The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  As soon as the words leave his lips he knows he’s made a mistake. Sean will tolerate some joshing around in private – just a bit, mind – but making him look a fool in front of the boys, in front of an outsider, worse, isn’t to be countenanced. Sean Harrity isn’t a big man, or a particularly hard-looking one. He’s average height, average build, average everything, really. Maybe that’s part of his success: he seems less than he is, so people underestimate him. Sol knows from experience that whatever is inside of Sean, though, is as cold and mean as a riled snake, when it comes out. There is nothing that Sean Harrity will shrink from, nothing, no matter how distasteful, if he feels it is in his own interests. Sean doesn’t move now, doesn’t even blink, but Sol still feels a wash of fear in his guts, his pucker knotting up.

  He forces out a half-witted laugh. “Kidding, is all, Sean. Lies spread by the English, right? That sheep thing. Dumb joke. Shouldn’t have said it. So there’s my apology, then.”

  Sean just stares at him, for a long, long moment, holding him with his eyes until Sol’s ass begins to sweat in sympathy with the sick in his belly.

  “Shouldn’t have said it,” Sol repeats.

  “This boy here, this poof, he’s Irish, too.” Sean finally says.

  “That right?”

  “Shame that a son of Saint Pat would stoop to such behavior. You hear me, lad,” he says, raising his voice, pointing at Nancy. “Fuckin shameful.”

  “Ah, Sean.” Sol trails off, not having anything more to say. His guts are just beginning to unwind and he needs to quit while he’s ahead. Why the hell is he even here? Just to hear Sean up on his pulpit, castigating the poor kid? Sol knows for a fact, from one of the working girls, that Sean himself is partial to having a dick-toy stuck up his ass, so it seems more than a little hypocritical to berate Nancy for maybe enjoying the real thing.

  “Yeah, but look at him, though, Sol, hey? What do you see?”

  Ah. Now he gets it. Again, the irony of it all is a bit much. “I see a big kid, Sean. Real big.”

  “Yeah, Sol. Big fuckin nancy-boy, though, ain’t he. But maybe we can come to an accommodation, Mr Big Nancy. I don’t know, though, sullying my establishment with your shameful fuckin behavior. Word from me, you’ll never find work in this town and I don’t care how big you are. I know people, hey Sol?”

  Sol grits his teeth. “That’s right.”

  “So, a big faggot – literally – like you, what’s to be done?” There’s a long pause, as if he’s mulling it over, but obviously Sean has seen the opportunity from a long ways off. Funny, again, how it all keeps coming back to these same old things. Eventually, Sean nods, winking over at Sol and then looking back Nancy’s way.

  “Tell me, lad,” he says, “big fella like you: you ever done any fighting?”

  5.

  “Come on now, we’re not fighting, right? Come on, Mrs Parker, it’s me. It’s your friend, Billy. I’m just trying to help you. So let’s put that down, OK?”

  Jesus, how does she keep finding the things? This is supposed to be a hospital for dangerous, crazy people, some of whom are sure to hurt themselves or someone else and yet, again and again, Elizabeth Parker somehow winds up with something sharp in her hands. Granted, it’s just a little paring blade this time, but it doesn’t matter: knives cut, and Billy’s damn sure not interested in having that blade stuck in him, anywhere. Little lady like Mrs Parker got to looking a lot bigger with something sharp in her hands. The goddamn lazy kitchen staff, leaving shit like this around, maybe one of the other orderlies but, whoever it was, it’s not right, at all, that this poor girl is standing there on the other side of her bed, keeping it between them, crying and shouting Lord knows what as she holds the little knife to her neck.

  “Get away! I deserve this. I deserve it so get away!” Elizabeth is weeping, her words caught and bouncing between sobs until they’re mostly incomprehensible. Yet again, she’s found the way to her salvation, a release from it all in these three inches of sharp, pointed metal but, again, she won’t go through with it. “Get away!”

  One quick jump, Billy thinks, a jump right across the bedframe and a pop on the jaw would give him time enough to get the knife away before she cuts herself. Or him. One fast punch, didn’t even have to be that hard, just enough to stagger her for a second, and then we’re fine. But shit, he doesn’t want to hurt her. The thought of punching a woman, one old enough to be his mother – not to mention everything else about her, Sol and the rest – the thought of just up and smacking her doesn’t sit right, even if it’s for her own good.

