eight
That night, Roger and Veryl sat in their living room in front of a crackling fire. “Listen to this,” Veryl said, looking up from her newspaper. “Some rancher in Oregon got in trouble with the law and abandoned his herd of buffalo. So they wandered onto an Indian reservation and now no one can figure out how to round them up. The Indians set a trap for them, thinking they might start their own herd, but the buffalo are too smart to fall for it. They’re fast learners.”
“Well, you’re either a fast learner or a buffalo burger,” Roger muttered from behind his book.
“Now that’s a pleasant thought,” she said. “It’s bad enough having Charlie gone without thinking of him as somebody’s lunch.”
Roger put down the book, which he had only been pretending to read. “Kind of quiet without him.”
“He never made all that much noise in the first place.”
“Okay, but just knowing he’s not outside in his pen makes me feel a little lonely.”
“We’ll get used to it,” Veryl said.
“Not half as fast as I got used to that prairie dog of yours being gone.”
Veryl looked ceilingward. “I hope you’re happy, Petey, wherever you are. And you, too, Calamity Coyote.”
Calamity was an abandoned coyote she had taken in for a while back in Colorado, before Roger’s time. “She was no Petey,” Veryl said now. “And a far, far cry from Charlie. She wouldn’t bond, not even when I tried to lure her into bed by putting chicken bones under the blankets.”
“Thanks for not trying that with me.”
“Believe me, you didn’t need chicken bones. But with Calamity, nothing worked. That’s why I called her Calamity Coyote. It was like a very long, bad date. When she was finally old enough to be released, I took her to a clearing at the edge of the forest and she took off like a shot toward the trees.”
“She couldn’t wait to get away from the damn chicken bones.”
“But just before disappearing, she pulled up, turned, and looked back at me. It was more eye contact than we’d had in a long time. Then the most peculiar thing happened: after a moment, she ran back and jumped into my arms for a huge hug, something she hadn’t wanted in all the months she was with me. We hugged for maybe fifteen seconds and then I put her down and she took off for good.”
“Like Houdini,” Roger said. At the request of the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, he and Veryl had wintered a lost black bear cub some years earlier after a severe drought had driven a lot of wildlife down into Santa Fe looking for food. They kept her in the barn’s one empty stall—later to be occupied by Charlie—which they thought they had made escape-proof. But the cub found a way out, earning her name, and was recaptured in the same spot in downtown Santa Fe, ten miles away, where she had gone looking for her mother. Following a tightening of barn security, Houdini remained with them throughout the winter, living the life of a caged but well-fed wild animal. Roger and Veryl kept their distance, knowing that the only way to ensure her survival in the future was to make sure she did not learn to like people. If she did, she would gravitate toward them, become a problem, and eventually get shot. Roger and Veryl’s goal was to provide her with only basic care and release her in the spring. When the time came, they called the Game and Fish Department, who sent out a warden to tranquilize her with a dart gun. Then they put her in an animal transporter, a truck whose back half was an enclosure, and drove her to a release area a few hours away.
At their destination, they let Houdini settle in her cage for a little while. Before he finally opened the door for her, Roger had his hand resting against the steel mesh when Houdini, now recovered from the tranquilizer and fully aware, came over and rested her nose against his knuckle. It was the first time she had shown him anything other than contempt. Now the bear kept her nose against his hand for a full minute. Whether it was to acknowledge that she knew she hadn’t been the easiest animal to live with, or simply in gratitude for being allowed to go, Roger would never know.
“Well, at least things can get back to normal,” he said to Veryl now. There was a part of him, of course, that was relieved that Charlie had found a home. They had done their job, and it had only been Charlie’s freakishly friendly personality that made his departure so hard. Roger was actually eager to get on with his life, even if in his heart he knew that “normal” had changed a few months ago. “Normal” had become life with Charlie.
That night, Roger lay in bed, listening to the coyotes and trying to fall asleep.
“You awake?” he whispered to Veryl in the dark.
“Yeah.”
“This is hard.”
“I know,” she said. It reminded her of the childhood sadness of watching her beloved snow horses melt every spring.
VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the phone rang. It was John Painter.
“Hey, John,” Roger said, looking at the clock. It wasn’t even six yet. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry to call at this hour, Roger, but I think you need to get over here.”
“What’s going on?”
“Charlie’s down and he can’t get up.”
“What?!” Roger felt like he’d been hit over the head. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, but he’s down by one of the fence posts and he can’t get up. He might’ve run headlong into it. Maybe you’d better get over here soon as you can.”
Roger woke up Veryl, and they jumped into their clothes and hitched the horse trailer back up to the Chevy Tahoe, in case they had to get Charlie to a doctor. They threw Mickey and Luke in the truck with them and started the two-hour drive to the ranch just as the sun broke over the horizon. Every mile was torture for them. Roger felt sick. He knew that angry or frightened buffalo sometimes charged blindly into walls, barns, fences. Charlie had probably panicked. To an animal who had never been with his own kind, two other buffalo probably seemed like a crowd. Maybe one of them had picked a fight and Charlie had run away as fast as he could—right into the fence. All of John Painter’s fencing was steel well-pipe fencing—strong enough to stop any buffalo. Behind the wheel, Roger winced with second thoughts. What had he been thinking, leaving Charlie there? He didn’t know what he would be facing when he arrived—whether Charlie had just had his bell rung or whether Roger might have to . . . well, he didn’t even want to complete the thought.
