EXCERPT: Charlie at six months old....
Roger was the only one who could physically handle Charlie, so all Charlie-related chores now fell to him. Roger’s world was increasingly defined by the buffalo. Charlie was a rapidly growing responsibility in every sense, and with every new pound of weight and quarter-inch of horn, he became a bigger threat to Roger’s carefully maintained balance of power. There were evenings when Charlie, his tail standing straight up, stood glowering at the plastic drum, about to do battle, and Roger knew better than even to enter the arena. Charlie’s testosterone levels would soon be spiking, but for Roger and Veryl, on principle, neutering was out of the question because he was going to be released into a herd. In fact, Roger often thought about how he would someday visit the herd, spot Charlie in the distance, and think, “That’s my buffalo.”
Veryl, more preoccupied with the bronze, not the real, version of Charlie, kept her mouth shut, but by mid-November, spring was looking mighty far away to Roger. He reluctantly came to the conclusion that the initial plan—to let Charlie be a buffalo among buffalo—now made practical as well as every other kind of sense.
Roger didn’t want to send Charlie back to Marlo Goble’s ranch, where he would face an uncertain fate. Instead, he called John Painter—Charlie’s “Uncle John,” as he had come to be known around the house. John knew Charlie, his ranch was only two hours away, and he treated his bison with a love and respect that, although no match for Roger’s buffalo sentiments, was unusual.
“I’d be happy to have him,” Painter said.
“I’m going to pay you a boarding fee, John, ’cause I don’t want anything to happen to him.”
“Heck, Roger, you know I’d never let anything happen to ol’ Charlie.”
“I wish I could hold on to him myself, but some things are just bigger than we are.”
“A buffalo would be one of them.”
“I tried.”
“Roger, I’d say you’ve gone where few men have dared to go. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were a softhearted old sentimentalist with a crush on an ungulate.”
“It’s more than that, John. Buffalo are like the ghosts of American history. Being with Charlie’s like touching the past.”
“Okay, so you’re a softhearted old poet with a crush on an ungulate.”
It took Roger a couple of weeks to break the news to Charlie. They were taking one of their walks down the arroyo on their property as a light December snow fell, dusting the piñon pine and small prickly-pear cactuses.
“It’s like this, Charlie,” he said, “and I don’t want to get all emotional about it, so don’t make it any harder on me than it has to be.” He cleared his throat. “Veryl and I think it’s time for you to learn how to be a buffalo. Now, what do you think of that?”
Charlie, who now came up to Roger’s waist, pushed his wet nose up against Roger’s behind and butted him down the path. It was a little like being nudged by a small snowplow.
“Here’s the thing,” Roger said when they got to the bottom of the rise, “we’ve had a lot of great times together. Just about as much fun as a couple of people and a buffalo can have.”
Charlie snorted two little clouds of condensation.
Roger laid his hand on top of Charlie’s head as they walked along side by side. “If you weren’t so big, this might not be an issue. Of course, if you weren’t so darn big you wouldn’t be a buffalo, which is one of the things I like about you. But you are. You already weigh over four hundred pounds, and before it’s all over, you’re going to weigh two thousand pounds. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve owned cars that weigh less than that.”
They walked on a bit while Roger tried to think of a way to put a more positive spin on it.
“Listen,” he said, “pretty soon you’re not going to want to hang out anymore with Luke and Mickey and Veryl and me. You’re going to want to hang out with other two-thousandpound animals. I’m talking bison.”
Charlie stopped to inspect some dead leaves lying in the arroyo.
“It’s time for you to be what you are,” Roger said, surprised that his eyes were getting a little misty.
“And that’s a buffalo.”
Veryl and Roger decided to have a big going-away party for Charlie in mid-December and invite the people who had been part of his life. The guest list included Veryl’s eighty-threeyear-old Uncle Dean Goodnight from Phoenix, Dr. Marlo Goble and his wife Michele from Medicine Lodge, and a cousin of Veryl’s from Lubbock, Texas, named Andy Wilkinson, a singer/songwriter/English professor/ex-cop, whose great-greatgrandmother had been Charles Goodnight’s sister. Andy had recorded a number of CDs, including several very moving songs about Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight, the extermination of the buffalo, Goodnight’s old friend Chief Quanah Parker of the Comanches, and life on the plains and the Texas Panhandle.
On the morning of the get-together, Roger was out in the yard helping get things ready when he had a run-in with Charlie that helped him overcome some of his guilt about giving him up. The weather was now cold enough that Roger was on his hands and knees on the patio, struggling to plug in the electrical cord for the heated cat bed, when he felt some light pressure against one hip, then another, followed quickly by a vise-like sensation on either side of his waist. As Charlie briefly pounded Roger’s skull against the wall of the house, Roger braced himself against the wall, finally summoning the strength to raise his torso and force Charlie off his back.
