Axe Glance at the Woodpile

The blade skipped off the knot with all your weight behind it and came down through the boot leather like it was wet paper. It found the small bones of your foot and did not stop at them. When the doctor cuts the boot away, two toes come with the ruin of it, hanging by cords of skin. He talks quietly of taking them clean rather than letting rot decide the matter, and lays out the small saw and the carbolic while you still have the whiskey bottle in your hand.

• No weight on the left foot at all for 10 days, then a stick and a friendly shoulder for 2 weeks after
• Boot cut off and gone, the foot bound in a splinted wrap, no riding for 3 weeks
• Laudanum haze each evening: no fine work, no night watches, no promises you mean to keep, for a week
• /me sits gray-faced with the bound left foot propped high, counting toes under the breath

Recovery Six to eight weeks before the foot bears a full day of work, and it aches before rain for a season after.·Doctor, urgently

The edge turned off the knot and dropped, and the boot took only the first inch of it. The rest went into the top of your foot, through lace and tongue and into the instep, chipping the small bones there. The doctor draws leather threads out of the wound with forceps before ever he touches silk, muttering that boot-dirt kills more men than blades do, and packs the cut with carbolic-soaked lint.

• No boot on the left foot for 12 days: a loose wrap and a cut-open shoe if you must walk at all
• Walking on the heel only, short distances, with a stick, for a week
• Wound checked and repacked daily; any red streaking up the ankle goes straight to the doctor
• /me limps on the heel of the left foot, the instep swaddled in carbolic-smelling lint

Recovery Three to four weeks to a working foot, if the wound stays sweet.·Doctor required

The axe glanced sideways and bit into your shin a hand's width below the knee, deep enough that the edge rang on bone and stopped there. The doctor flushes the cut with carbolic water and probes the bone with a bare finger before stitching, telling you the shinbone is scored but whole, and that you may thank the knot for stealing half the blow's strength before it reached you.

• Fourteen silk stitches down the left shin: no kneeling and no climbing for 10 days
• Walking at a flat amble only, with a stick on rough ground, for a week
• /me favors the left leg, trouser slit to the knee over a long bandaged shin

Recovery Stitches drawn in 10 to 12 days, the shin sound in three weeks, a scar you can find in the dark forever.·Doctor required

The blade skipped and dragged rather than chopped, opening your shin in a long slanting mouth from below the knee nearly to the boot-top. It missed the bone but it did not miss much else, and you left a trail across the yard that a blind man could follow. The doctor works by lamplight with silk and a curved needle for the better part of an hour, and charges you for the lamp oil too.

• Better than twenty stitches in a line down the left shin: no running, no jumping down from wagons for 2 weeks
• The leg kept dry: no river crossings, no bath house, sponge and basin only until the stitches come out
• Light-headed from blood lost: no heavy lifting or long rides for 4 days
• /me walks stiff-legged, the whole left shin bound in a long spiral of bandage

Recovery Two to three weeks, stitches out in 12 days, the scar a pale seam the length of your shin for good.·Doctor required

A glancing lick down the front of the shin, the edge peeling skin and flesh from the bone like bark from a green log. The cut is long but clean and the bone beneath shows white and unhurt. The doctor is nearly cheerful about it, sponging carbolic along the bone before he draws the flesh back over it with a dozen silk stitches and tells you to buy taller boots.

• A dozen stitches down the left shin: no kneeling on that leg for a week
• Walk, do not run, and take stairs and ladder rungs one at a time for 5 days
• /me steps careful and short, one trouser leg rolled above a neat white shin bandage

Recovery Stitches out in 10 days, right as rain in a fortnight.·Doctor required

The edge caught you where the boot ends and the shin begins, slicing through the top of the leather and an inch of you besides. It bled with an enthusiasm out of all proportion to its size, filling the boot before you got it off. The doctor ties off a stubborn little vessel, stitches the lips of the cut, and allows that the boot leather likely saved the tendon.

