The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  “Vlad. Hello, son. Just looking for something is all.”

  “Rob knows you are here?”

  “Goddamn it, Vlad, don’t worry about what Rob knows or don’t know, OK? Now come on, brother, I need to get past you.” He tries to edge around the big Russian but Vlad moves back in front of him.

  “Maybe I think you should be back at your level. 1200 is my crew today.”

  Goddamn all fucking Russian bastards and their bastard Russian fucking crews, Sol shouts quiet inside his head, but instead says, “Just looking for something, Vlad. Just give me a minute and I’ll be out of your hair, hey?”

  “You tell me what is you want and I find it for you.”

  Sol eyes a prybar that’s leaning against the drift wall a few feet away. In another minute he’s going to pick it up and crack it across this stupid asshole’s thick Russian skull, is what he’s going to do, ring his chimes and then be about his business.

  “Not sure what it is just yet, Vlad, OK?” Sol raises a placating hand, edging a bit closer to the prybar.

  “You look for something but what you don’t know.” Vlad frowns theatrically, shaking his head.

  “About the size of it.” A step closer.

  “Best you look for it then at your level, Sol, khorosho?” The big man reaches a hand out to take Sol’s shoulder, none too gently but, when Sol takes a step away, he sees it, a thick wodge of candle, still burning, resting up against a timber that’s beginning to char at the bottom.

  “You motherfucker!”

  He pushes past Vlad, who’s caught by surprise; Sol takes three quick steps forward and brings his muck-caked boot down on the candle, squashing it into the rock and mud, twisting his heel and then scraping down along the timber until he’s sure that any spark is out, cursing more or less incoherently all the while.

  “The hell are you doing, Sol?” Vlad steps close, his face darkening.

  “You stupid Russian motherfucker,” Sol says. “Stupid big square-headed dipshit. Stupid.” He points to the timber and the smashed candle. “You’ll burn this whole fucking mine down around us, you dumb asshole. Do your fucking job, hey? Pick your fucking shit up.”

  “Is one candle. Half candle.” Vlad kicks up a pat of wet, gluey mud, hitting Sol in the shins with it. “Is wet everywhere, old man. Nothing burns.”

  Before he can stop himself, Sol steps forward, slamming his palms into Vlad’s wide chest, knocking the big man into the drift wall. Even though the Russian has most of a foot and seventy-plus pounds on him, not to mention being thirty-odd years younger, all the pent-up fear and teeth-grinding emotion from what’s happened has Sol ready to tear the bastard apart, or at least give it a good shot. Mercifully, Owen takes the opportunity to step in front of him, which gives Sol a brief splash of sanity, making him back down a shade. He contents himself with pointing over the boy’s shoulder, yelling.

  “Do your fucking job, Vlad. You’ll get us all killed.”

  “You don’t tell me how to do my job, old man.”

  Vlad is pressing forward against Owen’s outstretched hands. Owen looks a bit like he does when he’s pushing the ore cart, although he never has to worry that the ore cart is steaming furious and going to beat the shit out of him. “Hey hey hey, fellas, come on now,” he says, tries to calm things down. Even though standing between these two must be the last place he wants to be and is probably going to get him killed. Sol knows he isn’t being fair to the boy but his thoughts are still jumping hot and crazy in his head.

  “You stupid Russian fuck,” he says. “You stupid fuck.”

  “Fuck you, old man. You say that again, you say that to me.”

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Rob Quinn is standing in the drift, hands on his hips, looking every shade of annoyed. Vlad and Sol turn to look at him, Vlad fuming, Sol guilty because he knows he’s acting like an asshole, right then, even if he can’t help it. But there are goddamn circumstances, right, circumstances.

  “Sol, what the hell are you doing up here?”

  “Old man is looking for something he don’t know, Rob.” Vlad spits a mucousy glob on the ground between Sol’s feet.

  Quinn points a thick finger. “Goddamn it, Vlad, didn’t ask you, I asked Sol. And what the fuck are you doing standing here? If you’re done playing fuckin grabass maybe you can go do some work, huh? That’s what you’re paid to do, dipshit, not to stand here running your fuckin mouth. Now get the fuck out of here.” He points down the tunnel and Vlad slumps off, shouldering Sol out of the way, muttering to himself.

