The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

“Now hang on, Billy, hang on,” Sol says.

  Sol looks at the old Indian, cocks his head a bit. “Let’s not be rude to your uncle here.” He reaches out a hand. “Solomon Parker, sir. Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” The Indian merely stares at Sol’s hand, still smiling, and then mutters a couple of syllables in his language, whether his own name or what Sol doesn’t know. Sol reels his unshaken hand back in, feeling foolish but telling himself that one must allow for differences in customs, after all.

  Billy stands up. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The old man explains in broken English the rules of the simple game, pointing out the markings on the yellowed old bones. Sol nods along, pausing once to wave a hand at Billy. “Goddamn it, Bill, either sit down or go. Making me nervous, you looming over me like that. Like the damn shadow of death.”

  Billy sits again.

  “What’s the bet then, sir?” Sol asks, picking up the bones, rattling them in a loose hand, getting their shape and heft. He has a lucky feel about himself this morning and his hangover seems to be crawling away.

  The old Indian’s smile grows wider, the scar on his cheek pulls his lip up and out of true. The base of a shining white tooth gleams wet. Instead of responding, he looks across at Billy again, pulling a handful of gold coins out of a pocket of his shirt, setting them carefully into a stack on the table. Then, as if changing his mind, he picks them back up and returns them to his pocket.

  “Cigarette,” he says.

  “Pardon?” Sol’s disappointed to see the coins go away; there were a fair few there, more than he’d have thought a shabby, broke-down chief like this old boy would have had. Sol needs money, needs it bad. The fight has chipped away at his obligation to Sean Harrity but he’s a long, long way from straight with the bastard and Sol won’t sleep entirely easily until he is.

  “Tobacco. I win, you give me a cigarette.”

  “That’s it?” The old man doesn’t reply, just takes the bones from Sol’s hand, giving them a rattle. He’s looking across at Billy, still smiling, but with an unpleasant gleam in his eye, that one long tooth still shining slick. “You wouldn’t want to sweeten the pot a bit more, partner?”

  “Cigarette,” he says again.

  “A cigarette, OK, OK.” Sol shrugs, breathes out a little sigh of disappointment, but sometimes games start small like this and build of their own momentum. If that’s what it takes to loosen up this miserly old bastard’s pockets then so be it. “What if I win?”

  “I will do you a favor, Solomon Parker,” he says, the smile stretched tight. “I will give you what it is you most desire.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sol, come on, this is bullshit,” Billy says. “Let’s go.” He stands up again.

  After a glance, Sol ignores him, directing his attention to the old man in front of him.

  “Let me make sure I understand this,” he says. “If I win, you’ll do me a favor, that right? Cigarette for a favor, huh?” Sol doesn’t really get it, but maybe it’s another Indian thing. Difference of culture again. Offhand, he can’t really think of anything this old bastard can do for him but, again, maybe it’s just a thing to get the game going. He’s starting to get that familiar itch; he can tell that the luck he feels creeping up on him has come to stay for a while. He’s had a run of bad, lately, but it’ll be different now. He’s due. Goddamn it, he’s due. Hell, the favor will be another game, Sol decides, and soon enough he’ll cut loose this tight fucker from that gold in his pocket. The day is off to a good start, and his hangover is entirely gone now. Poof, just like that, like magic.

  “It is your throw,” the old Indian says, reaching forward with the dice in his palm. “Now we wager on these bones.”

  He’s due, all right, and that luck of Sol’s holds true and the bones chatter on the tabletop, winning, winning, winning. He’s due and his luck is changing and then the old Indian takes his hands again. Differences in culture, some kind of ritual, maybe, and it doesn’t matter because he knows that when he picks up those bones again for the next game he’ll win again and again and again. This is a new day and he’s goddamn due and, finally, he can feel his luck digging in to stay and he looks into the old man’s eyes, so black they’re like holes in the world.

  They’re like holes in the world and then he’s falling into them.

  A tapping that becomes a slow boom.

  He’s falling and there’s the smell of burning timber.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  It’s coming.

  THE SMOKE AND THE DARK

  – 1916 –

  Pennsylvania Mine: Butte, Montana

  1.

  Flame and fucking smoke.

  It’s coming.

