The Trials of Solomon Parker

by Eric Scott Fischl

  Bad Bird had been sunk into one of his black depressions, had barely looked up when Billy came into the little cabin, just rolled over on his side and faced the wall, ignoring his son’s hysterics. After a time Billy went out and found himself a drink, and then another one, and another, until his shoulder and heart didn’t hurt quite so much any more.

  “Can I have some tobacco?” Bad Bird says now, half-sitting on a big milk can, hand extended for a cigarette.

  “I don’t know, don’t want to interrupt your talking, Father. Plus you’re probably too tired out from all the help you’re giving me here with this goddamn manure.” Bad Bird has spent the morning telling stories, watching his son do all the chores, not lifting a finger. It’s not that Billy minds the stories or even the laziness, it’s that he has to listen to the same old shit every day, over and over, at least when Bad Bird is calm and lucid and out of his bed. These months of close acquaintance with his father, even given what went before, have done nothing but chafe.

  Wordlessly he rolls another cigarette and passes it to his father, who leans forward for a light and then closes his eyes, smiling, as he pulls the smoke into his lungs. Billy leans on the handle of the pitchfork and, for a time, they’re quiet, smoking in silence that’s only punctuated by the flabby sound of the occasional cow fart.

  Strange that he’s wound up here at Warm Springs, this time around. Of his own volition, before his father even. After Stevensville he’d bounced around the reservation some, drinking a bit but mostly just moving from one thing to another without much in the way of thought or ambition, just following himself along from day to day. Picking up work mending fence and stacking hay and the like, as he needed, aimlessly shuffling from one job to the next, which at some point brought him near Butte: a place he’d never wanted to see again, but here he was, just down the road from it. It was as if there was a pull there, the place a low spot, high as it is, that he’d been slowly rolling toward.

  Billy hadn’t been particularly surprised then, when, one day on the road outside Anaconda, he’d stopped to help a man whose cart had busted an axle and, when the man crawled out from underneath the contraption and dusted his long frame off, had proved to be Sol’s brother, Dr Rideout. One thing had led to the next, Dr Rideout seeming to take a shine to Billy and, sure enough, here he was now, working as an orderly and general dogsbody at Warm Springs. Wrangler of crazies, ice-bath dunker, carpenter, cowshit artiste.

  “Have you boys seen Owen?”

  Mrs Parker is standing in the barn’s door, a worried expression on her face. “He’s run off again.”

  Billy checks a sigh. It’s better to just indulge her with these things; easier anyway. Funny that, that other time, Mrs Parker had been so convinced that she’d killed Owen, burned him up in the fire, even though the baby had lived. Now, this time around, when she actually had done the thing, she believes with all her heart that her boy is around somewhere, always running off, the scamp, as boys do. Seeing her every day makes Billy sad, but also just tired and exasperated. With her and the lot of them, the nuts and loons and defectives that make this place their home. It’s an uncharitable thought, he knows, but wrestling clean diapers onto grown men – and several needed them – getting covered in their shit, bit at and kicked, day after day, uses up your charity pretty quick. The wailing and screams, the women who would spit at you and then try to suck you off, the ranting about conspiracy and things that weren’t there. Billy doesn’t know how Dr Rideout does it; he’s a damn saint to choose these people as a life’s work. It’s only Billy’s respect for the man that’s kept him at the hospital this long. There are easier ways to make a living and, now that Bad Bird is sorted, off the reservation, where people can look after him, there’s not much else holding Billy to the job.

  “Haven’t seen him, Mrs Parker,” he says. “Expect he’s around, though. You know how boys are.”

  Elizabeth is shaking her head no, picking worriedly at the hem of her sleeve. “Yes, you’re probably right, yes,” she says, still shaking her head. Her brow furrows and she puts a well-chewed fingernail to her teeth, nibbling at it. Her hands red and chafed, the nails ragged, quicks inflamed by her ceaseless fidgeting. She gets agitated easily and, once she starts, it can be hard to settle her down again.

