The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a wild and bloody novel, and I’ve never read anything quite like it. Stephen Graham Jones takes the vampire story into new territory – late 19th and early 20th century Montana, the Western frontier where whites are violently encroaching and native peoples find their communities and their environment subject to horrendous brutality and destruction. What better or more appropriate way to tell American History than through a horror story.
The novel begins in contemporary Wyoming where 42-year-old Communications and Journalism professor Etsy Beaucarne, anxious for tenure, discovers that she has inherited a diary from her great-great-great grandfather Arthur Beaucarne. Beaucarne had been a Lutheran pastor in Miles City, Montana, when he mysteriously disappeared in 1912. His diary was found hidden in the wall of the rectory when construction workers were demolishing it. The diary is in fragile condition and is being maintained at a university library, but the librarian scans the pages and forwards them to Etsy. Etsy’s hope is that this diary could become the basis of some investigative research and eventually tenure.
Arthur Beaucarne’s diary entries date from March, April and June of 1912, and the vast bulk of the novel is what Beaucarne wrote during that period. Miles City was a cold and dirty place with a saloon, a brothel, a sheriff, the Lutheran church and some small businesses. Few native people were around any more, but the people living in Montana remembered the period 30-40 years in the past when white soldiers dominated and often destroyed native bands as well as the buffalo that had once populated the region. A lot of the people living in Miles City participated in that destruction themselves. Arthur in 1912 is an old man who has been in Mile City for decades. His parishioners seem to respect him but many in the city laugh at him, particularly the men who hang out at the saloon and local hotel. One Sunday, after services, Arthur notices a man in the back of the church, dressed in black robes and sunglasses. He appears to be Native American and initially Arthur thinks he might be a clergyman, but he learns quickly that this man, who goes by several names including Good Stab, is there for a confession. The story he tells Arthur, which winds out over several weeks after Sunday services, seems absurd, impossible, a wild tale. But Good Stab assures Arthur that he will eventually see the truth of it.
Given that this novel is described as a vampire novel, it is not giving anything away to tell you that Good Stab is the vampire. What is fascinating is his story of how he came to be one and how he has lived his life since then. At the same time that he is in the vicinity telling Arthur his tale, a series of gruesome murders are uncovered in Miles City; the bodies of several men are found, and they have been skinned with their “meat” left behind, just as the whites had done to the buffalo. Who these men were, their connection to Good Stab’s past and to Arthur are what this novel is about. This is a story of bloody tragedy upon bloody tragedy, and that’s not even accounting for the vampire stuff. And it is a story about how the past does not stay buried, no matter how much one might try to cover it up and ignore it.
I can’t say that I’ve read much horror literature and almost no vampire literature, so I can’t tell how Stephen Graham Jones’ work compares to classics in that genre, but based on his acknowledgements, he is very well read and has been influenced by the best. He also went to great pains to be authentic in the way he wrote his characters. While it is Arthur’s diary, and Arthur writes in his own voice about what he thinks of Good Stab’s story, there are just as many sections written in Good Stab’s voice. I will admit that sometimes the two characters’ way of speaking/writing was a bit difficult to follow, but I think that makes the story feel more authentic, and the plot was so interesting and exciting, there was no way I was going to put this one down until I finished. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a great choice if you are interested in horror, vampires, and Native/American History.