When Roger appeared a few moments later in the kitchen, where Veryl was overseeing the caterer, he brushed a few leaves off his jeans and said, “Honey, I just want you to know that I’m trying as hard as I can to be faithful to you, but it’s getting to be a challenge.”
“Don’t tell me,” Veryl said, a smile breaking across her face.
“I was on my hands and knees out there and I had a visitor. At least the cat bed’s all plugged in.”
“And was it good for you?”
“Let’s just say that his technique left something to be desired.”
...following a serious injury that partially paralyzes him, Charlie is treated at Colorado State's School of Veterinary Medicine...
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.
nine
“Here’s how it is.” Callan spoke very slowly, making Veryl and Roger even more anxious. “Charlie must have hit that fence going full-out, because he’s clearly suffered a serious neck injury and trauma to his spinal cord and it’s affected his nerves. We grade neurologic injuries from one to five. Five’s the worst. The animal’s down and can’t get up. That’s Charlie. He’s a five.”
“A five,” Veryl repeated.
“In the best cases—the very best cases—you get two grades of improvement. Maximum. For Charlie, that means he could get to a three.”
Veryl waited for Roger to ask, but he didn’t, so she had to. “A three?”
Callan spoke behind steepled fingers. “A three’s an animal that can stand and get around, but he might fall on you. A three’s not a pasture-sound animal. I’m sorry. This is what you’re looking at.”
Veryl and Roger looked at the floor.
“More often than not—” he paused again. “More often than not, they don’t stand up again.”
Veryl covered her mouth with her hand. Roger just stared at Callan.
“I believe in being straight with people,” Dr. Callan said. “Of course, most of our experience comes from horses and cattle. And you never know.”
“Charlie’s not your average animal,” Roger said.
“I can see that. I can see that he’s a member of the family. I don’t underestimate the role that love can play. Also, I know from Dr. Sandberg how cooperative Charlie is. He tolerates a lot of handling. To see that in a bison is exceptional. He seems to understand that we’re trying to help him. That’s a big, big plus.”
“He’s known nothing but love,” Veryl said.
“And it shows. All right, the first thing you have to do is make a decision about Charlie’s care. I’d like to X-ray his neck and take a myelogram.”
“Remind me what that is,” Roger said.
“We shoot some dye into the spinal fluid and see what’s going on in there. Among other things, it allows us to see how bad the swelling is pressing on the spinal cord.”
“Whatever it takes,” Veryl said, holding Roger’s hand tightly.
“There’s just one problem,” Dr. Callan said.
More problems? Roger thought.
“We have to anesthetize Charlie to do the procedure, and there’s a risk with ruminants. From our limited experience, we know in general they seem to have problems with anesthesia. A small percentage regurgitate when given anesthesia and they aspirate the contents of their stomach. And they suffocate. One in a hundred,” Callan said. “At worst, one in ten.”
Well, which was it? Roger thought. One in a hundred or one in ten? But he knew it didn’t matter. They were either going to do what they could for Charlie, or they weren’t.
“If there’s something wrong that we can repair and we don’t know about it,” Callan continued, “and Charlie doesn’t get better on his own, you could lose him, anyway.”
Veryl and Roger glanced at each other.
“I should tell you something else,” Callan added. “I’ve never worked on a buffalo before.”
“No?” Veryl said.
“We’ve never had a buffalo admitted here. But a spinal column’s a spinal column.” He smiled, trying to relieve the terrible tension. “I’ll give you a few minutes to think it over.”
Callan disappeared down the corridor and Roger and Veryl sat down on chairs in the corner.
Roger said, “If Charlie dies from the drugs needed to keep him quiet enough for an X-ray and a myelogram, we’ll never know if he might have gotten well all by himself.”
“But according to Dr. Callan,” Veryl said, “he’s not much of a candidate for getting better on his own. He’s a five, Roger. Dr. Callan was pretty clear—fives rarely get up on their feet again. You know if this were any other animal, if we were more practical people, we’d have to put him down. If we don’t let Dr. Callan put Charlie under and find out exactly what’s going on, and he doesn’t get well on his own, we’ll hate ourselves for not giving the doctors a chance to save him.”
“I know you’re right,” Roger finally said. “And I’d rather make the decision to do something instead of nothing.”
“So we’ll let him go ahead?”
“We’ve got to.”
An hour later, he and Veryl watched as the doctors put a line in a vein in Charlie’s leg and put him quickly under. Then the surgical team put a ventilator down Charlie’s throat to help him breathe, and Dr. Callan asked Roger and Veryl to leave the operating room. On her way out, Veryl stopped and whispered in Callan’s ear, “Please save Charlie, Doc. Next to me, he’s Roger’s best friend.”
They had two hours. Veryl suggested they go out and shop. Walk around. Something. Anything. Roger said no. He just wanted to sit there, staring silently into space. Waiting. Thinking. Until seven months ago, he had never seen a bison or even given them much thought. Now he was taking extraordinary measures to save one buffalo’s life. He sensed that, if Charlie survived, their lives would forever linked.