The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  Her back is turned to him now; he rests the base of his whiskey glass on the swell of her warm, generous hip, scratching idly at his cheek with his other hand. Sol doesn’t know if it was his gut or another nightmare that woke him, this time. He has that sweaty, jittery feeling that comes with the dreams but they don’t always wake him. He’s used to them, if one can ever really get used to such things. It’s automatic, any more, waking, reaching over in the dark for the whiskey decanter, pouring without spilling a drop. A learned skill. Sitting up, waiting to calm again, hoping sleep will return. Sometimes it does, but not often enough for his liking.

  He thought it had been squashed down, but memories of the past have been popping up, more and more, since seeing Billy, since what happened after. Since Elizabeth, too, maybe, before then. He thinks about her more than he’d like. Thinks about Owen, too, that other life he’s tried to forget. Look at him now, though, he tells himself, yet again: this big old house, all his money, the fine whiskey and the finer girls. A beauty like Kitt curled up against him? Warm and sweet-smelling and soft, his come in her belly and the knowledge that all it would take is a nudge and those lips will be around him once more. The Sol from before, that busted-down old fart, would never have had a girl like that, not in a million years. And never mind the particulars of the transaction because, when he’s with her, she’s good enough at what she does for him to have no trouble suspending disbelief, at least until he finishes maybe. After that, no matter, she’s good company and he enjoys being around her. She looks good on his arm.

  And, really, how long had he been happy with Elizabeth? A few good years, that was about it. Never mind that those years are the ones his mind constantly tracks back to, if he lets it. Rosy glow of memory, all that was; every time he calls it up it just gets another polish until now it’s almost too bright to look at. No way it was like that before, he knows it. They were just two people together with fights and accidental gas and everything else that goes with being a couple. Nothing is ever perfect.

  Would he go back, though? Wake up again in that shitty old shack, like Billy had asked?

  That time he spent before, running his mucker crew, drinking with those boys, fighting and whoring and gambling, those memories have some of that same false polish on them, he knows it. Easy to remember the bad times, too, though, all that went before with the job and being broke and all that shit with Sean. Maybe that’s his problem: those other lives are so sharp around the edges, the good and the bad both standing out in high relief. This one, it’s just flat, really. There’s good and there’s bad but even the standouts feel squashed and hunched. This right here, lying in a warm bed with a beautiful woman, that should be a high; that shameful fucking thing with Frank, a low. And they are, they are, but somehow it’s just not the same. It’s attenuated, weak, like it’s happened to someone else and he just happens to have acquaintance with it.

  So now, even knowing what he does, that he couldn’t ever be the same man as he was before, would he go back, given the chance? Try again, one more time?

  It’s childish, but he closes his eyes and makes a wish. He tries to pull it to him by force of will. Just one more chance. That’s all I’m asking. At least let me decide, with the choice right in front of me. Make the bet or not. Easy to speculate on the answer, but let me decide. He listens for the rattle of Indian bones.

  But, of course, when he opens his eyes again, there’s not a goddamn thing.

  Eventually, Sol dozes back off, startling himself to wakefulness by the whiskey spilled onto his belly. He jerks up and catches sight of the old Indian, Marked Face, crouching there in the dark at the end of the huge bed, like a cat come to steal his breath. Leering, the bones in his hair rattling softly. Sol yells, an unmanly squeal, and tries to scrabble away. The old man opens his mouth, too wide. Croaks like a raven, crawling forward towards him.

  The spill of whiskey, or maybe his hollering, wakes him, for real this time. There’s no one at the end of the bed, there never was; it’s just another fucking nightmare. His belly is wet with malt and sweat and he’s shaking.

  Kitt reaches out a hand, comforting him, still sound asleep. It’s one of the girl’s most attractive features, her ability to sleep through just about anything but also so easy to rouse when Sol gets to needing her during the long, shuddery nights awake. He closes his eyes, concentrating on the warmth of her hand, the soft press of her ass against his hip. He rolls over, sidles up behind her, buries his nose in the nape of her neck. He matches his breathing to hers until he finally drops back off, a long time later.

