A Congregation of Jackals

Chapter 8

“My name is Oswell,” Dicky said without turning around. He placed a chip upon the green felt and slid it toward the number box; the fingers tightened upon his shoulder.

Dicky added, “You’ve mistaken me for somebody whom you may touch without consequences.” He swatted the man’s hand from his shoulder and continued to slide his chip across the felt. The little blue barge traversed a tranquil sea of green.

“Turn around, Dicky. I’m not one for games.”

“A strange comment to make in a casino. And let me reiterate: my name is Oswell, and I’m playing roulette.” The croupier looked up at the man behind Dicky and said, “Sir, we are about to play. I cannot allow you to disturb my customers. Make a wager or step away from the gaming area.” The man sat beside Dicky. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his late fifties with a silver beard, white hair, a blue long coat over his striped blue suit, a tall white hat, and humorless narrow eyes on either side of an aquiline nose that could cut the air with a sneeze. Dicky’s furtive appraisal told him that this man was an outraged father (one who originated in Maine).

“You are supposed to remove your hat when seated beside a lady.” Dicky motioned to the woman beside him.

The father placed his hat upon the table. The croupier asked for final bets; the man from Maine disinterestedly tossed a chip onto the felt; the Alabamian spun the wheel and dropped the silver ball; the sphere danced across a game of checkers with a clacking tattoo.

As the ball hopped along the dial, the father reached into his blue vest and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He looked at the pretty woman beside Dicky and asked, “Are you here tonight as a companion of the man seated to your left?”

“I am not.”

“Then I would like you to witness this.” The hairs on Dicky’s neck tingled.

The Alabamian admonished the father with a glare. “Quiet.”

The father accepted the warning and silently unfolded his paper. Upon it was the drawing of a man’s face—Dicky recognized the visage as the one that he shaved every morning. The ball hopped along the inner rail.

The porcine men leaned forward. The pretty woman glanced at Dicky. The father flattened the illustration with his meaty palms. The roulette wheel slowed. The ball clicked like a slowly dripping faucet.

Dicky stood up and walked away.

Rain poured onto the cobblestone streets of New York City; the only carriages upon the drear avenues were covered ones guided by soggy drivers whose risks of pneumonia did not concern the people whom they conveyed. Dicky emerged from the doors of Callington’s onto a deck protected from the deluge by a two-yard overhang. He stepped beside the door, pressed his back to the wall and waited.

The door shut and summarily reopened; the father burst upon the deck and ran to its edge; he stared out into the rain for his quarry. Dicky rushed him from behind and pushed him into the downpour; the man spun around, his hat falling to the cobblestone. The gambler punched him in the jaw before the rain even had time to flatten his wiry white hair.

Standing beneath the cover of the porch and looking at the dazed father, Dicky said, “Do not pursue this.”

“She’s with child! You lied to her and took advantage of her, and now she’s swollen up with your leavings. You’re going to do right by her, yessir!”

Dicky did not impregnate women. Even when they requested (or begged) for him to spill his seed deep within their loins, he denied them without exception. (Additionally, he treasured the slow deliberate movements that they made when they wiped his ichor from their bellies or thighs or buttocks with warm, moist towels.)

“What is her name?”

The father was aghast; water pooled inside his agape mouth. He spat the fluid out and yelled, “How many women have you spoiled this way, you wretch?”

“What is her name?”

“The woman you dishonored—my daughter—her name is Candace.”

Dicky remembered Candace. She was a brown-haired woman with breasts a fellow needed two hands to hold and a bottom that wore his handprints very well, and she was ten miles from virginity the first time he had wedged himself in between her pale thighs. Apparently, one of her other lovers had been far less careful with his seed than he.

“Candace lied to you. That child is not mine.”

Rage flared in the eyes of Candace’s father; he reached his hand into his jacket; Dicky threw his right fist into the man’s nose; his knuckles cracked the cartilage. The man grunted and stumbled back; tendrils of crimson swung pendulously from his nostrils. Dicky returned to the porch, sheltering himself (and his suit) from the rain; the deluge hissed between the two men like a serpent with limitless lungs.

Candace’s father spat blood into the rain that had filled the gaps between cobblestones and the cylinder of his overturned hat. He looked up at Dicky as if awaiting a coup de grâce.

The handsome New Yorker said, “I know why you are upset, but I know for certain that that child is not mine. I can tell you things about your daughter that you would rather not know, but I would like to keep this encounter polite, brief and, most importantly, singular.”

As if he had suspected his daughter’s wayward nature all along, the man nodded his head and sighed. His blue jacket, now three tones darker with absorbed rain, clung to his heaving chest. His hand came away from his crooked, purpling nose slick with blood.