They rolled him quickly and stared at Pell awaiting his next move. He looked at the boy, face down in the dirt and said, “For the Spirit’s sake, turn his head so he can breathe.” Manute quickly did this while Gia knelt by his face, brushing dirt off his listless face. Pell picked up the boy’s ankle by the board splint attached to it just as Gia cried out. “He’s not breathing!” Gia exclaimed. Just as she said the words, Pell had begun to pull on his ankle. The boy gasped in a torpid fashion. “Oh! Do that again! The pain makes him breath! Keep going!”
Pell had let go at Gia’s exclamation. Thinking that he had never been commanded to purposely hurt someone before, Pell grasped the splint and used it as a lever to bend the leg into an even more deformed position than before, just as he had done with each of his successful bonesettings in the past. The boy gasped and struggled, flailing weakly about but Tando and Manute easily controlled him. Pell placed his instep on the back of the boy’s distal thigh and began pulling strongly on the splint with one hand and on the foot with the other. He felt the bones grating together in a sickening manner and thought to stop. But he remembered his false try with Tando when he hadn’t been able to pull hard enough so instead he continued to pull harder and harder. He straightened his back, heaving as hard as he could as the boy continued flailing weakly beneath him.
Again, Gia cried out, “The leather straps are cutting into his flesh! Stop! You’re pulling too hard! Stop!”
Pell, fearing that he hadn’t pulled long enough or hard enough, nonetheless began pulling less on the splint and more on the foot in order to rock it back out straight. There was some crunching in the bones beneath his hands and the ankle rocked back into a better alignment.
Letting out a gasp, Pell bent down to look at the ankle but even before he could see Manute shouted, “You did it!”
Hoping it had indeed been enough, Pell tried to press the splint against the calf where he had shaped it to fit but it wouldn’t go. Holding the splint near the leg, he crouched down to see why, surprised to find himself shaking from the effort just past. He saw immediately that the ankle was much better, no longer flopping off to the side as it had. However, it was not quite straight, still having a small bend out laterally so that the splint would not fit against the medial side of the calf. It also looked as if the foot still wouldn’t go quite flat on the ground when Falin stood on it. Manute and Tando also gathered close to inspect the outcome. They both jumped back when Gia cried out yet again.
“He’s hardly breathing again! Pell, work on his ankle some more, it keeps him going!”
Pell had been wondering whether he should try to set the ankle again, fearing that his next try might not even be as good as the one he had just completed. Gia’s pleas decided the matter. He stood and once again grasped the splint in one hand and the foot in the other, placing his own foot on the back of the boy’s thigh. He increased the deformity anew, pulling as hard as he could while the boy once more began to gasp and cry out. Pell tried to pull the foot over medially to correct the deformity that had remained after his last try but the leg just came with him when he moved the foot in that direction.
“Tando, come pull on the leg!” he gritted out. “Yes, yes, grasp it there, just above the ankle. Move it outwards! No dammit, outwards, toward you! No! The other way! Yes, yes!” Now that Tando had given him something to work against, Pell pushed the foot over onto the end of the leg, shoving mightily until it wouldn’t go any farther. His own muscles were protesting vigorously and he didn’t think he could possibly pull any longer so he tilted the foot back straight. Holding the splint against the calf he stooped again to look, then sat down beside it, exhausted. The leg was much straighter now. Still not quite perfect he didn’t think. It was hard to tell for sure because he was trembling from the exertion. The swelling in the ankle made it hard to see too.
Tando and Manute were exulting over what appeared to them to be a perfect job. Gia was sobbing into Falin’s ear, begging forgiveness for giving him too much medicine. Donte kept trying to tell Gia that it wasn’t her fault; she just hadn’t wanted him to suffer. “Better to suffer than to die!” Gia wailed, fluttering about the boy’s face, begging him to breathe deeper.
