I want to end by reading the final section
from their story called "After This Life, with a Lesson."
They had, at one time, reached a size of 87 in their party.
43 survived.
44 died.
Some were brought out by relief parties.
Others died of starvation or exposure in the snow.
The rule of the relief parties was
that anyone small enough to be carried
or strong enough to walk on his own could come out.
Donner, delirious with gangrene infecting his body,
was too weak to walk and too large to carry,
though he was still alive when the third relief party was
leaving, the last relief party.
Tamsen was strong enough to leave.
She was in remarkably good health--
his wife.
Their children, by means of the cannibalism they had endured,
were alive.
And they had to decide whether she should take them with her
and abandon her husband or whether she should
stay with him and give her children
to the care of her sister-in-law, who
was a member of the party and was going out
with the relief party.
There are two men mentioned here named Cady and Stone.
They are the names of two people in the relief party
who are there to take the children.
They argue what is to be done.
And Donner says, I told Tamsen you must go when the girls do
and have no fear for my peace of mind.
You can see how it's going to be.
If you stay here, we'll both freeze
or else starve in a few days.
And what kind of devotion does that
show to lose your life because you're my wife?
We both know a man marries a woman to bring to bed
and to be happy in the house of his heart,
where they live like an unquiet candle that will rise and fall
whichever way the wind draws the licking flame.
So it must consume itself night after night
until it dies, and darkness fills the room.
Though there are no laws to tell us
in what manner a mule marries or our horses or sheep,
are we so different from the dumb animals
that we must lie down side by side to die in the same place?
Is life so cheap in the face of a fierce necessity.
If it means no more to you or me than this loyalty,
what good is marriage?
It's a blessing and a true bargain,
but it's absurd to keep me company so we can die together
in our sleep.
I have worse worries that need my attention,
she said, and sent the men to the wagon
to collect the wool clothes still in storage
among the remaining supplies.
She would stay, regardless.
So we turned to other matters, though we exchanged glances
as we dressed our daughters-- slender Eliza and Georgia
and the infant Frances.
All their winter clothes but their boots
were a size too large or more.
Three huge hoods hid their eyes.
Their woolen mufflers wound twice around their throats
and swung below their knees.
The sleeves hung down so far that their hands didn't show.
Even when they were about to go and were led out onto the snow,
the girls still looked as if they were
clowning in their stiff coats.
Tamsen told how the men would leave them
with people we could trust to treat them tenderly and see
that they were well-fed when it was possible.
Finally, she said, for the sake of your father and mother,
wherever you live, whether you're with Elizabeth or anyone
else, be kind to one another, and always remember
to tell people that your name is Donner.
We kissed them goodbye.
Cady and Stone caught up the girls in their arms
and went on their way.
When they were gone, my wife walked out upon the snow.
I could see her breath for a minute more
beneath the branches before she turned away.
Then the back of her cloth coat was
all I could see while she stood by the creek and cried.
A curtain of quiet snow drifted down behind her,
heavy enough to hide her footprints in the frozen pack,
as though this weather was a soft reproach falling
all winter in the sifting trees while the ground grew
indifferent to our touch.
She left the creek and hurried home to the mouth of the hut
and swept inside and sat on her bed of old branches
to stay until the hour of our death.
It wasn't my idea.
I told her to go.
We began to argue.
How do you know it's too late?
You might make it if you try.
She never moved a muscle.
You can't say no to Tamsen or tell her what to do.
She won't hear you talking whenever she doesn't want to.
So we sit and wait.
And with warmer weather, the snow
thaws until a green patch of the meadow
may be seen close to the creek.
Even in the hut, we can hear the persistent plink
as the water drips on the floor in a muddy pool.
We stay put or sit up and watch the birds perform
outside our door.
And while we do, we're never alone.
Every day after dawn, the gray coyotes crawl
on their bellies underneath the bushes and
walk out and squat a hundred feet
from our hut, ears in the air and their eyes down as they
sniff at the patches of hair, rolling the pine cones
with their paws while they browse beneath the trees
and trickle urine on the blond bones.
With a full beard flowing over the snowy breast of his silk
shirt, a man looking more like a ghost
goes by us on his way to see the dead carcasses, which
he collects in the shelter of the low shrubs.
Keseberg hobbles past the huts.
His white hat almost hides his face.
As he reaches the mound and crouches over the corpses,
turning them this way and that with one end of his staff--
a walking stick cut like a crutch, a long piece of pine
which he can cramp under his arm--
he plants it in the moist mulch to one side
when he bends over the bodies and deliberately extends
his stiff leg inches off the ground.
He puts his water bucket nearby.
He picks a skull from the pile beneath his knee
and plucks the brains and tucks them carefully in his lap
while he breaks a breast apart and hunts
with one hand for the heart.
He takes up his stick when he wishes to go.
He carries the meat in the crook of his sleeve,
and we watch him retreat toward the trees that
had protected my brother's place, walking with a halting
hitch in his hip, lifting his large leg
like a deadweight which he has had to drag with him
wherever he went.
The fire glows outside the tent.
When his dinner is done, he tips his bucket over the coals,
and we watch as he moves down the meadow toward the woods
and disappears before dusk has come quietly up to the door.
This silence is soon broken.
The last days are like the first mild morning,
which arrives in April, when almost any noise is a surprise.
Squirrels race around the roof, scratching
the patchwork boughs.
They tumble down the dark walls and leave us
and leap onto the trees where the birds shriek and sing.
Then one morning, we hear the alders rustle
in the incessant rain.
Later, the sun slips over the meadow, and the blue jays
dive in long dips, flashing from shadow
to shadow while an enormous chorus fills the air.
After this life, we will listen, lying
in the loose grains of dirt with our eyes sealed
shut against the roots that reach for them.
We will hear our breath begin again, the engine of the brain
begin humming in the mulch.
And we will climb with our nails and teeth,
biting through the damp Earth, clawing away the soil, hand
and mouth tearing out of our wet tombs
forever to find it is spring.
The grass is wet and waving toward the trees.
Their bark is yellow or brown, and the leaves
are black on the underside that is so gentle,
we are afraid to touch it.
Come into a meadow where the crystal snow crust shrinks
under the shade of the rocks.
After this life, we will listen to the judgments of bears
and the deer awaking, the birds over the treetops crossing
and calling in the long leaves.
The red eyes of berries surprise us.
And the deer and the fox who know that we are there
on the brink of the meadow, they can
smell our fear floating into the grass like a shallow river
establishing its edges.
They find us and follow the cool water from the mountains.
Their eyes bring the blue light of evening
onto the valley, the prairie almost lost,
drowning in darkness, the sparks of stars
already spinning downstream, traveling in the tall weeds.
After this life, we will listen to the long river running
through the soil saying it is spring.
The sun has begun to burn the brown needles
nesting on the ground around our graves.
The jays perch in the pines and cry.
And wherever we may sleep among the dead,
we will rise together under the trees like men who are set free
from the folly of a dream into the fragrant morning
to hear the heavy stream of our blood begin to sing,
our souls awake and warm once more
and weaving like a fire when the light begins to dance
in the land of our desire.
[APPLAUSE]