  Sol knows it, this time. He can see it ahead of himself clear as fucking day, thirteen hundred feet underground. Down here in the wet, dusty stink of the Penn, again, again. Over the rattle of the ore car and the chattering shatter of the widowmakers on the rock face down the end of the drift, he can hear the screams and curses and gasping for air that’s coming, soon enough. His nose tests for the acrid bite of burning wood, his lungs pull tight inside him, searching for the tickle of ash in the breath he sucks in.

  He knows it: it’s coming.

  Flame and smoke. Flame and fucking smoke and twenty-one men dead. Twenty-one men will die today, Owen among them.

  It’s coming.

  Sol hears the clatter of a dropped prybar, sees Billy looking back at him from a few feet away, eyes wide with fear. Billy knows too. A moment ago they were drinking coffee and fighting down hangovers with greasy hash and eggs; a moment ago Sol was throwing dice with Billy’s old uncle, the scar-faced, smiling bastard who can freeze a cup of coffee with a breath. A moment ago, a year from now, a year that had happened and would happen again, unless Sol does something.

  It’s crazy and makes no sense but Sol can see it shining back at him from the look in Billy’s eyes. Fear of a memory of a time that doesn’t yet exist. It makes no sense but Sol’s guts are in a tangle, his asshole tight as a saddle knot, sweat pushing through the grime on his forehead.

  It’s coming, flame and smoke: the mine is going to burn.

  “Go!” Billy shouts, pointing down the drift. “Fucking go, Sol!”

  There’s no time to think it through, no time to wonder if he’s gone completely batshit and is going to wind up down the road at Warm Springs, under the care of his brother; maybe in a day or two he’ll be swapping stories with old John Bird, Billy’s dad, about the times their heads cracked open and all the sane leaked out, laughing and hollering about what a great hoot that was, dragged away screaming about fires and futures and all sorts of fucking things. No time for that now, John Bird, Sol thinks as he sprints as best he can down the drift, hunkered down, elbowing the boys out of his way, ignoring their odd looks, no time for crazy talk because this mine is going to burn, ha-ha, I know it, going to kill a passel of men, and Owen, and how about that brother of yours, Whatshisname, with the scars and the dice and the cigarette bets, owes me a favor, that one does, and I guess this is it. Maybe soon enough he and Lizzie can rest on some porch stairs at the hospital, of an evening, enjoy a smoke and a lemonade and talk about whatever it is that lunatics talk about. How’s Owen? she’ll say, How’s my baby that I burned up? Sol will laugh, squeezing her shoulder and drawing her closer, her head to his chest, scratch of her hair against his beard. Oh, he wasn’t burnt up, girl, I saved him that first time, didn’t I, and then I saved him again, that time I went crazy down the Penn. Saved the lot of those boys from a fire that never happened, hey? And they’ll hug closer and swirl their crazy thoughts together and things will be as good as it was when they both were sane, years and years ago when they were young.

  Best not to think about it, not right now anyway, best to just take this chance and leave the thinking for later, once Owen and the rest of the crew are up at the Stope, tonight after shift, alive and not burnt up at all, drinking their Se
an O’Farrells and bitching about the day’s work, making rude jokes about their respective heritages and the rest of it, griping about the Company and maybe looking for a girl or a fight or just a good drunk to try on. Leave it till then and then maybe, maybe, take Billy aside to a quiet place and talk, low and lunatic, about what the fuck and that smiling, scarred-up old bastard of an uncle of his, with the evil looks and Indian magic and the crazy that’s crawled into Sol’s head and all of that.

  Right now, though: run.

  Coughing around the dust in his chest, trying not to bang into anything, too hard anyway, Sol sprints and staggers down the line of the drift towards the shaft, looking for Owen. Soon enough he finds him, hunched over, body sprawled out at a forty-five-degree angle as he pushes an especially overfull cart of ore towards the shaft to be hauled up to the headframe. As the new boy, Owen gets the shit jobs and it’s a bit of a game for the others to see just how heavy they can make the cars; the drift is mostly level but the cart itself is heavy enough even empty, the wheels and rails thick with muck, and stuffed as full as possible. That car can get damn oppressive, pushed back and forth over the course of twelve hours. Sol knows it from experience, years and years ago when he was the low man, doing all the scut-work and shit details, but it’s an expected part of the job and Owen needs to build up some muscle anyway. The boy takes after his mother, lean and narrow-boned. Pushing a heavy cart won’t kill him.