  Billy extends his half-smoked cigarette towards her, raising his eyebrows in question. Sometimes it’s best to just distract Mrs Parker, derail her one-way train of thought as much as you can. Sure enough, her eyes light up and she reaches a hand out, greedily. The patients aren’t supposed to smoke, and Elizabeth Parker is damn sure to be kept away from fire. Hell with it, though, Billy thinks, he’s right here and can keep an eye on her. Poor lady is carrying around a pile of shit for a life and, if a damn cigarette can make her happy for a bit, let her have one.

  “Shouldn’t give that one tobacco, Sagiistoo,” his father says in the old tongue. “That one is crazy.”

  Billy cocks a glance at Bad Bird. “Pot and kettle.”

  “Rile her up. She’ll burn down this whole place and us with it.”

  “What is he saying, Billy?”

  Billy turns back to Elizabeth. “He was just saying how pretty you look today, Mrs Parker, standing there in the light like that. Like a angel, he said. Careful with this old man, though: he’s a charmer.”

  She blushes, looks girlish for a moment. She’s still a beautiful woman, Elizabeth, when the pain and fear drop away from her face and leave her eyes, rare that it is. She looks like a woman half her age and it’s easy to see what drew Sol to her, when that happens. It makes it even more sad to see the expression die, as quickly as it arrives, shut up as the worry comes back.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen Owen? It’s almost lunchtime.” The gnawed fingernail goes back to her teeth, the stub of the cigarette forgotten in her other hand. “I need to go find him.”

  Before she can turn and leave, Billy steps over and takes her wrist in a gentle grip, stopping her. “I’m sure he’ll turn up, Mrs Parker, but I’ll just take that cigarette, OK?”

  He smokes the remnant as he watches her hurry off towards the main building. He can hear her calling for her dead boy.

  “Crazy, that one,” Bad Bird says, a strange look in his eye. “But they say us crazies see the world as it really is, don’t they?”

  “They say a lot of stupid shit, Father, whoever they even are.” Billy knows the things he himself has seen, and doesn’t like the thought.

  “Told you she’ll burn this place down one day, that one,” Bad Bird says, nodding towards the retreating Mrs Parker.

  “You’re probably right, Father.” Billy twists the last bit of cigarette out under his boot. He stretches his back, rolling his bad shoulder one last time, looking grimly towards the long line of stalls he’s yet to muck. “I got to get back to work. Don’t suppose you’re going to help.” But Bad Bird has already resumed his low, breathy chanting, eyes closed, sitting there on his milk can, motionless as a tobacco-store Indian.

  Well, to hell with him. As Billy steps into the first stall and stabs the fork into the pile of hay and warm shit, he tells himself again that it’s not a bad life he’s found, this time. Better in some ways than the one that came before, the one he tries not to think about. More and more it’s just a kind of strange memory, losing its reality with the passage of years that are rolling toward it. He’s young and healthy – mostly – now, he has a job and a friend or two and there’s even a girl up at town who seems to maybe have a bit of shine in her eye for him, a state of affairs he needs to investigate further when he can find the time. Even if he’s mucking shit, day after day, diapering crazies and the rest, at least he’s not down in a dark, wet, fearsome hole in the ground, that will one day be the death of him. Here, a lunatic might stab him or a cow kick him in the head but, if that happens, at least it will happen on the ground, not buried under it.

  It’s not a bad life, not at all. Maybe not the one he would have picked for himself, not exactly, but pretty a
ll right, most of the time. It’s not a bad life but, looking over at his father, still chanting the old songs, Billy wonders if he’d change it if he could.

  4.

  Sol’s been dreaming about the fire again. There’s a faint, lingering whiff of smoke in his nostrils and his throat hurts, dry and scratchy. Whether from dream-smoke or from shouting himself awake, he isn’t sure. More than one of the girls has complained about Sol’s tortured, thrashing sleep, the mutters and shouts and grinding teeth, that keeps them awake. Sometimes when he wakes up his fingers are clenched so tight into fists he has to pull them free in aching stages, until he can straighten them all the way, leaving dead white half-moons in his palms from the press of the nails. When the girls complain Sol merely growls then don’t stay over, as if it was their choice, when, in fact, Sol is the one who’s brought them there, bought their time. Sometimes, the touch of a warm woman, even a stranger or a working girl, in the middle of the night, is what he needs. Just to be able to press his nose into the back of a woman’s neck, smell the perfume and sweat and clean or dirty hair and all the rest of the things that makes up the scent of a female.

