Grizzly Bear: Swipe: Head & Face

The paw comes down across your brow and the world goes red on one side, claw through eyebrow, lid and deeper. The doctor cleans it by lamplight with carbolic and silence, and will not say yet whether the eye stays yours.

• One side of your face swathed in bandage; no depth to your seeing while it lasts
• Flat on your back in a dark room for 3 days while the swelling tells its tale
• Laudanum for the pain, spoon-measured and sparing
• /me sits still as the doctor unwinds the dressing, one hand gripping the chair arm white

Recovery 7 days bandaged under a doctor's daily care to have any hope of the eye; untreated it is no hope at all·Doctor, urgently

The claws catch at the hairline and peel, a flap of scalp the size of a hand folds back wet and hot, and the world pours red. The doctor sews it home with silk, forty stitches by his own count, and says you will keep the hair if the wound stays sweet.

• Head swathed like a pasha for 5 days; the hat sits on top of the bandage or not at all
• Stitches from crown to temple, dressed daily, no dust, no brawling
• Headaches that arrive with the afternoon for 4 days
• /me adjusts the bloodstained bandage wound turban-thick about their head

Recovery 5 days of daily dressing with the doctor, and a scar under the hair forever; untreated the flap sloughs and the wound goes foul·Doctor, urgently

The flat of the paw takes you across the jaw like a swung fencepost, teeth clack, something under the ear gives, and your mouth no longer closes true. The doctor binds it shut with a bandage knotted at the crown and prescribes soup and silence.

• Jaw bound closed for 7 days, broth, mush and whatever fits through teeth
• Speaking hurts and slurs; keep to short words for 5 days
• A bruise from ear to chin, with swelling that squints one eye for 2 days

Recovery 7 days bound with the doctor setting it true; left unbound it knits wrong and wants breaking again·Doctor required

One claw catches the ear and splits it into two ragged strips that hang by the lobe. The doctor stitches the pieces back in their proper order with silk fine as spider-thread, but he is honest with you: it will never sit quite flat again.

• Ear stitched and bandaged flat to your head for 5 days
• Hearing muffled on that side while the dressing stays, 5 days
• Sleep on the other side only for 5 days

Recovery 5 days dressed and stitched with a doctor, 7 and a far uglier mend without one·Doctor required

A claw tip opens your eyebrow to the bone and the blood sheets straight into your eye, you fight the rest of that scramble half-blind. Six stitches close it, and the doctor calls the eye itself the luckiest thing he has seen this month.

• A stitched brow, with the eye swollen to a slit for 2 days
• No shooting off that shoulder until the eye clears, 2 days
• A white seam through the eyebrow that stays forever

Recovery 2 days for the eye to open proper, 4 for the stitches; unstitched it heals wide, ugly and slow·Doctor required

The paw takes you above the ear and the ground swaps places with the sky. You come to with grass in your mouth and a ringing that will not stop, the bear gone, your hat twenty feet off, your thoughts arriving slow as winter mail.

• Concussion: ringing, headaches and a temper on a short fuse for 3 days
• Someone wakes you every few hours the first night to see your eyes still track
• No galloping, no ladders, no liquor for 3 days
• /me stares a long second too long before answering the question

Recovery 3 days quiet with a doctor watching the eyes, 5 foggy ones if you tough it through·Doctor required

Two claws draw twin furrows from cheekbone to jaw, shallow at the ends, deep in the middle, bleeding down your collar in ropes. Stitched neat, they will heal into the kind of parallel scars men invent better stories for.

• Face stitched in two lines, dressed for 3 days; chew on the other side
• Twin scars down the cheek, permanent as a brand and twice as legible
• Smiling pulls the stitches for 4 days, mercifully rare out here

Recovery 4 days stitched with a look-over from the doctor, 6 if it granulates open·Doctor required

The claws part your scalp in a line above the ear, a shallow cut as head wounds go, but it bleeds the way scalps do, filling your hat brim and painting you red to the collar. It looks like murder and stitches up like nothing.

• Four stitches hidden in the hair, tender when the hat presses for 3 days
• Shirt and hat dyed a red that never fully washes out
• Scalp tight and itching as it heals for 3 days

Recovery 3 days with stitches and a clean head-wrap, 5 crusted ones without·Doctor required

A single claw draws a line across your forehead, temple to temple, shallow, straight, and bleeding just enough to keep you wiping. Cleaned with carbolic and pulled shut with plaster strips, it settles into a stripe you will explain forever.

