The Last Buffalo
By Kristen Stieffel
Copyright 2012 Kristen Stieffel
License Notes
Cover Illustration: Tatanka by Piumadaquila
Cover design by Kristen Stieffel
This story first appeared in The Coffee House Fiction 2009 Anthology.
Contents
The Last Buffalo
About the Author
~ ~ ~ ~
The Last Buffalo
The wracking cough shook him again.
Deirdre frowned. “What did your doctor say about that?”
Dr. John Hollow Horn took a few shallow, pained breaths, and waited for his hands to stop shaking.
“He said I should quit smoking.” He stepped through the gate into the buffalo’s enclosure.
A quarter-acre of land meant to mimic the Great Plains, the enclosure was now a dusty, flat parcel of weeds and dead shrubs. The buffalo lay at the back of it, farthest from the moat and pedestrian walkway where visitors used to stand, watching him and his herdmates. Now that he was alone, the buffalo stayed near the camouflaged gate the keepers used—near the source of food.
Deirdre poured feed into the trough. “You don’t smoke.”
“That’s what I said.” Actually, he used to pass the pipe when he visited the reservation, but he hadn’t been back in years. He’d still gotten lung cancer. “Grandfather always said the air in the city is worse for you than tobacco.”
This observation had proved increasingly true over the years. The clouds that formed a near-perpetual canopy over the city were tinted brown by the continual expulsion of exhaust.
The zoo had been built in the countryside, but industrial sprawl had long since surrounded it. The trees that once traced its perimeter had given way to the towers of a power plant. The zoological society had received a promise, accompanied by a large donation, that the plant would be a clean coal-fired plant. But the soot that covered the rocks and trees in the animals’ pens belied that promise.
John used his fingers to comb the black hair back from his face. He’d been letting it grow out. It was now past his shoulders.
He knelt by the buffalo. “Poor old tatanka.” John scratched behind the buffalo’s ears. He turned to Deirdre. “Wash his eyes out, will you? I’m gonna take a look.”
“Why?” She dampened a sponge and washed the crust from the buffalo’s eyes. “He can’t be any better.”
That was true, since there was no way to treat the virus he’d contracted. It was a new strain—they didn’t even know what it was. “I want to see how he’s doing.” John pulled the ophthalmoscope from his bag and looked into the buffalo’s eyes. It twitched a little when John pulled back the lids, but other than that, did not move.
John put the scope away, and sighed. “He’s blind.”
Deirdre, who had crouched next to him, stood and stretched her back. Her T-shirt was too small, and her ribs showed through it. “He’s a goner, Doc. Why don’t you put him down?”
It was no surprise that she could toss off the euphemism so easily. It had been tossed around a lot lately.
“We can’t. He’s the last one.”
“So? There was a last condor, too. And a last manatee, and a last—”
John nearly growled at her. “This is different.”
“Sorry.” She pouted.
“When the last buffalo dies, the waters will cover the earth, and this world will end.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, that’s what Grandfather used to say. Ptesan-Wi, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, told that to the people in a prophecy ages ago.”
Deirdre snorted.
John hadn’t imagined he would start relaying the old legends. But ever since he’d been given the care of the last buffalo, they haunted him.
~ ~ ~ ~
The last acre of the Amazon rainforest was cleared to make room for another high-rise hive to house the burgeoning population of South America. A project that was never built because the day after the last tree went up in smoke, the developer ran out of money.
~ ~ ~ ~
Deirdre scratched absentmindedly at the melanoma on her left shoulder.
“You had that looked at yet?”
“Yeah, he’s gonna take it off next week. After that, he wants me to do some chemotherapy, but…” she shrugged “I don’t know if it’s worth it. What do you think?”
“I took a pass on it, myself, but I’m twice your age. You probably have a better prognosis than I do.”
“Maybe. I just wonder…why bother?”
Deirdre was still in college—or would have been in college if the college were still operating. But as there were neither enough faculty nor enough students to make it worthwhile, it had closed.
The generational cohort to which Deirdre belonged had always been small. In John’s opinion, which Deirdre reinforced daily, they were also apathetic. “Why do you keep showing up here?”
“They keep paying me.”
That wouldn’t last much longer. The zoological society’s funds were dwindling fast, and there were no longer any foundations awarding grants.
Thunder boomed overhead. What would Grandfather call that? Wakinyan Tanka. The Great Thunderbird.
“If it rains again, I’m outa here. Look what it did to me last time.”
“Uh-huh.” He had told her to put her rain suit on, but as usual, she hadn’t complied. The acid rain had reacted with her hair dye, leaving it auburn-streaked-with-green. “Go home. There’s nothing more to do here.” That was a lie.
“Oh. Okay.” She started to go. “Will I still get paid for the whole day?”
“Sure.” Another one.
She left.
