The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  “I am no one, Uncle,” he whispers, meaning it.

  Marked Face laughs, seeing that the lesson is finally gnawing at little Sagiistoo’s liver. “Yes, you are no one, Nephew. You see that now, hey?” He leans back in his chair, pulling his medicine back inside himself. No need for the whites to feel it, even if they don’t understand the power that touches them. It just makes them uneasy, these hollow men who don’t even exist as real things. But, for a moment, it feels good, letting himself become more like the way he was in times past, sitting straight and powerful again.

  There is always a price that comes with using medicine though, and, for too long Marked Face has squatted up there on the reservation, biding his time, watching one day pass as another, empty and long. Waiting, left alone with his thoughts, his memories. Yet again he wishes that his brother would let himself out of that hospital. His brother, weak though he is, is the only one who truly understands him. It’s only when they are together that life feels like it has much weight, great and terrible and full of sorrow that it is. At least it is something more than the numb, mocking days that step by now. He’s lived too long, and yet he remains. But this is the way of things. There is no use dwelling on what merely is. The Above Ones have ordered this and who is he to quibble, he is only their tool. Their plaything, perhaps, like any other man. Marked Face knows that he must be strong, for himself, for his brother, for the boy. For all of them, he must be hard.

  There is always a price with medicine.

  “Old man,” he says in the true tongue, knowing that his nephew will translate. He doesn’t want the taste of the white words in his mouth, just then. “When last we diced, I told you that, if you won, I would give you the thing you desired in this world. This I have done.”

  “No, you fucking didn’t!” Sol says, after Billy finishes. “All I wanted was my boy back. That’s all I wanted.”

  Marked Face shakes his head. How to explain to the white that he, Marked Face, understands more of what the man wants than the man does himself? It is written there inside him, but this Solomon Parker cannot see it. The old white doesn’t want this thing or that thing. What he wants is something far simpler: the chance to succeed. To change his world. You are a failure, white man, Marked Face wants to say, or so you think yourself. He’s not sure which is more pathetic. These whites, empty as they are, are never satisfied, always hungry, and so fragile when they don’t get what they want. Solomon Parker, if you had seen and done and felt some of the things that I have, he thinks, you would crumble into dust. You are spoiled, like the rest of your race, like Sagiistoo has become. Oh poor me, I have failed again. If only you people understood that you cannot fight the whims of the Above Ones.

  Marked Face has played by the rules of the game, has delivered the thing he’d promised upon losing although, truly, it does not matter. The outcome will be the same. For whatever reason, Sagiistoo has been bound to this white man, their lives twisted together, their stories twined, so one must suffer for the other to grow. It is a strange thing. He sighs, shakes his head. He looks toward his stupid, empty nephew and can’t help but feel a sadness. It is not quite time, not yet. Wait, Sagiistoo, it is coming. Wait.

  “Very well, white man,” he says, now. “We will play again. Once more. If you win, I will grant you that favor, the thing it is that you desire.”

  Sol nods.

  Billy doesn’t say anything, this time, knowing that this is a terrible idea, one that will come to grief one way or another. He doesn’t understand why his uncle is doing this, or how, but Sol doesn’t seem to realize that there is always someone stronger than you are. Someone you can’t fight. Someone who will always win. Sol just doesn’t understand, and Billy knows that there is no way he will be turned aside, not now. All Billy wants is to get as far away from his uncle as possible, as far away from Sol. He gets up.

  “Sagiistoo,” Marked Face says, his eyes on the table in front of him. “There are some things you can’t run from, Nephew. Not in this world or any other.” He glances up and, for the first time Billy can remember, in all the years he’s known him, his uncle looks sad. “Remember that. Some things will always find you.”

  Without a word, Billy walks out of the diner. He ignores Sol’s shout after him, tries not to think about the look in his uncle’s eyes when he stood, the one that reaches down inside him even now, wrapping around his guts. All he wants is to be away, to find a drink. He feels raw and brittle inside, empty, but that space is rapidly filling with fear.