• Plaster strips across the brow for 3 days; keep the sweat out of it
• A thin straight scar across the forehead, permanent
• /me tips their hat back, showing the fresh red line across their brow

Recovery 3 days under plaster strips, 5 open to the air and dust·Doctor advised

The blow lands more push than claw and your head snaps sideways, for the rest of the day there are two of everything and both of them ache. By supper the world settles back into one piece, mostly.

• Doubled sight until evening, no shooting, no riding faster than a walk today
• A headache that hangs on for 2 days
• A tender goose-egg above the ear for 3 days

Recovery A day for the eyes, 2 for the headache; a doctor can only tell you what you already know·Doctor advised

The paw clips your face and your nose breaks with a crunch you hear from the inside. The doctor sets it between two thumbs while somebody holds your shoulders, one short scream and it is straight enough, though both eyes go black as a badger's by morning.

• Two black eyes for 4 days; every acquaintance will have a joke ready
• Breathe through your mouth for 2 days while the swelling stands down
• Nose tender to the touch for 5 days, lead with something else in a brawl

Recovery Set in a minute, sore for 5 days; unset it heals crooked and whistles·Doctor advised

A claw tip splits the scalp an inch above your ear, short, shallow, hidden in the hair. Whiskey poured over it burns like judgment, and a folded kerchief under the hat does the rest of the nursing.

• A tender line under the hair for 3 days; the hat sits careful
• Wash it with whiskey or carbolic daily for 2 days
• /me winces, resettling the hat a half-inch off true

Recovery 3 days keeping it clean; a doctor would only charge you for the same advice·Doctor advised

The last claw in the swipe catches your chin as you jerk back, a shallow gouge through stubble, bleeding free into your collar and clotting slow. Another finger's width and it would have been your throat, which is worth a drink to think about.

• A gouged chin scabbing for 3 days; shaving around it is an art
• A small pale scar on the point of the chin for good

Recovery 3 days to scab and settle; no medicine needed but a steady razor hand·Doctor advised

The wind of it does most of the work, one claw grazes your temple, a hot line that welts more than cuts. You sit down hard, count your senses and find them all present, if rattled.

• A welted scratch at the temple for 2 days
• A dull headache till tomorrow

Recovery 2 days and it is only a story; nothing to dress but the welt·No doctor needed

A single claw draws a thin line along the jaw, shallow as a shaving cut and twice as dramatic-looking, dried blood beading along it like a string of garnets. It itches worse than it hurts inside a day.

• A thin scab along the jawline for 3 days; leave the itch alone
• A faint hairline scar to angle at the light in card games

Recovery 3 days to a scab, a week to a faint line; nothing more to it·No doctor needed

The pad of the paw more than the claws, a slap from something the weight of a stove. Your ears ring till nightfall and your neck is stiff from the whip of it, but the skin never breaks.

• Ringing ears till tonight; folk will need to repeat themselves kindly
• A stiff neck for 2 days, turning your whole body to look at things

Recovery The ringing dies by morning, the neck in 2 days; time is the only doctor·No doctor needed

You feel the hot sting before you understand how close it came, a nick at the hairline no longer than a fingernail, one bead of blood rolling down your temple. The shakes that follow are worse than the wound.

• A small scab at the hairline for 2 days
• Hands that will not quite hold steady until you have sat down a while

Recovery Gone in 2 days; the memory of the swing takes longer·No doctor needed

The claws take your hat off your head so clean you feel only the tug, four parallel slits through crown and brim, and a single faint scratch on your scalp where the tip of one claw signed its work. You keep the hat; it earned a nail on the wall.

• One faint scratch under the hair, gone in a day or two
• A four-slit hat that no bartender will ever let you pay full price around
• /me holds the ruined hat to the light, poking a finger through each slit in turn

Recovery A day for the scratch; the hat is beyond even the finest doctor·No doctor needed

You lean back the width of a playing card and the paw sails past, close enough to feel the heat of it, close enough that one claw tip draws a hair-thin line across your cheek you find only in the shaving mirror. The bear huffs and thinks better of the whole business.

• A hair-fine scratch on the cheek, gone by week's end
• A new habit of touching that cheek whenever the story gets told

Recovery Nothing to heal that a wash won't handle·No doctor needed

You drop flat as the paw whistles through the air where your skull was, you feel it comb the top of your hair, no more. Then you are rolling downslope through the brush, up on your feet, and gone while the grizzly is still wondering where its supper went. Not a mark on you, and a tale that gets a foot taller each telling.

• Not a scratch anywhere a mirror can find
• Bragging rights: the one who ducked a grizzly at arm's length
• /me parts their hair to show exactly where the claws combed through, swearing to every word

Recovery Nothing to mend but your nerve, and whiskey handles that tonight·No doctor needed