He picked up his bag, and headed for the deer habitat. The zoo, once a riot of primate calls and bird squawks, now was like a graveyard. Most of the animals had been sent elsewhere, or been euthanized. The only ones left were the buffalo, a herd of sick deer, a couple of bears, and a sea turtle. The park hadn’t been open to visitors in more than a year.
Dr. Arvin Conrad waited by the habitat, grim-faced, a red plastic coverall stretched over his barrel-shaped torso. “I hate this.” He waited while John pulled on his own biohazard gear, which sagged on his gaunt frame.
“So do I. But what else can we do, Arv? They’re dying.” He opened his bag and filled a syringe.
Euthanizing an animal was never easy. But sixteen…
One by one, the deer were quietly killed. Arvin and John stacked and burned the corpses.
The smoke curled up, joining the dark clouds overhead. “Guess that bison of yours will wind up like this, too.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“John, he’s got whatever they had.” Arvin gestured to the charred remains. “And look what it did to them. He’s sick, he’s lame—he’s a goner.”
“According to Grandfather, the White Buffalo Calf Woman told us that when the last buffalo dies, the world will end.”
For half a minute, the only sound was the crackling of the fire.
“Your grandfather—does he live on the reservation?”
“What? Oh, no. When I said Grandfather—he wasn’t literally my grandfather. We all called him that. He was wichasha wakan—holy man.”
“I never heard you talk about…y’know…Indian stuff.”
John chuckled. The laugh turned into a coughing fit, bringing up black and red mucus. “Guess now that I’m getting near the end, I’m getting closer to my beginnings.”
Arvin nodded. “We’re all near the end. Have you ever stopped looking at the animals long enough to look at the people? The world is dying, John. Let it go.”
Thunder roared from above.
~ ~ ~ ~
The last rain fell, d
ropping acid on the barren soil. People ran out of places to bury the dead. Those poisoned by the water, those starved, those who died the lingering deaths of cancer, were interred together in mass graves until there weren’t enough people left living to bury them.
~ ~ ~ ~
Each day Dr. Hollow Horn tended his four remaining charges. The society had stopped making payroll deposits, so the rest of the staff had stopped showing up.
The staff lounge had always been austere, with mismatched Formica tables scattered across a chipped and stained linoleum floor.
But before, it had always been filled with the jovial banter of his colleagues and friends. Now, John sat there alone, eating a sandwich of bologna and fry bread.
He hadn’t made fry bread in years. But he couldn’t buy sandwich bread, because the grocery store had closed. The fry bread was tough. Whether that reflected his poor cooking or the poor quality of the flour, he couldn’t say.
His table faced a wide window overlooking the “Western Woodlands” section of the zoo. Rain poured down in thick waves. He imagined great wings beating the unseen topside of the dark, roiling thunderheads.
Wakinyan Tanka shouted again. His children, chattering after him, gave voice to the little rumbles that followed his big one.
Thunder, rain…the Wakinyan were responsible for cleaning the filth from the earth. They’d been given a monstrous job this time. How could they clean anything, with their clouds all polluted?
He could see the bear pen from that window. The bears were a bit mangy, but otherwise healthy. Yet he saw no movement in their habitat.
John grabbed a coverall and ran outside. They were widely separated from the deer and buffalo. They couldn’t have caught the virus.
By the time he reached the enclosure he was wheezing, his diseased lungs laboring for air.
The bears were gone. The habitat was empty.
He rubbed his forehead. He was not imagining this. Coughing and wheezing, he walked back to his office. He phoned the curator at home and described what he’d seen.
“I sent you an e-mail, Dr. Horn. Did you not get it?”
“No, my computer’s been broken for a week.”
“Oh. Sorry. A game preserve in Montana accepted the bears. They picked them up early this morning.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
“So that leaves us with just two animals, correct?”
“Yes. The sea turtle and the buffalo.”
“Bison.”
“Listen, wasichu, if Grandfather on the rez called it a buffalo, then it’s a buffalo. My people have more right to decide what to call it than yours.”
“There’s no need to be abusive, Dr. Horn.”
“Hollow Horn. My name is Hollow Horn and—” Another coughing fit attacked him.
The curator waited until it was over. “The sea turtle has been offered to other zoos, but there are no takers yet. As for the bison…what’s his prognosis?”
John coughed, his lungs laboring for air. “About as good as mine.”
“Then you can put him down.”
John stood, frozen.
“Did you hear me, Dr. Ho—Hollow Horn?”
“Yeah. I heard.” There was a long silence. “The turtle. Could it be safely returned to the ocean, do you think?”
“I’m not sure any place is safe any more, Doctor. Do what you think is best.”
Numb, John pulled the hood of his rain suit over his head and walked through the empty zoo. Was that all they were good for now? Putting down?
He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t hasten the process. He’d just try to make the buffalo’s last days comfortable.
John checked on the sleeping buffalo before going to the turtle.
The reptile house, a low concrete building set halfway into a hillside, was dark. To save energy, most of the lights had been disconnected. He needed a flashlight to see his way through. The warming lamp in the turtle’s tank gave the only other light.
