The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  “Very well, I choose the bird to the left,” he said, picking the one with the healthy wings. “That bird will fly first.”

  Just then the crippled bird on the right straightened its wing and flew off, spiraling up into the sky.

  It is a very stupid thing to bet with gods.

  At the faraway place where he lived with his wives, Raven watched this pass from his perch atop the high pine and was troubled. For that old bird, of all creatures on this Earth, saw the world as it truly was.

  He lifted his shining black wings and flew.

  9.

  Billy comes awake to the sound of tapping at the window, a dry rap like a fingernail against the glass. Moving slowly, eyes closed, he reaches under the pillow for the large knife he’d placed there. The tapping hasn’t woken Sol, given the sound of his snoring. The amount of whiskey Sol had consumed – over Billy’s objections – since they’d arrived at this little room in the Gulch is no doubt helping with the old man’s slumber. Billy is surprised to find himself woken up, given that he’d never meant to sleep in the first place. Exhaustion and the emotional crash after the danger of the riot and running, combined with – he’ll admit – a bit more whiskey than he himself was accustomed to, must have put him out.

  He’d been dreaming about Maatakssi’s bet with the Above Ones, one of the stories his father used to sing to him in the days before the government school. It was a good story and, as near as he could tell, the moral was that the house always wins.

  Words to live by, if ever there were such.

  The tapping continues at the window. He isn’t quite ready to look yet, although, if they’ve been found by the wrong person, the door would already have been kicked open, most likely. Billy hopes it’s just a lost drunk; he doesn’t want to show his face, in the hopes that the man will give up and wander off without catching sight of just who is holed up in this little room. At first Billy had questioned the wisdom of hiding out in the Irish stronghold of Dublin Gulch, where Sean Harrity maintains such a presence but, upon reflection, he has to admire Sol’s cunning. No one will likely think to look for them here, of all places. Probably Sean will figure Sol has finally wised up and cut out of town. Billy isn’t quite sure just what the next play is, but tomorrow is another day.

  Tap tap tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

  Go the fuck away, he thinks. Keep on moving, rummy. No one here, no one that you’re looking for anyway. He levers one eyelid open the slightest bit. From the darkness of the room he can see it’s full night still, dawn far away. Sol’s ratcheting, wheezing snores judder up out of the sagging easy chair he’s wedged himself into, in the far corner of the room.

  Tap-tap. Tap tap tap.

  Goddamn it. Billy tightens his grip around the knife, taking comfort in its heft and, in one smooth motion, rolls himself out of bed and onto his feet. He crosses to the window in two long strides, yanking back the tattered lace curtain.

  “Jesus fuck!”

  He staggers back, shouting before he can help himself, tripping over the leg of Sol’s chair and nearly stabbing himself in the kidney as he falls clattering into the bed table, which is kicked aside with the shriek of wood against floorboards.

  “What now what!” Sol, coming awake and upright from a dead sleep, hollering, swinging an arm out. “What!” He bashes into the table himself, shoves it back the other way with another squeal of legs on floor, yelling something incoherent again.

  A long, confused second, then Billy gets his legs under him and his wits somewhere back to close. “No! Sol! It’s fine! It’s fine.” He heaves himself upright, tossing the knife onto the bed before someone gets hurt. “Sol, it’s fine. It’s a bird, it’s just a fucking bird.”

  Sol looks at him, eyes wide and crazy, shining in the dim light coming through the window. “What?” He takes a step back, bumping the back of his knees into his chair, letting his weight collapse into it. “The hell are you yelling about, Billy? You scared the goddamn shit out of me.”

  “Startled me, is all.”

  “Sweet Jesus, boy.”

  “I said it fucking startled me.” The bird is looking at them, head cocked to one side like an inquisitive dog, black eye gleaming. It taps its beak against the window again. Tap-tap-tap. Tap tap.

  “The hell’s a goddamn crow doing at the window, middle of the night?”

  “It’s ain’t a crow: it’s a raven, Sol. It’s omanaahstoo.” Billy’s voice is hoarse, whether from being woken from a sound sleep or something else, he doesn’t know.