  Owen’s heeled forward, palms on the cart, arms stiff, legs spraddled out behind him, taking one steady step after another. The startled look on his face when Sol grabs the back of his shirt, pulling him upright, would be comical if Sol himself wasn’t so terrified about what is coming. “Are you OK, boy? Are you OK?”

  “What?”

  “Goddamn it, just follow me!”

  “What? Sol, what the hell is going on?”

  “Just follow me, boy! Don’t fucking argue with me, just follow and don’t get out of my sight, you hear, Owen? Don’t get out of my fucking sight!” Sol’s pulled the boy close, screaming the last into his face, knowing he won’t understand but trusting in the power of volume and spittle-flecked proximity to trump logic. Without further discussion, he runs off down the drift, dragging his son behind him, ignoring whatever it is the boy is saying.

  A moment or two later they’re at the shaft, where old Torsten sits on a stool, reading a detective magazine under the dim shine of an overhead bulb. He looks up with placid unconcern, marking his place with a finger. “Sol,” he says. “And whatever your name is.” Torsten doesn’t stand on ceremony; he’s been down the mines for almost forty years, seen plenty of boys come and go. It’s too much work to remember all the fresh ones, he says, so he doesn’t even bother to learn the names of the new kids until he’s reasonably sure they’re the kind that are going to stay. “What can I do for you, Sol?” he says.

  It’s then that Sol realizes that he has no idea what to do, how he’s even going to stop whatever is coming, now that he has the chance. Some screaming part of him just says take Owen and get the fuck out of the Penn, quick fucking sharp but, as soon as he thinks it, he knows that he’ll never let what’s coming find Billy and the rest of the boys. Or any of the other men, for that matter. But Billy knows what’s coming, that nervous, fearful part of him is saying, he’ll get the boys out. Might already be doing so, right now. Sol knows he can’t leave his crew, though, those boys that look to him, not even in the hands of Billy. It wouldn’t be right. They’re his responsibility. His.

  He casts his mind back – forward? – trying to remember – what? – whatever it is he knows about the fire down the Penn, what happened – will happen, Sol, you crazy fucking old man – a year ago. Now. In the aftermath, before, in the half-assed Company investigation, they figured that the fire broke out on the 1200 level – right? am I remembering that correctly? – and it started from an electrical short or an abandoned miner’s candle or who the fuck knew what else. But 1200. Two hundred plus men down the Penn that day, scattered across levels, the fire starts, they pull most of them out from safe levels and Sol and his boys go out the Tramway, a half-mile away. Most of Sol’s boys. He grabs Owen by the collar, pulls him closer.

  “Send me up to 1200,” he says to Torsten.

  Torsten leans back, scratching one gnarled, yellow-nailed hand across the stubble on his cheek. “Why you need to go up to 1200, Sol?”

  Sol doesn’t pause, just lets Owen loose and steps forward, grabbing the old Swede by the shirtfront. “Send me the fuck up to 1200, Torsten, or get ready to count your fucking teeth, old man. Get me up to 1200!”

  Torsten assumes a look of affront and peels Sol’s fingers from his shirt, brushing down his chest with wounded dignity. There’s no call for this kind of behavior, his expression says. None at all. He’s a senior man, after all, proved himself down these mines for years added on years. Sol Parker should show him some respect. General courtesy.

  “I ain’t no old man, Sol,” he says. “And you’re older than me, yeah. Older than me. No need to be rude, friend, I was just askin. But I send you up there, don’t worry.” He gestures towards the cage, still wearing his mournful, hurt expression, face like a slapped ass. Once Sol and Owen are inside, Torsten joins them – I go with you, yeah – taking what seems to Sol an inordinate amount of time ringing the hoist operator up at the headframe. By the time the confirming buzzes finally sound, Sol is ready to throw the old fucking Swede down the shaft.

  – 4 bells and 4: 1200 level.

  There’s a jolt and the cage starts moving upwards.

  “Sol, what’s going on?” Owen hollers over the rattle of the lift.

