I imagine Keseberg with the snow howling around the corners of the cabin, wondering if it was still April or if the winter had pushed into May. The year, 1847, was receding into the past and taking Keseberg with it, recording him as a monster, a man who stayed behind to outlive the others and take their money when they could no longer hold it. He was the only survivor at Donner Lake, perhaps the only one of the Donner party left, but he had received no news from the camp at Alder Creek, which was seven miles away.
Mrs. Murphy had recently died. The pot was boiling and Mrs. Murphy’s naked body was sitting in the chair. The wind set the door to a beating rattle. The snow hissed outside, sifted through the cabin planks, and collected in powdery drifts in the corners. Snow settled on the cold withered legs of Mrs. Murphy, dusted her hair, filled the crevices of her mutilated body. She was missing an arm. Her eyes stared out just to the left of the door and Keseberg thought maybe he should adjust the chair so she would be looking more at it, less at nothing.
Keseberg stirred the pot. Maybe he was wondering about Alder Creek when he heard the moaning outside, as if the crazy Irish had brought with them their banshee. Because a crazy Irishman would need something like a banshee screaming to tell him death was near, when all a German needed was to look at the amount of food divided by the amount of people divided by the amount of days, et cetera, et cetera.
But now there was a pounding on the door and Keseberg realized, with some bewilderment, that he had a visitor. Tamzene Donner entered the cabin. She was soaked to the bone. Sometimes the snow gave beneath you and you found yourself deep in water. Is that what had happened? Maybe she had fallen in the lake.
“Mrs. Donner,” said Keseberg.
“He is dead,” she replied. “He is dead and he told me to go get the children and make sure they have enough to eat. He told me to do that.” Tamzene Donner sat at the table across from Mrs. Murphy. Her skin was blue and her skirt frozen in swirls, like the drapery in Renaissance paintings. She blinked scattering snow from her eyelashes onto her cheekbones. Keseberg gave her a cup of hot water. “He told me to give them the silver,” she said.
“What silver?” asked Keseberg.
“For the children,” whispered Tamzene, lowering her voice, “for them in California.”
Keseberg wondered if George Donner had died. He was moved with pity. It passed quickly, which saddened him.
“A bear came into the cabin. It sat at the foot of George’s bed,” said Tamzene. “The bear said I should eat it. Then it took George’s ax and split its head open. I ate the brain.”
“A bear?” said Keseberg. He looked at Tamzene’s hands and noted the blood on the cuffs of her dress, blood that even this endless wash of snow and her near drowning had not removed.
“I came to get you so that you can bring the silver to the children.” Tamzene told Keseberg where it was buried and Keseberg promised to collect it for the children. The relief parties sent out were made of mercenaries. They thought more of carrying a bolt of calico back through the Sierras than a lame child. These men, these heroes, took fifty percent of all the valuables they found. But this silver Tamzene spoke of was buried back at Alder Creek, and Keseberg was lame. His foot had not healed; he had stepped on a shard of wood at Goose Lake, back when the sky was full of birds and all one had to do was poke a hole in the heavens with a shotgun to have the food raining all around. Although the spike of wood had finally worked its way through—Keseberg found it poking from the top of his foot—he was still lame. If he could walk, he would have crossed the mountains long ago.
“I will do what I can,” said Keseberg.
“I saw the masts,” she said, “bobbing from the ships. I saw the ships again.”
“I think you saw the tops of the trees moving in the wind.”
“No,” she said. “These were the ships of Newburyport filled with rum and sugar and pineapples. They were rising high, high above me. They were…” Tamzene Donner looked deeply at Keseberg, then grew quiet. Later she screamed. Later she confessed that she had eaten her husband and when she was finally still, there was such a silence about the cabin that—despite all that Keseberg had endured—he felt the ache of loneliness.
Keseberg makes it to California, tries his hand at a few things—including a short stint as a brewer—but most often fails. In 1877 Keseberg’s wife, Philippine, dies at the age of fifty-three, thirty years after she set out with the Donners. At that time, only four children, all daughters, of Keseberg’s eleven children still lived. Two had married and moved away. The other two were idiots and their incessant howling made it necessary for Keseberg to live far away from his neighbors. And that’s the last we hear of him: Keseberg living with Bertha, who cannot speak and “would leave her hand to roast on the fire if he did not pluck it out” and Augusta, who only stops howling to stuff her mouth, and weighs well over two hundred pounds.
In that first onslaught of winter in Maine, I thought of Keseberg, and Bad Billy, and all the toothy things leaving their prints upon the snow, their gnawing hunger and snuffling, their breathing silenced by the fierce wind flung from tree to tree—the high hiss of spruce, the low groan of oak, the final crack of a dry birch laid to rest. Keseberg was a survivor. He made it out of the mountains, out of the horrible of winter of 1847. But he never escaped his fame as the Cannibal Keseberg. I wondered why Keseberg was made out to be such a villain. He suffered as much as everyone else, maybe more. Lewis junior, only an infant, had been one of the first of the Donner Party to die. Philippine escaped the hell of Donner Lake in an early relief party, which took her and Keseberg’s three-year-old daughter, Ada, with her. And Ada was still in the snow when Keseberg made his crossing weeks after. He saw the little girl’s dress poking through the snow. Her face was probably well-preserved, having been packed in ice.
So why hate him? He does nothing but survive. Isn’t this just another great American tale?
22
I awoke to the gentle boom of snow sliding off the roof. The wind picked up splattering raindrops against the window. Arthur and I were asleep on the couch. I was in my underwear and he wasn’t wearing anything at all, huddled up against me under a tiny stadium blanket. The morning was done with. I figured it had to be close to two P.M. The dog came over, curious, needing to go out. I’d forgotten about the dog. I’d forgotten most everything, it seemed, except for a few flashing images of Johnny, stark naked, spinning on the back deck. I remembered his hair whipping around, his eyelashes crusted over with snow. He said he wasn’t cold. He was alive.
My jeans were lying by the couch. I couldn’t find my shirt, so I put on Arthur’s and tucked the blanket around him.
Kevin gave me a desperate, high-pitched whine.
“All right. I’m hurrying.”
I pulled on my duck boots, which, without socks, were clammy and far too big. I put on Arthur’s Army surplus coat, which I supposed had been intended for some polar defense. Who defended the poles? In the second world war, there were a few Japanese soldiers stranded in Alaska, bravely occupying American territory. No one bothered to get rid of them. I’m not sure how they even knew they were there. I imagined the Japanese recruiting officer. “All right boys. Everyone for taking Alaska, over here. Everyone for Hawaii, over here.” The coat smelled like a wet dog, which I realized was the collar that was made out of dog or some close canine relative. There were cigarettes in the left pocket, and a lighter in the right. I headed out.