An academic is gifted a journal nearly a century old, written by her great-great-grandfather, a Lutheran priest out of Miles City, Montana. It contains his writings on the confession of a Native Pikuni man. Three voices, three lives; each bound to the other, each bearing their own heavy histories of violence and blood, death and debt. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a tremendous achievement and has already, in my opinion, cemented itself as one of the best novels of the year.
It is 2012, and a construction worker finds an old journal stored in the walls of a decrepit church, delivering it to the writer’s descendant, Etsy. In the journal, it is 1912 and Lutheran priest Arthur Beaucarne is the sole religious figure in Miles City, Montana when a string of murders occur; dead men whose skin has been peeled away, like old trappers used to do to the buffalo fifty years prior. One Sunday evening, a Native Pikuni man in a dark coat and sunglasses comes into Arthur’s church, gives his name as Good Stab, and says he wishes for confession. As candles are snuffed for his comfort, Good Stab sits in the dark and regales Arthur with the story of his life. How a Native man in the late 1870s is viscerally connected to a journal almost a century and a half later? Let Dr. Jones show you in all its beautiful, gory glory.
Every layer of this book sings, as Jones moves effortlessly between the three distinct voices at play: Etsy and her modern, anxious rambling; Arthur and his languid, overwhelming use of language; Good Stab and his direct, but sublime observation of the world and the recounting of his story. There’s a whole essay in this book on voice alone and how Jones utilizes each to say more about the characters than they’d ever admit themselves. Etsy lacks the language for her horror, Arthur hides behind his fancy words like a shield, and Good Stab refuses to modernize his speech or to negotiate the language of his people, the Pikuni and his family band, the Small Robes. It is this refusal to give into the modern—and predominantly white—vision of the world that makes Good Stab’s voice so irresistible and engaging. While his self-told tale is a long, horrible struggle to remain Pikuni, despite what we learn is vampirism in his blood, we see time and again how his very words are capable of keeping that part of himself alive.
Good Stab’s tale is some of the most compelling and haunting writing I’ve read this year, with multiple sections told so expertly and so harrowingly, I had to take a break and breathe the air of the now, so lost was I in Good Stab’s world. From his young, mortal days of ambition to the fateful encounter with the one he and his friends end up calling the Cat Man—on account of the being’s ferocity and madness, reminiscent of a mountain cougar—Good Stab’s journey into the life of blood drinking is a vampire story only Stephen Graham Jones could pull off—and have no doubt, as he quotes in his Afterword, these “are his kind of vampires.” Watching a master of horror ditch certain “rules,” about what these undead can and cannot do, viewed through Good Stab’s attempts to maintain a connection to his humanity and to his people, is absolutely riveting work. And then to see his continual heartbreak as he tries to live in balance with the natural world, too… There is no comfort in looking away, none. These sections invite surprise after surprise, and Dr. Jones is not interested in easy answers for Good Stab. Even when he finds a food source in the white hunters and trappers, Dr. Jones crafts conundrum after complication, continually forcing Good Stab to figure out who he is, and how can he remain alive as a bloodthirsty monster, while still living his life as, and looking like, one of his people, the Pikuni.
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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Yet Good Stab is only one part of this tangled weave. While Etsy begins and ends this tale, the story of Arthur draws the reader in alongside Good Stab. A man of god who found faith after a past he’s seemed to outrun, he’s absorbing Good Stab’s story along with us. Watching him move from skeptic to wary listener to terrified believer in the story of our Pikuni vampire is amazing to watch, especially as Jones keeps bringing attention back to the murders happening within Miles City—men found dead and skinned, done to them what they did to the buffalo at the apex of their conquering of the West. With the deft hand of a magician, Jones leads the reader towards and then away from certain easy answers—but don’t bristle at being led; it is with purpose. As Arthur and Good Stab continue to circle one another, one the speaker, the other a receptacle, Jones turns the screws, inch by inch. Each conversation adds tension, each revelation bringing Arthur closer and closer to the truth of it all, whether he wants it or not.
That is one of the narrative cores at the heart of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter: what is remembered, who is forgotten, and the pursuit of justice when history calls you to be accountable. The threads that bind Good Stab, Arthur, and even Etsy are tight and stretch across time; this whole novel could be said to be an accounting of those strings, and what happens when, despite time’s slow hammer, those strings pull taut and you are pulled into a story older than you know. From Good Stab, we see the erasure of not just many of his fellow Pikuni, but multiple tribes and Native peoples, as each are decimated by White soldiers, trappers, and politicians. We see the sweeping arc of death as buffalo are eradicated for nothing more than money, contributing to the death of the Native people and fueling Good Stab’s revenge. But while history’s memory is long, Good Stab’s is longer, and Jones pulls off one of the most beautiful and bittersweet full circle endings in a novel I’ve experienced in a long, long time, directly related to Good Stab, his pursuit of justice, and the ties that have bound him up with Arthur Beaucarne. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is absolutely one of the strongest novels I’ve read in a while, and certainly one of the best that will come out this year. Let your eyes adjust to the single candle in the church. Do not look away from the black-glass lenses of Good Stab. And be ready to listen with an open heart.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is published by Saga Press.
Such a good book