One of the enjoyments of reading a Stephen Graham Jones novel is discovering which narrative strands—some that would be recognized as “literary,” some as “genre”—will be woven together in the book. Whether it’s Mongrels’ werewolf tale and family saga, The Only Good Indians’ supernatural revenge tour and basketball tourney, or the Indian Lake trilogy’s slasher epic, horror seminar, and female bildungsroman, Jones crafts story strata that surprise and satisfy. In his latest, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, a deep dive into historical fiction inspired by the 1870 brutal massacre of a Pikuni Blackfeet camp by U.S. soldiers in Montana, there are more layers than ever, “about monsters and history, ghosts and justice.”
In the opening pages of the novel, things don’t look good for Etsy, a down-on-her-luck professor up for tenure who has been spending too much time teaching and not enough time producing publications that meet the university’s “standards for promotion.” Fortunately, an archival miracle falls in her lap, giving her something to publish. A construction worker on a parsonage renovation project has discovered a journal from 1912 that just so happens to be written by the professor’s great-great-grandfather, Arthur Beaucarne.
What the excavated journal reveals is a tale of the post–Civil War, still–Wild West, in which Beaucarne, an aging pastor, records the confessions of a strange and slightly menacing “Indian gentleman” who starts turning up for his Sunday sermons. The latter identifies himself by several names, but the one that sticks is Good Stab. Beaucarne alternates between his own impressions of these visits and the transcription of Good Stab’s autobiography, as told to the pastor in the darkened church.
But why has Good Stab chosen Beaucarne to be the interlocutor for his testimony? And is it possible that Good Stab is telling the truth about having lived as a vampire for decades? And who are the men turning up dead on the outskirts of town, ritualistically mutilated in a manner that echoes details from Good Stab’s story?
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter never actually uses the term “vampire,” but the legend is so recognizable within these pages that the word is unnecessary. Beaucarne observes, “Those two corrupt syllables can’t be trapped, not in a way that captures the monster they would signify.” In his retelling, Good Stab begins his journey of immortality when he and some other members of his tribe come upon American soldiers who have unknowingly trapped a vampire in a cage. He is infected when he accidentally consumes the blood of the “Cat Man” during a subsequent violent skirmish. On the same day, in the same territory, the Marias Massacre leaves its mark on history.
The reader is given well-paced clues about the links between the two men and the two massacres as The Buffalo Hunter Hunter follows Good Stab’s adjustment to his new reality through the complex landscape of Blackfeet territory. One of the storytelling layers mentioned earlier might include the education narrative—how does a man learn to survive as a monster? Good Stab reports, “It’s like being big and small at the same time, like being alive and dead together, and I hate that it feels so good. I hate it because it means I can’t ever stop.”
Jones spares no detail as Good Stab figures out his diet, his enemies, his weaknesses and strengths, and his relationship to his community after being transformed. “To be a Pikuni and be alone is to not be a person anymore,” Good Stab says. Much is made of his tragic relationship to the land and the animals that populate it. In an intriguing spin on gothic expectations, Good Stab begins to morph into whatever species he is consuming most, putting his identity in question. He concludes, “What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” Eventually, these 19th-century nightmares are brought to Etsy Beaucarne’s 21st-century doorstep.
Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire has been a symbol of otherness. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter plays with this perspective; on Native land, it is the arrival of those who would seek to other the original inhabitants that leads to infection. Good Stab tells Beaucarne, “We never called this place ours like that, though. But that didn’t mean it was yours.” In fact, of the many combatants that threaten Good Stab as he struggles to survive and seek revenge for the massacre of his people, America itself looms large. An entry in the journal notes, “This, I believe, is the story of America, told in a forgotten church in the hinterlands, with a choir of the dead mutely witnessing.”
All of Stephen Graham Jones’s books expose the false dichotomy between genre and literary fiction. Will a typical narrative from the author involve someone dying in a horrific way that will haunt your dreams? Sure. Will readers also encounter the profound themes and evocative prose of the best American literature? They will—and to fear the gore is to miss out on the revelation.•
THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER, BY STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Chris Daley has written about books, cults, and heartbreak in the Los Angeles Times, Air/Light, Essay Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Collagist, Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She publishes the Submission Sunday newsletter on Substack and designs author websites at chrisdaley.com.