John lifted the listless sea turtle from his tank and put it into a carrier. He switched off the lamp, and followed the flashlight beam out of the cave-like herpetarium.
The carrier fit snugly in John’s hatchback. He drove all night, until he reached the coast.
Grandfather said that Tunkashila, the Creating Power, built the world on the back of a turtle. That was why the people called North America the Turtle Continent.
“Go on, Brother Turtle,” he said, urging it toward the Atlantic. “Find a safe place.”
Hesitantly, the turtle plodded forward. He picked up speed as he neared the water. Then he disappeared into the waves.
A bullhorn sounded behind John. “Sir, please leave the beach. This is a restricted area.”
John climbed up to the beach patrol Jeep. “Restricted? Why?”
“This is the last clean stretch of beach on the Eastern Seaboard, sir.”
“So you keep people off it.”
“Right.”
“Smart move.”
~ ~ ~ ~
The last clean stretch of beach on the Eastern Seaboard was polluted by a ruptured tank at a water treatment plant upriver. It had been built to service the megalopoli that covered the turtle continent from coast to coast. The plains that were once home to the buffalo had been covered by the wasichu—the fat-takers. They took all the fat of the land, and left nothing but their waste.
~ ~ ~ ~
The last day, Hollow Horn slung his pipe bag over his shoulder and walked through the acid rain to the zoo. There was no gas for his car because the last gas station had closed, because the last refinery had gone out of business, because the last oil well had run dry.
Weeks on end of rain had swollen the rivers. They churned with a mighty fury, flooding the surrounding land. It seemed Unktehi the water monster had returned for another battle with the Wakinyan.
Hollow Horn climbed over the fallen tree limbs that blocked the zoo’s walkways. He paused, coughing, bringing up blood and blackened mucus. He didn’t have long.
The buffalo lay in his pen. He couldn’t lift his head. His breathing was ragged—even more so than Hollow Horn’s. His rheumy eyes were stuck shut. Hollow Horn cleaned them, more for himself than for the tatanka.
He stood next to it, patting the mangy hump. He couldn’t feed the buffalo—there was nothing to give him. Just as there had been nothing at home for Hollow Horn to feed himself. He stared up at the coffee-colored clouds. How had the sky looked to the last dinosaur?
He opened the pipe bag, and reverently took out the chanunpa. He turned, sunwise, acknowledging each of the four directions in turn as he filled the pipe’s bowl with chan-shasha—red willow bark tobacco.
Wakinyan Tanka hovered in the clouds, beating his great wings.
Another coughing fit attacked him. Mucus and blood tinged the front of his shirt.
Hollow Horn raised the pipe to the Sky. He bowed to the Earth, and gave Her some of the tobacco. Then he sat, leaned against the buffalo’s hide, and smoked his last pipe. The buffalo huffed, stirred.
Could he smell the tobacco?
A woman in a fringed white hide dress stood near the buffalo. Her hand rested on its head.
“Ptesan-Wi.” Hollow Horn moaned. “No way.”
“Did I not say I would come again?”
He could only stare at her smooth, unblemished skin. Long, straight black hair fell to her knees. Her eyes were large, and so dark a brown they were almost black.
“How could I not come to see my brother at his end?” She kissed the top of the buffalo’s head.
The acid rain stung Hollow Horn’s skin. But he couldn’t move. The walk had taken the last of his strength. The buffalo didn’t move either.
Ptesan-Wi’s dress did not get wet.
“When the last buffalo dies,” John said, his voice thready, “the world will end.”
“And the water will come back to cover the earth.” Water lapped at her feet but did not soak her moccasins. “As it did before.”
?
??There were two worlds before this one.” Hollow Horn said. “The people polluted them, so Tunkashila destroyed them.” Grandfather Elk said the same would happen again, if the third world became as filthy as the first two.
“The water comes now.”
“Is this it?” Hollow Horn tried to speak, but his voice deserted him, leaving him with only an airy rasp. “Is this how the world dies?”
Between one blink and the next, Ptesan-Wi changed from her human form to a white buffalo calf.
“Will there be a fourth world?”
Another blink, and she was gone.
Hollow Horn stared up at the sky, acid rain burning his eyes, and took his last breath.
~ ~ ~ ~
The last tree fell…
The last eagle fell from the air…
The last baby’s cry was silenced…
The last buffalo died.
# # # #
About the Author
Kristen Stieffel is a writing coach and is a member of the Christian Proofreaders and Editors Network and the Editorial Freelancers Association. She specializes in helping writers polish and non-writers write. Despite ten years of newsroom experience, Kristen still believes in preserving each writer's unique voice.
Her editing credits include Winter by Keven Newsome, published by Splashdown Darkwater. Winter is available as an e-book and in print from major book retailers.
Connect with Kristen:
Website: https://www.kristenstieffel.com/
Blog: https://thefactotumsrostrum.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000041869202
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenstieffel
Twitter: @KristenStieffel