  On the sill of a high window, a glossy black bird sits, watching.

  Sol watches Billy leave the diner, not bothering to call after him again. It doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is right here, right now. He stops a man passing their table and bums a smoke off of him. The man, seeing the soot and dirt on Sol’s hands and face, gives him a sympathetic look and pats him on the shoulder.

  “Just take the whole pack, pal,” he says. “Things will be all right.”

  Goddamn right, things will be all right, Sol thinks, shaking out a cigarette and placing it on the table between him and Billy’s uncle, who is watching him with no expression on his face. The old Indian shakes his head.

  “What? Same bet as last time, yeah?” Sol rolls the cigarette closer to the old man with the tip of his finger. “Same bet. Let’s get on with it, you piece of shit.”

  “No. A different bet, this time.” Marked Face says. The bones are in his hand now and he rattles them over the table. “We raise the stakes. If I win, there is something you will do for me.”

  “What?”

  “If I win, you will do me a favor.”

  Sol pushes down the unease he feels, and nods. Whatever it takes. This time it will be different.

  A smile comes to Marked Face’s lips, the black pits of his eyes shining.

  “My throw, first.”

  TROUBLE AND BAD CHOICES

  – 1900 –

  Stevensville, Montana

  1.

  Burn it all.

  Elizabeth tugs another stiff-dried sheet down off the line and raises her arms, cracking the sheet down once, twice, trying to get the dust and pine pollen off of it. She holds it to her nose, breathing in against its scratchy, crinkled surface. It smells like vinegar and carbolic and the smoke from the fires in Idaho that are blowing east, which have been making the air hazy and hard to breathe for the better part of a month now. The laundry never smells clean any more: it either has the oniony, sour, organic reek of sweaty bodies and baby crap, before she washes it – a process that takes hours and hours of steamy, wet, scraped-knuckled and bent-backed labor – or there’s this smoky, medicine smell when it’s supposedly clean. This sheet in her hands is clean, but it stinks, stinks, and she’s still going to have to heat up the iron and press it and all the rest of the linens, make the scratchy surfaces smoother, easier on the skin so it doesn’t rub and chafe. Yet more hours spent hunched over, overheated and sweaty.

  Just burn it.

  The black bird, the fire-crazed one that seems to follow her lately, squawks from where it’s perched in a pine, watching her work. It squawks as if agreeing with her.

  It’s always so hot now. Elizabeth can’t remember the last time she felt cool, rested, dry. Every day passes in sweating labor at one thing or another: laundry, cleaning the house, changing diapers, cooking. Every night she’s up, again and again, to feed the baby, change his diapers – again – always just barely dropping back to sleep when the cries erupt once more. It’s overwhelming. Sometimes, when Sol is off tending the tavern, she’ll push a pillow into her mouth and scream, over and over, just scream, muffling it as best she can – but always the baby will pick up on her distress and join in so that she has to leave off and soothe him. No one ever soothes her, never. Sol does his best to help, in his bumbling, man’s way, but it’s a waste of time. A waste. Even when he pitches in, helps with the cleaning or cooking or any of the thousand little things that need to be done every day, it’s more tiring
than helpful. When he washes dishes, they’re never quite clean and she needs to redo them; when he cooks, the potatoes get burnt and the meat dries out to the point that it’s just better if she does it herself. Easier. He’ll shrug and smile apologetically, but it still means that she has to do everything. She’s raising two children, really: Owen and Sol. Sol’s heart is in the right place but that doesn’t make it any better. It should, but it doesn’t.

  Elizabeth rubs the back of her wrist across her forehead, smearing the sweat and dirt and the fine dust of ash that’s always floating in the air lately. Her laundry basket is empty; looking down the line she sees sheet after sheet and a thousand miles of diapers, dresses, Sol’s shirts and pants, all the million woven things that are part of their lives. Hours of folding, pressing, ahead of her again, the same chore that she does over and over and will keep having to do, day after day, in this merciless heat and smoky air. She can feel another scream building up inside her but clamps it back behind her teeth.