  “Get away! You stop!”

  She’s not yelling at him, now, but at James, another of the day orderlies, a big simpleton who’s come barging into the room, running over, hollering like the idiot he is. Billy and James don’t see eye to eye, never have. He’s cruel to the patients, James, and Billy suspects that, from time to time, he takes liberties with the women. The inmates at Warm Springs are tiresome, exasperating, dangerous sometimes, but they’re sick and it’s not their fault they’re that way. The temptation to slap around the more recalcitrant has come to Billy, from time to time – for sure it has – but the patients are people, human beings, and should be treated with as much respect and kindness as the staff can muster. James musters very little.

  “Put it down, Mrs P, or I’m gonna hafta come get it, and none of us are gonna like that, are we?”

  “Goddamn it, James, I got this. Just get out of here, OK? I got it.”

  “How come the lady’s got a knife, Bill? That your fault, Chief? You fuck up again? That right?”

  What Billy wants, right then, is to pick up this little table he’s standing beside, pick it up and bust it right over the head of this stupid cracker, settle things. Drop the table down on that bald, spotty head and then, once James is down, stomp him to a paste for all slights, perceived and imagined. For the cruelty and the rest of it. World would be a better place without this fucker in it. Billy has been getting these rages sometimes, that seem to appear out of nowhere, touched off by some little spark of incident. A burning anger inside him that wants to come out, needs to. He’s gotten in some fights, up at town which, fortunately, haven’t yet led to anything too terrible. Maybe more just out of luck than anything. These aren’t the mostly good-natured scuffles that used to happen after shift, back when he was a miner. Holding his own with his crew against some other, drinks at the end of it once the cursing and bleeding stopped. These fights are something worse, something black; fury – at something, anything – boiling out until it’s all he can do to still his fists, pull his boots in.

  It reminds him, more and more, of his father and Marked Face. It scares him.

  James is big, but he’s stupid, callow. Age and treachery beats big and dumb any day. Billy’s older than his time: he may only be twenty-four on this calendar but he has many, many years of fighting dirty behind him, learned from his father and Marked Face and the government school and the rest of it. Queensberry-rules fisticuffs isn’t for him. There’s no glory in losing with dignity, not when your flesh and bones are on the line.

  “Huh? I said, that right, Chief?”

  The table is just a step away and that gurning grin on James’s face is calling for it but, right now, the important thing is getting the knife away from Elizabeth before she hurts herself or someone else. Later, James, you stupid bald bastard.

  “Come on, now, Mrs Parker, let’s just have that little poker, OK? I think Owen’s probably looking for you, right? Owen? Let’s go find him, me and you, OK?” Billy speaks in the low, sing-songy voice you’d use to calm a skittish horse, extending a hand – slowly – out across the bed that’s between them.

  “Oh fuck this.”

  James lunges forward towards Mrs Parker and, before Billy has a chance to think about it, the table is in his hand, swinging. It’s just cheap pine but the weight of it across the bridge of James’s nose feels glorious, landing hard enough for the leg to splinter off in his hand. James lets loose
a squeal – high-pitched for a man of his size – and crumples to his knees, head in his hands. Figuring that the cards have been played at this point, Billy doesn’t hesitate to come forward and, with a judicious application of fists and boots and the remnant of the little table, finishes the work. James, whimpering, tries to crawl away, under Mrs Parker’s bed, but Billy grabs him by his belt and drags him out, then uses a combination of a foot up the ass and some pointed cursing to get him out of the dormitory. As the adrenaline begins to wear off, Billy regrets what he’s done, necessary or not, and he knows that it’s not the last that he’s seen of that situation. There will be consequences, almost certainly. James is too dumb to learn from his mistakes. Well, fair enough, nothing that can be done about it now.

