The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  Would that then, I had left our band, gone to the great water – anywhere, really – so that I would not have seen what I saw next, after my brother had left camp once more.

  We found him, Marked Face, days later. Several of us were hunting, seeking what meager game the whites had left us, and we found him, his face smeared with her blood.

  We only knew that it was Dove because she had been gone for a few days. “She’s with her husband,” we’d said, “making up for lost time.” Nudging each other, winking, thinking of her slender, curving form, wishing that we had caught her instead of lucky Marked Face. Now, what was left of that beautiful girl was little: her body had been butchered like a deer. From a nearby tree hung a haunch of her leg, along with some unidentifiable portions. In one of the iron pots gotten from a white trader, a stew of long bones bubbled over a low fire. But, ah, the bones that Marked Face held to his lips then, they were too small to be those of his wife. Not even her fingers, her toes, the delicate lines of her ribs. Those bones were so small.

  My brother tied one, well chewed, into his hair as we approached, our mouths open and the sickness rising from our bellies.

  “Brothers,” Marked Face said then, smiling as he swallowed another mouthful of his son, “I have found my medicine.”

  “Something to eat, Nephew?” Marked Face is saying, jutting his chin to the rusty woodstove, the small bones in his braids chittering against each other. On the stove, a sauce-pot bubbles, giving off the wet coppery fragrance of meat and blood and fat. He pats his belly. “I’m full, myself, but there is plenty more there. Help yourself. Dig in, boy, you look like you need it.”

  “Where is my father?” Billy says.

  8.

  “Get your fucking hands up, Nancy!”

  Sol is rubbing the boy’s shoulders, trying to loosen those huge flat slabs of muscle some. Nancy punches so wrong that he works everything too hard. The power should flow easily upwards and outwards from his plant foot, like he and Faraday had tried to teach him. Instead it just winds up as loosely flapped arm-punches, Nancy relying on the weight of his big hands and his considerable muscle to give it the requisite oomph. Artistic, it isn’t. Sol has tried again and again, as has Faraday, to give Nancy at least the rudiments of form, make it a little easier on him, save him some lumps and soreness, add a bit of art to that muscle, but the boy is hopeless.

  Not that it matters, though, tonight: this is a bullshit fight, pure and simple. It’s fucking Nick Faraday himself, across the little ring, sitting on a stool of his own while fat Mickey Doyle rubs his shoulders. Faraday is thick-witted and his punches are soft but he knows something of the art of boxing, even Sol has to admit it. Nick’s a pure technician: he doesn’t have much in the way of strength or smarts but he knows these skills, somehow. One of those idiot savants, maybe, although with most things the savant part is sorely lacking.

  “Listen, you got to get them up,” he says, “your hands, otherwise you’re going to get hurt.”

  “OK, Mr Parker, I’ll try,” Nancy says, wheezing air in. “I’ll try.”

  “Fighters, one minute!” Pat O’Toole – that useless tosser – hollers out, with something approaching authority. Drunken deadbeat is what he is. Judge of a bullshit fight the limit of his abilities.

  “Fuck are you doing, lad?” Sean Harrity is leaning in now, hissing in Nancy’s ear so loud that Sol can hear it, even if Sean’s eyes weren’t pinioning his own just then. “Make this fuckin shit look right, hey? Don’t just fuckin stand there, faggot.” Sean stands up, fixes Sol with a look that makes the prior version seem like courting eyes, damp and loving and full of promise. “And Jesus fuck, Sol, get your fuckin man sorted. Or I’ll fuckin sort him for you, right? There’s money riding on this fuckin fight.”

  Yeah, there’s money, Sean. A whole passel of stupid shits, too dumb to see what’s there in front of their faces, will be putting that Friday paycheck in your pocket. That fucking Friday paycheck that I see fuck-all of, even though I’m the one that’s doing most the work while you’re up in your fancy office, smoking good cigars, drinking old whiskey and sucking Company cock. Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job, you sheep-shagging Irish piece of shit.

  “Yeah, Sean,” he says, blandly. “We’re on it. Eamonn here’s just getting warmed up. Hey, Nance?” He gives the boy a slap on the shoulders, following it up with another deep squeeze of those thick, triangular muscles, and leans in towards Nancy’s ear. “One more round and then down. Down in the third. Like we talked about, yeah? But Sean’s right, Nance,” he says, louder, looking up again, “maybe show a bit more life out there, kid. Don’t let ol’ Faraday just pat you around the whole round. Need to make this look square.”

