The Meq (29 page)

“I am previously acquainted with Mr. Joplin, Mitchell, but thank you for the courtesy,” Carolina cut him off. “We are old friends and I’m only sorry Miss Lily could not be here to greet him,” she said, giving the man a warm embrace and taking his arm in hers. I could tell he was a shy man and he only smiled a little and said, “I’m so sorry, Miss Carolina, about Solomon. I just lost someone myself not two months ago.” Then he extended his hand to Nicholas and they shook hands. “That goes for you too, Nick.”

“Thank you, Scott. He believed in you, you know.”

“I know,” the man said, “I know.”

Mitch nudged me in the ribs. We were just two kids in the background. “That’s my teacher, man. That’s Scott Joplin. He’s teachin’ me to read music . . . write it down too . . . He’s the best, Z, the best there is.”

Carolina led everyone into the large dining room and main salon where people were already mingling and enjoying the food, wine, and beer that Ciela had prepared and laid out. There wasn’t any formal design or shape that Carolina had planned for her “remembering.” She believed things would take care of themselves. “Solomon’s presence is everywhere in this house,” she said. “Let him decide.”

The musicians all gathered around the Steinway grand piano in the main salon along with most of the others. It was the first time I’d noticed the absence of Georgia’s old upright. As Ciela replenished refreshments, Carolina rearranged the furniture so that everyone could be closer to the piano and the music. She asked Nicholas and me to move some couches, sofas, and chairs, which we did almost without complaint and without speaking. Nicholas was having the obvious problem of not knowing how to relate to someone who looked twelve years old, but was older than him in reality. It wasn’t easy and I wasn’t helping. Then an odd thing occurred.

The two of us were trapped for several minutes behind the couches and sofas as a line of people resituated themselves with their food and drinks. We were both awkward in the moment and neither of us knew exactly how to make it better. We started to talk about long lines and waiting in general, but especially at the gate of any good baseball game, then about the frustration of the fans with prices and conditions, then the state of the game itself, the current standings, Cy Young, pitching, fundamentals . . . everything, anything that related to the new friend we had in common, the one that eliminated our differences and allowed us to become direct and easy friends—baseball. Baseball is the one great communicator. Baseball overrides it all.

Carolina encouraged the way things were going. She joined in as Tom Turpin sat at the piano and played several of “Solomon’s favorites.” Every room was filling up and a path had to be cleared for the horn players to get to the piano. In the crush, Scott Joplin turned and gave me his bowler hat, saying, “Would you mind finding somewhere safe for that, son?” I said I would be glad to and slipped through the crowd to an alcove under the stairs with an empty bench and a door I hadn’t seen before. I left the hat there and found Mitch listening to the music, nodding his head. Scott Joplin was at the piano. “That’s called ‘The Chrysanthemum,’ ” Mitch said. “It’s just published, brand-new!” Mitch knew all the particulars about him. He’d found his hero and teacher in the same person. The piece came to a close and Scott Joplin turned on the piano seat and Carolina took his hand. He dedicated the next composition to Carolina and “the missing lady,” calling it “Leola.” It was slow and haunting, and as he played, Carolina made her way back through the people, greeting everyone cordially, keeping her real terror somewhere deep inside herself, but it was taking its toll. I caught her eye for a moment and she knew I’d seen her weariness. I felt as guilty as if I had surprised her naked. I had done this to her. I had put her in this role where she had to assume all grief, inside and out, grief that should never have been hers in the first place.

I took a step toward her and felt a gentle tug on my sleeve. I turned, confused for a moment, then recognized the Ainu woman and her grandfather from the train ride to St. Louis. In so many words, she told me it was Solomon who had paid for their trip and allowed them to join their people at the Fair. They never got to thank him properly and felt the debt would go forever unpaid. I told her not to worry, Solomon would have considered their presence as payment. She asked if I had known him well, and as I was about to answer, the old man interrupted with his low, growling belches. He was looking at me, but speaking to the woman and she responded with a puzzled look. I asked her what exactly he had said. I told her not to try and make sense of it, but just to translate, literally, if she would be so kind. She said, “My grandfather asks for you to ‘name what you keep alive.’ ” I looked at the old man and knew there was only one answer. “The Meq,” I said, “the Meq is what I keep alive.” He seemed pleased and lowered his head in acceptance. I did the same. The woman smiled, embarrassed that she had missed something. I asked her name and she introduced herself as Shutratek and her grandfather, Sangea Hiramura. I told her my name was Zianno, and looking at the old man, told him I would keep his name alive in my memory. He belched and she said he said he would do the same.

