The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  After the fire, Sol begins to find in the movement – the Movement – an outlet for his own anger and grief and shame. He begins to pay attention. To go to meetings, listen to speakers, even stand up and talk himself, once in a while. When he isn’t too drunk, that is, a state he found himself in more often than not in the weeks and months after the fire.

  His crew worries about him; Billy, ever the mother, tries to keep Sol sober when he can, ignoring the snapping outbursts of anger and the sullen silences. He worries that Sol is slipping away from them.

  It’s not your fault, Sol.

  But it is, Sol knows. Just like it had been with Lizzie, all those years ago.

  “It’s your own fuckin fault, Sol.”

  Sol just looks down at his hands, waits for whatever is coming. Fat Mickey Doyle and Nick Faraday had pushed their way into the cabin just before dawn, rousted him out of bed, ignoring Billy after a flat, warning glare. At least it’s my day off, Sol had thought, struggling into his clothes, dry-mouthed and gut-sick, a new hangover pounding behind his eyes once more. As Mickey had dragged him out of the shack, Sol tried to give Billy a look that had something like assurance in it. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Regardless of the fact that he knew it to be a lie.

  Sean Harrity shrugs now, raising his eyebrows in a helpless sort of way. “Sorry, but there it is: it’s your own fuckin fault,” he repeats, slowly and with grave emphasis. He nods his head in time with the words. Brightening falsely then, raising a bottle. “Too early for a drink?”

  “I’m awake, ain’t I?” Sol looks around Sean’s office, a squalid little space at the back of the Piper restaurant, barely wide enough to accommodate the battered desk Sean sits behind. Sol himself sits on a rickety dining chair that’s too low to the ground, as if someone has taken the time to shorten the legs by a couple of inches, forcing the chair’s occupant to look up at the man behind the desk. A penitent’s chair, a supplicant’s. Fat Mickey is squeezed in between that chair and the door; Sol can feel the hot press of the man’s belly uncomfortably close to the back of his neck. It’s hard to resist the urge to crane his head around so that he can keep one eye on Mickey, but instead he reaches up to take the glass of whiskey Sean pushes across the desk.

  “Sláinte.”

  “Cheers, Sean.” Sol drinks, nods appreciatively. “Good stuff.”

  “Only the finest for my friends, Sol.” Sean smiles across the desk, laces his fingers together.

  An uncomfortable silence. Sol looks back at the smile, wondering where this is going. All in all, he’d prefer an angry Sean Harrity to this smiling fuck sat up across from him. The man of quiet threats and noisy menaces he knows too well, from long association both public and private. Sean Harrity, the pimp, shark, thief; a criminal generalist, one of the enterprising class of lowlifes who exist to suck the paycheck out of the working man like the Company sucks the metal out of the hill. More worrying, to Sol, is the fact that Sean’s a murderer when he needs – or wants – to be. When he feels affronted or his interests are compromised or for any number of other reasons. Sean Harrity has never balked from using his power to the fullest extent and fuck the consequences, what little there are.

  Mining the pockets of his fellows has made Sean Harrity a wealthy man: he has gambling, drink, and prostitution interests throughout the red-light district around Chinatown, as well as owning a number of the shittier variety of cribs, hop-houses, and the like in the Cabbage Patch. Sean’s parlayed this wealth into a number of legitimate holdings, too: a portfolio of shops, boarding houses, and cafes, mostly up around Dublin Gulch, catering to his fellow Irishmen. Rumor has it that Sean is in tight with Company managers as well, providing unaffiliated and deniable muscle when heads needed cracking. Certainly Sean’s boys aren’t afraid to use their fists, or more, when collecting from recalcitrant debtors who have run the string out on their obligations a bit too long.

  Men like Sol.

  They look at each other for a solid minute. The dank, stuffy little room is so quiet that Sol can hear the faint whistle of Mickey’s breathing, the tick of the ornate, ostentatious pocket watch Sean wears on a thick gold chain.

  “I’ll get your money, Sean,” Sol says, finally. “I don’t got it now but I’ll get it, OK?”

