Tau Ceti
Page 31
He got out of the water and backed away a few paces. Then he turned and struggled to again speak calmly. Pell couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice, but Tando, in his drugged state, didn’t seem to notice. “Sorry Tando, your wrist was just too big and slippery for me, I just need something to help me get a better grip. You settle down, I’ll look for something to help me get that grip and we’ll try it again.”
Tando looked blearily at Pell for a moment, considering. “OK,” he slurred Donte gave him some more of the hemp to chew.
Pell walked back up to the campsite thinking furiously. Easily said but how could he get a better grip? For a moment he envisioned tying a slipknot around the wrist with a leather strap. How would he bend the bone back while he pulled on it though? He pawed through his meager possessions and looked around the campsite. His eye fixed on a piece of driftwood left from an old flooding of the ravine. It lay near some leather straps he had made earlier while cutting out thongs for his “traps.” It was about half a hand wide and the length of a forearm. He picked up the driftwood and the straps and went back down to look at Tando’s wrist. Tando snored loudly, oblivious to the world as Pell looped straps about his own arm in different directions and held the piece of driftwood up to his wrist, cocking his head to look at it from different angles. Finally, Pell took his hand ax and split it lengthwise. He hacked and scraped away at it until he had a fairly flat little board with a relatively smooth side. This smooth side fit comfortably against Pell’s own forearm, wrist, palm and fingers.
Pell laid the board against Tando’s palm and considered. Because of the angulation at Tando’s wrist, the portion of the board, which should lie against the forearm, stood away at least a handspan. Pell scratched his head, contemplating the problem. He tied the board to Tando’s palm with a couple of leather straps. With a shock of excitement, he realized that the portion of the board that would eventually lie against the palmar surface of the forearm gave him a handle such that, when he pulled on it, it would bend the bone back! This would increase the deformity like he’d had to do in reducing both fingers and also the rabbit’s broken leg! He wrapped the board into place with even more straps, extending from the hand, back up across the wrist and just onto the forearm bones, but only on the hand side of the break. Tando had tolerated all this fairly well, with only an occasional moan. The hemp must be working its magic fairly well even without Pont’s other herbal ingredients. Pell inspected the apparatus a moment more then put Tando’s arm, board and all, back in the cold water. Tando moaned and struggled a bit but tolerated it better this time. When Pell thought the wrist should be numb, he pulled it out and checked the straps, snugging up a few even tighter than he had gotten them before. He put Tando’s arm back in the water again and once more stepped out into the icy water to stand over the arm. As the submerged arm cooled again, Pell carefully considered how to exert the greatest possible force during this next try. He was fairly certain that Tando wouldn’t be giving him another chance if he failed this time. He had pulled very hard on the two fingers he had reduced. How much harder might he have to pull on an arm?
Pell bent Tando’s arm up to a right angle at the elbow. He grasped the proximal part of the board with his right hand, just below the fracture, bending the wrist and hand back. He grasped the other end of the board with Tando’s strapped fingers in his left hand then put his foot on Tando’s biceps just above the bent elbow. With a surge, Pell pulled mightily. The board bent the bone even farther back at the fracture site. Still through the board, Pell could feel the bones grinding together and slipping around. Tando flailed up, striking Pell on the back, though Pell hardly noticed. With his own left hand, which was grasping the board and Tando’s hand, he pulled the wrist back straight. This maneuver laid the board back down against Tando’s proximal forearm.
Pell stared. Yes! The board lay flat against the arm! Tando’s arm was straight again! It even seemed like it was back to its original length! Tears ran down Pell’s cheeks. He started to let go, expecting Tando’s arm to stay straight. The dislocated fingers had remained straight, after he had reduced them. To his alarm, in a sickening fashion the arm started to bend again. Pell remembered that the rabbit’s leg had done the same thing. He pushed the board back down against Tando’s forearm—this seemed to hold it straight. He held it there with one hand and lifted his own feet out of the icy water to sit on the bank and look at his work. Absently Pell reached out, picked up one more of the leather straps, and began to wrap it around the proximal forearm to secure the board in place as a splint. While doing this Pell slowly came to realize that Tando was still pounding him weakly on the back, all the while gasping in great wracking sobs.