  ***

  Marked Face watches from the darkness at the foot of the bed while the old man sleeps.

  It is almost done, now.

  The boy is ready. Finally, after all these long years, he is ready. All that Marked Face has done, the pain and sorrow he has caused, has been to bring this time to pass, to prepare his nephew for the trials that come. Poor Sagiistoo is the point of the spear and now we shall see if he breaks.

  Marked Face can feel the excitement of the Above Ones.

  His brother, his own part played, waits in the place where it will end, once again.

  Past the end of things is a beginning.

  “I have one last favor to ask of you, white man,” Marked Face whispers, with words that lack sound. “You, who the Above Ones have bound to my nephew. There is a thing you will do for me.”

  Slithering like Lenaahi, Snake, he comes forward and pours the dream into the white man’s ear.

  Listen, Solomon Parker –

  6.

  – Listen, and I will tell you of the end of Maatakssi and Siinatssi.

  You whites, those children of Maatakssi, called forth by Nihaat, the one called Spider, spread across the Earth. Your kinfolk grew great and strong and their numbers were without end, their power without compare. They returned to the lands of the People and drove the tribes to destruction, with their shooters and their sickness and their medicine water. Horrible dreams at night came with them, and the People never had rest. They wept for Siinatssi to save them with his own great medicine, but it was as Raven had foretold: evil had hollowed out the insides of Siinatssi and his children, and left them with nothing but a gnawing hunger, one that could never be sated. The medicine had abandoned them, leaving only this hunger.

  Finally, now that he was on the edge of becoming nothing but a spirit, Siinatssi’s broken mind cleared, for a time; he was given a vision and understood what he must do. Perhaps the Above Ones, looking down, whispered in his ear. He gathered his pouch and his tobacco and his traveling things and left the People in the night, alone. He knew that he must find his brother, Maatakssi.

  Maatakssi had disappeared, though, long ago. It had been years since any of the People had seen him, though he had become a terrible legend. Maatakssi, who had betrayed the People and created these empty, hungry white men who were killing them; Maatakssi, who had been driven mad by what he’d done, madder even than the sorcerer, Siinatssi. Some of the old women would say that they had seen Maatakssi here or there, in this cave or by that grove of willows, but these were merely stories to scare the young children into obedience. Maatakssi was gone, and Siinatssi knew that only Raven would be able to find him.

  So Siinatssi sought the bird out.

  Raven, though, even that creature was hard to find, and it took Siinatssi many years to do so, a story that is for another time. For Raven, seeing the world truly as he did, knowing how things would come to pass, had long ago witnessed this destruction of the People and known that Nihaat’s terrible trick was the only way to save even a remnant of the tribes from Siinatssi’s madness. Sorrow had overtaken the bird, and Raven spent long years alone, away from his wives even, growing thin and silent, his feathers gone dusty and brittle. But, at the sight of poor Siinatssi, even Raven’s cracked heart was moved and he agreed to lead him to his brother Maatakssi.

  When Raven brought him to the spot, atop the mountain that was shaped like an ear, Siinatssi c
ould not help but weep, seeing what he had wrought. Nihaat, ever helpful, had placed a veil over the place, a spell that prevented any from finding what remained of the wretch that Maatakssi had become. But Raven’s eyes were sharp, and no veil, not even one made by Spider, could block his vision.

  By this time, Maatakssi was more beast than man, filthy, hair matted, wordless. He sat surrounded by empty barrels of his children’s medicine water, covered in his own sick, a constant stream of tears running down his face. The old women say that the river at the base of that mountain was created by the flow of Maatakssi’s tears but that, again, is another story. I was speaking of the end of the two brothers.

