The Devil in Silver

The news played, though what was on hardly seemed to matter. The patients watched commercials and weather reports as intently as “breaking news” when they were in this state. Pepper heard the anchor’s voice. “Thousands packed Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a ‘Day of Victory’ to celebrate the one-week anniversary of the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.”

Pepper tried to focus on his breakfast tray. A small box of cereal, a green apple, an eight-ounce carton of milk, a four-ounce juice cup, two pieces of white toast, and a set of plastic utensils. Very little of this stuff actually qualified as food. Foodlike, maybe. Pepper looked away from his tray, slowly raising his eyes, if not his entire head, to peek at the half-court out there. But what he saw, just beyond the court, was that same chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. The door to the half-court had three locks.

How am I here? Pepper wanted to ask.

But he couldn’t form the words. Not only was his body still working at sludge speeds, but now his mouth was so dry he could feel the bumps of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He needed a sip of that juice. The most appetizing item on the tray. He meant to move his arms, to grab the tiny cup, but couldn’t. His fingers didn’t work, either.

Dorry watched him struggle without offering help. It wasn’t that she was being cruel. It was that she was on meds, too. Pepper recognized it on her face. She smiled widely again. Had he said something funny or was she reacting on delay to something she’d heard minutes ago?

He stared into her mouth. Dorry had tombstone teeth, bent at all angles and going gray. Her giant glasses showed streaks, like a window that’s been wet but not wiped clean. She wore the same blue nightdress from the night before. She was the kind of person Pepper might’ve given change to on a subway and never thought about again. Not a good thing to admit, but it was true. And now here he was, looking to her for help with his meager breakfast. His thirst overwhelmed him.

“Dorry,” he whispered.

Speaking, just that one word, and barely a whisper, made his parched throat burn. He puckered his lips, he opened and closed them. He stared down at the breakfast tray, at the juice carton, and hoped she understood.

Dorry said, “Do you know much about the American buffalo?”

It took Pepper a moment to register how mind-bogglingly random Dorry’s question was. If he’d been in control of himself, he might’ve chucked his table at her out of frustration. But he couldn’t do much of anything. He watched the little juice cup with an almost romantic longing.

Dorry rose from her chair.

She shuffled around the table.

“Two hundred years ago, or something like that, the American buffalo dominated the West. There were millions of the great beasts, running in herds so big it sounded like thunder rolling toward you. A population of five million. Ten million. Maybe more.”

Pepper couldn’t quite focus on her words. By now his mind seemed to be floating. Or sinking. Either way, his brain was an untethered balloon. If he hadn’t been able to see the tabletop right in front of him, see his arms balanced on the chair’s armrests, he would’ve thought he’d been let loose to float into the sky.

His throat felt so dry.

“When the settlers started crossing the country in droves, the American buffalo met its match. People wanted the skins for warmth, they ate the meat, they used the horns and the bones and all the rest. Those Native Americans used even more of the animal, but they hunted it all out of proportion, too. Used it for themselves and sold it to the settlers. The American buffalo became big business. Nothing stands in the way of that. In no time, maybe three years, those beautiful beasts were almost extinct.”

Dorry stood by his side now. She reached across his tray for the four-ounce juice cup. But she couldn’t pull the foil top off the thing. Even though she’d been on the unit for much, much, much longer than Pepper, she, too, had been walloped by her morning dose. What she took would’ve put Pepper into a coma.

“People used to go out and hunt them with rifles. Hell, they even leaned out of moving trains and picked the buffalo off with potshots. They also call the American buffalo a bison. Same animal, two names. Don’t know why that happened.”

Dorry finally opened the juice. Like Pepper used to do when he was a kid enjoying a quarter water after school. She popped two holes with her teeth then jabbed one finger inside to make a kind of spout. She tilted back Pepper’s head and opened his mouth.