Across the Plains in the Donner Party: A Song Cycle based on Virginia Reed's Memoir

Ho for California!

Fanfare in Unapologetic CMaj7

Ho! California bound!

Say goodbye to your town

Donners and the Reeds, through thick and thin

Lonely Grandma Keyes without her gin

Wagons rock and rolling cross the Plains

Ho! California bound!

Soon to cross holy ground

Dry up all your tears, we’ve said goodbye

There’s plenty on the road to make you cry

Don’t look back, we’ve left it all behind

Wagons ho! the Promised Land

Where ocean waves crash upon sand

I hear thunder rattling my dreams

Soon I’ll baptise in your golden streams

Wagons rock and rolling ‘cross the Plains

California, here we come!

It’s all you, Lord, Thy will be done

Fare thee well, my friends, may we meet again

Time will tell where or when

Hold us in your hearts, this wagon train

I’s only 12 but I remember it well

I’s only 12 but I remember it well

Misfortune etched in my mind

Of perils and hardships a tale I could tell

Of scoundrels and men who were kind

The morning we left Missouri, our life

A cold wind blew from the west

We loaded our wagons, trusting the Lord

In his infinite mercy we’d rest

Our wagons were drawn by oxen and steer

With provisions for six months a-journey

Little did we know, our fate was foretold

And our sufferings would triple their earnings

My mother was weak, declining in health

My good father he was a builder

In the darkest of hours my mother grew brave

And fought off what wanted to kill her

The stories we heard from old Grandma Keys

Of Indians, their dreadful crimes

I listened enraptured, my back to the wall

And feared encountering their kind

But Caws River, Kansas, they ferried us ‘cross

I prayed they wouldn’t sink us midstream

Watching them close, scarcely drawing a breath

But some things are not what they seem

By late end of May our dear Grandma Keys

Gave out what life she was saving

A coffin was hewn from a cottonwood tree

John Denton, he done the engraving

Platte River valley shone emerald green

Wildflowers I gathered by hand

The waters ran clear, shallow and wide

Our wagons rolled ‘cross the land

Mr Hastings claimed a new route was found

Running round the southern Salt Lake

His cut off would shave near 300 miles

So the cut off we voted to take

We later found out Bridges and Vasquez

Who shouted their praise for the route

Were employed by Hastings, a fact undisclosed

And left us troubled with doubt

Icy wind blew again from the west

We flinched at the slap to our faces

I turned to look back at the trail we’d carved

But the Lord’s hand covered our traces

We gotta move on, away from the life

We’ll cherish in memory at last

The sun’s run off, darkness has come

And loneliness is coming on fast

Billy

When I was child, a mere seven years old

I was gifted a treasure so kind

A pony named Billy, a beauty he was

Far across the plains we’d ride

We encountered the Sioux near Fort Laramie

They’s enchanted by Ma’s looking-glass

Desired my pony and bargaining hard

Buffalo robes and ropes of grass

Beaded moccasins laid at my feet

Made signs they wanted a trade

Father just smiled and shook his no

My Billy was a promise he made

We ranged and explored, Billy and me

A new world spread o’er the plains

Wildflowers I gathered and gave to my Ma

A pretty way to help ease her pain

But then came a day with no pony to ride

The poor fellow’s heart must have failed

Endless travel he couldn’t endure

We left him alongside the trail

I cried for hours, till I was ill

My sad heart broken and sore

I watch my Billy grow so small

And then I could see him no more

Please Mr Hastings

Please Mr Hastings will you show us the way?

Going to California there can be no delay

We don’t mean the Tao Te Ching

And this ain’t a Frampton song

Would you please Mr Hastings if you please

Get us ‘cross the Plains before the freeze

We heard about the Cut Off yesterday

With August round the bend we couldn’t wait

Hastings’ men wore southern smiles

Said we’d shave three hundred miles

Get on the trail now and don’t be late…

O Momma this don’t feel right…

Coyotes used to cry in the twilight

Haven’t heard a thing last two nights

Donners, Reeds, Murphys heading west

McClutchen, CT Stanton, and the rest

Forty miles and we’d be through

Desert dry, Salt Lake blue

Heartily believing we were blessed

Chorus

It seemed the hand death was on the land

Forty turned to eighty through the sands

Not a living thing was seen

Thirsty horses getting mean

We hadn’t figured dying in the plan

O Momma this don’t feel right…

Coyotes used to cry in the twilight

Haven’t heard a thing last four nights

Please Mr Hastings what the hell did you say?