I turned to look for Carolina and instead saw Nicholas was waving me over to meet the Cardinals’, player-manager, Charles “Kid” Nichols. Between us there were cardsharps and rabbis. I saw two bakers from the old Freund Bros. Bread Company and the tiny, five-foot tailor, Ira Stern, whom Solomon used to visit every day on his rounds. I saw the Deputy Police Commissioner, several old riverboatmen, and caught a glimpse of Annie Dunne, young Thomas Eliot’s nurse from down the street. Every room was alive with color, movement, music, and stories. It was the river of Solomon and somewhere across it, above it, I heard my name being shouted. It was Carolina.

Like the suddenness of being stung and the time it takes to realize it, I was aware of my new “ability,” my hyper-hearing. The clutter of noise and conversation became deafening, but I focused only on Carolina and found her the next time she shouted my name. As I started toward her, the “ability” went away, but just as it faded I thought I heard another voice, a voice as familiar as a younger sister’s would be, if I’d had one. It was Meq, I was positive. It was saying something about the Ferris Wheel and how beautiful it was, but vanished as a mirage does, probably some side effect of the “ability,” I thought.

I got to Carolina and her jaw was set tight in a false smile and there was a trace of panic in her eyes. She was standing with two men, one of whom I remembered from years before. Thankfully, he did not remember me. His name was Gideon Boehm and he’d worked in St. Louis for years as a sometime lawyer, sometime promoter of horse races and prizefights. His reputation was marginal at best, but it wasn’t him who Carolina seemed worried about. It was the other one. He was a plain man, taller than average, about sixty years old, with a strange but not unpleasant expression on his face. He seemed out of his element, yet completely at ease with it, as if he’d felt that way half his life.

“There he is,” she told the men, pulling me to her and putting her arm tight around my shoulders. “He was Solomon’s favorite grandnephew, this one,” she said, patting me on the arm, then standing away, looking at me hard and keeping her smile in place. “Zianno,” she said very slowly, “I couldn’t let these gentlemen leave without having you meet one of them. I know how much you love history in school and, well, I just couldn’t let this moment pass.” She paused again, keeping her smile frozen. “Zianno, I’d like you to meet Frank James.”

I stared back at her and she nodded, assuring me that I’d heard correctly, and in that moment we asked each other silently the same question . . . did Frank know Solomon had taken Jesse’s stash?

I looked up at the man and he smiled, extending his hand. “Nice to meet you, son,” he said.

We shook hands and I told him it was a real pleasure to meet him because the history books were doing him a disservice and not telling his side.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said and he glanced at Carolina. “Both sides pay in the end. Besides, son, it’s not history keeping me from talking, it’s the governor of Missouri.”

The other man laughed at that and I sneaked a glance at Carolina. I said, “Mr. James, did you know Solomon? Is that why you’re here?”

He looked down at me and he answered, but as he spoke he continually looked at Carolina. “No, I can’t say I knew the man. I heard his name once or twice, after the war, a card game, I believe, and maybe one other time . . . later on. No, son, I am here with Mr. Boehm and tomorrow I will fire my pistol to start a horse race. It is the only time the state will permit me to use a firearm.”

Carolina seemed to let out a breath that she’d been holding and thanked both men for coming, especially Mr. James for talking with me. They turned, and as Gideon Boehm led the way out, Frank James paused and spoke back over his shoulder to Carolina privately. “I don’t know how he did it,” he said and he winked at Carolina. “Never have. But I’ll tell you one thing. Jesse would have thought it damn clever.”

We both watched him disappear in the crowd without a word between us.

“Come on,” she said. “This ‘remembering’ is over. Solomon just said good-bye.”

She scanned the crowd and took my hand, weaving through the people until she found Nicholas near the music. Tom Turpin was back on piano and the woman, Yancey, was leaning on his massive shoulder. Carolina whispered something to Nicholas and we moved again, toward the stairs and the alcove with the door. On the way, she found Ciela and told her to clear the kitchen and the smaller rooms graciously. Nicholas was going to announce that it was time for things to wind down. She kept my hand in hers and led me through the door into the little room.

