A Fist Full of Quills

You slapped the thing off a low branch and it answered with thirty quills sunk past the barb. You waited a day, and the barbs did what barbs do: they walked. By the time the doctor lays your arm on the table the deepest tips are pressing at the wrist joint itself, and there is nothing for it but the lancet. He cuts down to each shaft by lamplight and draws them one by one, an hour of small cruelties, then flushes every channel with carbolic. If the joint sours, he says plainly, the hand stiffens for good.

• No use of the right hand at all for 14 days, not reins, not a fork, not a hammer
• The wrist splinted and slung against the chest, the arm kept dead still for 7 days
• Laudanum each evening for 5 days, no watch duty and no fine talk after dark
• The doctor reopens and checks the channels every other day for a week, fever watched nightly
• /me cradles the bound right hand against the chest, sweat standing at the hairline

Recovery Three to six weeks before the hand closes on anything, and the wrist may hold a memory of it for life.·Doctor, urgently

You swatted it like a man slapping a table and the table slapped back. Palm and all four fingers took quills to the hilt, and the ones you tried pulling with your teeth snapped off short beneath the skin. The doctor lays the hand flat, slits over each buried shaft with a lancet, and draws them out with forceps while the palm balloons tight as a drumhead. Twenty small cuts, a long carbolic soak, and a hand bound into a mitten of linen.

• The right hand bound closed, no gripping, no writing, no cards for 7 days
• Hot salt-water soaks morning and night for 5 days to draw the anger out
• Fever watch for 3 nights, any red streak up the wrist goes straight to the doctor
• /me holds the linen-mitted hand stiff at the ribs, away from every doorframe

Recovery A week bound, another week tender, the palm honest again inside a fortnight.·Doctor required

You never saw it in the dark, only tripped and came down full length on something that crackled. Your own weight did the driving: quills in the forearm, the hip, a line of them along the ribs, some sunk to the skin line in deep muscle. It takes the doctor the better part of two hours with pliers and lancet, you biting a leather strap, laudanum dripped in when the count passes fifty. He swabs every hole with carbolic and says you are lucky none found the belly.

• No riding for 4 days, the hip and ribs will not take a saddle jolt
• Sleeping on the back only for 5 nights, quill holes down one whole side
• Laudanum-slow through the first two evenings, no watch duty, no fine work
• /me lowers into a chair by careful inches, one hand splayed over the ribs

Recovery Ten days to close every hole, a month before you stop finding tender spots.·Doctor required

A cluster snapped off in the meat of your forearm two days back and you called it done. It was not done. Porcupine barbs are shingled like fish scales, and every clench of your fist walked them deeper. The doctor finds them by feel, small hard travelers an inch under, and goes after each with needle and lancet by lamplight. Three come out of muscle that never saw the original wound. He binds the arm and tells you plainly what waiting costs on the frontier.

• The left forearm bound elbow to wrist, no lifting past a coffee pot for 6 days
• Wound checks daily for 4 days, the doctor hunting any traveler he missed
• No fist made with the left hand for a week, the cuts must knit closed
• /me traces a fingertip along the bound forearm, counting the lancet cuts beneath

Recovery The cuts close inside a week, full strength in the arm inside three.·Doctor required

The count stops mattering after thirty, but the doctor keeps it anyway: forty quills, forearm and the back of the hand, drawn one at a time with pliers by lantern light. Each is a straight pull, a hiss through your teeth, and a bright bead of blood. Two snap and want the lancet. Between pulls he douses the field with carbolic and you with whiskey, and by the end the basin looks like a strange bird moulted in it.

• Forty small wounds kept clean, carbolic wash twice daily for 5 days
• No rope work or rein-hauling with the right arm for 4 days
• Shirt sleeve worn loose or pinned back, cloth dragging on the holes is misery
• /me flexes the freckled forearm slow, forty scabs pulling all at once

Recovery Scabbed over in 5 days, smooth skin again inside three weeks.·Doctor required

The glove took the blow first, which saved you, and then became the problem: a dozen quills through the leather and into the back of your hand, pinning glove to skin like upholstery. Pulling the glove off would have torn every barb sideways. The doctor soaks the whole business in warm water, snips the leather away around each shaft, then draws the quills clean. The glove is ruined. The hand, mostly, is not.

