a sickly paying passenger, and he was the only one of us to baldly admit it.

  My dearest only sister,

  Jean Baptiste came into camp empty-handed and discouraged again, and it took me some time to buck him up. He just left, everyone else is finally asleep, and again I can think what I want and write what I please. I ran out of writing paper some time ago and began writing you here in my journal. I think I am always talking to you anyway. It helps me sort out the muddle in my head. What would Betsey Poor do, I ask myself, and see you standing there in your snug clapboard in Newburyport, calm, unshaken, in the midst of your hectic family life. You were as much a mother to me as a sister after our dearest mother in the world departed from us, and your wise counsel guided me again after our dear stepmother died. I often speak of Aunty Poor to my daughters, and they know you and my niece and nephews as if they had seen you many times. “Ask Aunty Poor if little Will’s ear is better,” one or the other will say or “Tell Aunty Poor to bring her Elizabeth here to play with me.” It is my dearest hope that they and I will see you, Mr. Poor, and your dear babes in person this side of the vale.

  Will you ever read the pile of letters I have already written you or this journal? Will you ever know how I long for you to be here with me?

  Were you here, dear sister, hopes would be doubled, burdens halved.

  My beloved husband grows weaker each day. We do not speak of it, nor have we ever spoken about the accident on my 45th birthday, when our wagon tipped over.