I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

27 Dapper Jack

“So,” Waddell said. “Primrose happy with what he got?”

“He is.” Dapper Jack lifted the coffee pot off the stove and put one gloved hand on its side. When warmth seeped through to his fingers, he poured a measure of the thick black liquid into a cup and sat down at the stained and pitted table. “He wants more, though.”

“Typical Pel.” Waddell leaned back in his chair. His hair was shot through with gray, but still dark enough to stand out in stark contrast against the white wall behind him. He stretched and then shifted forward to tap a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the table. “Always hungry.” He slid one slim cigarette out and held it up, raising one questioning eyebrow.

Dapper Jack accepted it and flicked open his lighter to light the second cigarette which Waddell set between his own lips. The smoke curled around them like vines up tree trunks.

“What else does he want?” Waddell asked finally.

“Removing a big chunk of the railroad was fine, but it has not escaped his notice that there was no train on the line, and therefore no Baccarat.”

Waddell shrugged and sucked another mouthful of smoke from the cigarette, which he held between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. “Someone will get him eventually.”

“The wind over the Plains says Baccarat is going out to inspect the damage and oversee the repairs.” Jack said. “Jimmy says I’ll be there to meet him.”

Waddell’s cigarette paused in midair. “If Baccarat was the sort to go out walking by his lonesome self at night, he’d be gone already. How are you going to get close enough to do anything?”

Jack crushed the end of his cigarette into the table on a blackened spot, where many others had done the same and reached behind his back to pull out the long knife he kept tucked into his waistband. He set it onto the table, where it caught the glow of Waddell’s cigarette in a faint orange gleam on the silver-chased sheath, and slid the blade out. The curling patterns from the sheath were echoed by etchings on the blade. “I have killed men with this knife.” How many he could no longer remember. “And Baccarat won’t be the first or the last Pel to feel it kiss his throat.”

“You don’t have a plan.”

“Not yet,” Jack said. He ran a finger down the flat of the blade and let it drag lightly over the point. A drop of blood welled up on the pad of his finger and he looked at it. “I’m thinking. And I haven’t got the message yet that Baccarat’s on the move, so I have a little time for ruminating.”

Waddell snorted. “By the time he moves, it’ll probably be too late. You won’t catch him.”

“I have the beginning of a plan.” Jack licked the droplet from his finger. “Whatever train he takes, I’ll hear about it, and I’ll be out of the city before he is.”

“And then?”

“And then I’d like to know where I can find Merritt and his army.”

The burning end of Waddell’s cigarette was fast contracting to his pinched fingers. He took a last drag and crushed it into the table next to Jack’s butt. “You sure you’ll hear in time?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Waddell said, “I suppose I can send word up to Merritt. If you were to take the train to Mattea, he could have a man watch the station when the trains went by for a few days, to meet you. But I want to know what you’re going to do when you get there.”

“Find a way for Merritt to distract the Pels, I suppose, and take whatever openings I get. Why do you need to know all the details?”

“Because I’m the one who’s vouching to Merritt that you have some mind of your own left. That you’re doing this because it’s for the good of the Plains, and not because you’ve become another useless Pelagoan lackey. Because if this is the chance we have to get rid of Baccarat, I want to know that there is a reasonable chance we will succeed, and not set the Plainsmen up for another generation of oppression while we watch the Plains get chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces. Because the next time I see any Dorsane, I’d like to tell them that the family name is still an honorable one. So tell me that there is still a Jackdaw Dorsane behind Dapper Jack, with his silver jewelry and kid leather gloves and scented cigarettes.”

Waddell’s heavy brows rose along with the volume of his voice as he spoke, and he tapped a thick finger on the table to punctuate his words. His adam’s apple throbbed angrily in the sagging folds of skin at his throat. Jack could have picked up the knife and ended the old man’s tirade in one bloody moment.

“You think because Jimmy Primrose tells me what to do, you can too?” The words came out sulky and petulant, in the tone of voice his grandfather had often chastised him for. When had the conversation changed from a negotiation between equals to an old man disciplining a stubborn child? Jack put his hands in his lap and sat up straighter in the rickety chair beneath Waddell’s glare. “I do need a plan,” he said reluctantly.

“Yes.” Waddell said. “You do.”

Under the table, Jack pressed his thumbnail into the scratch he’d made on the tip of his finger, looking for some spark of inspiration from the small pain. “I came to Delta Mouth to find a way to use Primrose again Baccarat.”

Waddell took out another cigarette. This time he did not offer one to Jack.

“They’re both greedy; they both want to have the whole city for themselves. If Baccarat is gone, then Jimmy will want the railroad. If Baccarat could shift Jimmy out, he’d take over the shipping interests.”

“Greed is a weakness.”

Jack watched Waddell blow smoke toward the ceiling. “And pride.” A weakness for the Pelagoans, a weakness for the Angiers. Putting himself in Jimmy’s service had bent Jack’s pride, but not broken it. “That’s one we all have to watch out for.”

Waddell held out the cigarette pack. “That’s a start. Tell me what else; tell me how you’re going to make their weaknesses into our strengths.”

Jack accepted a breath of flame from Waddell’s cigarette to his and sat back in the chair. The beginning of something began to tickle inside his mind, like the first breath of wind shifting seed heads in the prairie grasses. He pulled the smoke into his lungs and let it sit there, pregnant with possibility, for a ten-count. When he began to speak, Waddell nodded his gray head with approval.