Saloon Brawl: Fists & Furniture

The brawl carries you over the balcony rail and your back finds a table edge on the way down, something deep in your spine gives with a wet crack the whole saloon hears. The doctor's face when he tests your legs tells you before he does: you may never walk right again.

• Legs answer slow and wrong, bedbound, then a chair, for 7 days
• A grinding pain low in the back with every shift of weight
• If you walk again, it's with a cane and a list to one side
• /me grips the chair arms and hauls upright by inches, legs trembling under half orders

Recovery Months abed under a doctor's care to learn what the back will give you; what it won't give is gone.·Doctor, urgently

The haymaker breaks your jaw clean, and the era's fix is medieval and effective: the doctor wires your teeth together and hands your life over to broth. Four to six weeks of eating through a reed and saying everything twice through your teeth.

• Jaw wired, speak through clenched teeth, barely, for 7 days and beyond
• Broth, soup, and whiskey through a reed straw, nothing solid
• Write notes for anything longer than three words
• /me tips the bowl and drinks their dinner through locked teeth, eyes daring comment

Recovery 4 to 6 weeks wired under a doctor's watch; unwired and unset, the jaw knits crooked and clicks for life.·Doctor required

A boot heel or a bar rail, nobody's sure, cracks the socket beneath your eye, and now the world arrives in duplicate. The bone knits on its own timetable while you see two of every door and choose wrong about half the time.

• Double vision, no shooting, no riding faster than a walk, for 7 days
• Cover one eye to read, pour, or aim at anything
• A deep bruised hollow under the eye, tender to a feather's touch

Recovery 3 to 4 weeks for the seeing to settle with rest; strain it early and the double stays weeks longer.·Doctor required

You threw the perfect punch at the least perfect target, the crack you heard was your own hand breaking against his jawbone. Boxer's fracture, the doctor says, splinting your gun hand with the weary air of a man who has said it a hundred times.

• Gun hand splinted, no shooting, no gripping with it for 7 days
• Learn to do everything wrong-handed, starting with buttons
• The knuckle never sits quite level again, a brawler's tell
• /me fumbles left-handed at a coat button, splinted right hand held stiff

Recovery 3 to 6 weeks splinted with a doctor's setting; unsplinted, the hand knits crooked and the grip goes soft for good measure.·Doctor required

Your nose is broken flat across your face, and the fix is the worst two seconds of the week: the doctor's thumbs, a grinding crunch, and the world going white. It's straight again, mostly, and both eyes blacken by morning as the receipt.

• Two black eyes ripening over the week, the full bandit mask
• Mouth-breathing through packed nostrils for 3 days
• Sneezing is a religious experience for 5 days

Recovery 10 days for the mask to yellow out; without the reset, the bend is permanent and the snoring legendary.·Doctor required

Two men and gravity put you through a card table, and the table lost worst, but your back and ribs took the frame on the way down. You rise out of the kindling like a resurrection with a limp.

• Deep bruising across the back and ribs, no lifting for 4 days
• Rolling out of bed is a planned maneuver for 3 days
• Splinter scratches across the shoulders
• /me rises from a chair in stages, hand pressed flat to the small of their back

Recovery 8 days of stiffness; you owe the saloon for a table either way.·Doctor required

A boot found your ribs while you were busy with somebody's cousin, and two of them cracked in protest. Nothing to set, nothing to stitch, just weeks of your own skeleton charging interest on every breath, laugh, and sneeze.

• Cracked ribs, no sprinting, hauling, or brawling for 7 days
• Bind them for comfort, breathe deep hourly anyway to keep the lungs clear
• Laughing hurts, and your friends know it

Recovery 3 weeks to quiet with sense and binding; ignored, one wrong twist doubles the sentence.·Doctor required

You never saw the haymaker, just the ceiling, then the floor, then nothing. You come around with a bitten tongue full of copper and a concussion's worth of cotton wool where your thoughts go, rung proper, and out cold long enough to worry people.

• Concussed, dark room and no riding or shooting for 3 days
• A bitten tongue that makes hot coffee an ambush for 3 days
• Slow, deliberate speech while the tongue heals
• /me talks around a swollen tongue, careful as a man walking on ice

Recovery 7 days of quiet with a doctor's nod, 10 stubborn and squinting without.·Doctor required

A clean, honest black eye, it swells worst on day two, blooms purple-black, then yellows out over a fortnight like a slow sunset. The whole town gets to watch the calendar of it.