  Sean winces, looking up, as if seeing something unpleasant off in the distance. “Well, Sol, I don’t like to be that man, but, you know.”

  “I said I’ll get your money.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I admit I’ve heard that before.” He shrugs. “I’ve got a business to run, Sol, a business. Now, I think I’ve been more than patient, particularly given your recent losses and griefs, but ...” He trails off, shrugging again. “It’s been fuckin months now, over a year, and your debt is doing nothing but rise.”

  “What do you want me to say, Sean? I’ll get your goddamn money. I don’t have it right now, and all the threats and bullshit in the world ain’t going to get it right now, so maybe spare us both the jawing, yeah? I said I’ll get the money and I will.”

  Sean leans back, looking aggrieved. “Threats? What threats?” He looks over at Mickey. “You hear any threats?” He leans forward. “Sol, I don’t make threats, but I’ll have that money. D’ya understand me?” He lowers his voice. “I’ve been a patient man, Mr Parker, out of respect for your age and station and the losses you have endured but, like I said, I have people who rely on me and, dare I say it, a certain image, a reputation, to maintain, you understand, and I’ll have that money.” He looks over Sol’s shoulder, gives a small nod.

  The bolt of pain shoots from Sol’s kidney up to his neck, making him lurch forward with a gasp. The second punch hurts even more than the first, and a low groan slips out from between his gritted teeth.

  “Let’s talk about repayment, Solomon.”

  4.

  “Hands up!”

  This fight isn’t going well and Sol needs a drink.

  The air inside Heaney’s, one of Harrity’s joints, a hole on the south edge where the shittier parts of the East Side rot into the arms of the Patch, is hot and close, containing more tobacco smoke than oxygen. The tables and chairs are pushed to the walls, patrons crowded tight against one another around the periphery, the room sweaty and smoky and reeking of unwashed bodies. Without looking, Sol reaches backwards into the crowd, yelling, “Drink!” until someone’s pint is put in his hand. He takes a long pull of the warm, sour muck that Heaney passes off as beer, knocking some of the dry from his throat.

  “Get your FUCKING hands UP, Nancy!” he shouts, watching his man lean into another series of fists: left, left, right, left, left, one coming after the next with quick, calm precision. Nancy’s never been much of a fighter, even back when they’d fought straight; he’s merely big and tough, with a tolerance for abuse that would kill any two other men. When he lands a punch, though, rare as it is, it’s truly that baby dropped from the building, the dead weight of his huge fist propelled by a tree trunk of an arm. Nancy’s slow, though, and has nothing in the way of cunning. The fighters around town figured him out soon enough and simply dance around him now, pick him apart piece by piece until he eventually crumbles. Which had accelerated Sol’s bad series of bets, of course, as he’d been too stupid to see it for what it was, naively trusting to Nancy’s heroic capacity for mistreatment.

  Even Nancy had his limits, though.

  He’s going down now, swaying, lurching to one knee as that excitable southpaw idiot continues to ring his skull with lefts. Sol looks at his watch, screams “Time! Time! Time!” He steps forward and tries to push himself between his fighter and Faraday’s fast left hand. Nick Faraday will get him killed if this keeps up.

  “Time!” Sean shouts, flat-eyed and angry, though he’s trying not to show it. Sol wonders just who has actually been dumb enough to put money on this fight, the fix being so obvious. Although, from personal and repeated experience, he knows that the human capacity for stupidity is limitless.

  “You want to call it now?” Se
an calls over to Sol, fuming, trying to maintain at least a modicum of subterfuge about the events at hand. “Your man seems done, Mr Parker.”

  Sol looks down at Big Nancy. One of the boy’s eyes is swollen shut and he’s huffing out of his broken nose like an animal, raking in air through a bloody mouth. Sol takes a handful of Nancy’s thick red hair and leans down, pulling his fighter’s face close to his own. “You OK, Nance?” he says, as quietly as he can over the din of spectators yelling at one another. “You don’t look so good, son, but just a little bit longer, hey?”