Roger floored the Tahoe all the way there—more, it would turn out later, than the transmission could actually bear. Mile after mile of desert and incongruous garish Indian casinos sped silently by, bathed in dawn’s pink light. When Roger and Veryl finally reached Montosa Buffalo Ranch and climbed down from the overheated truck, the frigid January air hit them like a slap in the face. They saw John Painter crouching by Charlie just inside the pen at the foot of a steel fence post. Because it’s dangerous for big animals, especially ruminants, to be on their sides for too long, John had him lying sternal, propped up on either side with hay bales. As Veryl and Roger approached, they saw a trickle of blood running out of Charlie’s right nostril. His right eye was bloodshot and rolled back. As soon as the two of them climbed inside the pen and crouched next to him, Charlie greeted them with a low, sorrowful grunt.
“Hi,” Veryl said.
“Charlie,” Roger said.
“The vet’s been here already,” John said, petting Charlie’s head with a gloved hand. “Gave him steroids to stop any swelling around his spinal cord. But he hasn’t moved since we found him this way this morning. We put hay and water in front of him, but he won’t touch it.” After this brief medical report, John, who was closer to Charlie than anyone besides Roger and Veryl, lost his composure. “Jesus,” he said with a grimace. “Any buffalo but Charlie.”
“Charlie,” Veryl whispered as she stroked his face. “What happened?” She offered him her ungloved hand, and he weakly sucked it.
John said, “It’s pretty obvious he ran headlong into this post.”
“Let’s hope he’s just knocked himself silly,” Roger said. “Let’s hope he gets up.”
But he didn’t get up. John put them up in the ranch house, and for the next two very cold days and freezing nights, Roger and Veryl took turns staying with him, snuggling up to keep him warm. At night, under a navy blue field of stars and a pile of warm blankets, they soothed and encouraged him, hoping for some improvement. But all they got were mournful, heart-rending, please-don’t-leave-me grunts from Charlie whenever one of them went back to the house to warm up. On the third day, Ray Loretto, the first Indian veterinarian in New Mexico, came by, watched Charlie at last try to get up, and concluded that he had dislocated his left shoulder. Loretto rolled Charlie over onto his right side, climbed on top, and popped the joint back into place. But Charlie still couldn’t move on his own. Mickey licked his cheek.
On the third day, Roger, Veryl, and John agreed they couldn’t wait around helplessly anymore for Charlie to live or die. Roger called the one place he figured could help Charlie now—the School of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University, 375 miles away. When Roger told Dr. Shelley Sandberg from the Food Animal Department that he had a paralyzed seven-month-old buffalo who needed help, she told him to drive on up. She said they treated mostly cattle, not many buffalo (and even that turned out to be a gross overstatement)—but that she’d be waiting for them.
So Roger and three ranch hands loaded 450 pounds of dead weight named Charlie into the horse trailer.
“We saved him once,” Veryl said as they pulled away from the Montosa Buffalo ranch. “Okay, so we’ll save him again.”
The road was endless, a black line of bad thoughts. Roger kept calling the school from his cell phone to remind them they were on their way. He imagined the whole staff waiting and waiting, then giving up before they arrived. Finally, late on Friday night, after seven long hours, Roger and Veryl pulled up to the entrance of a barnlike building at Colorado State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine. Roger got out and banged on the door. When it opened, five young women came out—Dr. Shelley Sandberg and four veterinary graduate students. Two of them were pushing a big gurney—a stretcher on wheels just a few inches off the ground.
“I’m not sure we have enough manpower,” Roger said. Not one of the young women was even as big as Veryl. “There’s no way the five of you and us are going to be able to pick Charlie up.”
Dr. Sandberg squared her shoulders and said, “It’s ten-thirty on Friday night. What you see is what you get. What do you say we get the animal on the gurney?”
With a little help from Roger and Veryl, the five women managed to move Charlie from the horse trailer onto the gurney and wheel him into a stall that had already been prepared. It was covered with sand for better traction—not that Charlie looked like he was going to be on his feet anytime soon. While Veryl and Roger looked on, Dr. Sandberg examined Charlie. She took a long needle and stuck it into one of Charlie’s hind legs. The leg twitched. “Good boy,” she whispered to him. She repeated the procedure on his other three legs. Each time Charlie twitched.
“Good,” Sandberg said. “His spinal cord’s not severed.”
The students fed the straps of a bright blue sling under Charlie’s belly, a switch was thrown, and an electric hoist slowly raised him to a standing position. The sling was attached to a track running along the barn ceiling in order to support an injured animal learning to walk again. Roger and Veryl were shocked when the little engine stopped. Charlie’s legs just dangled, brushing the floor. He hung there, like the world’s largest puppet between shows.
For the next two days, Charlie lay on a bed of straw for two hours at a time until some of the graduate students came in and hoisted him in his sling for an hour or two, hoping his brain would remember how to make his legs walk. Two hours on the straw, two hours in the hoist. Over and over again. Veryl and Roger had taken a room in a nearby hotel, and each time Charlie was in the sling, they came to help. Roger took hold of Charlie’s front legs, Veryl took hold of his back ones, and they moved them in a walking motion. Charlie’s legs, which had only days before been chasing Roger around the arena, never moved on their own.
On Monday, while Veryl and Roger were rubbing Charlie as he lay in his stall, a slim, balding man in his mid-forties approached them. “I’m Dr. Rob Callan,” he said, shaking their hands. “Professor of Food Animal Medicine and Surgery. Dr. Sandberg’s told me all about Charlie.” He looked down at the motionless buffalo. “She says you’ve got a pretty special bison.”
“We’ve hand-raised him since he was a week old,” Roger said. “We want to do whatever we can.”
“I don’t care what it takes,” Veryl said. “Make him walk again.”
Callan nodded—a barely perceptible, meditative nod. “Well, we’ll certainly do everything we can, but I want to be honest with you about his chances.” He glanced at Charlie again. “Maybe we should step outside.”
Roger laid a hand on Charlie’s head. “We’ll be right back,” he said, and the doctor led them through the double doors into the hallway.
