Bonesetter (38 page)

Deep inside though, he
realized
that he truly enjoyed having people respecting him for
something
.
Years of ridicule for his poor hunting skills had left him with a deep hunger for
peoples’
admiration.
He dreaded losing it.
After a moment he mentally
cursed
himself for worrying about his impending loss of respect—Roley and Denit were dying for spirits’ sake!
He should be worrying about them.

Gia called Pell over to inspect the huge bruise on Belk’s right mid and lower back.
“I think it’s below his ribs.
Do you think that he could have broken ribs anyway? If they are broken can you put them back in place
? R
ibs are shaped like sticks aren’t they?”

Gia had been palpating the bruised area gently.
She clearly expected Pell to feel it also, but Pell, fearing an event like the one that had occurred when he had probed Roley’s skull, could not bring himself to touch Belk.
He looked carefully at the swollen, bruised area.
Not yet black and blue, it appeared pink and had abrasions in the center of the area.
Pell felt his own back.
“Yes, I too think it’s below his ribs.
Anyway my trick wouldn’t work for
ribs;
I couldn’t get a grip on them to try to straighten them out.”
He glanced back over at the stricken Roley, noting with despair that Roley appeared to have stopped his heaving attempts to breath.

Gontra squatted down next to Belk.
“Remember Belk, I said that we shouldn’t try to attack Pell?
I
said
he controlled powerful spirits.”

Belk grunted.
“You only said it to me though.”

“Yeah,
” he snorted,
“
like Denit
ever listened to anyone else
anyway.”
He looked up, “Pell can you call again to the ‘Trap’ Spirit that loosed the rocks down on us?
Ask it to help Belk here.
Belk isn’t your enemy. I swear it.
He and I were only here because Denit told us we had to come.”

Pell was startled once again by this misinterpretation.
“It wasn’t a
spirit
!
It was only a trap.
A trap is… is a tool… like a spear… or a basket.
It does what you make it to do.
But I didn’t mean for it to do this.”

“Yes, well… could you ask
your tool
to help Belk?”

In astonishment a bewildered Pell looked over at Tando who, to his further consternation said, “I think you should Pell.
Belk is a good man.
I’m sure he wouldn’t have come raiding if Denit hadn’t bullied him into it.”

Pell’s perplexity rose even higher.
Did Tando believe in a “trap spirit” too?
Or did he just think that Pell should go through the motions of calling on it to raise their standing in the
Aldan
s
’
eyes?
Maybe… maybe it wouldn’t be too bad an idea for them to fear his control of the “spirits.”
Finally he shrugged and said, “All right.”
Then in a deeper voice he called out, “Hayuuh, hayuuh, hayuuh, oh great Trap Spirit. Hayuuh, hayuuh, hayuuh, Belk is a good man.
Belk is a friend of mine. Hayuuh, hayuuh, hayuuh, I didn’t intend for you to strike
Belk
down.
Just
Denit and Roley.
Hayuuh, hayuuh, hayuuh, please help Belk to get better.
Hayuuh, hayuuh, hayuuh.”
Pell sat back feeling pleased with himself.
Then he thought that, if Belk died anyway, calling on the “Trap Spirit” to raise their prestige was going to backfire.
Oh well, Belk had already been looking better before Pell called on the “Spirit.”
Maybe it would work out.
Then he realized he had just used one of Pont’s despicable strategies. He felt sick at having violated his own principles.

Sure enough, Belk rolled over onto his hands and knees, then slowly stood up, holding his own back.
“Thanks Pell, it’s feeling better already.”

Astonished, Pell looked around at the big noose trap where it hung against the
Cliffside,
wondering if a Trap Spirit might actually exist?

Gia turned to Pell.
“What should Belk do now?”

Pell was surprised again.
Why was she asking
him
? Surely Gia knew more about these problems than he did.
He looked around.
Everyone
was looking at him like he knew what to do!
Uh, I’m not sure, what would you suggest?”

“Hmm, well, Agan and I usually have someone who has been hurt lie down to rest.
We could make him a willowbark tea for the pain.”

“Yes,
yes,
that’s a very good idea.
Why don’t we take him back up to the cave and let him lie down.”
Soon the group was headed back up to the cave.
At the door, Tando stopped everyone, asking what to do about Denit and Roley, who at that point were obviously dead.
After conferring briefly, Agan detailed Gontra, Tando, Manute and Deltin to move the bodies across to the other side of the clearing.
Pell had expected that he would be
assigned
to this duty
as well
.
He felt tremendous relief at not being
delegated
to
moving them
, as he
didn’t
want to go near the bodies again.

Then Pell found out that he hadn’t been
assigned
to move the bodies
because everyone seemed to believe he was needed
to care for
Belk!
Though he
didn’t have anything
to offer, he
was
so
relieved at not having to touch the dead
that he refrained from
saying anything
.

But then gu
ilt surged through him again—after all, it was his fault they were dead!
He turned.
“I should help with the bodies.
I’ll be back to check on Belk.”