  Nancy’s good eye rolls around for a bit in its socket before coming to rest on him. “Fuck you, Sol,” he mutters through puffy, split lips. He spits a glutinous red dribble of blood and mucous between Sol’s feet. “Got him right where I want him.”

  Sol feels that isn’t really the point, but does his best to heave Nancy to his feet, leading him over to the chair someone has placed in their corner, passing him a beer when the big man sits. Nancy knows the score; going down doesn’t sit right with the boy but he’ll do it. Sol himself isn’t particularly troubled by the sporting implications of what they’re doing, because he knows that he has no choice. As he’d explained it to Nancy: you do this or you boys are going to find me in an alley somewhere. Nancy taking the dive won’t square Sol with Sean – far from it – but it’s at least showing some due diligence towards his obligations and, when it comes right down to it, Sean owns him, at least for now. Fucking owns him, body and soul. Sol has to do what he’s told and to hell with his pride.

  Nancy, weaving on his chair, leans over to one side and pukes up a thin stream of beer, blood, and bile.

  Sol squats on his haunches in front of Big Nancy, feeling the sharp crack in his tired knees. Nancy’s bloody face has gone vacant; Sol reaches up and gives him a few gentle slaps to focus the boy, wiping sweat and snot and blood off of him with his sleeve at the same time. “Goddamn it, someone get me a rag,” he shouts back over his shoulder. When one is passed into his hand he spends a moment trying to smear Nancy’s face back towards clean, stanch the flow of blood as best he can.

  “Fighters, one minute!” O’Toole calls.

  “Fuck off, Pat,” Sol mutters, slapping Nancy’s face with his free hand again until he sees the gleam of focus coming back into his open eye. Nancy raises his own hand, tries to push Sol’s slaps away.

  “You got to get your hands up, son,” Sol says, cupping the back of Nancy’s head, steering that one wavering blue eye towards his own. “Up, up. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I am hurt,” Nancy mumbles.

  “Ah, come on, now, Nance, don’t be such a fairy. You’re fine. Just hold on a little longer, and you know what to do.”

  There’s a long, wavering pause as Nancy’s battered brain processes this. “But I am a fuckin fairy, Sol,” he said.

  Sol slaps him a little harder. “Not tonight, you’re not! Come on, boy, I need you to focus.”

  “Quit hitting me, Sol,” Nancy says, waving his hand loosely in front of his face, blowing blood out of his broken nose. “I know what to fuckin do, OK?”

  “Time, gentlemen!” Pat calls out. “Fighters!”

  Nancy stands up, rolling his head on his shoulders, pushing Sol out of the way as he watches Faraday step back into the open space between them. It’s shameful, what they’re doing, but it needs to be done and he won’t let Sol down. Nancy turns away to spit again, catching Sol’s eye for a brief moment and then moving forward, gritting his teeth as he gets ready to absorb some more punches. He hopes that he can go down in a realistic enough manner, and that it won’t hurt too bad when he does.

  Later, he isn’t sure exactly just what happened. He remembers one fist after another smacking into the side of his head – left right left left left – and then the lazy loop of his own punch and then somehow Faraday is on the ground, twitching, eyes rolled back in his head as a bemused Pat O’Toole counts ten. Across the room, Nancy can see Sean Harrity staring at him, no expression on his face at all.

  Heaney’s is too loud, the air is too close and his head feels huge and swollen, throbbing from the punches he’s absorbed. Behind the crowd, an old man with long white braids is grinning at him. It’s hard to catch a breath and, for a moment, Big Nancy worries he’s going to pass out. A little late for that, he thinks, as Flynn and Michael hustle over to him, drag him to the edge of the crowd, push him towards the door.

  As they pull him away, Nancy swings his head around, mouth open, still trying to catch a breath. He looks for Sol, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

  5.

  Fuck you, Sean, Sol says to himself, those days after the fight, as he scans the crowd that’s gathered at the picket around the Neversweat. He knows Sean Harrity will be here, and is trying to plan accordingly. Accidents goddamn happen, so fuck you. For a moment he thinks he sees Mickey Doyle, but on closer inspection it proves to be just some other fat Irishman. Regardless, he ducks a little farther behind Nancy and Flynn. From where they are, to the left of the flatbed truck that the speakers will stand on, Sol can see a good portion of the men gathered on the road, without most of them able to see him.

