The Ragtime Fool (13 page)

The girl’s eyelashes fluttered. “Next full show’s at seven,” she said. “Saturday afternoon, they’ve got cartoons and serials for the kids, besides the two features and the newsreels.”

Alan smiled politely. “Thanks. I’ve seen the movie.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Oh, wasn’t Gloria Swanson marvy? I just cried and cried.” She flicked the tip of her tongue against her upper lip. “Bet you didn’t cry.”

Miriam had sopped through a dozen tissues. Alan smiled again.

The girl smiled back. “Strong, silent type, huh? Hey, you don’t live in Sedalia, do you? I haven’t ever seen you around.”

“No, I’m in from New Jersey.”

“Wow. That’s a long way.”

“More than twenty-four hours on two trains.”

“Why’re you here?”

I came for the ceremony to honor Scott Joplin Tuesday night.”

She cocked her head and shrugged. “I haven’t heard about any ceremony…to honor who?”

Doubt surged in the pit of Alan’s stomach. He’d thought the whole town would be gaga, but it seemed no one here had even heard of Scott Joplin, never mind the ceremony. “He wrote ragtime music, played piano. The ceremony’s at the colored high school.”

“Hubbard?”

Now it was his turn to shrug. “I guess.”

“But you’re not colored.”

“Not the last time I looked.”

The girl’s laugh fell short of wholehearted amusement. “What’s your name, wise guy?”

“Alan. Alan Chandler.”

Big smile. “That’s a nice name.”

It’s a name, Alan thought. What’s she getting at?

“My name’s Eileen.”

“Glad to meet you, Eileen.”

“I get off at six, and I don’t have a date tonight.” Her mother would have a cow, Eileen thought, but her mother wasn’t here, and this boy was really cute.

“Well…” Alan scratched at his head. “I just got here, and I’m not sure I’m going to be free.” He saw disappointment cover the girl’s face, and told himself not to cut off any possibilities. “But in case I am, why don’t you give me your phone number.”

She brightened. “Sure.” She scribbled on a pad, then passed the paper through the hole in the glass. “I hope you can make it.”

“Me too…oh, hold on a minute. Can you tell me how to get to the Maple Leaf Club?”

“The Maple Leaf Club? Is that in Sedalia?”

“On Main Street. I think East Main, actually.”

Eileen looked like a student being asked a question on the math homework she hadn’t done the night before. “Main’s just a block and a half down, the way you came from. Didn’t you see it?”

Alan shook his head. “I didn’t notice any sign. I thought it was probably First, since the next street was Second.”

“No, what ought to be First is Main.” The girl hesitated. “But I don’t think you really want to go there.”

“Why not?”

“The wrong kind of people hang around on East Main. It’s not a safe place.”

“I’ll be careful,” Alan said. “Thanks. I’ll try to make it later.”

“Neat-o. We could go out to the Wheel-Inn and have a Guber-burger. Bet you never had a Guber-burger.”

Alan couldn’t help laughing. “I’ve never heard of a Guber-burger.”

“And they’ve got all the good songs on their jukebox. You can dance, right?”

“A little.”

“I’ll show you all the new steps. Oh, we’d have just a great time. All the kids go there Saturday night.”

And all the kids would see her walking in on the arm of the mysterious stranger from New Jersey, Alan thought. He waved, then walked away.

***

He’d no sooner turned onto East Main Street than he realized what Eileen had been trying to tell him. All along Ohio, almost everyone was white, but the faces on East Main were entirely black. Well, so what? Alan’s friend Tony Moseley lived on Hamilton Avenue, right in the heart of the Negro section of Hobart, and Alan never gave a thought to walking down to Tony’s, any time of day or night.

Two old Negro men sat, smoking corncob pipes and talking, on a bench in front of the Archias Seed Store, a large brick building that Alan thought could have been standing at the time of the Revolutionary War. He remembered Huck and Jim had smoked corncob pipes on their raft as they drifted down the Mississippi, but he’d never seen a real live person puffing away at a hollowed-out cob. One of the men, a wrinkled ancient with an impressive top-mop of white wool, caught Alan staring. He pulled his pipe from his mouth, jabbed it in the boy’s direction. “Help you with somethin’, young mister?”

He looked old as Sedalia, but in considerably better repair. Blue suit clean and pressed, high button shoes polished to a fare-thee-well. He was clean-shaved, and his eyes shone bright and clear. “Where’s the Maple Leaf Club? I’ve read about it, and now I’d like to see it,” Alan said.