• Eye swollen half-shut, worst on day two, for 3 days
• The full color show, purple to green to yellow over 10 to 14 days
• Every acquaintance asks; the raw steak jokes write themselves

Recovery 2 weeks to fade entirely; nothing to do but wear it well.·Doctor advised

Your knuckles opened on his teeth, which is the fight's little joke: mouths are filthier than stables, and knuckle cuts fester like they're paid to. Whiskey over the splits, and watch them close.

• Split knuckles that crack open with every fist for 4 days
• Soak and clean them nightly, a hot red knuckle means trouble
• /me flexes scabbed knuckles open and shut, checking for the wrong kind of ache

Recovery 5 days clean, or a swollen festering hand and a doctor's lecture if not.·Doctor advised

An elbow catches your mouth and a front tooth gives up a corner, you find the chip on your tongue and, for reasons known to no one, put it in your pocket. The new edge is sharp enough to cut your lip until you learn its geography.

• A chipped front tooth, cold-shy for 4 days
• A whistling S until your tongue adjusts
• The chip itself, in your pocket, for luck

Recovery The lip heals in 3 days; the chip is a permanent addition to your grin.·Doctor advised

You leave the saloon horizontally through the batwing doors and land on the boardwalk at speed, palms first, tailbone second, pride a distant third. Road-rash hands and a bruised seat, plus applause from the porch.

• Road-rash palms, gripping reins stings for 3 days
• Bruised tailbone: sitting is a slow negotiation for 4 days

Recovery 5 days, mostly spent standing at the bar instead of sitting.·Doctor advised

A chair breaks across your back exactly like it happens in stories, and exactly unlike the stories, it hurts like the devil's own percussion. You wear the bruise-print of the slats for a week, an honest woodcut of the evening.

• Slat-striped bruising across the back for 5 days
• Stiff to bend or haul for 3 days
• Splinters picked from your shirt for days

Recovery 6 days; the chair was past saving before it met you.·Doctor advised

A short jab splits your lip against your own teeth, salty, swollen, and reopening every time you smile, which tonight, somehow, is often. It gives you a fine ominous look you didn't pay full price for.

• A fat lip through tomorrow
• Whiskey stings it; you drink anyway
• Reopens if you grin too wide for 2 days

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

A glancing hook you mostly rolled with, your jaw aches at the hinge and clicks once when you yawn, like a door that wants oiling. Chewing steak feels like work for a day or two.

• Chew careful and slow for 2 days
• A faint bruise along the jawline
• One theatrical click per yawn

Recovery 2 days.·No doctor needed

The scrapes across your knuckles say you gave considerably better than you got, theirs is the face that needs explaining. A whiskey rinse at the bar, poured by a barkeep who's seen a thousand of these.

• Skinned knuckles, scabbed by morning, for 3 days
• A very satisfying story where you come off well
• /me pours a splash of whiskey over raw knuckles without breaking conversation

Recovery 3 days.·No doctor needed

You emerge with a torn collar, one missing button, scattered bruises, and a shirt that gave its life for the cause. Nothing on you needs more than a cold creek and a night's sleep.

• Scattered small bruises for 3 days
• A shirt for the rag bag and a button lost to history

Recovery 2 days; the shirt is beyond even prayer.·No doctor needed

One small bruise on the cheekbone, barely enough to justify the raw steak the cook offers, though you take it anyway for the theater of it. The story of the brawl grows a foot taller with every telling.

• A faint cheek bruise for 2 days
• A steak you didn't have to pay for

Recovery 2 days, mostly for show.·No doctor needed

You bobbed, weaved, and let two other men hit each other on your behalf, all you carry out is a sore shoulder from where the crowd surged and somebody's hat that isn't yours. Cleanest brawl you've ever been thrown out of.

• A sore shoulder for a day
• Somebody else's hat, better than yours

Recovery Overnight.·No doctor needed

You go backward through a card table in a thunder of kindling, and rise from the wreckage with your glass upright and the whiskey unspilled, not a drop lost. The saloon goes dead quiet, then roars; the barkeep waves off payment for the table out of pure respect.

• Not a scratch, just sawdust to brush off
• A legend by the county line before Sunday
• /me steps out of the shattered table, takes a slow sip, and sets the glass on the bar

Recovery Nothing to heal. The table cannot say the same.·No doctor needed