The yard's trouble came to the shop the way trouble in that street always came: feet first, and shouting under the feet.
Ren was weighing powder at the counter when the street changed its sound. A crack of wood, far off and heavy. A man's voice, cut short in the middle of a word. Then the running — not toward the gate, but up the street, toward the light and the shelves.
He was already moving. The counter was cleared with one sweep of his arm. The water crock came in from the back step. Cloths were laid out in their pile, and the splint wood from its place by the door, and the blankets off the shelf. The shop's hands knew the order of it now, the way they had learned it on the night of the bell.
They brought Daichi in on the yard's litter, four men at the poles, and set the litter across two crates by the counter, the way a table is set where the work is.
The foreman did the telling, in the short words of a man who has carried his friend up a street and not yet caught his breath.
"The cart was loaded for the road. Beams, for the yard's winter work. The near wheel went into a hole in the yard stones as she came down the slope. The load went over sideways — slow, he says, slow as a falling wall. Daichi was at the cart's side with his hand on the brake rope. The bed and the beams took him between them at the thigh. It took six men to lift the beams off him."
Daichi lay grey-faced on the litter with his teeth shut. His right thigh was swelling under the dirt-ground cloth of his trousers, tight and rising, the way a waterskin rises as it fills. At his shin, a cut bled steady through the dirt. And when Ren laid his hand flat and light on the man's belly, the left side of it stood hard under his palm, and Daichi caught his breath at the touch, and held it caught.
Ren counted the pulse at his wrist. It ran fast and thin under his fingers. He counted his own at his throat: slow, and steady, and half of Daichi's count.
"Water," Daichi said, through his teeth. "Herb-man. Water."
"Nothing to drink," Ren said. "Not even water. Hear me: it is not cruelty, and it is not a rule I keep for other men. What is wrong with you bleeds where no eye can see it. A belly that bleeds inside goes empty to the hill. The hill will tell you when you may drink, and not before."
"Then keep the leg still," Daichi said. "It moves when I breathe. It is worse when it moves."
They kept it still. The shin cut first: a folded cloth, pressed hard, and Ren taught the foreman's hand to hold it — press, and do not lift to look. Looking lets the blood out to see what you are looking at. The cloth darkened, and slowed, and slowed, and held.
After a while the foreman's holding hand began to shake with the holding, the way any hand does. Ren took the pressure into his own hand without lifting the cloth — one hand over the other, the weight passed across, the cloth never rising. Then he gave it back. "Press as I pressed," he said. "The blood does not care whose hand it is. It cares that the hand does not wander."
The leg itself he did not straighten, and he did not press it, and he did not dig at it. He bound it to its fellow with wide cloth, at the ankle and above the knee, firm as a splint and gentler. Then he laid his own splint wood along the outside of the two, and tied that too. The pair of them would move as one thing, or not at all. Blankets went over him to the chin. Warmth was his, and stillness was his, and the rest was not this shop's to give.
Ren said the limit out loud, standing at the litter, so the men who would carry him heard it from the shop's own mouth.
"What bleeds in him bleeds inside, past any hand of mine and past any plant on these shelves. He goes to the hill — to the cutting kind of doctoring, and quick. Flat, and slow, and never tilted. Four men at the poles, and change by twos without setting him down, so the litter never stops and never hurries."
The runner went first, at the run, with the page's first half folded in his sash: the name, the hurt, the bleeding inside, the flat carry, the hill to make ready. The page's other half Ren wrote standing at the counter, in the gaps of the work, the way the night page had been written on the night of the bell. He wrote it all on the one page, because a litter can carry one page the way it can carry one man: flat, and whole.
Daichi of the yard, carter, hurt at the yard at the midday bell and brought to this shop on the yard's litter.
Found: the right thigh crushed between the cart bed and the beam stack. It is swelling hard and rising under the cloth. A cut at the shin, bleeding steady. The belly hard at the left side under a light hand; he catches his breath at the touch. The pulse fast and thin, counted twice.
Done: pressure on the cut, held by a man's hand, without lifting. The leg bound to its fellow, at the ankle and above the knee, and a board along the outside. Blankets to the chin. Nothing by mouth, though he asked for water, and was told why.
Not done: the thigh not straightened, not pressed, not dug at. Nothing given to make him sleep — the draught of that kind is made on the hill's written word, or not made.
Sent: runner ahead. The litter follows at the walk, four men, changing by twos without setting down.
Ren folded the page once and gave it to the foreman, who would walk at the litter's head.
"Into a doctor's hand," Ren said. "Not a porter's. Not a clerk's. A doctor's."
"If the leg goes, herb-man," Daichi said, as the poles came up, "the yard will find me a stool and a tally board. See that the page says I was working."
"The page says what the page saw," Ren said. "It says carter, at his cart. That will do for any board in the village."
He walked with them himself, at the litter's side, one hand resting light on the pole, feeling Daichi's breathing come up through the wood into his palm. The street stood aside for them the way streets do. Halfway up, the bearers changed by twos without setting down, the fresh hands taking the poles in stride, and the litter never stopped and never hurried, and Daichi's breath stayed shallow and even under Ren's hand.
Daichi's eyes opened once on the climb. "You are walking, herb-man."
"I am walking."
"Then the page walks too." His eyes shut again. "Good. A man should arrive with his papers in order."
At the hill's door the porter took the litter in. The foreman did as he had been told: the page went out of his hand into a doctor's hand, over the litter, without the litter stopping. By the door stood the hill's sand-glass on its iron stand, the glass the porters turn when a litter comes in, so the hour of a hurt's arrival stands written somewhere truer than memory. The porter turned it as the poles went through, and nodded once at Ren, the way men nod who keep the same count in different books.
Ren did not go in. The shop's work ended at the door, and the door was the shop's whole part in it: the pressure, the binding, the warmth, the page, and the road between.
He walked down alone in the afternoon's thin light, and kept the counter till evening, with the splint wood's place standing empty by the door.
The runner came down at dusk with a folded scrap in his sash, written in a hand that was not the runner's own.
Times received. He lives. The bleeding is stopped. The leg is ours now. He will be weeks with us. — Andō, the hospital.
Ren read it twice. Then he finished Daichi's page in the day book, in the place where the day's truth stood, and counted the day's costs the way the book counted everything.
The reference: door to door, forty minutes at the litter's pace, by the porter's glass at the hill. One page went up with him, whole. Word down at dusk: he lives; the bleeding stopped; the leg is the hill's. Cost of the day: cloth, two lengths; splint wood, one good length, gone up the hill on his leg; the counter's afternoon. Taken in: nothing. The day was the street's.
He folded the hill's scrap into the day book at Daichi's page, where the times stood. Paper against paper. It was the shop's whole wage for the day, and the book kept it.