  Sol ignores the boy, trying to frame some kind of strategy. He can’t very well just start telling the miners to get out of the Penn, on no evidence at all, to just drop tools and fuck off up top because old Sol Parker has a scare up his butthole; when the fire starts he knows that the Company will damn sure try to hold him accountable somehow, if he does that, as a saboteur or on some other horseshit charge, negligence, maybe, no matter what he has to say. They’ll frame him up as a Wobbly anarchist or secret Bolshevik, burning up their mine. If, for some reason, the fire doesn’t start, if he’s wrong or just straight-up crazy, as he half suspects, the ACM will haul him over for that, too, and he’ll never find work again; they’ll tear up his rustling card and put him on the blacklist. Either of those options are fine and good, he’ll take them happily if it will keep all these boys safe, but the better bet is to just find this fucking fire and stop it before it happens.

  And how in the hell is he going to do that? Just stroll around 1200, asking hey now have any of you boys seen a fire? Strolling around is about the extent of his ideas, just yet, though; maybe something better will come to him but, so far, that’s all he’s got. Best not to overthink it and, given the fact that he’s here at all, it seems wrong that he won’t be able to straighten things out. Best to shy away from that thought, too, though, wrapped up as it is in crazy or whatever kind of goddamn Indian witchcraft or acts of God or what the fuck ever. It’s too big of a thought to get in the head all at once without pushing something else out, so Sol just figures to ignore it for now and trust that he’s here for a reason, and that reason is to stop a fucking fire.

  “Come on, boy,” he says, as the cage rattles to a halt on 1200. He steps out, dragging Owen behind him, leaving Torsten to his magazine. “Just shut up and follow me.”

  Owen has no idea what’s happening. He walks behind Sol, who shuffles along, head swinging down low, side to side like a bear. For several minutes they work their way down the drift, the old man pausing at timbers, from time to time kicking them with his boot. Sol ignores the miners they encounter, who look at them curiously and then go back to their work. Whatever they’re doing, Owen is at least enjoying a break from pushing that heavy goddamn cart up and down the drift all day. It’s bullshit that he’s the one who always has to do it but Owen also gets it, that he’s the low man and gets hind tit, workwise. It
’s paying your dues, he guesses, but at the same time he looks forward to the day when he’s not spending all shift at the ass end of a heavy ore cart.

  If he even lasts that long. Owen isn’t sure that the miner’s life is the best fit for him. Maybe it just takes some getting used to, but the work is hard and, he hates to admit it, being down inside the earth scares the shit out of him. His dad and the others seem to pay it no mind, but Owen can feel the weight of every single foot of dirt and rock overhead, pressing down on him; sometimes the shaft walls, already narrow enough, push tighter and his breath catches in his chest, his eyes go a bit swimmy, until he can relax some. Just the thought of that that makes his head get a little light now, so Owen tries to focus on his dad, who’s still shuffling along, muttering to himself.

  It’s strange being here with him, though, finally getting to know him some. Owen isn’t sure if he really likes Sol, not yet, anyway, given that the old bastard shunted him off as a kid because he was inconvenient or because of his mom or whatever the reason was, but he can see that there are at least a few things to admire about him. Which is a grudging thought but there it is. The other men look up to Sol, and he’s good at the work and seems fair and all that. He can be a pain in the ass and he’s a fucking taskmaster, but all and all there’s less to dislike about his old man than maybe Owen wanted to find when he first came to Butte.

  His thoughts are interrupted by the sight of a big, big, man, damn near as tall and wide as Nancy, maybe bigger, even, blocking the drift in front of them. A pissed-off look on his face, fists the size of sledgehammers at his hips.

  “What the hell you doing here, Sol?” the man says, his accent twist-mouthed and sharp around the edges.

  Jesus fuck, not now, Sol thinks, looking up from his scan of the timbers. He’s never gotten on with this big fucker. Vlad, foreman of another mucker crew, who he crosses paths with more than he’d like, given their mutual animosity. Never got on with most of Vlad’s whole crew, really, Russians or Serbs or whatever the hell they were, the lot of them insular and distrustful of non-Russians or non-Serbs or non-whatevers. Pride in your heritage is fine and good but if you won’t drink with a man because he doesn’t speak whatever vowel-bereft language you speak, well, that’s just bullshit. Plus Vlad’s crew are a bunch of big, hard-knuckled bastards and Sol and his boys have come off second best in a scuffle or two with them over the years, of an evening, and that rankles.