The Accountant turned the chart around. On the back, in fresh paint: SEAT 1: CAPTAIN BO LAGRANGE. REWARD: ONE WORKING SHOWBOAT, NO LIENS.
Mamzelle Célestine, now in Seat 89, tried to flee. She clawed at the escape ladder, but the rungs turned to copperheads in her hands. As she fell, she screeched: “Bo sold us! The chart is a bounty sheet! Every seat has a price!” seating chart for general jackson showboat
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. The Accountant turned the chart around
Bo screamed and dove overboard. The Mississippi swallowed him whole. But the Accountant simply shrugged, wiped the chart clean, and began reassigning seats for the next voyage. After all, a showboat without a captain is just a coffin floating downstream. Mamzelle Célestine, now in Seat 89, tried to flee
And that, children, is why you never sit down before you read the fine print.