  “Fuckin third, lad,” Sean says with another flat look, before turning back to Sol. “Fuckin third, Sol. Jesus fuck, do your job. Fuckin third.”

  “Yeah, yeah, third, Sean. Third, I get it. Ain’t like I never done this before.” Sol gives Nancy another squeeze of the shoulders as that witless Irish bastard O’Toole yells out Fighters!

  “Come on, Pat! That’s a goddamn foul, son!” It’s mostly lost in the collective, sympathetic male groan after Faraday’s fist finds Nancy’s crotch, doubling the boy over like a boiled shrimp. There’s a long, loose second where it looks like Nancy is just going to drop, hands clenched over his balls, eyes rolled back in his head, but then he straightens up a bit, just in time to catch Nick Faraday’s forehead with the bridge of his nose. Cue another groan from the crowd, melding with shouts of outrage this time.

  The fuck, Nick?

  Here it is again, Sol thinks. Another of those gold-panned moments, the color of prior experiences settling out from the gravel of whatever this life is. Fires, fights, fuck-ups. The lot of it. Nothing is ever easy, is it? No matter how many times he runs through things, it happens more or less the same way. The players may shift position, play different parts and have different names, but they’re all reading the same fucking script, aren’t they? It might look a little different from one time to the next but, really, just pick up the book and read your lines, whatever they are, this time around. Doesn’t much matter what your part of the story is, because it all shakes out in the end.

  OK, so maybe Nancy cut loose a bit more vigorously than the situation warranted, at the beginning of the round, chiming Faraday’s head with a surprising combination of heavy crosses but, if anything, Sean himself can be blamed for that. Make this fucking shit look right. Don’t just stand there. Nancy is just a kid and has nothing in the way of subtlety, not now, anyway, if he ever really did last time, so maybe he got a bit excited at the start of the round and dinged up Faraday more than was actually needed. But Nick Faraday is a tough man, this Sol knows, no worse for wear after a couple three of those errant punches, so just settle the fuck down, Nicky.

  But Faraday also has a flaming temper and no real way of easily stopping it once it gets burning so, now, he’s bashing poor Nancy’s balls in and trying to stave in the boy’s face with a forehead. Just because Nancy had landed a punch or two. Jesus, Nick, it’s a fucking fight, regardless of its inherently bullshit, dishonest nature; it’s fucking fixed, so calm the hell down, you dumb shit, before you hurt the kid.

  “Goddamn it, Pat! Are you just going to fucking stand there? That’s a foul!”

  “Shut your hole, Sol Parker, and let the boys fight.” Pat gives him a look like he’s a piece of dogshit scraped from a shoe. That’s going to get paid for, Pat, Sol thinks, clenching a fist until his knuckles hurt. Talk to me like that? That look? May be a while, but that’ll get paid for.

  Sol is so furious with Pat O’Toole that his attention is diverted and he almost doesn’t even see the long, looping, heavy hay-maker that cracks into Faraday’s skull. Like a baby dropped from a building, that one – finally, but now? – then Faraday is down.

  Sol closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose between a finger and thumb.

  Back in Sean’s office, later.

  Not t
he opulent one, the gentlemen’s sanctuary. Not the snuggery, the growlery, one of those European words for a fancy room where rich men take their leisure, far from the stink of the unwashed masses. No, now they’re in the little shithole of a room behind the Piper, the one that’s used for the closer, sharper, more emotional work of Sean’s various enterprises. The one with the big shabby desk, the low, penitents’ chairs, the suspiciously dark stains in the wood floor. Fat, smug-faced Mickey Doyle looming at their backs like a goddamn low moon squatting on the horizon. Sol can almost feel the press of Mickey’s soft belly tickling the hairs on the back of his neck.

  Or maybe that’s just fear. Sean is pissed off, royally so, but come on, it’s not like this is a firing offense. Firing, a euphemism, but still. Sean’s gotten where he is by mastering his own baser urges, when the situation requires it, and Sol is a vital part of this enterprise. One of the most vital, if Sol is giving himself his due. Second man, all that. Responsibility. His ass is in for some chewing, that’s for a certain, and his pocket will be lighter by the end, so best just get on with it. He’s fucked up, plain and simple. Well, Nancy fucked up, but accidents happen, all right? Accidents happen and they’d make it right. First, though: first the theater.