  There’s a knock at the door.

  10.

  Sol looks from Billy to the old man, the man Billy says is his uncle. Marked Face is his Indian name, apparently, and it’s easy to see why. Twist of a scar, oily skin like old saddle leather. He’s an evil-looking fucker, built low and broad like Sol and, even though he looks to be somewhere north of two hundred years, it’s plain that there’s plenty of muscle left on him. He squats there on the floor, back against the wall, a tatty blanket pulled over a flannel shirt. From time to time he looks over at Sol with a shine in dark eyes that are flat and otherwise empty, like badly silvered mirrors. He wears his white hair long, in two thick braids, wrapped at the end with leather and what look like rabbit or bird bones, small bleached things that softly chatter against one another when the old man moves his head.

  The old man looks somehow familiar, but maybe only because all old Indians look a bit alike to Sol.

  He and Billy are talking Indian at each other; Sol can’t follow any of it but he doesn’t like the tone. Billy is stabbing a finger towards his uncle now, saying something in a harsh voice. Marked Face laughs, coughing out a few words of his own, pausing to spit afterwards. The Indian language always sounds to Sol as if they’re short on breath.

  “That he said, Billy?”

  Billy ignores him, which Sol feels is reason enough to get up and find his whiskey bottle, which still somehow has a few inches left at the bottom. Now that the excitement of being scared awake has mostly worn off, Sol realizes he has a thirst and is also still about as drunk as he’d been when he passed out earlier. No reason to go dry then, now, particularly when they have a guest, uninvited and as sour-looking as the man is. Pulling the bottle out from where it’s wedged between the arm and seat of his chair, he uncorks it. He politely wipes the rim with the tail of his shirt, offering the first drink to the old man, whose hand extends outward in a peremptory manner.

  Marked Face takes a long drink without looking at Sol, busying himself with sneering at his nephew. Billy is still arguing in Indian, his voice somehow getting both louder and more breathy, the sound sinking down lower and deeper in his chest, rumbling through his breastbone. Instead of responding, the old man merely leans forward and spits a stream of whiskey – to Sol’s dismay – on the ground between his feet. He repeats the act two more times, makes a complicated gesture with the hand that doesn’t hold the bottle, muttering something under his breath.

  Sol badly wants the bottle back. He notices that the raven is still at the window, which is open now, although Sol has no memory of any of them raising it. The bird watches the proceedings with eyes that are the same empty, shining black as Marked Face’s own. The old man reaches into his shirt, pulling out a handful of the same small bones that are tied into his hair; he scatters them into the whiskey he’d spat on the floor. The room feels colder.

  Sol takes a step back. It isn’t that he’s a superstitious man, per se, but in his youth he’d learned a respect for ineffable things.

  “Oh, bullshit.” Billy says in English. He stands up, breaking the spell of the moment, stepping past his uncle to push the bird out the window. It dodges him with an indignant squawk and hops down onto the bedside table, eyeing them warily. Billy shuts the window with a bang anyway, taking the bottle of whiskey from Marked Face’s hand as he comes back over, pulling a long drink before passing what little is left back to Sol. “Bullshit, old man.”

  Marked Face gives an ugly cackle, spitting again
on the ground and rattling off a long, hoarse sentence, cocking his chin Sol’s way.

  “Hell’s going on, Billy? What’s that he said?”

  Billy shakes his head, muttering something in Indian that sounds like a curse, which makes the old man cackle again. “Don’t worry about it, Sol. My uncle is fucking crazy and full of shit, not to mention a bastard. It runs in the family.”

  Marked Face slaps his hand down on the whiskey-wet floor, making the bones bounce. His cheeks twist a frown deep into the canyons of his wrinkled face, and he starts in on another gravelly, panting sentence.

