Bonesetter

by Laurence Dahners

  Pell’s eyes widened. He’d been ashamed of snaring rather than hunting but it sounded like Donte wouldn’t think that way if she understood that it wasn’t an accident. He wondered if he should tell her?

  Tando saved him from making that decision by rising up from his bed to interrupt them. He wanted to know if Pell thought they should exhume Tellgif and bring her to Cold Springs. Then Pell could try to revive her at his leisure. Pell spent the next several hours exhaustedly fending off Tando’s more and more agonized pleas with repeated assertions that he knew of nothing else to try in any effort to bring her back.

  The next morning Tando lay in a funk, refusing to get up or even eat. Donte stirred about, but moodily as well, responding dully to Pell’s queries. Pell, feeling desperate to get away from the pall that hung over the cave, went out to check and set snares. A brilliant morning walk up along the burbling clear water of the creek and among the healthy green leaves of the forest in summer did much to improve his mood. Then he saw Ginja and his heart leaped! In the excitement of the trip he’d only occasionally thought about the young wolf’s absence, wistfully perhaps, but not often. Seeing her now made him aware of how much he had truly missed his animal friend. After a moment, presumably taken to be sure that Donte and Tando were not about, the young wolf bounded up and then rose on her hind legs, paws on his chest, tail wagging, tongue licking! Startled at first, Pell scratched behind her ears and then wrestled her to the ground, much as he and Boro often had played when he was younger. Ginja snarled and yapped in a playful way, biting his wrists, but always gently. After they settled down he opened his pouch and gave her some smoked meat, which she enthusiastically bolted. Soon they were on their way again, Ginja leaping ahead at first, then settling down to her previous hunting routine of wary watchfulness. Pell’s snares were mostly empty, though several had obviously held prey that had been chewed away by other predators or scavengers in his absence. One held a few bits of a more recently trapped squirrel that he gave to Ginja. Pell repaired and reset the snares into new locations as they traveled. Once they surprised a deer traveling on the same trail as they were. It bolted back down the trail away from them. Watching it bound away started Pell thinking about a snare big enough to capture a deer or a boar. That would really be great! But it would take a real rope. None of his thongs would do, but maybe he could braid such a rope from smaller thongs?

  Pell and Ginja had almost reached their camp with no fresh meat from the snares when Ginja bounded ahead. Pell, trailing behind, came upon the young wolf snarling at a sow. Ginja had killed a piglet and was defending her kill from the piglet’s mother. The mother had a few other piglets to defend and so when Pell showed up at Ginja’s side, she decided to cut her losses. The pigs quickly rustled off into the bushes. Expecting Ginja to stay with her kill, Pell started on his way back to the cave. He was surprised to find her following behind him dragging the piglet. Piglet it might be, but it was still fairly good sized and dragging it seemed a struggle for the young wolf. Pell was surprised that she wasn’t just eating what she could of it. Puzzled he stopped to watch. She dragged it up and laid it at his feet, then looked up at him, tongue dangling from one side of her mouth. It was as if she was saying, “Here, you take it.”

  He considered a moment. In the past, she had growled at him if he even came near her while she was eating. He reached down toward the piglet and she backed up a step, eyeing him curiously but not growling. He touched the pig—still no growling. Well! He picked the pig up, threw it over his shoulder and turned toward camp. Ginja bounded ahead, tongue still lolling. Pell shook his head, this he didn’t understand, a wolf sharing its kill with him! Almost as silly Pell chuckled, as his giving the wolf some of his smoked meat.

  Back at camp Pell found Tando lying curled on his side. It didn’t look like he’d moved since Pell had left. Upon finding Donte and Tando there, Ginja stopped just inside the cave entrance, rumbling low growls. In hopes of disposing Ginja more favorably toward them, Pell made a big show of friendship to them. There was no response from the catatonic Tando. Donte was no more than monosyllabic in her responses. Despite the one-way flow of affection, Ginja settled down. She eventually took up residence just inside the entrance of the cave, head on her paws, alertly watching every move.