The man glanced at his friend on the bench, then turned back to Alan, and pointed at a two-story building across the street. A large sign covered the space between its two floors:
CARL ABBOTT’S RECREATION CENTER
. “Well, there be the building it was in, but the club’s gone fifty years and more. See them long windows with the curvy tops, up to the second floor? That was where it was. I spent many a good hour there, and oh, how them boys could play piana.”

Alan’s heart raced. “So you must have seen Scott Joplin, and heard him play.”

“Oh, yes, sure ‘nough. Not that he was the fanciest player, mind you. I don’t think he ever did win a single cuttin’ contest. But when Scott Joplin was in the right frame of mind, he could play ragtime fit to tear out your heart. I used to think how the angels was puttin’ down their harps to listen.”

The second old man nodded emphatic agreement. “Never heard nothin’ like that before or since.”

“Did you know Brun Campbell, too?” Alan could barely speak the words.

The wool-haired man stared into the distance, then slowly shook his head. “Name does ring a li’l bell, but I can’t say I do recall him. He play ragtime too?”

“Oh, yes. He was Scott Joplin’s only white pupil. Took lessons from him here in Sedalia, back in 1899.”

Again, the old man shook his head. “No, afraid that don’t help. Scott Joplin, I sure do recall, and many others too. But not no white pupils, sorry.”

Alan felt disappointed, but told himself it didn’t really matter. “Have you heard about the ceremony at the Negro high school Tuesday in honor of Scott Joplin?”

“I surely have,” the old man said. “I figure to go and see it.”

“Well, Mr. Campbell’s going to be there,” said Alan. “He’s going to play piano. And make a speech—”

He stopped abruptly as the old man’s body stiffened. Alan bent to touch his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, sure, I be fine. Get to be a hundred years old, sometimes your body plays you tricks.”

“That’s how old you are?” Alan asked. A hundred?”

“Be a hundred and one later this year. And I expect it’s been close to half them years since anybody done walked up and asked me about Scott Joplin or the Maple Leaf Club. I’m thinkin’ maybe you oughta go and see Mr. Tom Ireland, he live up the road a bit. Got a mem’ry like nobody’s business about the ol’ ragtime folk, and he’ll talk your ear off all night, you give him half a chance.” The old man pushed himself up off the bench, stretched, rubbed at his lower back. “Matter of fact, as you can see, I ain’t got no pressin’ business to hand, so I will take you to Tom’s myself, if you like. That is, if you got no objection to goin’ slow. I do walk a li’l lame these days.” He waved at his friend on the bench.

The man returned the gesture. “See you later.”

Tom Ireland! Alan’s heart leaped. He remembered that name from
They All Played Ragtime
. And Brun Campbell, in his letter, had called Tom Ireland an old friend. “That sounds great.” The boy extended a hand. “My name’s Alan Chandler, and I came out from New Jersey for the ceremony. I love Scott Joplin’s music, and I’m determined to get Mr. Campbell to give me some tips on how to play it right.”

Again, the old man’s muscles tightened, but only for a moment. He gripped Alan’s hand. “Isaac Stark. Most pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Another familiar name.

But before Alan could say anything, the old man took him by the elbow. “Let’s be on our way, then.”

***

Isaac led Alan back to Ohio and across the railroad tracks. At the first intersection, they turned left, walked a block to Osage, then turned right and continued on, past small houses, most with little gardens in front and to the sides. Isaac smiled at the boy. “Look a li’l different here, hey? This place, they call it Lincolnville.”

Pretty clear why, Alan thought. Everyone they passed was Negro. And not a single person who caught sight of them failed to wave at Isaac, or call a greeting. “Looks like you know everybody,” Alan said.

“Live in a place some sixty-seven years, that happens. It was 1884, I come here. Mr. Arthur was president, after they shot Mr. Garfield. Long time ago.”

Alan tried to get his mind around the idea that this old man at his side was actually around and could recall what to him were no more than lines in a history book. “Then you must be able to remember when Lincoln was shot,” the boy said.

Isaac’s face went grave. “Saddest day in the life of a colored man,” he said. “We was all ‘fraid they was gonna put us back on the plantations… Well, there, yonder, that’s Tom Ireland’s house.”

Alan’s eyes followed the bony, knobbed finger. A man sat on the porch of what Alan would have called a small cabin, rocking slowly. As he saw his visitors come up the concrete walk to the porch, he stood, then shaded his eyes.

