Bonesetter (4 page)

That night, drifting off to sleep with a stomach that wasn’t growling with hunger, Pell had a period of nagging doubt regarding his deceit in claming to kill the rabbit with a thrown stone.
How would he continue to deceive the others?
A few witnessed throws would again bring questions regarding his ability to throw well enough to be a hunter.

To his dismay it came to a head the very next day.
Belk and Lenta’s new baby had died in the night.
Everyone had been expecting it because, with little to eat, Lenta’s breasts gave little milk.
Expecting it or not, the tribe’s mood hung bleak about the cave and Roley decided to dispatch the hunters in small groups.
Roley assigned his son Denit to take Pell and Boro with him on his hunt.
Denit had fifteen summers and was bigger and stronger than Pell and Boro at only thirteen summers each.
Denit considered himself a man and deeply resented being sent out to hunt with “boys.”
He strode ahead of them fuming.
Once out of earshot of the cave he turned angrily.
“You
children
had better be absolutely silent on this hunt.
If you spoil my hunt I’ll bring home your
ears
for the dinner pot.”
Pell and Boro nodded meekly as he turned on his heel and strode ahead.

Pell tried to walk quietly but to his dismay both he and Boro frequently broke twigs in the wooded areas and sent pebbles tumbling on the rocky parts.
He expected Denit to turn and explode at all the noise they made, but Denit didn’t seem to notice.
After a while Pell realized that Denit was making as much
, if not more,
noise
than
they were!
Maybe Denit wasn’t the great h
unter he made himself out to be?
In fact, as Pell thought back, he realized that although Denit was always bragging to the younger boys about his hunting skills, as best Pell could remember, it had been
many
moons since Denit had brought home any game.
Pell frowned,
has Denit ever had a kill of his own?

Denit wasn’t looking around much either.
Roley and Tando were always telling the boys that a good hunter surveyed his surroundings constantly.
Game
frequently froze
in plain sight and
could be very
hard to see if you didn’t constantly scan the area you were passing through.
With a guilty twitch Pell realized that he wasn’t scanning either—he swept his eyes to the left and then to the right.
He stared!
There, not thirty feet from where they were passing, was a hare standing absolutely still at the base of a bush.
Nearly invisible due to its own smudgy brownish-whitish color, it just sat there!
Pell whirled and threw the stone he had in his hand.

As he had feared the night before, his throw went wide.
Way wide!
It hit so far away that for a second he thought the rabbit wouldn’t bolt, but then it exploded up the hill away from them before he could throw again.
Pell was still staring disconsolately after it when Denit struck him in the side of the head with a powerful blow.
For a second
Pell
didn’t know what had happened.
When his mind cleared, Denit was astride his chest angrily waving his flint knife and demanding to know why he shouldn’t take Pell’s ear.
Boro was standing
wide eyed
three paces awa
y. B
ut
Boro
showed
no intention of trying to physically
stop Denit
.
Pell
sobbed
apologies over and over.

Denit finally rose to his feet in disgust and stalked off in the same direction they had been going before.

Pell stumbled to his feet and staggered after.
Soon his wooziness disappeared but the throbbing ache in his head persisted.
A sullen anger developed as well—what had Denit expected him to do, call out, “Hey, Denit, you missed a rabbit—do you want to throw first—OOPS,
sorry
it ran away!”?

They trudged on the rest of the day without sighting any more game within range of a throw, though it gratified Pell when they saw a few
larger
animals at a distance.
Winter might be drawing to a close!

When they got back to the cave a celebration was in progress.
Roley, Belk, Gontra and Tando had driven a small pack of wolves away from a dee
r that the pack had killed. The
men had managed to steal most of the carcass for the tribe.
The cookpots were truly full for the first time in nearly a moon.
Gontra was drumming on his hollow log using one hand and a knobbed stick he had picked up on the way back from the hunt.
The different tone produced by the stick allowed him to produce an entirely new and interesting set of rhythms that Pell found fascinating.
Lessa was chanting to the rhythm in a counterpoint that had everyone clapping delightedly.

The men were bragging that Roley had nearly killed a wolf for the pots as well.
Pell was intensely relieved when, in their celebratory mood, the adults took little notice of Denit’ description of how “Pell had ruined ‘his’ hunt.”

The next morning however, Denit pursued the subject again when Roley was making up the hunting parties.
“Don’t send me out with Pell again.
He makes too much noise.
He throws so badly, he couldn’t hit the wall of this cave while standing inside of it.”

Roley looked him in the eye.
“Don’t forget that he’s had a kill since your last one.”

Denit’ face went white with a mixture of fear and rage.
Pell suddenly realized that Denit was worried about his own recent lack of a kill and therefore actually
jealous
of Pell.
That insight helped little when Denit whirled to stomp out of the cave and, finding Pell between himself and the entrance, knocked Pell to the ground on his way out.

Pell hunted with Boro that day
.
Predictably, they had no luck.
It was a clear bright day, cold in the morning but almost pleasant by afternoon.
They saw some animal sign in keeping with the better weather.
A few wolves trotted past in the distance.
Boro even thought he saw an antelope in the distance, which would be great news if it
truly
indicated that the herds were returning.