  “Thanks, Rob,” Sol says. Sheepish.

  “Fuck you. And Jesus, Sol, save that fuckin stuff for after shift. You know that. The fuck are you doing here, anyway? Why aren’t you down with your crew?”

  Sol doesn’t really know what to say, so he mumbles something about hearing that someone needed some help with something, vague bullshit that trails off into something approaching incoherence. Quinn is looking at him with an expression somewhere between annoyance and just plain disgust by the time Sol finishes.

  “Jesus Christ, Sol, get the fuck down to your crew.” He nods at Owen, standing there mostly ignored now. “Hope you don’t take after your old man here, kiddo. We’re here to fuckin work, right? Jesus, you two.” He walks off, shaking his head.

  “Hey Rob,” Sol calls after him. He thinks he’s done what he needs to do, but there’s some worry still, a nagging feeling scratching at the inside of his skull. It’s not like he has an instruction manual for any of this. Quinn turns, face still sour. “Just keep an eye out today, OK?” Sol says. “Got a funny feeling, is all.”

  “You got a funny feeling.”

  Sol shrugs. He knows he sounds stupid, but needs to say it anyway. “Yeah, I got a funny feeling. Woman’s intuition or something. Just look out for the boys, OK?”

  “Fuck, Sol, don’t tell me to do my fuckin job, because, of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s fuckin doing it right now. Now take your boy and your fuckin woman’s intuition down to Thirteen and do your fuckin job. Jesus.” He turns and strides off down the drift. “Get the fuck out of here, Sol!” he calls over a shoulder.

  Sol and Owen walk back down the tunnel. Sol feels hollowed out inside, shaky on his legs now. He’s trying not to think. From time to time he glances over to Owen, who’s walking next to him and, then, from one step to another, he knows that his words to Quinn are unnecessary. There is no fire, there will be no fire. If he’s done one good thing in this life of legion and numberless mistakes, bad choices, here it is. He just feels it, feels it in his belly, warm and hot like a shot of whiskey. How he managed it, how he stopped the fire from a year on, back now from a bet, he doesn’t know and isn’t nearly ready to study on it, not for a long goddamn while, really, but there it is.

  Torsten is still sitting in the cage, reading his magazine. He doesn’t look up as Sol and Owen get into the lift. Must still be in something of a snit, because, when he rings them down, the car drops sharp and hard and then heels up fast. It bangs Sol, unprepared, into the side of the car, where he cracks into a shovel that’s propped, against all regulations for sure, in the corner. The handle of the shovel knocks painfully into his shin and he curses the brokedown fucking Swede as the lift descends again, more slowly this time.

  “Don’t blame me, Sol,” the old man mutters. “I’m not the one who runs the machine, I just send the ring, yeah.”

  Yeah, you already sent up the drop-hard signal, you old fucker, Sol thinks. Notice you didn’t get all crashed around, braced as you were. It’s fine, though: Torsten will get over himself and Sol had been an asshole earlier, after all. He’ll buy the old Swede a drink after shift and that will be that. Sol leans down, rubbing the rising knot on his shin, grimacing at Owen, who’d made something of an unmanly squeak when the lift dropped. You’ll get used to it, boy.

  Back down on 1300, the cage comes to a halt. Motioning Owen out in front of him, Sol gives Torsten a friendly slap on the shoulder as he exits the lift.
“First round’s on me later, hey, old man,” he says. Torsten nods and smiles and that’s that.

  Further up the shaft, the spark, kicked up from the shovel Sol banged into a moment ago, is burning into a thick smear of the grease that coats the lift cables.

  It drops down onto a dry patch of timber.

  ***

  The old sorcerer kneels in the dark, fanning the spark until it becomes a flame. As it did before, as it ever will.

  Soon now.

  We are sharpened, like a blade, each time.

  Soon.

  We are sharpened, or we are broken.

  2.

  “We need to find him!” Sol, soot-faced, wild-eyed and filthy, strains at Nancy’s arms wrapped around his chest. “We need to find him, now, now!” The blood streaming down from the deep cut on his head runs into his eyes; he blinks, tries to shake it free but it’s pouring too fast and he can’t see. “Goddamn it, let me loose!”

