AUTHOR’S NOTE

My introduction to Charlie the buffalo occurred in a series of suspiciously unlikely circumstances. I had been set up on a blind date in New York City with a woman who also—the matchmakers involved had failed to realize this—grew up in Chicago and knew the starting lineup of the 1969 Chicago Cubs. That coincidence was only the beginning. On our first date, I mentioned the one person I knew who had graduated from her school—a woman who had dated one of my brothers.

“She used to be my sister-in-law,” Ellen said.

Then it turned out that we lived on the same block without knowing it. It was surprising that our parents had never met, since they shared some very good friends and moved in the same large circle. In fact, it’s possible, my father says, that in the late 1940s he sold some fabric to Ellen’s father’s window-display manager.

Before long I was in Santa Fe, where Ellen’s parents spent part of the year. At a small cocktail party there, I was introduced to Sherry Gaber, a friend of Ellen’s parents who also happens to hail from Chicago. When she told me that she was a chiropractor for large animals, I asked, “So who’s your most unusual client?” When she replied, “A lame buffalo,” I said, “That I would love to see.” Within the hour, I was at the home of Veryl Goodnight and Roger Brooks (whose birthday, it would turn out, I happen to share), being licked by a buffalo with a limp. It was exciting, but by the time Charlie’s drool had dried, I had already filed it away under Unusual Animal Experiences, along with the time many years ago when I absentmindedly put my hand into a cage at the San Diego Zoo and beckoned to what I thought was a big dog, but which turned out to be a small bear, who promptly gashed the back of my hand.

I didn’t give the buffalo another thought until a few days later, when I woke up preoccupied with the notion that, however extraordinary being licked by a buffalo had been, there was something even more remarkable about that visit. Certainly, Charlie’s sheer size and unexpectedly gentle disposition had impressed me. I was also moved by Roger’s obvious devotion to an injured animal. More subliminally, I think I saw in Roger’s affinity for a buffalo a warped reflection of my own midlife struggles. In any case, something in their novel and vaguely haunting situation—a middle-aged man caring for an injured buffalo with a woman descended, as it were, from one of the saddest dramas in American history—kept calling to me. I waited until a decent hour, called Roger and Veryl, and invited myself over to talk about how I wanted to write about Charlie and their experience with him.

That afternoon found me on their patio, surrounded by a couple of overly attentive dogs, hoping to insinuate myself into the lives of Roger, Veryl, and Charlie—three creatures I barely knew. I had no reason to expect that Roger and Veryl would agree to open up their lives to me, a stranger and non-Westerner to boot. My career as a writer had wound its way through many media and genres without once touching subject matter involving anything west of the Mississippi. So I was surprised by Roger’s and Veryl’s blind faith in me. Perhaps they noticed, as their dogs crowded around me, that I like animals and that was good enough for them. Whatever their reason, they believed me when I told them there might be a book in their story. We then shook hands, forming one of the more rewarding and unusual collaborations I have ever known.

 

A WORD ABOUT the way this book was written. America is a culture where the line between fiction and reality has disappeared completely in a blaze of moral dishonesty and technological gimmickry. We live in a circus of ambiguous forms and manipulated meanings. Infotainment or docudrama? Newser-tainment or entertainalism? Reality programs or programmed reality? Weapons of mass destruction or weapons of mass deception? In a climate as cynical as this, it hardly seems worth making distinctions any more.

Nonetheless, here goes. Every contemporary event described in this book was based either on direct observation or on the memories and reconstruction of those involved. I can’t vouch for the absolute accuracy of the many historical accounts I relied upon, but I trust that any errors or embellishments on the part of these sources were minor and/or unintentional. Conversations in this book have been held, inevitably, to a slightly lower standard. Some conversations were observed firsthand and recorded. Some were reconstructed from bits and pieces of firsthand accounts—occasionally with additional dialogue created in the spirit of their reality. Others were taken verbatim from videotape of Roger, Veryl, Charlie, and friends. Roger’s “conversations” with Charlie were created from a combination of observing how Roger actually talked to Charlie, Roger’s descriptions of events, and the odd exchange invented for dramatic effect.

 

—R.D. Rosen