  The mountain was a sacred place. Being shaped like an ear, it heard the dreams that crossed from the west each night once Sun had gone to his sleep. These dreams would rumble through the bones of the Earth and crawl into the skulls of the People who slept on the Earth’s skin. But now, the burning drink of the whites, or perhaps Maatakssi’s tears, seeped into the mountain, causing those nightmares and terrible thoughts that came in place of the dreams from the west. My brother, oh my brother, Siinatssi thought, weeping harder, what have we made, the two of us. Truly, we, the sons of Old Man, have been cursed by the Above Ones. We have been damned for our sins.

  Siinatssi stilled his tears as best he could and took the cup of medicine water from his brother’s hand. He cleared away a spot, and sat down. “Brother,” he said, “it is I, Siinatssi. I have done you a terrible wrong, for which I have no hope of forgiveness. But Brother, we must do something to save the People.” Maatakssi made no answer and showed no awareness, merely wept silently at what had come to pass.

  Siinatssi tried again, more words that went unheard. He stood up then, and danced his most powerful dance, sang his strongest song, but he was empty, you will remember, hollow and always hungry. Filled with madness and a great anger that clouded his vision at times. His medicine was gone. Still, for many hours, he danced and sang and exhorted his brother to listen, to no effect, until, finally, Siinatssi sank to the earth and wept again.

  Raven watched all this and, with a deep sigh, shimmered, then, and changed his form. He regained the shape of Old Man, which he’d abandoned long ago, after his sons had left him.

  He reached down, touching each of his sons on their head, clearing their minds and bringing them back to themselves. Holding their hands together, he called upon the Above Ones.

  “Surely my sons have been punished enough, Above Ones,” Old Man said. “Please take pity on them. It is I, your friend, who asks this.” Old Man lowered himself to the dirt, his own tears making mud of it. “Please take pity on my sons.”

  The Above Ones are cruel. They are spiteful, even, at times. They toy with their creations, but they are not entirely heartless. Looking down then at pitiful Siinatssi and Maatakssi, seeing the grief of Old Man, the Above Ones saw anew this world, saw the many mistakes they had made in building it yet again, while forming it out of the chaos of the before times. They saw the terrible state of things now: the sickness of the land, the dying animals, the grief of the People who walked the Earth. Perhaps they felt guilty even, although who can tell the feelings of people of that kind. But maybe this had something to do with what they did, or maybe their motives were other.

  “Siinatssi, you are almost a spirit,” they said. “You have let evil magic eat you hollow. Why should we take pity on you?” Siinatssi hung his head in shame. “And you, Maatakssi, you brought those whites into the world, the ones who are destroying the People and this land we made for them. Why should we take pity on you?” Maatakssi put his hands to his face and wept again.

  “But perhaps there is a way,” the Above Ones said, “for you to show us that you have learned from your mistakes, that you are no longer the cruel and selfish men you once were. Your fate will be bound with that of your People, and with their choosing you will be judged.”

  The Above Ones showed them, then, what it was they required, giving Maatakssi and Siinatssi a vision of what must be done, the fate that they would have to endure to right the wrongs they had made. Perhaps those gods smiled, then, too. They were great gamblers, and the place in which they lived could be dull at times, after all.

  The brothers looked at one another, understanding. They wept and held one another, sorry for all that had come to pass. They embraced their father, pressing their heads to the dirt, after, begging his forgiveness for their many sins.

  “I forgave you so long ago, though, my sons,” he said to them, the tears hot in his eyes. “So long ago.”

  Maatakssi and Siinatssi turned to face the sun, just coming up now, shining down on the top of that mountain, glowing like a watchful eye. They opened their arms and accepted the will of the gods. They knew what they must do.

  7.

  Billy listens to the screams. The wail of the sirens and the sharp clanking clatter of the fire-bells. Smoke pours out of the Speculator’s headframe, a black billowing cloud of soot and ash and rising sparks. He’s sweating, shaking with the memory of the Penn, real or not; that long-ago flight in the dark and the wet, the asshole-pinching terror as he and Sol and the crew fled the flame and the smoke, in those times that never happened. He’d thought – convinced himself – that he’d forgotten all of that, but the banging of the bells and the banshee sirens bring it back, pound it behind his eyes, tighten his chest. It’s hard to take a breath, not just because of the sore, busted-up ribs Sol’s boys had left him with, a couple of weeks ago: the smell of the smoke, acrid and sharp in his nose, is pulling his throat closed with remembering.