  He hopes.

  “You boys spot anyone?” Michael is keyed up, shuffling from foot to foot as a cheap substitute for actual pacing. From time to time he pops a fist into the palm of his other hand, nervously cracking his knuckles.

  “Yeah, Michael, there’s a whole host of them right in front of us, with bats and fuckin axes,” Flynn says, “but we just thought to keep it quiet, like. You know, as a surprise for you. You fuckin eejit.”

  “Well excuse me, Johnathan, you and your keen fuckin eyes–”

  “Goddamn it, you two, shut up,” Sol says. “Just shut the goddamn hell up for a minute and keep an eye out.”

  It’s been like this for days, since the fight and Nancy’s looping, misplaced fist. He can’t hold that errant punch against the boy, not really. Accidents happen, after all, and the likely concussion Nancy’s wearing, on top of an enormous helping of guilt, is more than the boy deserves.

  It was supposed to have been easy, but now everything is fucked and Sol’s hiding out, doing his best to avoid Sean Harrity. Shuffled to and from the mine every day, surrounded by his crew as de facto guards. Moving from room to room at night, never sleeping in the same place twice. It’s embarrassing and emasculating, is what it is. Old Sol Parker, the welcher, idiot, and coward. The boys try to press a pistol on him, but he and pistols don’t agree with one another.

  Besides, it doesn’t matter. There are two ways this thing will go: he’ll find some way to square things with Sean or, more likely, Sean will merely wait him out and exact whatever punishment he sees fit when the chance finally presents itself. The boys – and Sol himself – can’t keep this up forever. It’s only been a few days and already they’re damn near ready to kill one another from too much nervous proximity.

  There’s one other thing he can do, though, and that’s leave. He’d left his problems behind more than once in his life, after all. So maybe best to not take the high road now, either.

  The miners mill around the picket blocking the Anaconda road to the Neversweat which, along with several other mines, is shut down by the Union on the urging of Frank Little. The Company isn’t happy. No one is happy. The mood is ugly and it won’t take much for things to spill over. Already some fights have broken out, for no good reason. When the scabs and the police and the Pinkertons show up – and they will, for sure – Sol doesn’t know just what will happen. The mine guards on the other side of the picket line are armed with rifles, the Pinkertons aren’t shy to use their own guns, and the police are in the Company’s fucking pocket. It doesn’t look great, as situations are measured.

  It’s a year, to the day, from the Pennsylvania fire. All Sol wants to do is go find a bottle and not think for a while, but here he is. He’s tired; he can’t remember the last time he’s had a good night’s sleep, what with all the moving around and the terrible dr
eams he keeps having. If anything, the dreams are getting worse. They’re full of fire, big black birds, a field of cut-up bones.

  He’d been surprised to discover how much he liked Frank Little when the man showed up in Butte. Somehow Sol had been drawn into Frank’s orbit, grudgingly at first through Rob Quinn but, later, he was unable to resist the appeal of the man and his message. At some point, an honest wage for an honest job seemed not just desirable, but a right. Something that could actually be accomplished, maybe. Or maybe all this is just something Sol is using to take his mind off of other things. He doesn’t really know, when he looks closer at it.

  A murmur in the crowd heralds Frank’s arrival, surrounded by an honor guard of the miners who are looking out for his safety. Quinn’s at the head of the procession, gaze swiveling through the crowd. There are hundreds of men at the picket, and no doubt some undercover Pinkertons salted throughout. Quinn and Frank and some of the other organizers have taken care to station levelheaded, trusted men at strategic points throughout the mob, in an effort to maintain a modicum of control if things go south. The Company guards on the other side of the picket look restless, passing their rifles from hand to hand as Frank and the others make their way to the flatbed. Before he steps onto the back of the truck, Frank gives Sol a wink and then, with a light hop, he jumps up. He raises his hand for a moment to acknowledge the cheers and whistles of the crowd, before making pressing motions downward, to silence the commotion.