  “Sol!” The boys are hollering, trying to get him under control by main force. Their own faces are streaked with ash and sweat and grime and maybe the runnels of tears, they’re panting and coughing and shivery at what they’ve been through, what they’re just now beginning to process. It’d taken them long, terrifying, lung-stretched minutes in the smoke and the dark and the wet heat, staggering along in a ragged group. Nancy carrying the unconscious, bleeding Sol after they’d dug themselves out of the last drift, the one that had caved in on them just a few feet from where they’d needed to get to. Mercifully close enough that they could pull themselves out, yelling and choking through the dust, bruised and cut and skinned up. Billy leading them out from the Penn to the Tramway, those long minutes a quarter mile deep underground before finally, finally, up and out, pissing their pants from fear until they could all get out of the burning mine, pulled up in a ragged, sweaty, huddled group. All of them but one.

  Owen, left half-buried in the cave-in, the heavy, collapsed timber that had killed him at least pulled from atop his skull. No time for anything else. No time for sentiment.

  And now that Sol is awake again, he’s going crazy.

  He pulls forward, winging his elbows back, trying to connect with Nancy’s jaw, skull, teeth, whatever it takes to get the big dumb fucker to let him loose. He just needs one quick second for the bastard’s arms to relax from around behind him, and he’ll be loose and he needs to go now, now, while there’s still a chance. Sol has already seen it before, he remembers, he knows what will happen, what is happening. Another set of arms wrap around his chest from the front, pinioning his own and stabbing him tight, back to belly, against Nancy. He snaps his forehead forward, feeling the satisfying impact as Michael’s nose crumples to the side; he drives ahead again, trying to cut loose.

  “Goddamn it, let me go, you fuckers! There’s still time!”

  Michael reels a step back, hands held to his face, cursing a mumble through his fingers and trying to stop the sudden gush of blood down his chin, but Nancy heels backward, lifting Sol from the ground so his legs lose their push forward, like that old Greek boy that Hercules wrestled, a story he was told once. Hercules lifted that boy off the ground and he was fucked, whatever his name was, like Sol is now, he realizes, and goddamn you big faggot let me loose I have to go! He flails around, kicking backward with his heels, twisting side to side like a half-landed trout, until he feels more arms, long and lanky and tough as old leather – that would be Flynn – pinning him tighter against Big Nancy, the voice growling in his ear that he needs to stop, that it’s too late, too late, it’s done.

  “It’s not fucking too late you fucking fucks!” Sol screams it, knowing they won’t understand, pushing his head around Flynn until he can catch Billy’s eye. Billy is standing there like a statue while the other miners at the collar of the Tramway push past and by, shouting their own nonsense, running through the smoke that’s settled on the hill. A hive of activity all around, men hollering for the Draegers, water, shovels; some are cursing the Company, some yelling for friends they know were down the Penn, trying to find them. All of them rushing towards the black plume of smoke boiling out from under the Pennsylvania’s headframe. Even with the fire, the air feels too cold, too sharp; there’s a dry smell of new snow even around the stink of burning mine timber and the sulfurous fog from the arsenic-rich smelter pits, that heavy, healthful air that smothers down around town and is killing them, day by day, like the dust in their lungs.

  For a second everything seems to slow, go quiet and hard, and Sol can see each individual small, pebbly white flake of snow drift down amidst the lazy black flecks of ash from the burning mine. He’s failed, once again, and the Penn is aflame. Somewhere, lost down there, his boy is burning.

  Sol doesn’t open his mouth this time, merely stares at Billy, knowing that he, of all the men in this town, barring one, understands. Billy’s mouth is slightly open and he’s panting, a slick of drool shining on his lower lip, which he wipes with the back of his sleeve, smearing more soot across his face. His eyes are bright white holes above the dark of his filthy cheeks. Sol holds him with his own eyes, willing him to listen.

  Billy, he says, silently, we need to find him.

  It’s not too late.

  3.

