Bonesetter (26 page)

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 som
e 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 of 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.”

“He can walk on it now if he wants?!”

“Well not now!”

“When then?”

“I’m not sure.
When he thinks he can.
When it feels OK.
When it doesn’t hurt.”

“You don’t seem to be sure of anything!
What kind of ‘Bonesetter’ are you?”

Pell felt a flush rising on his neck, “Well, no, I’m not sure.
And I’ve told you that I don’t consider myself to be a ‘Bonesetter.’ Just someone who has a trick for putting bones back in place when they’re deformed.”
He considered just inventing answers to her questions. However, memories of his own disgust when he had felt that Pont had just made up responses to queries rose to silence him.

Gia left, muttering, “’Just a trick for reducing bones.’ Huh!
Well what
is
a ‘Bonesetter’ then?”

Despite Gia’s apparent dissatisfaction with Pell’s answers, she stopped Pell the next day.
She laid a bundle of assorted medicines out before him.
“Bonesetter, I have medicines for a cough, medicines for pain, medicines for a fever, poultices for redness and heat—what will you take in payment for Falin’s treatment?”

Pell’s ears grew warm.
As before, the “Bonesetter” appellation felt splendid but undeserved.
He considered the different medicines she had arrayed before him.
“I’d rather that you taught me how to make the powerful pain medicine that allowed me to set Falin’s leg without his being in agony.”

“No!
It’s much too dangerous!
Even
I
nearly killed Falin by giving him too much.
Besides, when you use the correct amount they do feel some of the pain.”

“Well, I know that it was too much.
Teach me the mixture and I’ll just use less.”

“How can you say that?
You have to give more to big people and less to little children.
I misjudged Falin’s size, not the dose of the medicine.”
Her voice took on a musing tone.
“Even if you judge the size correctly, sometimes the medicine seems to be
much
more powerful than other times.
Even when prepared in the same way and given to the same person.”
Then she looked up sharply.
“It has poppy seeds in it—harvested on different days, they have different potency!
In any case it is
very
easy to misjudge, as I did, and much too dangerous for someone inexperienced with medicines, such as yourself.”

“But, it made the bonesetting so much less painful for Falin.
If, in the future, I am called upon to set more bones, it would be such a kindness to give them
some
of your medicine, even if I use
much
too small a dose.”

Gia looked at Pell curiously.
“Well maybe you’re right, but the magic in this pain reliever is too strong for you to make by yourself.”
She had said this much with a sly tone.
She shook herself and with a more open look said, “Besides, my grandmother would kill me if I gave away her secret!
However, I will make quite a bit for you, perhaps enough for five or six more ‘bonesettings’, and leave it.
If you need more you can trade with me for it in the future.”

Pell agreed
at the thought of meeting her again someday. She
set about making it up.
He was chagrined when she appeared later with several mixtures for him and set about giving him careful directions for them.
Some parts had to be ground, then steeped.
Others steeped without grinding.
The liquid from one mixture was combined with the dregs of another and words must be said at each step!
Finally, there were careful instructions for dosing children and varying sizes of adults.
At first, Pell thought that he could never remember it all.
Astonishment came over him when he considered that this was but a portion of one of
many
recipes that she must carry in her head.
Despite his feeling of hopelessness, she, having had to learn recipes herself, knew the trick of it.
She drilled him over and over with questions and repetitions until she was sure he had learned the recipe and would not forget it.