  That spell is always broken the next day; he’ll wake up, hungover more often than not, and look at the blousy, puffy eyed tart in the bed next to him, stinking of under-clean linen and a dirty crotch and other men’s semen. Don’t stay over, he’d say. If they bitched about his thrashing around he’d tell them to just drink more or use more dope – that’ll make you sleep – or just shut the fuck up, now get dressed and out of his room.

  Sol’s alone today, bleary and dry, his head aching in time with the pounding on his door. Maybe it’s the hangover or the nightmare or a combination of the two, but he feels uneasy, for no reason he can put his finger to. He doesn’t want to open that door, face whatever might be coming. He just gets these sorts of feelings sometimes. Woman’s intuition.

  Looking out the window, he can tell it’s late afternoon, the sun hanging large and low in the sky; the room, nice as it is, is still hot and close and Sol can feel the sweat running down his ribs. He lifts an arm, sniffs experimentally, pulling away from the stink of himself, dirty pits and stale booze. Again, he tells himself that he’s going to stop drinking so much but, any more, he needs it just to sleep, most nights, lousy as that sleep is when he gets it. It’s medicine, really, vital for his health and all that. Man needs to sleep to live and maybe he needs to drink to sleep so there it was. Sol just wished he didn’t usually feel like day-old shit in the morning.

  The hammering at his door continues as he levers himself upright, wiping a handful of sheet across his chest to dry the sweat some. Bang bang bang on the door or maybe it’s just inside his head. He takes a long drink from the mason jar full of water, now tepid and flat, that he’d put next to his bed whenever he’d finally gone to sleep. The sun had been up, that much he remembered.

  Bang bang bang.

  “Hold the fuck on, all right?” he mutters.

  Bang bang. Hollering from the other side of the door.

  “Sol? Sol, you up? Wake up now.”

  It’s that fat fucker Mickey Doyle. There’s no love lost between the two of them, what with Mickey believing that Sol has usurped his rightful place as Sean’s number two, but fuck him: it’s not Sol’s fault that Mickey is stupid – although a shade smarter than that halfwit Faraday, to be sure – and that he lacks initiative and forethought. He’s big, Mickey, and that there is the sum total of his accomplishments in life, the entirety of what he adds to the Sean Harrity enterprise. Big and dumb and bang bang bang bang. “OK FOR FUCK’S SAKE, MICKEY, I’M UP!”

  Entirely pissed off now, forgetting the unease, Sol stumbles over to the door, sheet over his shoulder like a Roman, dragging in a train behind him. His dick is hanging out but who cares, let Mickey see it. It’s a fine piece of work, after all, unlike whatever sorry little bean the fat fucker is hiding under that gut of his. Haven’t seen your own pitiful little cock for twenty years, most likely, so take a look at this one, you flabby Irish bastard. He yanks the door open.

  “WHAT?”

  Mickey stands there for a moment, blinking stupidly at the sight of sweaty, disheveled, half-nude Sol Parker, prick hanging out for all the world to see. “Sol,” he says, finally. “You’re up.”

  “Of course I’m fucking up, you dipshit. You been banging on my goddamn fucking door for twenty minutes. What? What do you want?”

  Fuck you. Sol can see the line of Mickey’s thoughts in the play of his fat, stupid face. Like reading a book. Fuck you. If you got the fuck out of bed I wouldn’t need to keep pounding at your door. It’s humiliating for him, Sol knows, being sent like an errand boy, and he knows that, one day, Mickey will try to test Sol, try to take his place. He’s so transparent that he may as well be shouting it.

  “Sean wants to see you,” Mickey says instead.

  “And he sent you to fetch me, huh? Ain’t that cute, Mickey. Finally, a use for your limitless talents.” Here I am, fucker. Whenever you like. Sol can’t help needling the big dummy, although it’s probably not the smartest thing to do just now, stood here with his dick out, by himself, hungover and, more to the point, unarmed and about a hundred pounds smaller than the man. He can see the muscles in Mickey’s jaw bulge outward as his teeth clench, but Sol knows that, if there’s one thing that Mickey is afraid of, it’s Sean Harrity. So maybe Mickey’s not so stupid after all, really, because it’s nothing but smart to be afraid of that evil fucker.