  He limps back down the hill, fighting the crowds that are pushing towards the Speculator, moths drawn to the flames, to try to help or merely to gawk at the spectacle of tragedy. Billy elbows men out of the way, ignoring their curses, his broken, half-set arm shouting at him and the breath hot and gasping in his chest, until he’s well away from the press of men. He can still smell the bite of smoke, hear the yelling and the sirens and the bells, so he keeps stumbling along, always downhill, away from the fire. It doesn’t matter where he goes, he just needs to get away.

  Eventually, much later, he finds himself in a dim, ragged little tavern down in the Patch, empty save for the bartender. Billy shakes his head when asked the latest, says he doesn’t know – don’t fucking know, all right? – just wants a beer and another and another.

  He shouldn’t even be in Butte, he should be back at Warm Springs, but he’s been kept here. First the week or so of convalescence he’d needed after Sol’s men had beat the shit out of him for his insults; after that, he’d decided to stay in town, to look for his uncle. Nowhere to be found on Utah Street or anywhere else, though, Marked Face, and Billy wonders if Sol had been lying about seeing him in the first place, for reasons of his own.

  He thinks about those men down in the Speculator who maybe won’t be coming out, their last panicked moments in the dark; he thinks about Sol and Flynn and Michael and the Dans, about running for their lives wrapped in that same terror. Them, the lucky ones. He thinks about Owen and beer follows beer until he can’t think straight, any more, which is just fine by him. That’s the goal, tonight.

  Hours pass, and the tavern fills with angry men.

  The headline reads:

  33 KNOWN DEAD; 162 MISSING

  GRANITE MOUNTAIN DISASTER WORST IN METAL MINING HISTORY

  BUTTE STAGGERS UNDER PARALYZING EFFECT OF TERRIBLE LOSS OF LIFE

  EVERY MINING OFFICIAL IN BUTTE AIDING IN THE GHASTLY RESCUE WORK

  Sol’s shaking hands lower the Butte Daily Post. For a long minute he thinks that he’s going to be physically sick, to puke down into his own lap. His breath comes short and fast and doesn’t bring much air with it. He’s sweating, the muscles of his back and belly gripped tight to his bones. The stink of smoke in the air, which cuts even through the cigar reek that impregnates the walls of his office, brings back too many memories of that time before. The whiskey he drank earlier is burning his guts. He feels old,
old. His true age for once, not whatever the lines of his face say. Although, today, the two are probably in sync with one another.

  He knew this would happen and yet he went ahead anyway. Out of greed. That was it, pure and simple. He’s condemned who knows how many men to death, so that he could buy office blocks and businesses. Condemned them to burn and smother and suffocate in the dark, just like his boy.

  Sol has damned himself, just like Frank had warned, before he’d killed him, too.

  Damned.

  Instead of puking, the sick bubbles out of him in laughter that, once released, he can’t stop. Laughter that twists close to tears and back again. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It doesn’t matter even though he knows it to be a lie. Frank was right. He’s damned, and this is his punishment. It would be horrible if it wasn’t so fucking funny. Fire, flame, smoke, over and over and over again. He’s still laughing, head between his knees, holding his ribs and trying to stop himself, when Marcus Connor pushes into the office.

  “I couldn’t stop him, Sol.” Mickey is standing behind Connor, holding his hand to his bleeding nose. “I couldn’t stop him.” Whatever he’s going to say next is cut off by the door that Connor slams in his face. He’s white as a sheet, hair standing on end, soot smeared across his cheek, eyes wild.

  “What did you do, Sol? What the fuck did you do?” he whispers. He strides over to the big window on the far wall, pulls the curtain shut. “No one can know about this. Sol!”