Marcus and the Buffalo

Issue #17 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, April 7, 2024

Marcus was one of those kinda kids who had to see for himself. Because although he was still just a kid, he was old enough to know that adults would sometimes tell him stuff that was flat-out wrong just to be telling him stuff. Or to encourage him to be quiet.

Yeah. Encourage. His mother actually said that to him one time in the car when she was driving to the grocery store and he could tell she probably would have preferred to go alone for whatever reason. But Dad was working on the house and said he didn’t have time to be “watching that hyperactive kid”, so she got stuck with him is how she was acting.

Anyway, Marcus thought maybe if he told his mother a story then that might improve her mood. Usually, she liked his stories, the ones he could just make up on the spot like a jukebox. Sometimes, just for a challenge, she would give Marcus a topic and then see what kind of story his fertile little imagination could come up with. Like dog biscuits. Or pterodactyls. Or broccoli. But Marcus was not to be defeated and would always find a story in there somewhere, and his mother would just shake her head and laugh.

But not today. Today his mother just said “whatever” when he asked her to come up with a topic, so he decided to weave together a story about the first thing he saw out the passenger side window as the car picked up speed down the street away from the house. It was a beautiful blue bird staring right at him from a tree branch, which inspired what Marcus thought was one of his best stories ever. Once he was through spinning his tale, he looked over at his mother with one of his best smiles and asked what she thought.

“Pretty good one, huh?” he asked.

But his mother didn’t say anything for a while… until she did.

“I’m sorry, Marcus, I was watching the road. I can’t really listen to your stories and drive at the same time, all right? Listen, I know you have a wonderful little imagination between those two ears of yours, and that’s great, but for now I’d really like to encourage you to maybe be quiet for a while until we reach the store. Mom needs to think about some things.”

Marcus decided to be quiet for a lot longer than that. For nearly a month, despite his parents’ best efforts and his mother’s tearful apologies, Marcus refused to speak. To anyone. Not even at school, where normally he was one of the most talkative kids in the 3rd grade.

It was the buffalo that broke his silence.

Several months before that trip to the grocery store, Marcus was seated on top of a tall stool beside his father in the garage tool shed where he was busy sanding down a door before painting it. He had experienced an interesting dream the night before and thought maybe his father could help him figure it out. But instead, his father gave him an exasperated look as he took a brief break from his work.

“You say you were falling from somewhere way up high, is that right?”

Marcus nodded his head enthusiastically.

“And then just before you hit the ground, you woke up?”

“Yeah!”

“Uh-huh. So listen to me, Marcus. The reason you didn’t hit the ground is the reason why you’re alive right now. Because if you ever hit the ground in a dream when you’re falling from way up high, then that’s when you die. So you always want to make sure you wake up before you hit the ground. Now I need to get back to work on this door.”

“Ummm…yeah…. OK. Thanks, Dad. I guess…”

And somehow, Marcus managed to avoid having any more dreams where he was falling until one night, about a month after his self-imposed silence, when he fell asleep and dreamed of a herd of buffalo that was storming through a valley below him. Actually, they were kind of far away at first, but they were headed in Marcus’s direction, and Marcus was clinging desperately to a wire that cut into his hands as he tried to make his way from one tall cliff to the cliff on the other side. Somehow the wire was connecting the two cliffs, and Marcus was slowly making his way across, his feet dangling below, as he watched the buffalo getting closer and closer. He could hear the thunder of their hooves. None of this made any sense, but he was dreaming so…

Anyway, Marcus’s luck ran out about halfway across as he was suspended above the valley and just couldn’t hold on any longer. He could feel his fingers weakening painfully as he was unable to go any further. The buffalo were now almost directly beneath him, and the sound of their hooves was deafening - and that’s when Marcus let go.

He fell, and fell, and fell…

And then he landed hard on the ground. And then he stood up to look around at the lush green valley, full of all those beautiful buffalo calmly feeding on the tall grass. They were no longer stampeding! One of the buffalo approached Marcus, a glimmer in his eye. The animal was huge and powerful, but Marcus didn’t feel threatened.

“Thought you were gonna die didn’t you, kid?”

“I did!” said Marcus. “My dad said that…

“I know, I know. Adults have been telling their kids that lie forever. So do you wanna fix that?”

Marcus nodded.

“OK, so when you wake up, here’s what you’re gonna do…”