Walking

[Calico Jack Rackman]

Calico Jack slips unnoticed from his respectable quarters and out into the night. As he walks, he smokes: Calico missed this, and other pleasures of civilization. Smoking never makes him cough these days, nor stains his fingers yellow.

The streets around his haven are well lit and well cleaned. The people, of course, are the same mixture he was so familiar with, generations gone. Here a dipper, there a trull. Calico catches a snatch of speech, in a provincial accent unchanged for more than a hundred years. There stands a flash covey, busy hassling, cheating and strongarming his way to jail or the hangmans jig. In a different city, at a different time, Flash Harry there would have been a good recruit. He grins to himself at the idea.

The flash cove, seeing the grin, frowns and wonders at Calicos attention. A casual stroller would be wary of the flash cove. This prowling, cheroot smoking man is not. When their gazes lock a moment the steady eyes weigh flash up like a cod on a stall. The figure paces meditatively past, a black fin through the crowd. Flash is glad to see him go.

Calico walks past scores of faces, hundreds. The city got big; A man could be lost in it. Moving south, he vanishes first into the crowd and later into the night itself.