  Pell gutted and skinned the small boar. After a bit, Donte sighed and set about trying to preserve the stomach for a waterskin and the bristly skin for leather. “Pell! You let that damn wolf chew on this piglet, didn’t you! What were you thinking?!”

  “Momma, the piglet was the wolf’s kill, not mine. Of course the wolf chewed it.”

  There was a stunned silence in the cave. Pell gave the little boar’s heart to the wolf with a piece of the liver. He cut the rest of the liver up for the three of them to share. Though he didn’t personally like the taste of liver unless he was really hungry, he knew that eating liver made people better when they had “end of winter” sickness. When Pell looked up again he saw both Tando and Donte staring at the wolf. For her part she lay contentedly tearing at her meal. Glad to see him alert, Pell again tried to speak to Tando but to his dismay Tando dropped back on his bedding, completely ignoring Pell’s overtures. Donte came over to whisper, “Tando takes Ginja’s hunting for us as just one more bit of evidence demonstrating your astounding powers. Powers that Tando feels you are refusing to use to bring Tellgif back from the dead.”

  Pell went over to sit cross-legged beside Tando. After a moment he said, “Tando, you are a good hunter, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you hunt for me if I asked?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ah, but I don’t want you to hunt for me, I want you to catch fish.”

  “Pell, I don’t know how, but if you teach me how I will happily catch fish for you all day, every day.”

  “No, Tando, I don’t know how to catch fish either, I want you to do it.”

  Tando apparently didn’t realize where Pell was headed with this. His brow furrowed and he said, “But—I don’t know how.”

  “Tando! I don’t know how to bring people back from the dead either! Now I have heard of people who can catch fish. I have heard of people who can set bones. But, never have I heard of someone who can bring people back from the dead, have you heard of someone that can do that?”

  Tando cast himself back to again lay flaccid on the pile of leaves and grasses where he had been sleeping. “No, but you could if you’d try.” Tando stared disconsolately up at the roof of the cave, a tear trickling down his cheek.

  “I did try—I can’t do it Tando. I’m sorry.” This last trailed off into inaudibility. Pell turned and went out to climb up onto cliffside rocks where Donte had spent the previous afternoon. He hunkered down, rocking on his heels and watching, unimpressed, the multicolored hues of a summer sunset. Donte climbed up to sit beside him. She chanted one of the women’s mourning songs for a while. They sat in companionable silence staring down the ravine and listening to the distant rush of the stream over the rocks. After a while, without looking at him Donte told Pell in a cheerless tone that Tando would get over it. Gloomily delivered, her promise raised little hope in Pell. Despite his own statements regarding the impossibility of reviving the dead, Pell felt like a failure. Having a hunter in his prime such as Tando begging a mere boy, a boy who was a hunting failure, for a favor—it was agonizing not to be able to help.

  That night Pell and Donte ate roast piglet with baked roots and fresh berries that Donte had found. Tando lay dully, staring at the ceiling and ignoring their attempts to entice him with food.

  The next several days Pell ran his traplines in the morning and went gathering with Donte in the afternoon. The traplines continued to produce their bounty of several small animals per day. Donte delightedly exclaimed over the success of his “hunts”, day after day after day. Pell struck the corpse of each of his “kills” with a rock to make it seem that he had killed it with his “newly found” throwing talent. Kills chewed on by scaveng
ers prior to his retrieving them were given to Ginja if their condition was too bad or were dismembered before being carried in if they were salvageable. The majority of the meat they smoked for winter. Donte spent her mornings making the skins into leathers and furs, stitching some skins into rough clothing, stuffing “fingers” of intestines with smoked meat and fat and weaving baskets for grain storage. Tando continued to mourn listlessly, eating little and contributing nothing to their efforts.

  Pell and Donte finally discussed whether they should consider declaring Tando “ginja” and throwing him out of their little tribe of three. He awoke two mornings later and declared that he was hungry. Pell was surprised to find that they willingly fed him a huge breakfast a few days after debating the need to “cast him out.” It was, nonetheless, good to see Tando up and moving around. After the meal he proclaimed himself ready to go along on Pell’s morning hunt.