  When he comes back, Mrs Parker is sitting on her bed, head in her hands, crying. The little knife is next to her, forgotten now. Billy sits down beside her, the bedsprings shrieking under the thin, stained mattress, the sag pulling them together. Elizabeth leans into his shoulder, crying so hard it sounds like she’s gasping for air; Billy puts an arm around her back, patting her awkwardly. She shouldn’t have seen any of that, him and James, regardless of whether it needed to happen or not. Too much excitement, good or bad, is hard on a lot of these patients, many of whom are just trying their best to keep things together in the face of whatever storms rage in their mind. Dr Rideout had explained it to him, but it’s obvious if you looked at it. Hot, raw emotion just spins these poor people up, to no good outcome, usually. Keep them calm, encourage them to pick weeds in the garden, help with the cows, shuck peas, whatever: gentle, pastoral therapy designed to quiet whatever it is in them that’s broken and can’t be fixed. And here he is, breaking a goddamn table over a man’s head in front of a patient with a knife in her hand. Jesus.

  “I just want to go home,” she whispers, turning her face into his chest. “I want to go home.”

  “It’s OK, Mrs Parker, it’s OK.” Because what’s he going to say? You’re home here, with all the other crazies. The suicidal, the murderers, the defective, the deranged. With me. All of us who see the real world. Welcome home, Mrs P.

  “I just want to go home, Sol,” she says.

  Later, Billy’s having a cigarette out on the back porch, sitting on a step, watching the sun go down. Dinner’s over and he’s off shift, though he usually sticks around for a while, just in case the next crew needs any help. A pint of whiskey is tucked discreetly against his ankle and, from time to time, he lips it, just enough to take the edge off. He doesn’t even look up when Dr Rideout sits down next to him, just wordlessly passes him the bottle. It’s cheap, lousy stuff, and the doctor hisses after a small sip, to tamp down the burn. For a long time, they’re quiet, watching the sun sink, listening to the click of the early bats out for mosquitoes. Even this late in the day, it’s hot still; the air smells of dust and pine and, with the wind on, the faint smoky stink of the mines those miles away at Butte. He’s rolling himself another cigarette when Dr Rideout speaks.

  “Give me one of those, will you?”

  Billy doesn’t say anything, just lifts an eyebrow, as the doctor is a non-smoker. A non-most-things, really: he rarely drinks, no more than a sip or two, of an evening with Billy – as far as he, Billy knows, anyway – doesn’t smoke, doesn’t swear, doesn’t whore or engage in any other vice that is obvious. His family, his church and, most importantly, this hospital are the extent of Dr Rideout’s interests. The guiding force in the doctor’s life is the work of helping others, as best he can, which, to all appearances, makes Agamemnon Rideout happy. Dr Rideout is a serious man, but there’s usually the glint of a smile in his eyes. Endlessly patient, calm, gentle, he’s almost a caricature of what a doctor should be, really, Billy thinks. Strange that he and Sol – loud-mouthed, drunken, impatient Sol, and that’s the way he was, then; Billy’s heard rumors from up at Butte as to what, who, Sol is now, and none of it sounds good – strange that the two brothers, brought up together, are so different. They have different fathers, so maybe there’s some kind of truth in blood that mattered more than how you were raised or what your name was or wasn’t. Although, it is true that Sol, like Dr Rideout, has, or at least had, that thing about him that made him take others under his wing. The boys in the crew, Billy himself, certainly, gathered in by the man that Sol was, looked after as best he could. So maybe Sol and his brother weren’t too different after all, at least once.

  He hands Dr Rideout the cigarette, gives him a light. There’s a long inhale, a pause, and then a hacking, racking cough.

  “Good God, that’s awful,” Dr Rideout says, when he can breathe again. He passes the cigarette back to Billy. “Every once in a while I feel the need to try to smoke again, see if there’s something I’m missing about the process. You’d think I’d be smarter about it, by now, because every time it’s just as terrible as the last. Good God.” He shakes his head, spitting discreetly to the side.

  “Live and learn, Doctor.”

  “Live and learn.” There’s a long pause and then Dr Rideout says, “Bad thing today, Bill.”

  Billy sighs. Here it is, then. “Yeah, a bad thing. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Sam James can go fuck himself, Billy. He won’t ever be back here, that’s for certain.”