  “Hang on, just hang on a minute. Whiskey on the table if you want it,” he says, placatingly, pointing his chin to the bottle, which has barely an inch or two left in it.

  “I’m fine.” The jaw muscles relaxing a bit.

  “Well, I’m not, Mickey, so pour me one, hey? Got a thirst, first thing in the morning. Afternoon, whatever. Got a thirst.”

  “Boy’s a faggot.”

  “Well now, Sean, who are we to judge? Ain’t like we don’t have our own vices.” Sol is ensconced in one of the huge easy chairs in Sean’s office, the city office, not the little hole behind the Piper where threats were made and the more gutter sorts of activities planned. This is the office of a respectable businessman, where a civil, and vastly more lucrative, sort of illegality is attended to. It’s a place of buttery soft leather chairs, thick Persian carpets, shining brass spittoons. The smell of pricey cigars, a sideboard full of the finest liquors. The walls are paneled in some sort of dark wood – mahogany? teak? – and the gleaming desk, of a matching color, is the size of a rhinoceros.

  This room’s a place where Sean can meet with his betters, the Company men and their assorted clingers-on, the lawyers, politicians, the like, in an environment better suited to hide what he, Sean Harrity, is: an Irish piece of shit, a thug from the alleys of Dublin who has no reservations about much of anything, if it benefits him in any way. A prick with delusions of grandeur, come to bustling Butte to seize that gleaming brass ring. The American fucking dream and all. Here in this office Sean can pretend that he’s merely a businessman, one who had particular resources offered by few others; he was a well-connected gentleman of society, Sean Harrity, and never mind his grammar or the broken knuckles. A self-made man like our own Marcus Daly, pulled up by his bootstraps using the sweat of his brow and that natural cleverness that comes with being a son of Erin.

  “Still, Sol, a shameless queer. Unnatural, is what it is.”

  Strange, then, to be in this room of gentlemanly business aimed at the cream of Butte society, staring at huge, gangling young Eamonn Mallon, standing there, all shoulders and elbows, head down in shame. It’s perhaps inevitable, being here in Butte again, that Sol would cross paths with some of his boys, but it still feels odd. First Sean and Butte itself, then Michael, and now here’s Nancy: it’s as if Sol’s life is always going to settle out around certain features. Like a shaken gold-pan, swirled and jostled, leaving the flecks at the bottom of the dish when the water pours free. Maybe, if Sol’s life is shaken out, Sean and Nancy
and the rest of it are left there gleaming in the wet, that it doesn’t matter whatever sand and gravel or what else makes up the remainder: the color is always there hiding somewhere, ready to show.

  Or maybe the universe just isn’t very creative, with only so many ideas to hand. Best not to think about that shit anyway; any of the before never happened. He’s never known Eamonn Mallon, who everyone called Nancy, no matter what he remembers.

  “Bit harsh, Sean. Just a kid, really.”

  “Heaney caught him sucking off one of the fellas in the back room of his place, Sol. It’s disgusting, is what that is. Aberrative.” Sol can tell Sean’s pleased with that five-dollar word, as he repeats it. “Aberrative. Good Book has something to say about that kind of behavior, you bet your asshole it does.”

  The boy’s head hangs lower. He’s breathing so hard Sol can hear it, a thin wheeze of fear or humiliation or both. It didn’t matter what had happened before – didn’t fucking matter – but Sol can’t help but feel a hitch in his chest, seeing him like this. That big kid was – would be, whatever – one of the best of Sol’s crew, back before, and this isn’t right. Who gives a shit what he put in his mouth, who he fucked? World is hard enough, already, and Nancy is who he is and besides, who are you to fucking judge anyone, Sean. He can’t stop his mouth from opening.

  “Yeah, but come on, cut the kid a break,” Sol says. “You Irish are a nation of sheep fuckers, hey? Lonesome shepherds, all that? What’s that word you used? Aberrative? Seems like the Good Book probably has something to say about that kind of behavior too, Sean.”