  Burn it all, she thinks again, sniffing the air. Take all this damn laundry, all the sheets and diapers and shirts, pile it in a heap on the ground, and set it afire. Maybe take Owen and Sol and hike up into the Bitterroots, high up to some mountain spot, somewhere cool beside a lake, where it won’t matter if there’s smoke in the air because of the trees and the cold mountain water and the shade and all that they don’t have here, down in the valley where the sun beats down mercilessly and the air settles thick and smoky with either no breeze at all or a sharp-edged wind that just kicks up more dust. If she looks west, she can see the mountains looming there, piney and sharp and cool, mocking her. She’ll burn this laundry in a pile and then burn their little house along with it; they’ll all turn their backs on this sweaty, dead-aired, smoky existence of chores and heat and wet rashes on the skin and go up into the mountains where it’s cool and she can think straight, where she can relax for once. Where laundry doesn’t make her want to scream and the wailing of little Owen doesn’t send her into a desperate, hopeless crying jag. She and Owen and Sol will just burn it all and leave together, or maybe she’ll just go by herself.

  It’s just the heat, she tells herself, again. Just the heat and the sweat and this air that’s hard to breathe. At times like these, when the weight of her life seems to be pressing her down into the earth, cracking her apart, when everything about her feels broken and sick and crazy, she needs to remember, remember, that it’s just the heat and the lack of sleep and the inconveniences that come with having a small child and a bumbling husband who doesn’t make much money but who has a good heart and is trying to be a good provider, doing what he can to make their life better – she knows that – and these crazy, frantic thoughts she gets shouldn’t be coming and they shouldn’t mean anything when they do.

  If only she had some help, though. There was that woman that Sol hired for a bit, but it hadn’t worked out. She was an old harpy, that woman, always at Elizabeth for one thing or another, always judging her and tutting her thin lips. Oh not like that, dear or surely you’re not going to leave it that way. All the time. Sol says he’ll try to find someone else to pitch in, but she knows that word of how it had gone with the first one has gotten into town – crazy Elizabeth Parker – and they’ll be lucky to find anyone else. She’s stopped going to town, as much as possible; she knows the way they look at her. Sol brings home the groceries and the things they need from the store. She’s not feeling well, he’ll say, picking up the bag of sundries, be right as rain in no time, though. He’s given up trying to convince her to come to town, even to go to service on Sunday. Be right as rain in no time.

  It hasn’t escaped her that he’s spending more and more time at the tavern. Working, he says, trying to get us ahead, but he still comes home later and later, stinking of booze more often than not, a greasy look on his face and a rumpled, sweaty bag of groceries under his arm. It’s fine, though, she prefers it that way; there’s a time in the early evening, after Owen has been put down and the air is finally starting to cool off some, when she can sit on the couch and relax, feel almost normal for a while. She’ll lay back, hands laced over her belly, listening to the silence of the house, the chitter of the finches and nuthatches outside. Just sit there, not thinking. More often than not, though, when Sol comes banging in the door, Owen will wake and begin screaming and the spell is broken, the peace and normalcy cracking around her like rotten ice.

  From the house, she can hear Owen wailing now, thin desperate shrieks climbing out of the open window. He’s a fussy, colicky baby, red-faced and angry more often than not. Even when he nurses, his face knuckles into an expression of indignant fury. It’s irrational, she knows it, but she has the feeling that he hates her. Maybe because she’s brought him into this hot, smoky, exhausting world from wherever comfortable place babies’ souls live in Heaven. Sometimes he doesn’t even look real, look human, as if that hatred that burns inside him molds his form into something unnatural. He’ll be there in her arms, just a baby clawing at her breast, and then he’ll become something dark and sharp, hard like a cicada, pinching and biting at her skin. More than once she’s had to peel him off her, ignoring his furious screams, and leave the room, go outside, get away from him, heart pounding, sick in the belly.