  Billy wouldn’t have been more shocked if one of the cows had come up and started declaiming Shakespeare. Dr Rideout almost never cursed, and certainly nothing saltier than the occasional damn. He glances over, can see that the doctor is seething, rims of his nostrils round and white in his reddened face.

  “Miss Summers was in the hallway, Bill, saw the whole thing. I don’t like to say it, but I’ll just admit, now: I wish you’d done more, even, because Miss Summers went on to imply that James has been, well, bothering some of the women. You know what I mean. Why didn’t the silly woman say something before now? Do I have to have you break tables over all of the employees’ heads? Just in case? Good God, Billy.” Dr Rideout stands up, takes a few purposeful steps one way, another, before returning to his seat, somewhat anticlimactically.

  Billy feels a stab of guilt for suspecting the same thing about James and not mentioning it to Dr Rideout. He should have said something from the get-go, same as Becky Summers should have. If he’d been wrong, so be it, but the Doctor should have known. Either way, it didn’t make what Billy had done in front of poor Elizabeth any better, though.

  “How’s Mrs Parker, Bill?”

  “Ah, she’ll be all right, I guess. Just a bit riled up, confused. You know.”

  “That poor woman. She gets so much worse when the weather gets hot, you notice that? Every summer. Sometimes I wonder …” He trails off, and they’re quiet again.

  “I ever tell you just how hard my brother had to work to land that girl?” Dr Rideout says, eventually. “It was really a bit pathetic. She wouldn’t give him the time of day at first, which did nothing but make him more determined. If you knew my brother, you’d see the humor in that, let me tell you. Drove him absolutely crazy that she didn’t fancy him. I guess in the end he just wore her down.” He sighs. “And look how that turned out.”

  Oh, I know your brother, Billy’s thinking, knew him, anyway, and it doesn’t surprise me a bit, hearing that. The Sol he knew was never one to let something come between him and a thing he wanted.

  “You ever wonder, Bill, how things might have turned out in your life if you’d just made a different choice, done something else, maybe, once upon a time? What you’d do if you could take another shot at it, knowing what you do now? You ever want to just start over?” He sounds sad.

  Billy doesn’t know if Dr Rideout is still talking about Sol, or maybe about himself, some lost, lingering regret, maybe, an opportunity missed, a girl left waiting, something that aches in the quiet hours. It wouldn’t do to lecture the doctor, but Billy wants to tell him that the life we have is the one we get and, no matter how you might want to try it, changing it up is most likely just going to come to grief. One way or another, if his
own experience is anything to go by.

  Life is just a series of things that you have to get through. Make the best of it that you can. Billy understands that more and more, as each year passes.

  He never wants to see his uncle again.

  They watch the sun finish setting. Listen to the clicking of bats and the soft hoot of a barn owl, hunting.

  6.

  “Goddamn it, get your hands up, Nancy.”

  Sol reaches forward, grabbing the boy’s wrists, lifting them closer together and raising them a few inches. Turns them inward some, lining up the fists where they need to be. “Here, like this,” he says, tapping the top knuckle of one of Nancy’s thumbs. “See how this knuckle points right at that opposite shoulder? That’s where you want to be throwing from. Keep your hands lined up like that.” He leans down, slapping at the kid’s front leg until he pulls it in a little. “And goddamn it, quit sprawling your leg out like that. You can’t punch if you’re standing there like you’re trying to step over a big puddle.”

  “Sorry, Mr Parker.” Nancy turns his head, then murmurs something else into his shoulder.

  “That you said?”

  The boy won’t meet his eyes, just mumbles, “Don’t like being called that, Mr Parker. Nancy. I ain’t no fairy.”

  “What? Of course you are, son. And no one’s business but your own, that. Now come on, hands up and let’s see what you can do to this bag.” Sol steps behind the big gunnysack filled with sand, which hangs from a beam in the warehouse he’s using to skim a quick veneer of pugilism onto Nancy. Who, if anything, is even more hopeless as a boxer than he remembers. That training hadn’t quite taken, first time around, but maybe he’ll be better now, catching him young like this. At least the boy is still huge, and hopefully just as tough as before. Sol leans his shoulder into the back of the bag and waits for a punch, but Nancy just stands there, hands dropping to his side.