In the late afternoon
as
they walked down a ravine toward the cave
they
came to a narrow choke point where a flash flood had washed up a large assemblage of sticks, brush and other debris.
It had caught on a couple of small trees to form what appeared to be an impenetrable morass.
For a while they thought they would have to climb out of the ravine
because
the bru
sh was too dense to get through. T
hen
they
realized from the way all the tracks came together that animals had found or created a small passage through one area.
They crouch
ed down to go through.
Pell was pushing through a tight spot when a strand of dried vine got wrapped around his neck.
He struggled somewhat frantically to get it loose in the tight little space. Afterward he mused that what had just happened to him must have been something like what had happened to the rabbit he had trapped in his thong.

When they got to the other side of the morass of brush, they smelled blood.
Looking about they saw an area off to the side where a big hole had been torn in the brush
pile
.
It looked like some kind of animal had become trapped there and had been killed.
To their disappointment, there wasn’t anything left except some blood splattered here and there.
The ground was rocky so they couldn’t even tell what had made the kill, much less track it and attempt to steal its prey.

When Pell and Boro arrived back at the cave, they found Denit strutting about proudly. A small boar hung roasting on a spit in the center of the cooking fire while Denit bragged to E
xen and Gurix about his hunt
.
The two boys listened raptly, chins in their hands and eyes shining.
Pell and Boro sat down to listen too as Denit described his chase.
“So I just kept trotting after it and trotting after it.
I felt so tired it hurt to breathe, but I could tell that the boar was getting worn out too.
Then it started up a little ravine.
I thought I would die going upslope but then the boar came to a spot where the ravine was choked
off
with brush.
For a little bit it cast about looking for an exit but, finding none, it turned and charged right at me!
Its head lowered, its tusks swinging side to side, its beady little eyes glowing red, it attacked!
Knowing how much we needed the food, I didn’t give an inch.
I dropped to one knee, my spear butted to the ground behind me and the boar spitted itself right below the breastbone.
It dropped in its tracks.”

Pell was musing to himself about the fact that it must have been the same brush clogged ravine he and Boro came through earlier and must have been the kill they saw the blood from when he heard Denit continue
…

“Yeah, good thing
Pell
wasn’t there.
He probably would have thrown a couple of wild pebbles and frightened the boar away.”

Pell started.
A sick feeling came over him.
Everyone was going to think he couldn’t hunt—maybe he couldn’t. Inwardly he raged at Denit.
“Yeah, how come when Boro and I were in that same ravine on
the
way home from our hunt it looked like a pig got stuck in the brush and some great hunter just walked up and stuck his spear up its ass?
Charging?
Ha!
Hey, did anyone see a wound in the front of that pig?” Pell looked around.
“Where’s the skin?”

Pell found himself on the floor of the cave with Denit astride his chest,
hitting him
.
His arms were trapped under Denit’ knees but he convulsed one knee up to strike Denit in the back and knock him forward.
Denit fell forward a moment but quickly sat back and resumed flailing at Pell’s head.
Pell had turned his head and was trying to bite Denit on the thigh when Roley walked over and broke up the fight with a few well-placed blows.

L
ater Pell cowered in the corner, hurt much worse by Roley’s single cup handed blow to the side of his head than the many rained on him by Denit—
dazedly
he thought to himself that
it
was little wonder no one challenged the massiveRoley for leadership of the Aldans.

After several days of successful hunts, that night developed into a joyous celebration.
They feasted on the leftover deer from the day before and the roast pig from Denit’ hunt.
Pell was sitting by the cooking fire, sucking the marrow out of a couple of ribs.
He didn’t feel the celebratory mood of the others—though he thought to himself that life
probably couldn’t
get much better.
After all he had a full stomach and the warm fire made for a pleasant feeling all over.

Still, he felt uneasy—worried about his status in the tribe.
Though gratified he was amazed that Roley had cuffed Denit as well as Pell in stopping Pell’s
fight
with Roley’s own son.
Donte had told Pell that Roley had respected Pell’s father Garen tremendously.
Perhaps that led to Roley’s relative
ly
soft spot for Pell—if Roley could be said to have a soft spot.
Perhaps a “not so hard spot?” Nonetheless, Pell had gnawing doubts that Roley would continue even a pretense of fairness if it came to something really important. After all Roley had never really singled Pell out for special treatment or even tried to teach him to hunt. What if Pell never got any better at throwing?
He resolved to try flint knapping again.
He
must
find another skill
!
S
omehow
he had to become a
useful
and productive member of
the tribe
!

Having made that resolution he sat back, feeling contented.
He saw that the healer squatted near him, brewing one of his concoctions.
It seemed, once again, to consist mostly of hemp leaves.
“Who’s sick?” Pell queried.

Pont glared over at him.
“None of your business, ginja boy!”

Pell started back.
The healer’s answer was practically dripping vitriol.
It was a bad portent to be on poor terms with the tribe’s healer, even the seemingly invincible Roley carefully
stayed
on the healer’s good side.