• Eight stitches above the left ankle: the boot worn loose-laced or not at all for a week
• No wading and no wet work while the stitches hold, 10 days
• /me walks with a careful heel-first gait, a bandage padding out the top of one boot

Recovery Ten days to two weeks, and the boot needs a cobbler before it needs polish.·Doctor required

The blade skated down your shin and its corner dug in at the last, popping a chip of bone off the crest like a flake off a flint. The wound is short but it goes all the way down, and it grinds when the doctor probes it. He picks the loose flake out with forceps, swearing softly at the lamplight, then packs and stitches the little pit it leaves behind.

• The left shin splinted with a padded lath against knocks for 10 days
• No riding above a walk for a week: the stirrup leather sits square on the wound
• Any knock to the shin sits you down whether you choose it or not, plan your work so for 2 weeks
• /me angles the left shin away from table legs and door frames, a lath splint under the trouser

Recovery The pit in the bone fills over four to six weeks; the ache when you kneel outlasts the wound.·Doctor required

The head glanced off the knot and swung wide, and the heel of the blade hooked the meat of your calf on its way past. It cut muscle, not bone, a deep short mouth in the back of the leg that makes itself known every time the foot pushes off. The doctor stitches it in layers, silk below and silk above, and orders the leg rested straight and the woodpile left to somebody else.

• Layered stitches in the left calf: no pushing off that foot, no running, no ladder work for 12 days
• The knee kept lazy: flat-footed, short-strided walking, a stick on any slope
• /me moves with a flat shuffling step, sparing the left calf its spring

Recovery Two to three weeks before the calf takes a full stride, a month before it takes a hill.·Doctor required

The edge split your boot from tongue to toe cap and stopped there, spent. The leather took the cut and your foot took the blow, and the small bones across the top of it are bruised deep enough to count your heartbeats by. There is barely a scratch beneath the split, but the foot swells to fill the ruined boot by supper.

• The left foot swollen and boot-shy: loose lacing or a cut-down shoe for 5 days
• No long marches and no stamping work, spade and stirrup both, for 4 days
• /me eases the weight off a swollen left foot at every pause, the boot split up the tongue

Recovery The swelling falls inside a week; tender across the top of the foot for two.·Doctor advised

The axe twisted in the glance and it was the flat cheek of the head that slapped your shin, not the edge. The difference is the difference between a funeral and a curse word, but the blow still split the skin over the bone and raised a knot like a saddle horn. You finished the woodpile out of pure spite, and you are paying for that decision now.

• A goose egg on the left shin: no kneeling on it and no crawling under wagons for 4 days
• Cold cloths morning and evening until the knot goes down
• /me rubs at a rising lump on the left shin through the trouser cloth

Recovery A week of blue and yellow, a fortnight before the lump is gone entirely.·Doctor advised

The blade missed you but the poll did not, the blunt back of the head clipping your ankle bone on the ricochet. The knob of the ankle sang like a struck horseshoe and swelled to match, and for a quarter hour the whole foot forgot how to be stood on. Nothing is cut and nothing is broken, but the joint means to make you remember it a while.

• The left ankle wrapped firm in a linen strapping for 5 days
• No jumping down from wagon, fence, or saddle: step down like an old man for a week
• /me tests the left ankle at each first step, letting the strapping take the twist

Recovery Walk-sound in three or four days, strapping off inside a week, a tender ankle knob for two.·Doctor advised

The boot gave its life for you. The edge went through counter and side leather and had just enough left to draw a shallow line along the side of your foot, a cut more insult than injury. You washed it with whiskey on the spot, which taught you a good deal more about the cut than it did about the whiskey.

• A shallow cut along the outside of the left foot, washed and wrapped, kept dry for 4 days
• The ruined boot swapped or cobbled before any long walking
• /me walks in one good boot and one borrowed one, a thin wrap showing at the ankle

Recovery Closed and quiet inside a week.·No doctor needed

The edge came down across the toe of your boot at a slant, creasing the cap and mashing the toes beneath without breaking a single one of them, which the doctor calls luck and you call poor consolation. The nail of the big toe is already going the color of a storm sky, and the boot cap wears a scar it will keep for both of you.