  Sean brings out a bottle of good whiskey from the drawer of his desk, makes a show of pouring himself a shot. He knocks it back, refills, and then puts the bottle away, shutting the drawer with finality. Oh you cheap, petty fuck, Sol thinks, eyes on the glass. You wretched Irish bastard.

  “What’d I tell you, Sol,” Sean says, lazily almost, his eyes not leaving Nancy, who’s sitting, slump-shouldered, head down, miserably staring at his hands in his lap, the knuckles bruised and swollen, fingers twisted into a nervous tangle. It’s even more pitiful a posture in such a big man, young as he is, too. Sol reaches over, gives Nancy a brief squeeze of the knee. Don’t worry about it, son, that squeeze says, best as Sol can manage it. You’ll be OK. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve got this.

  Sol looks at his employer. I don’t know, Sean, he thinks. You’ve told me lots of stupid shit over the years, haven’t you now. “Told me I needed to do my job, Sean. Told me third round, Nancy goes down,” is what he says, though, mustering a tone of voice that has as much of the semblance of contrition as he can scrape up, just then. But fuck you. “Accident, though, all it was.”

  “Accident, hey?” The eyes lift from Nancy, swing his way, sharp on the inside. Sean’s nostrils are flared, sure sign that he’s working himself up into one of his posturing rages, the chest-beating horseshit that serves to reiterate I’m the boss. Been a lot of that lately, more than Sol really cares for, but what can he do. Sean is the boss, much as it chafes, times like this. Wasn’t necessary for the man to do all this drama, put Sol back in his place, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Let’s just get on with it, he thinks again.

  “Accident, Sean. Boy’s still learning, after all.”

  “Learning, is it?”

  What are you, a fucking parrot? “Yeah, he’s learning, Sean. I told you, it won’t happen again.”

  “I lost money on this fight, because of your learner here.”

  “And I’ll make it good.”

  “Oh, you’ll make it good.”

  “Jesus, Sean, I said I’ll make it good. You should know that by now.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  Oh sweet Christ is this necessary? “It means, Sean, that I’ll make it right. Pretty straightforward, really.”

  “Taking a tone with me now?”

  Sol stills the anger in his chest, keeps his teeth from clenching. He’s been through worse than this, he’s learned control. None of this matters, anyway, not a lick of it. The things he’s seen and done and seen and done again. Sean Harrity doesn’t fucking matter, now or ever. It’s a solid, smooth and slippery life Sol’s learned to lead, by now – over-learned, maybe, with these unnatural years added and re-added to his total, a thing he doesn’t like to think of – a life where nothing is able to grab hold of him and hang on, pull him down. This moment, now, is just one more thing trying to claim him but it won’t, same as the rest, the good or the bad. Who knows if this moment will come back again, after all, in one way or another. Sol might dream poorly of a night, but this mode of being is a surprisingly liberating way to go through his days, really, skipping across the surface of things like a stone chucked flat at a pond. Solid, smooth, slippery.

  He’s calm again now, his jaw loose. Sean’s just another actor, playing his role. Best just to get on with it. “Course not, Sean. I just want to make this right. I made a mistake, and I’ll get it sorted, me and Big Nancy here. It’s my responsibility, and I’ll make it right. Like I always have.”

  “Like you always have.” Parrot, again. “Seems like I hear a lot of those words, these days, from you. I appreciate that, though, Sol, I do. You’re a good man.” Sean opens the drawer again, pulls out the bottle of whiskey, setting two more glasses down on the desktop. He fills them, refills his own. “Here now,” he says. “Let’s all have a drink. We’ve had a disagreement, and maybe I got a little hot, but that’s that. You’re going to make things right, and that’s that. Drink up, boys.”

  Nancy hasn’t even had the chance to look up and reach for his glass before Mickey loops the belt around his neck.

