Seating Chart For General Jackson Showboat Instant

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.

Judge Woolcott, now in Seat 44 (the chandelier spot), laughed too loudly. “A game of musical corpses!” he brayed. Half an hour later, the chandelier’s crystal chain snapped. It fell like a guillotine’s blade. The judge was crushed—but not before someone had carved the number “44” into his palm with a shard of glass. seating chart for general jackson showboat

And Seat 2—the captain’s own table, dead center—was for a man known only as “the Accountant.” No one knew his real name, but his specialty was settling scores with a thin wire and a smile. The air along the Natchez Trace was thick

The room went silent as a grave. Bo LaGrange had sold the seats as “premium assignments” to wealthy guests, but he’d also sold their names to a network of assassins. The Accountant was merely the final bidder—a man who paid in gold and collected in souls. But there was one seat left on the chart: Seat 1. It had been empty all along, drawn as a tiny skull. Tonight was about the seating chart

And the seating chart, as the river rats whispered, was a death warrant.

“Who sits there?” whispered a gambler.