Pell strapped the splint to Falin’s calf with two of the leather straps that Donte had cut earlier, then he asked Gia if she wanted him on his back now. When she nodded, they all rolled the boy over and Pell began to worry about fitting the other splint into place. He padded it with the soft fur Donte had cut for that purpose and then placed it against the lateral side of the ankle. To his relief, it fit fairly well. While peering at the fit he noticed in dismay that, as Gia had said, the wet straps from the first splint had cut into the swollen flesh. Blood was oozing from beneath one of the straps and the other was deeply creasing the skin. Using one hand to squeeze the two splints towards one another and against the sides of the ankle, he tried to use the other hand to worry the knots in the straps loose. “Tando, I need help. Can you get these knots loose? No? Well cut the straps then.” Pell held the splints firmly in place while Tando did so. It was difficult to see in the twilight and under the edges of the splint but the skin did appear to be broken where the straps had cut in. However, he thought it to be a small wound. Carefully holding the ankle against the lateral splint, he pulled away the medial splint and had Tando pad it with fur like the lateral one. With both splints back in place, Pell held them in place and had Tando bind the two splints about the leg with fresh straps from the pile Donte had made.
Through all this, the constant small manipulations of Falin’s painful ankle kept the boy gasping in pain. Shortly after they finished the splinting however, Falin began to breathe shallowly again. This caused Gia a great deal of distress and she begged Pell to undo the splints and begin to manipulate his ankle again. To his surprise Pell found himself disagreeing, “No, Gia!” Before that moment, he would have thought that he would do anything that girl asked. “If we move his ankle too many times I’m afraid the swelling will become much worse. Better that he die now, rather than later of a limb with the swelling sickness!” Though they didn’t understand the infection that caused such deaths, everyone knew that the deaths that came from a limb that swelled too much were horrifying.”
“The pain of you working on his ankle is the only thing that has kept him breathing so far! Would you really rather he just died right now? At least there is a chance that he might survive the swelling.”
“But there must be other ways to cause pain than to damage his ankle more.” Saying this Pell grasped the boy’s fingers and bent them back like Denit had done to him so many times when they were younger. This brought a small moan from Falin but only after he had bent the fingers back so far that Pell feared they might snap.
Tando leaned forward and grasped the boy’s arm pushing the bones together just below the wrist. “My brother used to do this to me when I was little—it hurts a lot.” Falin moaned and took a deep breath, thrashing about a little.
For the next half hour or so the group took turns sitting with the boy, stimulating him in various painful ways in order to keep him breathing until Gia’s concoction wore off. Continuing to worry about the swelling, Pell again propped the boy’s leg up on the inverted basket. With time, Falin gradually resumed breathing steadily. Working beside Pell to treat the boy, Gia’s thigh accidentally pressed against Pell’s. His breath caught at the touch. Her warmth seared into him, then raised goose bumps on that whole side of his body. She asked an innocent question and he stammered a reply, but a moment later couldn’t remember what the question had been. Shortly after that, he staggered away, feeling like Pont on too much hemp, cursing himself for being unable to converse intelligently with the girl of his dreams.
Donte and Tando were giggling off to one side. Happy to see them in a good mood, Pell forgot his own distress. He went over and asked them what was so funny. “Oh Pell,” Donte exclaimed, “You are so moony eyed over that girl. It’s obvious you adore her, why don’t you at leas
t say a few words to her? You’re nothing but business!”
Pell felt his face flush again. “I… I… I, I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled, scuffing his foot in the dirt.
To Pell’s chagrin, Tando guffawed, “Boy, if you can’t talk to the pretty ones you’re going to end up mated to some bristly old sow.” He chuckled at his own joke and Donte giggled with him.
Seeing how embarrassed and miserable her son was, Donte asked him to go with her to gather some foodstuffs for a feast, saying, “We need to celebrate the successful bonesetting.” As they walked up to the cave, she suggested that he simply pretend that Gia was one of the girls from the Aldans whom he hadn’t seen for a while. “Talk to her but imagine that she’s an old friend. Ask her questions. She’ll do most of the talking and you can just listen.”