Ain’t no cut-off we can see but suffering and delay

We don’t even pray no more

Our foolishness is plain

Mr Hastings when you’ve got the time

Shove this cut-off where the sun don’t shine

Twenty Wells, Utah

Beyond Twenty Wells, when the third night fell

Could we survive? No one could tell

Barren wasteland, piercing cold...

Oxen tumbling, crazed by thirst

Unhitch the wagons, spared the worst

We laid our heads upon the desert floor

Suddenly in the scream of night

Fatigue was banished, turned to fright

Young steer charged unforgiving

Father’s gun drawn, holding a child

The beast turned east, red eyes wild

Darkness hides a curse inside a prayer

Cold day broke, a five dog night

Losing fast the will to fight

Father forged ahead for water

Abandoned the wagons, hard to bear

Our cattle gone we knew not where

Mother wrapped her shoulders in a shawl.

Eight hundred miles from California...

Divided our provisions, what little we had

What we didn’t need, or couldn’t carry

We buried in the earth for another day

Onward we rolled, time rolling away

Hope we fluttered like a thread in the wind

Humboldt Sink

I’m gonna tell you just one more time

Hell is closer than you think

See the river just disappear

My friends, that’s the Humboldt Sink

South around the Rubys, worn down to the core

Papa done killed a man back at Gravelly Ford

Exiled to the wilderness to even the score

Sixty-eight days of  heartache and pain

We followed the river west

So much lost with every mile gained

No time, there’s no time to rest

You think the Devil’s done with you?

Dip your tin, take a drink

The bitter river flows soundlessly

And dies at the Humboldt Sink

The Paiutes spoke some English, what little they knew

Joined us all for the night, and shared some stew

Morning comes the oxen gone, and Grave’s shirt too

Now we remember old Grandma Keys

And the words she held so true

Desolation blowing on the breeze

A desert forty miles to get through

Snow melt in the spring forms a lake

Sparkling so pretty makes you blink

But when you wait September’s end

All you get is the Humboldt Sink

October 1846 (instrumental)

At the end of the Great Basin itself, and its 40-mile desert, the

Donner Reed party reaches the Truckee River. Clean rushing

water. Grasses for the oxen. The first trees they’d seen in weeks:

“red and gold leafed aspens and cottonwoods waving from its banks.”

Come the Night, the Dreaded Snow

Come the night, the dreaded snow

Whirling flakes, their icy glow

Three miles from summit, we turned back

An Indian stood under the trees

Seemed to know that we would freeze

Wrapped himself in blankets, watched all night

The cattle killed, preserved in snow

How long we’d eat, we didn’t know

Snow was falling, falling without end

A rescue party, Forlorn Hope

Fifteen brave climbed the slope

Set off to California to save the rest

Of those brave and strong of heart

Only seven made John Sutter’s Fort

Horrors endured no pen will ever tell

Winter fierce and Christmas near

For the starving no comfort here

Mother then revived our failing souls

A few dried apples, some tripe so lean

A piece of bacon, scattered beans

A feast she saved for her own

We watched the cooking carefully

Mother said “Children, eat slowly

For this one day you can have all you wish.”

Every Christmas I go back to Donner Lake...

Never Take No Cutoffs

Oh, Mary

I’ve not wrote you half of the trouble we've had

But I have wrote you enough to let you know what trouble is.

But thank God

We are the only family that did not eat human flesh.

We have left everything, but I don't care for that.

We have got through with our lives.

Don't let this letter dishearten anybody.

Remember, remember...

Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.

That Was All So Long Ago

That was all so long ago, but spring arrived at last

Under the snow at Donner Lake, hard times now have passed

But Sacramento valley, as broad as all world

Would be our home, our cherished land, our flag at last unfurled

Napa Valley afternoon in shade we stopped to rest

A lovely little knoll I found, I wandered by myself

Wildflowers I gazed upon, green valley full of trees

And in the branches high above, the birds would sing for me

The blessed sun a smile

A benediction pure

How could we have come this far

Without His guiding hand?