  Marked Face scrubs a thumb across the corner of his mouth, wiping away a yellow streak of undercooked egg. They’re in the same diner they were at a day ago, a year from now, whenever, hungover and bleary, but that time they were eating their eggs while the old Indian watched. The situation is reversed now; Marked Face ignores them, stolidly working his way through his eggs and hash, pauses from time to time to loudly slurp from his mug of tea.

  “Bad business, hey,” is all he said when they sat down. “Dangerous, those mines of yours.” He doesn’t even flinch when Sol tries to jump across the table at him, hands racked into claws as if he’s going to tear the old man’s eyes out. It’s all Billy can do to hold Sol back, to calm him down and quiet his shouting before they get kicked out of the place. Already the other customers seem less than pleased that a dirty old Indian from up the rez is sullying the establishment with his presence, but the stack of gold coins ostentatiously piled in front of his plate makes the owner and waitress more amenable to his patronage. Now, two sooty miners are trying to start a fracas. Everyone in the place has heard of the Penn fire by now, though; it’s all that anyone is talking about and, just now, they’re inclined to be a bit more forgiving to brother workers. But still, it’s unseemly and the diner’s owner is weighing propriety against that stack of gold.

  “C’mon now, you two,” he says, finally. “Take that shit outside.”

  Marked Face doesn’t bother to look up, just quietly belches out of the side of his mouth, following up with another sip of tea. Billy makes placating gestures toward the proprietor with his free hand, the other clenched around Sol’s biceps, holding him. He can feel the muscle shake and contract with the heave of Sol’s chest, the air raked in in angry gasps. Sol’s entire body is tight and jittery, his nostrils wide and white-ringed, pupils huge and black in his eyes.

  “Send me back, you fucker,” Sol finally whispers.

  Marked Face pushes a last bite of egg onto his fork with the side of his finger. He raises it to his lips and then chews it slowly, methodically, before reaching into his mouth and removing a small fragment of shell, which he places back on the plate with a deliberate motion.

  “I won the bet, chief.”

  Marked Face belches again, wiping his lips with the back of his sleeve. His eyes roam the room, aimlessly.

  “I won the bet, fucker!”

  At Sol’s shout, the proprietor of the diner looks up again, frowning, but Marked Face shows no response, merely scratches idly at the back of his wrist, still looking around the café. Billy tightens his grip on Sol’s arm and makes shushing noises.

  “Uncle,” he says.

  At this, Marked Face’s eyes swing around to rest on Billy’s own. Billy feels the press of the old man’s gaze like a physical
thing; he feels the familiar pinch in his guts, like he did when he was a boy and knew that the fists would come out. Now, though, the fear is sharper, because he knows that Marked Face is not merely just a scary old man, a bastard with hard hands who never shied from using them: he’s something more. It doesn’t sit right with Billy’s own government-scrubbed mind. There’s no such thing as magic, or medicine, or whatever you wanted to call it, unless it’s money or guns or disease. That’s the real medicine. And yet he knows what he’s seen, what he’s been through. His belly is tangled up inside him and he wants to shit himself at the expression in his uncle’s eyes.

  “Why, little Sagiistoo,” Marked Face says in the true tongue, blank-faced. His eyes, stony and shining black.

  Sol starts to speak but Billy cuts him off. “Sol’s right, Uncle. You said you’d give him what he desired. I remember it, Uncle. I remember. I don’t know just what the hell you even are but–”

  “What I am? What I am, Nephew?” Marked Face’s eyes go even harder, above a slow smile. “I am a man of the People. I am Marked Face, who has killed a hundred hundred men with his own hands. Marked Face, who learned the secrets. I am a man who deserves respect, Nephew.” He pauses, the smile withering. “Who are you?”

  Billy can’t help himself: he hides his own eyes, stares at the smear of yellow on his uncle’s plate. Marked Face has grown larger with his words, and Billy can feel himself shrinking down. What kind of man is Bad Bird, to stand up to him for so many years? The two of them, always like stiff-legged dogs fighting over a rabbit carcass. Who are these men that Billy thought were his family? There’s something almost palpable boiling out of his uncle, crashing in waves against him. For the first time in many, many years, Billy feels not the slightest bit white, as if his uncle’s presence has burned out what the government crammed down into him. Just now, he doesn’t know what’s left.