  This shook Pell! He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t considered this problem before. How would he be considered a “great hunter” if Tando, or anyone for that matter, came along and watched him hunt?

  They set out into a muggy summer morning miasma, as steam seemed to rise from the lush summer vegetation. The day promised a scorching afternoon after the thin clouds burned away. Ginja followed the duo cautiously at first but after a bit she began to lead as she usually did when Pell was alone. Tando asked how Pell was able to sneak up on any prey, commenting not only on the noise Pell was making as he walked but also on the fact that, with the wolf out in front, it surely would have flushed any prey before Pell got to it. Pell dithered about in his own mind, wondering how to respond to Tando’s questions. He suddenly realized that he needed to follow a different route than he had the previous day in order to stay away from his traps. Tando would surely notice them. He decided to head west but before he could call the wolf and head that way she bounded ahead with a little yip… directly to the site of the first trap he had laid the day before! A raccoon scurried away from the site of the trap. When they arrived, Ginja stood guard beside a slightly chewed squirrel. The squirrel hung by a thong noose from a branch Pell had propped against a tree. Pell had noticed that squirrels often used sticks and branches that had fallen against the trunks of trees as paths to run down to the ground. Pell had taken to suspending his nooses just over these “squirrel paths.” When that proved successful, he stooped to propping branches against trunks to make more “squirrel paths.”

  Pell tried to block Tando’s view of the trapped squirrel in hopes of cutting it down and claiming that Ginja had merely driven away the raccoon who was its rightful owner. However, Tando stepped in quickly to examine the squirrel and the thong excitedly. “Pell! You made this little thong noose didn’t you? I’ve seen one of them dangling out of your pouch. But how did the squirrel get caught in it? Wait… Is that what the thongs are for?! Is this how you hunt? You catch animals in these things, don’t you?”

  Pell stared down at his feet shamefacedly and muttered, “Yes.”

  “That’s incredible! How does it work?! Show me!! I’ve never seen anything like this! Can I do it too? Must you have the spirit power to set one up?”

  Pell slowly looked up. Tando wasn’t making fun of him! In fact, Tando was so excited he was practically dancing a jig. He didn’t seem to think that Pell was a hunting failure because he used snares. Though, Pell thought to himself, if Tando ever saw him throw, his dismal accuracy would still be a source of ridicule. Nonetheless, at present an awed Tando evidently thought the snares to be further evidence of Pell’s “amazing powers.”

  Pell, worried that Tando would again begin demanding the revivification of Tellgif, tried to dispel his awe. He attempted to explain the snares as the simple tools that they were.

  “Of course you could do it Tando. There’s nothing magical about it. You know that rabbit I brought in to the tribe at the end of winter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well I didn’t actually kill it with a throw. I missed and saw it go into its burrow. So I sat by the burrow for a while hoping it would come out so that I could hit it with a club. It didn’t come out, but while I was sitting there waiting I thought to put a noose about the burrow entrance in hopes that the noose would slow the rabbit down enough to give me a better chance to hit it. Then I left to check out a place where some vultures were circling. I wasn’t even there when the rabbit came out. But if the noose is placed right, most of the time when animals run into it, it pulls tight around their neck. The animals struggle like they’ve been speared and the noose gets tighter and tighter until it chokes them. So I just go out every day and suspend nooses over the paths and trails where animals run.”

  Tando sat down, still staring in amazement at the squirrel dangling in the noose. “This is unbelievable! Why didn’t I think of this?”

  “It was just luck. If that rabbit hadn’t gone into a hole I could see, right when I had a thong with a noose tied in it, I wouldn’t have thought of it either.”

  “No! Pell! You have a gift for seeing these kinds of things. You should thank the spirits for such an extraordinary talent.”

  Pell absentmindedly rubbed the thong with some manure to erase the smell of death and human, thinking that it would be difficult to explain such a strange practice to Tando. On the contrary, Tando immediately grasped the idea, again thinking that Pell was ingenious. “You do that so that the animals can’t smell you on your snare right?”