Pell turned, “Tando, it worked. Your arm looks straight!”
Tando looked at his arm, still gasping. Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground. For panic stricken minute, Pell feared that Tando’s spirit had left him, but after watching carefully, he could tell that Tando was still breathing. With a gasp, Pell began breathing again as well.
Pell slowly began to wind even more leather straps into place. When he had Tando’s arm firmly strapped to the wooden splint he propped it against the supine Tando's abdomen. To his amazement, a sense of complete exhaustion rolled over Pell. He considered the physical effort involved in what he had just completed and it didn’t seem like much, however he seemed to be unraveled. He lay back next to Tando, trembling.
To hide her own tears, Donte had gone out collecting firewood while Pell whittled on the little board. Her own nerves were tattered by the battering alteration of despair and hope for her only surviving child. She didn’t honestly want to survive Pell’s death, a death that she saw as inevitable unless Roley took him back into the Aldans. A squalid death in starvation or a savage death in the jaws of some predator—in either case it would be a desolate end for a mother’s son. Her hopes had been buoyed high upon Gontra’s admission that Pell—believe it or not, Donte’s own son—had in fact been the one to reduce his dislocated finger.
The ability to perform such miracles was a Spirit given gift that could make you welcome in any tribe, even if you were an abysmal hunter—even such an abysmal hunter that a mother would recognize the lack of skill in her own son. Donte’s high hopes had been dashed repeatedly on the stones of disbelief. This was, after all, the boy she had raised for thirteen summers, always watching for the signs of the distinction that a mother hopes for in her child, yet, being honest with herself, never seeing it.
Pell had been a scrawny, clumsy child, and though initially friendly, after many beatings at the hands of his tormentor, Denit, he had become fearful and shy. Only the similarly afflicted Boro had remained as Pell’s friend. Nonetheless, Donte had loved her son and had still hoped against hope that he would prove to have some distinctive skill. If not skill as a hunter, then something else that would prove his worth. When Tando had asked her to take him to Pell, she had begun praying to all the spirits that she knew of. Praying for a miracle that she didn’t truly believe could occur. On edge when Tando first asked Pell to reduce the wrist, horrified when Tando became angry at Pell’s initial poking, relieved when Pell calmly reassured Tando, then finally and desperately disappointed when Pell’s attempt failed—Donte’s emotions had whipsawed back and forth so brutally that she had stumbled back into the bushes where she emptied her stomach violently on the ground.
Seeking solace in a familiar routine, she set out to gather wood. While dully and tediously collecting a leather strap full of dry sticks, Donte had arrived at the conclusion that she must stay in Cold Springs Ravine with her son. Her son couldn’t possibly survive without her, and she couldn’t bear to rejoin the Aldans with Tando. With a crippled Tando, and with word certain to get out that, not only had Pell crippled the marvelous hunter that had been Tando, but that her son had tried and, of course, failed to amend the damage he had wrought.
She arrived back at the little clearing below Pell’s shelter with a leaden cloud of despa
ir, ready to find Tando hostile and angry. She searched for words to brace Pell’s spirits. Her load of wood clattered to the ground. As if struck dead by the Spirits, Pell and Tando both lay inanimate at the edge of the stream! Donte cried out, rushing to them. Then her heart leapt with joy as Pell rose on one elbow to look toward her. She stumbled to a halt, “What happened? Are you OK? What’s wrong with Tando?”
Pell grimaced, “Yes, I’m fine. I think Tando will be OK too; he’s just had too much hemp. His wrist did go back in place though.”
Donte turned wildly to look at Tando’s wrist. It was extensively bound to Pell’s piece of driftwood and thus almost completely hidden from view by the leather straps. Nevertheless, it was obvious that the grotesque deformity that had been present for the past two days was gone! Donte felt little prickles in her scalp and, lightheaded but still staring at Tando’s arm, she sat down with a “whump.” Tears streamed freely down her face. Pell got up and moved to her side, “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” she sobbed, clinging to her son, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
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To read the rest, look for “Bonesetter” by Laurence E Dahners at your e-book seller.