At the feast that night, Gia and Manute shared some “traveling food” which they had brought. It consisted of cooked grains and root fragments that were packed into little cakes using the fat drippings from a roasted animal. They tasted as if they had been savory initially, but now, several days after they had set out, they had become a little sour. The three hosts ate some of the cakes out of politeness but they had been spoiled by the consistently better fare provided by their traplines and diligent gathering. They furnished a roasted rabbit from the day’s run of the trapline. They also contributed some freshly baked roots and handfuls of fresh berries Donte had picked earlier that day. Gia brewed up a special tea that tasted of mint and hemp leaves. The sumptuous meal, along with the mild euphoria from the tea, induced a happy feast. They ate out in the small clearing where Falin was laying by the stream and afterwards sat around the fire they had built there, telling stories and monitoring the boy’s progress. Though Gia continued casting worried looks at her little brother, she and her brother repeatedly expressed amazement at what Pell had been able to do with his ankle. Such a deformity would likely have cost him his life eventually, as unable to walk much less run, he wouldn’t have been able to carry his own weight in a tribe. Though no one said anything about it, as if for fear of bad luck, their enthusiasm remained tempered by the knowledge that he might still come to a bad ending from the swelling in his ankle.
Pell looked up with some surprise to see Tando carrying sleeping furs down from the cave to the clearing. “What are you doing with the bedding Tando?
“I didn’t think we should move the boy, so I thought it would be better if we all slept down here in the clearing with him.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous; surely we could carry him up to the cave if we’re careful.”
Tando shot Pell a meaningful look and, while jerking his head off to the side to ask for a private conference said, “No, no, he’ll rest easier if we don’t move him. Besides there’s hardly room for six in the cave.”
Thinking that there was easily room for more than six in their newly expanded cave, Pell nonetheless said nothing. He got up and walked back up to the cave with Tando for the conference Tando so obviously wanted. When they were out of earshot, Pell turned. “Why do you want us to be such poor hosts? They could sleep in the cave. We have plenty of room and I’m sure we could move the boy safely.”
“Pell, if they sleep in the cave, they may well deduce the secret of our smoked meat! Soon everyone will be making it. We’ll never have a chance to really do well at a trading place such as River Fork! We can’t let anyone outside our own little tribe into our cave. At least until we find a good way to hide our secrets.”
“Like I’ve said before, I don’t think we should keep it a secret. Smoked meat could help many people who might otherwise die make it through the winter.”
“Believe me, it won’t stay a secret for long. From the taste alone, someone is going to figure it out soon. But, I’ll give you another reason why no one else should be in our cave. We have a lot of smoked meat hidden in there. If word gets out about what we’ve stored in there, someone may be back to demand some of it this winter. Large tribes have raided small ones in previous winters. The three of us couldn’t protect ourselves. Raiding is one of the most important reasons it’s so bad to be part of a really small tribe. Not only is it harder to hunt, but when bigger tribes get hungry in the winter, they kill you for what little that you may have stored.”
Pell thought with dismay of the Aldans. If they were hungry, it would be easy for Denit to bring the Aldans’ hunters down to massacre Pell, Tando and Donte. Denit would do it for a little smoked meat, much less the quantity they had hidden away. Denit would do it for fun! “I hadn’t thought of that.” He reflected a moment, “I don’t think Gia or Manute would do that though.”
“No… but maybe her tribe would. We know nothing about them you know. Even if she just brought them here to trade for meat in the winter—if some of them realize how small our tribe is, we could be in trouble. And, she might just talk about it. She may not realize how dangerous it could be for us if other tribes knew we have large stores of food. If she just mentioned to someone in passing, ‘how amazed she was at how much meat we had saved up,’ we could die this winter despite our stores.”
“Well... you may be right. There aren’t any clouds so probably no rain. It looks OK for us to sleep outside, at least tonight.” Pell returned to the fire with more sleeping furs for the group. His mind stirred over these new problems until long after the rest of the little party was sound asleep.