He went back out after the others, oblivious to the awed stares and whispers of those remaining in the cave.
They were unsure whether he was going to oversee the proper handling of the bodies, or perhaps intended to consign Denit and Rol
ey’s spirits to some dark place.
However, in awe,
they all felt his intention to supervise the unpleasant task of handling the bodies to be another portent of his power.

After talking to the members of t
he Cold Springs tribe
Agan
decided to call off their move for now.
The major danger they had feared was gone. Tando had made a brief detour to check part of the trap lines during his trip away from camp and brought in a groundhog and a rabbit.
The others shook their heads over his “usual good luck with small game” and settled in to cook it.
The mood threatened to become celebratory, but could not with Gontra and Belk, members of the decimated Aldans, in their midst.
Then Belk limped out to pass his urine and returned trembling in fear because it was
a
dark bloody red.
Pell feared that he would be expected to know what to do for this ailment as well, but Agan had apparently treated several people with blood in their urine in the past.
She immediately began brewing large quantities of tea and urging him to drink it all.
This apparently helped.
After drinking
large volume of liquid
h
e
soon
began need
ing to go out frequently to pee
.
As he did so his urine thinned and became less bloody.

While
they talked over the
ir
evening meal, the Cold Springs group’s spirits were high
with
their fears of being raided
gone
.
Gontra however, became morose.
Part way through the meal Pell looked up to see tears running down Gontra’s face. He asked, “Are you sad that Denit and Roley are dead, Gontra?”

Tears continued to roll down Gontra’s face and he simply stared into the fire.
For a while Pell thought that he might not respond.
Eventually he did speak though and when he did speak, the words poured out, more than Pell had ever before heard at one time from the taciturn Gontra.
“No, Denit, and even Roley have been causing nothing but trouble since before you left.
It’s been getting worse and worse.
But our tribe!
We were down to just six hunters and were having trouble getting enough meat.
Now we have only four.
Belk is hurt, Pont has never been any good as a hunter and my son Exen is young.
I hope that Exen will
be a
better
hunter
in a year or two, but Denit had been leading him astray for so long.
You know that a young hunter should
constantly
practice his throwing to become good and Exen hasn’t practiced much at all.
Certainly, I haven’t been able to teach him much lately because of Denit’s
influence
.
We have six women and four children to feed this winter and
no one
has built up much fat this summer because of the poor hunting we have had following Denit.
If we don’t have a couple of lucky hunts soon, especially right before the frost,
many
of the Aldans
will die this winter.
I know that your little tribe here is also too small and so facing the same thing, but I’ve
never
been this close to winter and in such bad shape before.
The women have done well storing grain and roots, Denit didn’t affect them much, but you know we
need
meat
or people will get sick.
I’ve lost children before in the winter, even when we had more food than we do this year.
I can’t bear to think about losing
my
little Tila.
I had
thought that she was
old enough to survive and so I’ve come to let myself love her too much.

But,
Tila’s
already
thin at
the
beginning
of the great cold!
I’m afraid everyone’s going to expect me to lead now that Denit and Roley are gone and I don’t think I can solve these problems.
But, even if I fear leading myself, I don’t want Pont to lead; he’s too addled from chewing hemp.
Maybe if Belk recovers well, he can lead us, but I don’t think that Belk can find us meat that just the four of us can hunt successfully either.
I don’t know what to do…
I just don’t know what to do…
I don’t know....
For a while there I had thought that Denit had a good idea, asking Tando to rejoin us,
especially
when we heard that you had other hunters here—maybe a couple of big hunts would set us up.
But of course, Denit had to screw it all up and try to attack you.
He was sure that you were hiding a bunch of that meat that doesn’t rot.
You know, like you
were trading at the marketplace?
I asked him how he thought you would have gotten all of the meat and he didn’t know, ‘I just know they have it’ he said.
I told him we should wait until Tando got back, but he wanted to have the meat already in
our
possession, ‘Then Tando will
have
to join us,’ he said….
Denit!
He always wanted to do everything by fighting!
Spirits!”

Gontra’s monologue had been delivered flatly, almost, it seemed without emotion.
But for the tears that continued streaming sluggishly down his face and the mild exclamations as he ran down at the end, he might have been recounting a sad story from years ago.

Several times, while Gontra was speaking, Pell glanced around to see
how the others were taking it.
Boro, like Pell himself, had seemed angry during the parts where Gontra had thought it reasonable that they try to get Tando to join the Aldans, presumably leaving Pell and Boro to fend for themselves.
The others seemed upset that they, like Pell, had not considered that their good fortune in the death of Roley and Denit bode ill for the other members of the Aldans, especially the hapless women and children of the tribe.
Pell thought back on the mind numbing grief that came every winter when it seemed that at least one babe or child would die. The same winter as his father had
died;
Pell’s baby sister had also passed into the spirit world, though to Pell, the significance of the baby’s death paled in comparison to the agony he had felt over his father.