  She knows she’s going crazy.

  Elizabeth knows it, that she’s not going to be right as rain, maybe not ever. She shouldn’t have these thoughts, should just be able to be a normal wife and mother and woman and yet she can’t, not always, no matter how she tries. After the incident with the woman Sol hired, he wanted her to go see his brother up at Warm Springs, maybe see about some help, but she refused. Now she wishes that maybe she’d gone. She hasn’t told anyone about the things that she’s seen that weren’t there. Like dreaming while awake, remembering what never happened. She knows they weren’t real, those things, she knows it, but there’s a doubling that happens sometimes, when she can’t tell where she is. When she is, maybe. What’s real and what isn’t. Just for a moment or two, but the spells, that’s what they are, just spells, are coming more frequently. I’ll be fine when it cools off, she thinks, it’s just this heat all the time and with the baby so small still and all of that. When it cools off I’ll be able to think more clearly and Owen will sleep more and the colic will stop.

  She rubs her face into the scratchy sheet that’s still in her hands, not caring that she’s soiling it with the sweat and ash caked to her forehead. It doesn’t matter: it’s not clean anyway, nothing’s ever clean any more. She’s not clean, outside or in; there’s something foul crouched inside her, leaking out the hotter and sicker she feels. She was so healthy once and now she isn’t. Maybe that’s why Owen hates her, because he can sense it in some baby way. Maybe she’s poisoning him, he’s sucking the foulness with her breast milk and it’s infecting him too.

  Owen continues to wail from the house. Elizabeth throws the sweaty sheet into her basket, tries to catch her breath. Her heart is thumping in her chest and for a moment she feels like she might faint; for a wild second she wants to just run, hike her skirts up around her hips and just run, run, run, not stopping until her heart bursts or she’s so far away she can’t find her way back. Instead, she packs it all down inside, once again, biting the scream back behind her teeth. She’ll be right as rain in no time. Right as rain.

  The bird squawks again and, when she turns, Sol is standing there, watching her.

  2.

  “What are you doing home?” Elizabeth asks him. Her face is flushed red and she’s sweating, there’s a smear of dirt on one of her cheeks and what looks to be an incipient pimple growing to the side of a nostril; wild tendrils of damp hair have escaped from the bun at the back of her neck and are sticking out to all sides. She looks beautiful.

  What is he doing home? That’s a longer story, for a certainty. One that Sol can’t begin to explain, not yet anyway, if ever. He doesn’t even have to look around to know where he is, when he is; Elizabeth still has that bit of pregnancy fat ar
ound her hips and chest and face, which rounds her natural boniness out in a way that makes his heart catch at the sight of her. He tries to freeze this moment in his mind, hold it tight so that he’ll always remember it, no matter what happens next.

  “Wanted to see you, is all,” he says, finally.

  Sol remembers everything that has brought him here, dropped down into this younger body that feels wrong, a body he can’t quite recall ever having, even though he had, these years ago. He hears the rattle of dice that became a booming sound again, the singing, sees the hands holding his own and then the long fall into the black pits of eyes. He remembers it all, except whether he’d won or lost that last bet with old Marked Face.

  Inside, later, Sol holds Owen, tries to still the boy’s wailing. He was never particularly good at this; his hands always feel too big and rough and clumsy and he’s terrified that he’ll squeeze too hard or drop the boy. He sways a bit, humming something tuneless in his mouth, which only makes Owen cry harder, perhaps at the affront of it all. Elizabeth is banging around in the kitchen, putting some lunch together. She doesn’t seem very happy to see him; his being here has maybe put her off whatever her normal routine is, the days that he was – is – down tending the little tavern in Stevi. Tending to his own belly, too, he remembers, pouring at least as many beers and shots down his neck as he did for the customers. No wonder he was never able to make a go of the place, even before what had happened happened.