“Who sits there?” whispered a gambler.
But Bo had a secret. He was also a debt collector for the Black Bayou Syndicate, and the seating chart was his ledger of damnation. Seat 17 (portside, near the sternwheel window) belonged to Silas “Silk” Thornton, a cardsharp who’d fled Memphis after a high-stakes game turned into a high-body-count affair. Seat 44 (center, under the blown-glass chandelier) was reserved for the Honorable Phineas Woolcott, a judge who’d hanged an innocent man and buried the evidence in a sugar crate. Seat 89 (the shadowy corner by the escape ladder) was for Mamzelle Célestine, a voodooienne who’d cursed a plantation family so thoroughly that their own hounds turned on them. seating chart for general jackson showboat
The air along the Natchez Trace was thick with honeysuckle and the promise of trouble. In the summer of 1887, the General Jackson showboat was a floating palace of gaslight and gin, its calliope music luring planters, gamblers, and fugitives from three states. But tonight wasn’t about the burlesque or the blackjack tables. Tonight was about the seating chart. “Who sits there