• Toes of the left foot bruised: no running and no dancing for 5 days
• The big toenail blackening; it may lift and be lost, a small ugliness and not a lasting one
• /me curls the toes inside the creased boot and thinks better of it

Recovery A week of tender toes; the black nail grows out over a couple of months.·Doctor advised

The last of the blow's strength spent itself in a nick above the boot-top, a thumbnail's length of opened skin on the shin. It bled just enough to make the sock interesting and not enough to make anybody worried. You bound it with a strip of clean rag and went back to the woodpile, considerably warier of that knot.

• A rag binding on the left shin, changed once a day for 3 days
• Keep it out of the mud and the river for a few days
• /me hitches the trouser leg to check a small rag binding on the shin

Recovery Scabbed by tomorrow, forgotten in five days.·No doctor needed

The edge kissed the front of your boot and cut the laces clean through, and with them the top layer of skin along the instep, a graze the width of a straw. The boot flapped open like a church door and your heart tried to leave through your mouth, but when you finally looked, the foot beneath was barely marked.

• A grazed instep under new laces, tender to a tight lacing for 3 days
• Boot laced loose or bound with twine until new laces are found
• /me threads new lacing through a scarred boot, slow and thoughtful about it

Recovery The graze dries and peels within the week.·No doctor needed

The axe skipped off the knot and threw the wedge of wood it had raised straight into your shin, a fistful of oak splinters at speed. None went deep enough to matter, but a half dozen went in, and you spent the evening by lamplight with a sewing needle and language your mother would not own to teaching you.

• Splinter holes down the left shin, checked daily for festering, 4 days
• One splinter sits deep under the skin: if a red ring forms around it, the doctor digs it out, not you
• /me picks at the shin with a needle by lamplight, muttering

Recovery Sore spots for four or five days, so long as none of them sour.·No doctor needed

The blade turned flat as it glanced and scraped down your shin the way a misjudged fence rail does, taking bark off you rather than biting in. What is left is a raw red graze the length of a hand, weeping and gravel-tempered, the kind of small wound that shouts loudest at bath time and says nothing the rest of the day.

• A raw graze on the left shin kept clean and dry, salved morning and night for 4 days
• Trouser cloth rubs it raw: a soft rag bound under the cloth when working
• /me holds the left trouser leg clear of a raw grazed shin when sitting down

Recovery New pink skin inside a week.·No doctor needed

The edge dropped past your foot so close it shaved a curl of leather off the boot heel, a cut you never felt and only found when the boot started rocking on its heel that evening. The space between that curl of leather and your ankle was the width of a prayer, and you know it, and you will be telling it wider than it was.

• A boot heel to be seen to by the cobbler before it lames you on a slope
• A new habit, free of charge: clearing knots from the block before the next swing
• /me turns the boot over and thumbs the shaved heel, quiet a moment

Recovery Nothing of you needs healing; the boot takes a day at the cobbler.·No doctor needed

The blade skipped, and it was the knot itself that flew, spat out sideways like a rifle ball. It cracked you across the boot hard enough to sting and spun away into the grass, and the axe buried itself harmlessly in the dirt beside the block. You stood a long moment doing arithmetic on inches, and the answer sat you down on the chopping block.

• A stinging bruise atop the left foot, honest work unhindered after today
• A story owed at the fire tonight, and a lifelong squint at every knotted log hereafter
• /me sits on the chopping block a spell, hat off, looking at the axe standing in the dirt

Recovery The sting fades by morning; the caution, with any luck, never does.·No doctor needed

The blade skipped off the knot, leapt the log entire, and came down between your feet with your full strength behind it. It stood there in the chopping block, haft quivering, the edge sunk two inches into oak, a boot's width from either ankle. Every man in earshot heard the thock and turned to find you standing astride your own near miss. The block wears the scar now. You will be showing it to strangers for years, and not one of them will believe you.

• Not a scratch on you, and every witness at the woodpile knows it
• The scarred block preserved as proof: the story told at least once tonight, and better each time
• /me stands astride the buried axe a heartbeat longer, then wrenches it free with a flourish

Recovery Nothing to heal but your composure, and that is back by the second telling.·No doctor needed