“’Afternoon, Tom,” Isaac called. “I brung you a caller.” He stepped onto the porch, Alan a half-step behind.

“I see that,” said Ireland.

“He want to talk about Scott Joplin.”

Ireland’s bony face relaxed into a smile. “Well, I guess you knew where to bring him.” He put out a hand to Alan. “Tom Ireland.”

“Alan Chandler. I read about you in
They All Played Ragtime
. I’m really glad to meet you.”

Ireland was slim, a light-skinned Negro with a prominent forehead and scooped-out cheeks. Alan figured him to be about seventy.

“Except for Mr. Rudi Blesh a couple of years ago, it’s been a good while since anyone’s come to talk to me about Scott Joplin,” Ireland said.

“Well, this boy come all the way from New Jersey,” Isaac said. “He’s going to the ceremony Tuesday night, and get a man called Brun Campbell to teach him how to play piana like Joplin.”

Ireland’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know Brun was coming out. I hear from him now and again. He was a wild kid, rode a train to Sedalia from Oklahoma, the summer of ‘ninety-nine, just about the time Joplin and John Stark signed their contract to publish ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ As I recall, there was a good deal of commotion, and Brun was square in the middle of it somehow. He left town right after, pretty sudden.”

Alan patted his book bag. “Mr. Joplin wrote all about that commotion in his journal. I read it on my way out here.”

Ireland chewed his upper lip, just below the thin, gray mustache. “You’re telling me you’ve got a journal of Scott Joplin’s with you? How did you—”

“It’s a long story, Mr. Ireland.”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

Ireland and Isaac exchanged glances, then Ireland stepped toward the front door. “Come on in,” he said. I’ll start a pot of coffee, and you can tell me all about it. That is, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind at all. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. And you can tell me what you know about Scott Joplin.”

Isaac laughed. “Boy, I don’t think any one of us got enough time on earth for that.”

***

Alan thought the whole of Ireland’s house would fit into his parents’ living room. The boy sat on a scarred, straight-backed pine chair, balancing a coffee cup on a knee. Ireland and Isaac, side by side on similar chairs, listened as Alan told them how he happened to have Scott Joplin’s journal, and why he’d brought it to Sedalia. He didn’t tell the exact truth about where the five thousand dollars had come from; it seemed better to say Brun had wired it to him. But all the rest was the straight scoop.

When the boy finished, Ireland smiled genially. “Well, Alan that is some story. Hard to believe you beat out Rudi Blesh. That man’s a demon, chasing down material he can write about. I’d say you did Brun Campbell proud.”

Alan beamed. “Thank you.”

“Where are you supposed to meet Mr. Campbell and give him the book?”

Alan shook his head. “He never did set a time and a place with me. Just told me he’d be out here for the ceremony.”

Ireland laughed. “Well, that does sound like Brun. He never was what you’d call a planner. But you’ve got me curious. Would you let me have a look at the journal?”

“Sure, if you’re interested.” The boy picked up the book bag from the floor between his feet, opened it, pulled out the journal. “Here.”

Ireland took the book, then looked back to Alan. “I’d be most interested in seeing what he said about the commotion in Sedalia.”

“I can find that part for you, if you’d like.” Alan reached for the journal.

“I would,” Ireland said. “I’d like that very much.”

***

The two Negroes worked their way slowly through three and a half handwritten pages, then looked at Alan.

“I was really surprised when I read that,” the boy said. “There was nothing at all about it in
They All Played Ragtime
. And Mr. Stark, when you introduced yourself, back on Main Street, I recognized your name from in the journal. You worked for John Stark, Scott Joplin’s publisher. Funny, you and he have the same last name.”

“Nothing funny about it,” Isaac said. “I took Mr. John Stark’s name because of he did me a great kindness back in ‘sixty-five.”

Ireland held up the journal. “Okay if we look through this a little more?”

“You bet. Take your time. Then, will you tell me some of what you know about Scott Joplin?”

“I’ll be glad to. Though I’m not sure I have anything as interesting as what you’re showing me.”

***

The sun was low in the west when Ireland, Isaac, and Alan came out onto the little porch. Alan pulled his jacket closed, set the book bag between his legs, zipped the jacket. “I just can’t thank you enough,” he said to the two older men. “I feel almost like I know Scott Joplin personally. Maybe it’ll help me play his music better.”