I felt so near to God that day, His breath upon my cheek

My kisses flew to heaven’s light, all in thanksgiving

I heard Papa calling me, “Daughter, where’ve you gone?

Come child, we’re ready now, sing for us a song.”

The friends we love, the friends we lost

Remembering us home.

Ophelia

Misery loves company,
Is a lie in the first degree
Accepting grace, you wear a face
So no one else can see

That'it’s long, long way down
Your feet never touch the ground
Laughter and scorn, a ragged coat worn
As you stagger your way out of town

Chorus
Ophelia, wear your garland like a queen
Ophelia, awaken from your dream
Ophelia, time for your big scene

Who’s that man in the photo there?
By the sea, the wind running through his hair:
Outside the frame, she’s calling his name
In his eyes there’s a longing so rare

But it’s a long, long way down
Your smile just looks a frown
It’s just no use calling a truce
Surrendering to a ghost town

Chorus

Bridge:
Does the day love the night?
He hides in shadows of twilight.
And when night’s dreaming is through
Her tears fill the morning dew

Sitting in the backyard feeling blue
Singing songs to help me through
Handful of notes, scattered like stars
Piety gives the Devil his due

It’s long, long way down
Your feet never touch the ground
Laughter and scorn, a ragged coat worn
As you stagger alone out of town

Ophelia, yeah honey you're a queen
Ophelia, this is our big scene
Ophelia, you look fine in jeans...

The Grapefruit in the Apartment

She pitied me, as only friends can. Or perhaps she needed me after all. Maria worked as a technical writer (she may have moved beyond that position) in San Francisco’s financial district and rented an apartment in Lower Russian Hill, back when that remained thinkable, and we had been friends since meeting in a Hemingway and Fitzgerald literature undergraduate seminar in at Sacramento State. I was renting a living space off a kitchen in Berkeley, but commuting by walking to BART, training to MUNI, finally arriving to the misty outer borough of San Francisco State for graduate school classes, and the return slog, became a pricey, time-consuming, and dreary affair. In May 1989, one week before Finals and three months after my father died, my girlfriend of three years suddenly and with little explanation cast this true love to the Emeryville mudflats and leave the body to the tides and foraging gulls. Maria’s fiancee had recently moved out, and with a few suitcases and a standing lamp carried away their engagement with him. As the summer months relieved me of academic readings and research, my soul, unburdened, opened to wrenching heartbreak and pathetic phone calls. One terribly bright sunny July 4th afternoon, while I blackly feared the long hours alone, Maria called with an invitation to a rooftop party at her Lower Russian Hill apartment, offering that other tenets had also gathered. Saved. And then she proposed: she needed a housemate.

Maria was a dark-haired woman, passionate, generous, with comic timing and a charitable devotion to both the madcap and ironic. Years before she’d been honored Miss Sacramento, an event reluctantly if rarely mentioned, and then only brushed away like dust falling on a table. This pageant crowning never dulled her edge of wit or the genuineness of warmth. I was delighted with the proposed change. Her upstairs studio apartment on Van Ness and Green divided itself by French doors into two areas, one with bookshelves, a single bed, and a piano, and lavished with morning light when the sun eased over the Hill; the other shadowed, smaller, room enough for a bed and dresser, sporting a narrow window looking with dull brownish hues out between apartments and down into an empty cement walkway, untrodden but littered with pottery shards of fallen plants. In this delicately given space we cooked and kept safe company, letting the healing come in shifts.

You don’t dress for the position you currently hold in the dark and cold shadowed towers of downtown San Francisco, but for the upper slot you desire: Maria’s rule. I’d wander down on a day off to have lunch with her, and we’d eat our cellophane wrapped sandwich sitting on cold gray stone, and while the workers passed she’d point out by their dress their position in the company: entry level secretary, junior executive, mailroom, assistant manager resentfully waiting for his inattentive boss to die, corporate lawyer, executive out of his league, green-eared graduate springy in his step... Once as a joke I’d dressed (as best I could) as a homeless man, soiled baseball cap, unshaven, gardening pants, she a spry investment bank lawyer, and we walked together down the dark and wind chilly streets, California, Pine, Sutter, beneath the foreboding towers of sterling Capitalism. We chatted amiably like old friends in a John Cheever story, beauty and her beast, amidst sidelong suspicious glares of passersby defensive and correct.

