Erin Fisher - That Tiny Life

The sawbones squats, his satchel by his knees, his back to the cart and the mules and their feedbags. He runs his forefinger along the tourniquet above Roy’s knee, rubs the pus between his fingertips and thumb, sniffs the lot, and says he’s taking Roy’s leg.

“Like shit you are,” I say. “What’s he left with it gone?”

The sawbones pushes his specs up his disjointed nose and says that if he leaves the leg attached, Roy’ll be gone. Roy’s girl, just three, explores her mouth with her fingers. Her eyes big and gold as coins. She squats in the dirt in front of some thorny shrubs, a whelp in piss-stained trousers, the night growing fathomless above the hills behind her.

Girl’s new with us. I guess it was three years ago Roy and I passed through the settlement her mother lived at with Roy on the lookout for comfort. I hope he found it, ’cause now we’re hampered with the product of said comfort — Roy fetched the girl from the mother less than a week back. Don’t know why he accepted the child, since, one, he knew the child’s age from the letter, and two, he already had that crushed toe sending stripes up his foot.

The sawbones’ specs shine flat-lensed in the light from the firepit. I suspect they don’t so much alter his vision as give him a look. He bends over Roy, who’s laid flaccid under the cactus. Roy’s hair and skin and clothes are tacky with basin dust. The firelight blinks over his silhouette, pretties his discoloured leg and cracked lips. His cocky flip of curls thrown back from his ridged nose and cheeks and spread over the dirt. His eyes closed. Been passed out a while. I grab his good foot and jostle and release.

“Might go anyway,” I say.

The sawbones rocks on his haunches, eyeing the mule I promised him for the trip. One of a pair. Sorrel, sturdy — three hands short of draft — and recently acquired, though Roy and I have been hauling supplies through Arizona and the Southern Californian deserts good on seven years. That’s seven years of spiny fruit and sunburn while carting basics to men batshit enough to have settled this particular desolation. Brutes searching a vein of gold-quartz, coal, oil midst the saltbush and boulders. The work gives Roy and me a nice, healthful pay, but only because not many want the job. Heat’s hard on the mules and water takes up half the wagon.

The girl pulls her fingers from her mouth and wipes them across her shirt. Sawbones removes his specs, holds the lenses to the light, then plucks his hanky from his coat and polishes. His kerchief’s done up old-style — stitched around the trim with cream dashes — same era as the jacket, which has buttons top to bottom, but hangs wide open. Plush fabric, carpet-like, worn thin down the back. Like he’s spent his life sitting. He settles his specs back on that crooked nose and loops the wires around his ears.

Roy, flat-out, chest hardly lifting each breath. I put a hand on my lips and jaw. All the grit there, in the lines and loose skin — the valley sucks away fat. Roy and I, we seem to have aged twenty years though it’s only been those seven, and we were both young men when we acquired the route. He and I been partners too long now to know who owes who — though I suspect at this moment it’s him who owes me. We have a friendship. Which is why I said nothing when Roy kept the girl.

I recline against the wagon and set a knuckle to the forehead of the nearest mule, and the mule leans into it. Soft-nosed beast. “Take the leg then,” I say.

Sawbones opens his satchel and reaches out a pan, a leather roll, and a hard-cased cautery set. Kicks the logs and exposes the coals and balances the pan. Unsnaps the cautery case and sets the long-handled irons into the fire.

“Water,” he says.

I uncap a jug and fill the pan. The sawbones fiddles with the knot and unrolls the leather wrap. Tools inside flash blade to spine: tongs, scissors, various knives. He thumbs the clasp on a worn medical bag. Vials strapped to the underside of the lid. The interior’s full of glass flasks and spools of silk and gauze. He tips a vial of iodine into the pan, then opens a jar of alcohol. Wipes down each blade with a soaked bit of cotton and sets the equipment ready on top the leather sheath.

Sawbones removes and folds his coat and lays it on the bow of the wagon. He steps to Roy’s side and snips the torn pant leg. Twice the normal size below the knee, and two of the black toes sport open sores.

“Lift.” Sawbones waves at the foot. I lift. “Higher.” I lift the whole leg off the ground. He slides a sheet of oilskin under the thigh. “Down.” He and I loop rope around Roy’s wrists and good ankle, then tie the rope onto stakes and pound the stakes into the dirt. Sawbones pulls a big wad of cotton from the bag and wipes Roy’s thigh a good half-foot above the tourniquet.

“That high,” I say. “Christ almighty.”

“Sit on him.” Sawbones tests the tourniquet already in place. I take my spot kneeling on Roy’s shoulders, and the girl comes up beside me. Kid’s already kicked off and lost her shoes and stands barefoot in the cooling sand.

“Turn round,” I say, and when she won’t, I grab her. Press her face into my chest.

Thing is, Roy thought he’d be fetching a son. The mother played on that, had the kid’s hair cropped. Boy’s trousers and shirt. Course he didn’t see it. So little difference between sexes at the child’s age — the ability to piss off the back of a cart is about it. Which was how we discovered it was a girl — she wet herself. Roy should have left her when he realized. Tiny tot, good for nothing but cuteness, and what use is that? Wouldn’t even grow into use.

A half-week out of town with the child, Roy’s foot could no longer abide the wagon ride. We camped. He panted in the dirt and I helped him unwind his bandage. Hot red streaks up his calf. I tied the tourniquet.

Evening arrived. Roy went feverish, mumbling, tossing under the cactus. The girl, at least a quiet child, stared into the coral stain of clouds as the sun struck off. And then she stared at nothing. No, not nothing. I followed her look up the dust and barbs of the cactus trunk to thick white flowers, petals the size of fingers.

Morning, the flowers were gone, and the red poison ran as high as Roy’s knee. I saddled a mule and rode to the nearest settlement. Left the girl with water for Roy. By the time I returned to the wagon with the sawbones, Roy’s leg was pusing and hot to the touch from something internal. Pit ash blew over him and clung. The girl sat with her face against her knees in the twilight. The water looked untapped.

“Roy and I are partners,” I tell the sawbones. Why, I don’t know. I suppose I mean to remind myself. The sawbones straddles Roy so his back is to where I’m kneeling on Roy’s shoulders, the girl still in my chest. Her breath against the thread of my shirt.

“Fellows,” I say, although Roy hadn’t shown a degree of consideration after he received that letter and demanded we go out of our way and fetch the kid. The child would only slow us, but he was so fixated on it that when I objected, he jumped from the cart to walk off his anger and let the wheel lurch over his foot. Time we reached the mother, we knew the damage was bad. After we’d already taken the kid and discovered it was a girl, he said, “I owe you. I owe you, but if you leave me then you’ll owe me too, and you take her. You repay me by taking her.”