39
Watching the Buffalo
It was spring when I arrived in the valley. I drove along the highway to the
edge of town, then pulled over at the drop-off overlooking the Bear River.
From there I could look out over the basin, a patchwork of expectant fields
stretching to Buck’s Peak. The mountain was crisp with evergreens, which
were luminous set against the browns and grays of shale and limestone. The
Princess was as bright as I’d ever seen her. She stood facing me, the valley
between us, radiating permanence.
The Princess had been haunting me. From across the ocean I’d heard her
beckoning, as if I were a troublesome calf who’d wandered from her herd.
Her voice had been gentle at first, coaxing, but when I didn’t answer, when I
stayed away, it had turned to fury. I had betrayed her. I imagined her face
contorted with rage, her stance heavy and threatening. She had been living in
my mind like this for years, a deity of contempt.
But seeing her now, standing watch over her fields and pastures, I realized
that I had misunderstood her. She was not angry with me for leaving, because
leaving was a part of her cycle. Her role was not to corral the buffalo, not to
gather and confine them by force. It was to celebrate their return.
I backtracked a quarter mile into town and parked beside Grandma-over-in-
town’s white picket fence. In my mind it was still her fence, even though she
didn’t live here anymore: she had been moved to a hospice facility near Main
Street.
I had not seen my grandparents in three years, not since my parents had
begun telling the extended family that I was possessed. My grandparents
loved their daughter. I was sure they had believed her account of me. So I had
surrendered them. It was too late to reclaim Grandma—she was suffering
from Alzheimer’s and would not have known me—so I had come to see my
grandfather, to find out whether there would be a place for me in his life.