“I call it Georgia’s room,” she said.

It was a kind of office, study, and sanctuary all in one. There was a window in one wall with the curtains open and a beautiful cherry wood desk in front of it and a Tiffany lamp on the corner of the desk. Books in oak shelves lined two other walls from floor to ceiling, and against the wall closest to the door was Georgia’s piano. Outside, I heard Nicholas’s voice above the others, thanking everyone for coming, but now gently encouraging them to leave. Carolina sank into the chair behind the desk. She was completely spent. She looked up at me and in the smallest voice asked, “What will that evil one do with her, Z?” Star had never left her mind.

Just then, there was a light knock on the door, which was still open. It was Scott Joplin.

“Miss Carolina?”

“Yes, Scott. Please, come in.”

He hesitated, then stepped inside. “I don’t want to bother you,” he said, then glanced at me. “I’ve got a favor to ask you, kind of private.”

She saw where he was looking and said, “Don’t worry about Zianno. He’s family. Now, what do you need?”

“Well, I’d like you to keep this for me,” and he handed her a manuscript. It was titled “A Guest of Honor—an Opera.” “It was meant for Lily to sing,” he said. “I just don’t see any reason to pursue it until I know she’s all right. She has that voice, that voice that drips just like honey, and I can’t hear anyone else in the lead role.”

“I know, Scott. I have heard her singing to Star on many occasions. She has a lovely voice.”

“Well, I’d like you to just keep it here with you, then. Safe and secure. And if you hear from Miss Lily, I would be grateful if you’d find me or leave word with my publisher. I want Lily to know how I feel, Miss Carolina. I am serious about this piece and I am serious about her singing it.”

“I will be glad to keep it for you, Scott, and it will stay with me until I hear from Lily or you tell me otherwise. I miss her too. She had a lot of promise. My daughter, Star, she always loved to . . . she always . . . she—” Carolina broke down and covered her face with her hands. Scott Joplin asked if she was all right and she nodded behind her hands. He asked if he’d said something wrong and she shook her head. He looked at me for some kind of assistance or explanation. I said, “She’ll be fine, she’s just exhausted. Would you like me to get your bowler?”

He took the cue and turned for the door, saying, “Yes, son, thank you. Young Mitchell Coates will be looking for me.”

Carolina suddenly uncovered her face and looked up. “I like Mitchell,” she said. “I could use someone just like him around here.”

Scott Joplin stopped at the door. “Well, I believe he’s available, Miss Carolina. He’s a hardworking boy, bright, and he might be a good player someday. I will send him by.”

“Thank you, Scott, I mean it. Solomon always believed in you. Always.”

“I know,” he said, “I know.”

I slipped past him into the alcove and reached down for his bowler resting on the bench, and as I grabbed it, another bowler spun through the air and landed on my hand. A much older, nastier, and uniquely familiar bowler.

“Bull’s-eye,” the voice said.

I looked up and he was smiling, almost as brilliant and white a smile as the Fleur-du-Mal, only a thousand times more welcome. Ray Ytuarte. “What’s the matter, Z? It looks like you seen a ghost.”

Behind him stood Owen Bramley with Eder and Nova, who was almost as tall as Ray, only a hundred and ten years younger. Owen Bramley said, “It seems we’ve missed most of the festivities.”

I looked back at him, then over to Ray. I turned and looked at Scott Joplin, then past him to Carolina sunk in the chair behind the desk. I looked behind her through the window past the “Honeycircle” and beyond that to the shadow of a beautiful doubt and the echo of a whispered word, “beloved.”

“Yes,” I said. “You have.”

Twelve hours. It was just twelve hours from the time Ray had tossed his bowler that we were both boarding a train for New Orleans. Yet, in that short span I was witness to something so rare that Eder told me later it had never happened in all her time among the Giza. She had only heard mention of it through her parents in legends and stories from the Time of Ice.

It began with embraces and awkward introductions in the alcove, and Scott Joplin assuming we were family. Then Mitch rounded him up and Ciela cleared the house with shouts of “Out! Out” (in English). Nicholas helped show the last of the stragglers out with the utmost courtesy.