  “No, old man, just get the fuck out of here,” Billy says. He leans forward, pointing down at his uncle. “You’re not a fucking sorcerer and whatever medicine you think you had is long gone. You’re a broke, crazy old man with a trained fucking bird and a line of shit as long as I am tall and who has nothing better to do, in the middle of the goddamn night, than to fuck with me, apparently. You’re a pain in my ass, you and Bad Bird both. Two of you should have done me a courtesy and died a long time ago. You don’t belong here, you belong out at Warm Springs with him. Maybe you can see which one of you can finally kill the other, hey? You know what, why don’t you go there right now, get started.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling out some limp, crumpled bills, throwing them at his uncle. “Here. Just get the fuck out. I don’t care where you go, come to think of it, just as long as it’s not here. Go.”

  “Billy,” Sol starts to say.

  “No, Sol, no. You have no idea. No goddamn idea.”

  Sol hasn’t seen Billy, normally so quiet, like this before. He reaches out to put a hand on Billy’s arm, but is shrugged off.

  “Don’t fucking touch me, Sol. I don’t need no one touching me.” He absently rubs at his shoulder.

  Sol’s known Billy for years, knows that his childhood had been less than ideal. Which is why he’d wound up in Sol’s orbit, after all. He’d never asked details, and Billy had never offered. Fair enough; every man had been a boy once and every man has a right to the privacy about things past. Lord knows Sol had gotten up to some stupid shit as a youth, things no one needed to hear about.

  What he realizes now is just what Billy puts aside, a couple of times a year, sometimes more, to go see his father up at the asylum.

  Sol hasn’t been out to Warm Springs to see Elizabeth in years.

  Marked Face squats there, listening to his nephew rant. The boy is as soft as sun-warmed shit. Poor, poor little Sagiistoo. Such a hard life you have had! Once, when the boy was small, he’d maybe seen something hard and fierce in the one his brother had named Sagiistoo: Owl, the Night Announcer, who now calls himself by an English name, one that sounds like the patter of piss on dry grass. Billy Morgan. Piss on grass followed by the plop of dung. A boy afraid of his own true name. But the name of a thing didn’t matter when it came down to it, did it? Regardless, whatever strength had been there in the boy was squeezed out of him at the white school, that’s clear; the young man who came back with his short hair and his Jesus-god Bible wasn’t the one who had left. Strange that the Above Ones have singled him out in this way, although, perhaps, that is the point.

  Sometimes Marked Face feels that it is too bad, in a way, that his brother’s hatchet hadn’t cut a bit deeper when the boy had gotten between him and Bad Bird that time, one of many times, to be sure. But that’s how the world is: you are strong or you are weak. Sometimes you get caught between the strong and discover a fact about yourself, discover what you are. That is how you are tested, that is how you choose your path in this world.

  Poor little white Sagiistoo with his scars and his crying now.

  His nephew has never understood – never believed, as a wise man does – that the whites are nothing but an evil trick played on the world by cunning Nihaat and foolish Maatakssi, to spite his brother Siinatssi. Those stupid old ones, back in the time before other things. The stories are clear. Seeing things as they are now, what kind of man would not believe their truth? And, knowing the stories, what kind of man would want to be one of those whites: empty, evil creatures, even given the power of their medicine. What kind of shortsighted fool would choose that, as his nephew does? Better to be nothing at all.

  It was a good trick, though, with the bird, Marked Face thinks, chuckling to himself. He’s always had an affinity with the ravens. The father of those birds, Raven himself, has long been beloved of the People.

  But, ah, Sagiistoo, Sagiistoo. His nephew isn’t only empty, he’s stupid, although maybe that is merely another aspect of the same thing. He is also disrespectful, Sagiistoo, carrying on in such a way, and that is a thing that should not be tolerated, for the boy’s own good. He is weak, he is stupid, but he is family, nonetheless, with all that that entails.

  It is time that he learned that hiding from medicine doesn’t make it any less strong.

  There is a way things must go. Marked Face knows the task in front of him. His time is coming to an end, after all. This is the thing he must do. The Above Ones have spoken and he fears their judgment. Marked Face fears his own failure, as all men should. To fear a thing is to respect it.