And old friends we remain.

Analysis last scene of Gail Godwin's "A Sorrowful Woman"

The last scene in Godwin’s sad and poignant “A Sorrowful Woman” shows the woman, in a final, maniacal burst of energy, accomplishing what society expects of a traditional wife/mother role, which ends up depleting her entirely, sacrificing of her selfhood. At this point in the story the woman rarely left her white-painted room; hastily written, short but loving notes from her husband and drawings from her boy slid under the door were her only connection to her estranged family. Hinting at recovery, Godwin has the woman, in a token of her reformed attempt to please them as wife and mother, bake a loaf of bread—symbol of the sharing family—but the “joyful notes” slid under the door seemed now to have their own power to push her further into the corner of the room, as though psychological invasions against which “she had hardly space to breathe.” Earlier and earlier she’d drunk the “sleeping draught”, symbolic of her husband’s well-intentioned attempt to quiet (and so repress?) her vaguely understood restlessness.

But the story moves from dark winter into spring, and while the husband and boy were gone during the day, the woman began retaking her role as wife and mother and homemaker to a fantastical degree. Indeed, now “the days were too short. She was always busy…. Worked till the sun set. No time for hair brushing.” In keeping with the dystopian inversion of the fairy tale, the husband and son return home to an outrageous scene smelling “redolently of renewal and spring.” They find “five loaves of warm bread, a roast stuffed turkey, a glazed ham, three pies of different filling….” There were also a “two-weeks’ supply of fresh laundered sheets and shirts and towels” as though the woman was preparing for an extended leave. The husband also found not just one but a “sheath of marvelous watercolor beasts accompanied by mad and fanciful stories nobody would ever make up again” and the final, tragic touch of a “tablet of love sonnets addressed to the man.” This exaggerated feat of stamina and energy serves as the tragic climax, where, giving in to the societal expectation for the woman to sacrifice everything for family, house, and home, the boy notes that “Mommy is sleeping…she’s tired from doing all our things again” as they’d burst into her room with overwhelming joy.

The woman had tried to be everything the idealized young babysitter represented, what social expectations of the time demanded. Unaware of the sacrifice his mother had made—and women in these traditional roles are expected to make—the child’s only thought is to ask whether “we can eat the turkey for supper?” It is telling the reader doesn’t receive a reply from the husband, who Godwin characterizes in the end as having none but a silent, clinical reaction, rolling “tenderly back her eyelids” and testing “the delicate bones of her wrist.” The diction here is woman as fragile creature, her strength sapped and depleted to sustain the role of perfect wife and mother, a dream perhaps attained once upon a time.

Hayfork 1852

A new song loosely commemorating a massacre of Native peoples not too far from here...

Hayfork 1852



[Man] The miner digs with a tin pan
River’s icy and running fast
The scent of her body lingers
A beauty so young
What he left he left undone

[Woman] “How’s your luck holding out, man?”
The woman calls from an iron bridge
Loneliness like a bloodstain
Burning like gold
What is left is left unsold

O you paid your dues
Walking in their shoes
Red white the blues
You don’t suffer fools
You paid your dues
Somebody win, somebody gotta lose

[Man] The miner says “I’m a damn fool
Slaving here eleven days
S’waste of time panning Hayfork
River is cursed,
They tell me 9 to 5 is even worse”

[Woman] The woman blinks at her old man
Twenty-four and there’s not much more
They’re down to whisky and Saltines
Scars and disease
Pretty soon they’re scheming like thieves

Chorus

[Woman] The woman gazes upriver
Men and women and children too
Bodies broken and bleeding
A dream is a ghost
Vanishes when you need her most

[Man] The miner smokes in the doorway
A final drag and he disappears
Lilies grow in his footsteps
River runs red
What is left is left unsaid.

July 2015