The quiet of the night was broken by Falin’s painful cries. Pell awoke to check on his leg. It was even more swollen. Pell loosened the straps and Gia sparingly gave the boy some more of her potion, fretting aloud about his earlier overdose. After a bit Falin became more comfortable. Nonetheless, he continued to cry out occasionally.
By morning, blisters had popped out on Falin’s grotesquely swollen ankle. Pell felt his heart begin thumping in his chest as he recognized that new bruises had appeared as well. The blisters had formed directly under the areas where Pell’s straps had cut into the skin during the bonesetting. The ankle seemed hot so he doused it briefly in the cold stream water to cool it off. The cold didn’t last long so Pell got some cold mud from the creek bottom and packed it around the leg and ankle. Falin moaned and sat up. “Bonesetter, what’s the mud for? It’s very cold.”
Pell shook his head, “I thought it might take some of the heat out of your ankle. Heat can be bad.” Pell didn’t say anything about the fevers that he had seen take people’s lives. He began changing the mud whenever it warmed up. Pell found an unexpected benefit in that the mud covered the ugly bruising and blistering. No one else seemed to have noticed the injured skin and the concealing mud made them less likely to blame Pell for additional injuries, at least for now. His mind scampered about, feeling somehow that it was wrong to hide the additional injuries. But, he thought to himself that there had been no other way to straighten the leg. If he’d left it as it was, the leg, and therefore Falin, would be useless. Regardless, he knew that many members of his old tribe would blame him if Falin died, whether it was Falin’s only hope or not. In any case, it made Pell feel better if no one else noticed the bruising and blistering.
To Pell’s relief, Falin said that the cold mud made his ankle hurt less and he began requesting that the mud be changed as soon as it began to warm up. Falin also liked to have his ankle propped up because it didn’t throb as much, so Pell had them continue supporting it on the large inverted basket. By evening, it seemed as if the swelling was beginning to go back down and Pell was able to retighten the straps a little.
The next few days passed uneventfully. It stayed clear and cloudless so there was no problem sleeping outside. The swelling in Falin’s ankle went down little by little. The boy slowly felt better and required less of Gia’s medicine. Pell tightened the straps on the splints twice a day and the little boards began to fit as he had first intended when he carved them.
Manute hunted a few times with Pell and Tando, excitedly at first, expecting unusually easy hunting after seeing Pell or Tando return the first few days o
f his stay with a brace of game each time. Of course, when he went along, they stayed away from the traplines and so returned with only an occasional kill. Visibly disappointed, he asked what he might have done wrong to spoil their hunt. They laughed it off as “some days are good, some not so good.”
Manute gasped in awe at the haul Pell made the next time he went out and Manute stayed in camp. “So big a haul” that Pell had “stopped to clean, skin and cut them up in order to decrease the weight” and carried them back in a big pouch of leather. Actually, after two days untended, the trapline had been full of partially eaten prey and Pell had had to cut them up to disguise this fact. Manute, of course, didn’t consider such a possibility.
As the days passed, Manute found he could carry his little brother around for short periods without causing him too much pain. They began to talk of returning to their own tribe. As they contemplated leaving, Gia came to ask Pell questions about how to take care of Falin’s ankle after they were gone. As always, Pell felt tongue-tied as he tried to answer the questions posed by the beautiful young woman. He found it especially unnerving to be addressed as “Bonesetter,” an honorific that seemed so undeserved. Nevertheless, when the word crossed her lips it swelled him with pride. Trying to follow Donte’s advice, he found that he did indeed stammer less if he simply imagined her to be Gurix, Belk’s curious young daughter. He described how in treating Tando’s wrist he had constantly had to retighten the straps to keep the splint snug. “The swelling goes down and down so that they don’t fit as well.” She asked how long to leave the splints in place and, when Pell said he didn’t know, expressed her dismay.
“Gia, I told you that I’ve never taken care of an ankle before. I think Falin will know when his leg is healed enough to go without the splints.”
Bonesetter Page 16