  “Nephew, let us have a game,” he says, in the language of the People. He understands the white tongue well enough, but does not dirty his mouth with it, whenever possible. Marked Face knows that his nephew thinks him just a foolish old man, weak with age, but he will learn. He is old, true, but far from weak. Marked Face is not his name because of the scar; no, these are the old words for Badger, a powerful, dangerous animal, possessed of a fury, who makes his own way in the world, on his own terms. Badger is built low and heavy, strong in the legs and shoulders, as he is.

  But more powerful than Marked Face’s body is his medicine, the power songs that he’d learned, at great price, long ago. It is the thing that makes him who he is.

  “Let us have a game,” he repeats.

  “A game?” Sagiistoo answers in the lying white tongue. “Old man, you need to get the fuck out of here. Go!”

  It’s tempting to put this disrespectful, stupid pup in his place right now, with something harder than the long medicine. Maybe just stand up, push a knife in the boy’s belly, like in the old days, taste in his nose the hot reeking rush of shit-sharp blood, feel the heat as it washes over his hands, hear a last, womanly whimper in his ears. He feels his power building up inside him, seeking escape. The anger that sends him to black places. He remembers other times, before the whites had finally finished breaking the People; he remembers other men who crossed him, to their sorrow. He is Marked Face, and this cur of a nephew, this hollow man with his white, piss-streaked name, is giving him orders? The boy will learn. Perhaps he had been too lenient in the past, thinking that his weak brother, Bad Bird, would somehow impart strength into his even weaker offspring. That is a foolish thought: since the old times, each generation of the People has been born softer than the one before. It is no surprise that, after the whites were created from Nihaat’s trick, even those empty people had overpowered the People.

  He relaxes his clenched fists, calms himself. Things must be as they must be. The Above Ones have shown him the path and he will obey.

  “We will have a game, Sagiistoo,” he says. “We will have a game or, when I leave this place, I will tell those whites where to find you.” He doesn’t particularly care whether his nephew or the old white man are found, but he knows, as he knows many things, that other evil men seek them out. If this is the goad that is required, to teach his shit-soft nephew the way of things, then so be it. In his many years, Marked Face has learned that to come at a thing sideways to achieve an outcome is often the better way. He glances at the white man. It is only the fool who rushes headlong into things.

  Marked Face sees the fear and disgust alight in his nephew’s eyes, like corpse-flies on a body. “You wouldn’t do this thing, Uncle. Not even you.” Sagiistoo lapses back into his first tongue, now, which makes Marked Face smile. The tongue of the People is the tongue of power, of anger, wh
en such is needed. The tongue of true things. The white language is hollow, like those people themselves. It isn’t suited to real things, only to shadows and lies. This is why the word of those people is as worthless as a mouse fart in a strong wind.

  He shrugs. “Why would I care what happens to your pet, Nephew? He means nothing to me. Nor do you.”

  “You talk from your ass, Uncle. We are family, like it or not.”

  “Why would I give thought to you, boy? Because you give me tobacco, sometimes? Pretend to listen when I speak? Your mouth and your ears are full of shit. Besides, I think maybe your mother fucked some other weakling, maybe one of the camp dogs, and not my brother Bad Bird, to get you. I fucked her enough times myself – everyone did – but you’re certainly not one of mine.” He spits. “Now we’ll have our game.”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Uncle. Go tell the whites, then, coward, if that’s what you want to do. If I see you again, though, I’ll kill you myself.”

  Marked Face is unable to hold back a peal of laughter. The puppy is finally showing some teeth. It’s far too late, though; one kick will send him whimpering off quickly enough. The boy is not yet strong enough, whatever he might think. Swallowing his distaste at making the liar’s tongue, although of course that language is just the thing needed now, he addresses the old man.

  “Old man. We will make a game, me and you. My nephew Sagiistoo is afraid to play, because he is a coward.” He glances towards his nephew, then back. “So you will play with me. We are old men, too old to be afraid of games. Where is the harm in a game?” He opens his hand to show the white man the flat bones, notched and marked by long-ago people. They are very old, and Marked Face has had them a long time.

  Sagiistoo strides over to the door, opens it. “Get out, Uncle!”