• The left hand wrapped across the back, no glove worn on it for 6 days
• No hard gripping with the left for 3 days while the punctures close
• Buy or borrow new gloves, the old pair is cut to ribbons and buried
• /me works the bare left hand open and shut, eyeing the row of small scabs

Recovery Punctures closed in 4 days, the hand fully willing inside ten.·Doctor required

You bent low to look it in the eye and its tail came around like a hand broom. Quills across the jaw and cheek, one hanging an inch below your ear, one through the lip. The doctor draws them with pliers while you grip the chair, each pull loud inside your own skull, then swabs every hole with carbolic that burns worse than the tail did. A finger higher, he says, and does not finish the sentence.

• Chewing on the left side only for 4 days, the lip and cheek are all punctures
• No shaving the right jaw for a week, the razor stays off the wounds
• Talking kept short for 2 days, long speeches pull the cheek
• /me touches two fingers to the dotted jaw whenever anybody says the word porcupine

Recovery The face closes fast, clean skin inside a week, a proud story sooner.·Doctor required

You knelt to get a better look and put your knee down where the animal had already made its argument: a patch of shed and scattered quills, points up. Four went through the trouser cloth into the kneecap's edge, and one stood close enough to the joint that the doctor draws it a hair at a time, waiting after each pull to see the knee still bends. It does. He straps it anyway and forbids you the ladder for a while.

• The right knee strapped, no kneeling, no ladders, no squatting for 5 days
• Stairs taken one at a time, leading with the left leg, for 3 days
• A short cane or a stout stick on rough ground for the first 2 days
• /me straightens the strapped knee out to the side before easing down to sit

Recovery Strapped for 5 days, an honest knee again inside two weeks.·Doctor advised

You threw the arm up to guard your face and the tail met it square: a dozen quills in the forearm, evenly spaced as fence posts. Each one comes out with pliers and a hiss, a straight pull against the barb, and each leaves a bead of blood no bigger than a currant. Carbolic on every hole, a clean wrap, and you are back at the fire before the coffee cools, telling it bigger than it was.

• The left forearm wrapped for 3 days, kept out of the wash water and the mud
• No hauling on ropes with the left arm for 2 days
• /me rolls the sleeve back to show a tidy line of twelve small scabs

Recovery Scabbed by morning, clean skin inside a fortnight.·Doctor advised

You reached to shoo it off the porch and it swiped like it was owed money. Eight quills in the wrist and the back of the hand, none deep, all hateful. You pulled half yourself before your nerve went and let steadier hands pull the rest. The holes get whiskey for lack of anything better, then carbolic when the doctor hears about the whiskey.

• The right wrist wrapped light for 3 days, no leaning on the palm
• Rein work done with the left hand for 2 days while the wrist forgives you
• /me picks at the edge of the wrist wrap, counting eight small scabs beneath

Recovery Right inside a week, the scabs gone before the story gets old.·Doctor advised

You kicked at it, which everyone agrees was the stupid part, and the tail met the boot mid-swing. Most of the quills died in the leather. Four found the gap at the top and sank into the calf, and one snapped off short when you hauled the boot free. That last one needs a needle and a steady hour by the fire, the rest come out with a grunt apiece.

• The left calf dressed, boots swapped for the loose old pair for 3 days
• No wading the creek or standing in the wash for 4 days, the holes stay dry
• /me eases the boot on by degrees, favoring the dressed calf

Recovery The calf is quiet in 4 days, the boot leather never fully forgives.·Doctor advised

You sat down on a log the porcupine had claimed first and rose considerably faster than you sat. Five quills through the trouser seat and thigh, shallow as splinters and twice as embarrassing. A friend pulls them by firelight, enjoying it more than the work requires, and you take supper standing. Carbolic on the holes if there is any, whiskey on them and in you if there is not.

• Sitting done gingerly and on the one good side for 2 days
• The saddle padded with a folded blanket for 2 days
• /me eases down onto the bench sideways, one thigh doing all the sitting

Recovery Forgotten in 3 days, except by everyone who watched.·No doctor needed

Six quills in the meat of the shoulder where you pushed through brush the animal had seeded. Four pull clean. Two snap at the skin and have to be dug for with a sewing needle passed through a flame, a slow mean business that hurts worse than all the honest pulls together. Carbolic on the lot, and a lesson about brush piles you will keep about a month.