  Pell shrugged, “Yes.”

  They moved to a different location and Pell showed Tando how to set the snare back up. They made the rounds of the rest of Pell’s traps. Tando constantly questioned Pell about the snares, “Why put one here? How big should the loop be? Why do you drape grass or leaves over them?” The queries seemed endless but Pell found that they focused his own thoughts about the snares and together he and Pell thought of several other places to deploy them. The two “hunters” arrived back in camp with a groundhog whose burrow entrance Pell had snared, a rabbit and two more squirrels. A fairly good haul, and one which had Tando agog. He burbled steadily about the possibilities opened up by the snares. When they got back to cave and encountered Donte, Tando launched excitedly into a description of the snares, their fabulous haul and Pell’s brilliance. Pell found the surfeit of praise embarrassing, yet he wished that the whole Aldans tribe could be there to hear this praise heaped on their erstwhile “ginja.”

  Donte, at first slow to understand, gradually became excited. Then she grasped that the rabbit, the one she had found during Pell’s absence with a thong about its neck, had been trapped purposely rather than accidentally. “Pell, why didn’t you explain it to me before, when I showed you the thong that my rabbit had been trapped in?”

  “I thought that you might think it was a dishonorable way to hunt.”

  Donte and Tando gaped at Pell, absolutely astounded that he would not be proud of his ingenuity.

  Donte had questions of her own. “Why do the animals go into the snares?”

  “Well, by accident, I think. I set the snares on paths where they run. Like the branches that the squirrels like to run on. Small rabbit paths in the brambles and underbrush. Around the entrance to their burrows when I find a burrow. I suspend the bottom of the loop where I think the animal using that path will strike it with its chest. The top of the loop is higher. I think the animals expect to push aside the bottom of the loop like a twig and don’t expect it to drop about their neck and tighten. When they begin to fight it, it tightens further. It works best with the squirrels because they fall off the branch and their weight finishes tightening the noose. Then they hang high enough off the ground so that most of the predators can’t reach them.”

  “Why don’t the animals see that you put something in their path and go around it?”

  “I don’t know, but I guess it’s because it doesn’t look dangerous and they’re moving pretty fast. Besides, I think many animals count on smell to recognize danger and I smear the thongs with the dung of other plant eaters. T
he dung smell covers my scent and so I don’t think that the snare smells dangerous to them anymore.”

  That afternoon they all went gathering together, taking a new route that proved to be as bountiful of vegetable foods as the morning’s trap run had of animals. In the evening they cooked up a feast from their profusion of fresh food. They cut up the rabbit and squirrels into strips of meat, which they soaked in Pell’s skin full of salty water and then laid out back in the smoking nook. The groundhog they spit on a couple of sticks and suspended over the fire turning it occasionally as it roasted to a crusty brown on the outside. Donte baked some tubers in the coals at the edge of the fire. They ate berries while they waited for everything to cook and talked excitedly of plans to make themselves self sufficient for winter.

  Pell was gratified that the other two had gotten over their funk and was pleased to be planning for the winter that he had so long dreaded. Wiping some berry juice from his chin he said, “You know the small area of the overhang that I walled off to make this “cave” for me is getting pretty tight for the three of us. Especially so, now that we’re starting to accumulate a lot of food. I think that we should spend some time making it larger. There is a lot more space underneath the overhanging rock that we could wall in.”

  “Great idea Pell,” said Donte her eyebrows up. “I’ve been feeling crowded, and wondering where we could store more tubers and grains. I hadn’t thought about just making our cave bigger!”

  Donte, and even Pell, stiffened when Tando said, “Yeah Donte, why don’t you get started on it tomorrow?” As one, they turned on him but he had a big grin on his face. “Yeah, yeah, I know, no more ‘women’s work’ and ‘men’s work,’ a tribe of three is ‘too small for that’. I just wanted to see the expression on your faces!” Pell and Donte laughed with Tando, Pell secretly grateful that Tando could make a joke. They agreed that each of them should start cutting and collecting poles for the enlargement when they had spare time.