Bonesetter (17 page)

The next morning, after an endless night of Tando’s sobbing, the two of them stood haggard on the little rise at the edge of the meadow.
They watched as the tribe dug a new pit at the edge of the burial mound that had received so many other friends and relatives over the years.
With Pont officiating and the whole tribe chanting, Tellgif was lowered into the opening.
They did place a few of her things in the grave with her.
Tando angrily noticed that many of her most prized possessions were not to be seen, presumably already divided up among the other women.
Pell sat in vigil with Tando for the remainder of the day.
That night he went down with Tando and sat for hours while his friend lay prostrate upon Tellgif’s grave sobbing.
As he sat uncomfortably waiting for Tando’s grief to spend itself, his mind returned over and over to
how much he loathed
Pont.
He mulled through his recollections of Pont’s ceremonies and treatments.

The more he considered them
,
the more he thought that Pont didn’t really know a
nything about healing. It seemed that he only knew how to take
credit
when it wasn’t due and lay
blame elsewhere
when
a patient
worsened
.
Pell resolved
to never do that for any bonesetting he might do
.

When morning broke, Tando was dry eyed and ready to leave.
Before they could go, however, he dug a small pit by
Tellgif’s
right hand
and
he placed some of the
“
spirit meat
”
there
for her to enjoy in the afterlife.

As they traveled back to Cold Springs Ravine, Pell kept an eye out for gatherables, at first plucking only a few choice edibles such as berries, then as they neared home he began to stuff his pouches.
Tando stumbled along, oblivious to what might be gleaned but Pell; having filled his own pouches began to fill Tando’s.
After a bit, Pell gave Tando a large leather to carry. He folded it to make a huge pouch that he stuffed with tubers.
They arrived back at Pell’s cave heavily laden.

Donte greeted them joyfully but then wanted to know where Tellgif was?
Her joy turned to anger because she assumed that they had let Roley drive them away. She accused them of lacking the courage to sneak back and steal Tellgif away. Then Tando’s disconsolate expression penetrated and, without a word of explanation, Donte guessed the truth.
With a wracking cry, she began her own grieving process for her old friend.
She left the cave and climbed up onto the cliffside above the cave.
There she stared off into space, chanting the melancholy tunes that the women of the tribe
sang
in times of mourning
.

Tando cast himself upon one of the grass beds in the cave where he lay staring upward.
Completely unresponsive to Pell’s attempts to start a conversation, he did little more than blink.
Pell unloaded his pouches, then Tando’s, then emptied the big pouch of its tubers.
As Pell looked about his cave, he was pleased to find that while they were gone Donte had produced a mod
erate sized stack of tubers. She’d woven
a couple of baskets
and filled them with
early grain and some sheaves of edible leaves.
To his surprise, when he looked back into the smoking recess, he found a number of objects back there in the smoke that hadn’t been there when he left.
He looked closer.
There was rabbit meat and to his surprise some sliced tuber, a flat basket with a thin layer of grain and some spread out leaves.
Why hadn’t he thought of trying to smoke anything else after it had worked on meat?
Even more puzzling, who had hunted that rabbit?

When Donte came down from her vigil later that evening, he asked her excitedly about the smoking of tubers and vegetables.
“Did it work?”

“Well, not yet at least. I just started smoking those items today.”

“That was a great idea!
I’ll bet it works—we’ll see tomorrow. Where did the rabbit on the smoking shelf come from?”

To Pell’s chagrin she pulled one of his thongs out of her pouch.
“You’re not going to believe it.
I found it strangled in this!” she exclaimed.
“Was it your thong?
I saw several thongs here and there in the bushes as I went out gathering.
I couldn’t figure out what they were for, so I left them alone but then I found that rabbit stuck in this one.
Sure wish more rabbits would get tangled up in them though, you’d be able to give up hunting!”

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 s
hould 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.
H
aving a hu
nter 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
.