• The right shoulder dressed, no pack strap or rifle sling across it for 4 days
• Throwing and hard swinging spared for 3 days while the dug holes close
• /me shrugs the right shoulder in small circles, testing where the needle went

Recovery Closed in 4 days, sound in ten.·Doctor advised

Three quills in the web between thumb and finger, in and out with a wince apiece. The skin there is thin and the barbs never got purchase. You pressed the beads of blood, sucked the worst one clean like a snakebite you read about in a dime novel, and got back to work before anyone thought to ask what happened.

• The right thumb favored for 2 days, hard pinching left to the other hand
• /me flexes the thumb wide, showing three dots in the web like a snake that missed

Recovery Gone in 3 days.·No doctor needed

Five quills hanging in your forearm skin like darts in soft pine, barbs barely seated. Each comes out with two fingers and a straight pull, and each hole gives one bright bead and closes. You spent longer finding them all in the lantern light than pulling them, and the porcupine spent no time on it at all.

• The forearm washed with soap and hot water tonight and again in the morning
• /me plucks a last loose quill from the sleeve and holds it to the light

Recovery Healed over inside 2 days.·No doctor needed

One quill. One. It slid flat under the edge of your thumbnail like it had been measured for the job, and the whole tally of your suffering is that single hateful sliver. Drawing it straight out takes three tries, a set jaw, and language your mother would not own. The nail throbs to your heartbeat for a night and turns a small proud purple.

• No buttoning, buckling or fine work with the right thumb for 3 days
• The thumb soaked in hot salt water each evening for 3 days against festering
• /me presses the purpling thumbnail once and immediately regrets the science

Recovery Throbbing done in 2 days, the purple grows out with the nail over weeks.·Doctor advised

The tail swept past close enough to comb your knuckles. Loose quills raked four thin scratches across the back of your hand and exactly one stuck, shallow in the heel of the palm, out before the sting finished arriving. You washed it at the trough, wrung the hand twice, and called the whole affair a near thing loudly enough for the bunkhouse to hear.

• The scratched hand kept out of the dirt and dung for 2 days
• /me turns the hand over to display four thin red lines, narrating each one

Recovery Faded in 2 or 3 days.·No doctor needed

You felt the blow land and your stomach dropped, and then you counted: three quills standing proud in the glove leather, not one through to skin. You worked the glove off slow as a surgeon and shook it, and the quills rattled out onto the ground like spent cartridges. The glove wears its three small scars. You wear a grin you have not fully lost since.

• The lucky glove retired to Sundays, holes and all
• Obliged to let anyone who asks inspect the glove and count the holes
• /me holds up the punctured glove, three fingers raised behind it for the count

Recovery Nothing to heal, the glove takes the scar for you.·No doctor needed

The tail caught your coat sleeve full on and turned it into a hairbrush: a dozen quills in the wool, one lone point through to the skin of your forearm, and even that one dropped out when you shook the sleeve. A pinprick and a dot of blood you had to hunt for to prove the story true. You spent a quiet quarter hour pulling quills from wool by the fire, saving the longest for your hat.

• The coat sleeve wants an evening of picking and a patch at the elbow
• One pinprick on the forearm kept clean for a day, purely on principle
• /me draws a quill from the coat sleeve and squints down it like a gun barrel

Recovery Healed before it properly started, a day at most.·No doctor needed

You swatted, and by whatever providence watches over fools your open palm landed flat on the one part of a porcupine with nothing to say: the bare nose. The animal somersaulted backward off the trail and crashed away through the deadfall, shedding quills like a burst pillow, and not a single one of them found you. You picked the longest from the dirt, threaded it through your hatband, and walked back into camp a legend nobody believes.

• A trophy quill threaded through the hatband, to be worn a week at the least
• Obliged to retell the bare-handed swat, blow for blow, whenever the quill is noticed
• /me tips the hat brim to show a long quill threaded clean through the band

Recovery Nothing to recover but your composure, done by supper.·No doctor needed