  Just pay it no mind, it doesn’t matter. Sol stares straight ahead at the whiskey in front of him, trying to draw it into the full scope of his consciousness, blocking everything else out. Nancy’s kicking and thrashing next to him, the panicked gasps, Mickey’s strained, groaning grunts as he heaves his bulk backward, trying to use the leverage, the thick, narrow leather of the belt cutting into Nancy’s throat. The boy’s fingers are frantically grabbling at it, trying to get some purchase and dig it out of his flesh. Mickey’s good with that belt, though. Sol’s seen it before.

  “Sol, I worry that you’re not giving the job the entire amount of your attention, lately,” Sean is saying, ignoring what’s transpiring in front of him. “You’re getting a wee bit sloppy, maybe, some would think. Your poof there had made his own side bets on tonight, did you know that? Fucked us, tried to anyway. Stood to collect a nice little payday from that little ‘accident’ of yours. Tried to right fuck us.”

  Bullshit, Sol thinks. Nancy doesn’t have that in him. Doesn’t have the gumption, even if he had the savvy to do so. Where did you hear this? Mickey, maybe? That’s a possibility and, if he finds out that’s the case, there’s going to be a reckoning for that fat fucker. A fucking reckoning, let that be said. Or maybe Sean has just made it up himself because, after all, this is just another lesson, now, isn’t it? Sean Harrity, showing his underlings how it is, at the expense of one big, dumb kid. Don’t make mistakes, boys and, whatever you do, don’t think you can put anything past me. Sean Harrity, the all-seeing, all-knowing. Big men are a dime a dozen, after all, town like this, so who cares as to the truth of the matter at hand. Wrong place, wrong time, all that. Sorry, lad. There are always more men at the bottom.

  “This is an unpleasantness,” Sean waves a vague hand, “but I’m thinking, Sol, that you needed a reminder, maybe. To pay more attention, like. Because, if this has slipped past you, what else has? And if it didn’t just slip past you then, well, we have another problem, don’t we. But I don’t believe that, not for a second, Sol. I trust you. We’ve done a lot of good work together, and I trust you.”

  Yeah, you fucking trust me, Sean. Same as you trust everyone, trust them just enough to put the knife in when their back is turned. Don’t worry, this won’t get forgotten, Sean. The lesson is learned and will be paid for. Won’t be today, won’t be next week, but this will get paid. Same like Pat, like Mickey, a reckoning. There will be restitution for this.

  Sol’s ledger of wrongs grows longer by the day. Just because things didn’t matter doesn’t mean they could be forgotten. Seemed like, any more, it’s the wrongs, the slights, that are the only thing Sol lets cling to him. Wasn’t always this way,
but that’s the way it is now.

  “Let’s have that drink, Sol, hey? This will be done, soon enough. Let’s just put this behind us. Focus on the future. The past is dead, Sol.” Sean reaches forward, raises his glass.

  Sol tries to ignore Nancy’s weakening kicks as the life drains out of him. It’s a real shame, and he’s sorry, but none of this matters anyway, he repeats to himself. Weights it with repetition. Makes it convincing. None of it matters. The past is dead, just like Sean said, and it’s all a fucking illusion, this whole sorry world. Sol doesn’t want it to be this way, but there it is, so best not dwell on it. Maybe the next time will be better. If there is a next time, but who knows. Maybe he’s living his life just waiting for it to start over. A life free of consequence.

  He picks up his glass, keeping his head cocked away from Nancy, who is whimpering a thin wheeze now. Sol stares at the whiskey, admires the oily amber slick of it, the way it clings to the side of the glass when he tilts it. At least the pleasure of a good drink is a constant. One of those shining flecks of gold. He nods at Sean and brings the glass to his lips, savoring the hot astringent burn of the fine malt. Holds it in his mouth for a moment before letting it slide its fiery way down his throat. Sol closes his eyes with satisfaction, and can’t help but think about the shape of the boy’s lips as they tried to gasp out his name, can’t help but remember it. He knows that it’s one more thing that’s going to stick with him, much as he’ll try to shrug it off, like all the rest of it. One of many things to wake him up at night, maybe, whether they matter or not.

  But, after all, though, his is a life free of consequence, isn’t it? Near as he can figure things, anyway. And that’s Nancy strangling next to him, Nancy. He owes the boy, from before. Owes him. Sol lets the anger come back – it’s never far away, lately – and it burns like fine whiskey.