The Ragtime Fool (8 page)
Applause started slowly and hesitantly, but caught on, and by the time Brun began to play, he thought every pair of hands in the room was clapping.
***
Two in the morning, customers gone, the Aragon Ballroom so quiet as to seem unnatural. A small man with a spine badly twisted to the left pushed a wet mop over the floor past the small table where Brun and Cal sat over partly-filled glasses. Cal glanced at his wrist. “Getting late, Brun.” He knocked down the rest of the whiskey in his glass. “Your wife’s going to have a fit.”
Brun chuckled. “Naw, no trouble there. May’s been sleeping probably four hours already, and when she gets up in the morning to go to church, I’ll be asleep. By the time she gets back home, it’ll be after noon and she’ll be so full of Jesus, I won’t hear a word the rest of the day. Saturday night’s the best time for me to play.”
“Saturdays, you get the best crowds, too.” Cal pointed at Brun’s hat, now back in its usual jaunty position on the old man’s head. “How much did you take in?”
“Almost a hundred-twenty. Not too shabby, but I was hoping some guy with more in his bankbook than he could figure what to do with just might decide to bankroll me.” Brun shook his head. “Lotta dough to have to come up with in just a week or so.”
Cal blinked hard. “I wish I could help you.”
Brun patted the young man’s hand. “I appreciate the thought. At least I got enough from the crowd so I can take the train. Won’t have to ride a goddamn Greyhound bus. Maybe I can find me a sugar daddy in Sedalia, wants to make his town proud.” The old man drained his glass, poured himself a refill. “Damn, Cal, didn’t I have them stomping tonight? Everybody likes my music. Everybody but my wife, that is.”
Cal pushed back from the table. “Come on, Brun. I’ll get you home.”
“No hurry.” Brun jabbed a finger toward the half-filled bottle. “No sense wasting good whiskey. Might as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
Sunday, April 8
Late evening
Gray fog filled Jerry Barton’s basement. Clay Clayton, Rafe Anderson, and Barton chain-smoked cigarettes, lighting new ones from the butts of their last. Little Johnny Farnsworth puffed at a fat cigar. Otto Klein eyed him through the haze. “Christ a’mighty, Johnny, you look like you’re eatin’ a turd.”
“Smells like it, too.” Luther Cartwright snickered. The others laughed.
Farnsworth blew a mouthful of smoke in Klein’s direction. “You don’t like my ceegar, too goddamn bad,” the little man snarled. “If it bothers y’all too much, I’ll just pick up what I brung here, take it home, and do my smokin’ there.”
Barton scrambled to his feet. “Otto, Luther, shut the hell up. This’s my house he’s smokin’ in, and what I say is, anybody brings around what Johnny brung can smoke shit, eat shit, or toss shit, whatever he wants.” Barton pointed toward three round sticks on the floor across the room. “How’d you get your hands on that, Johnny?”
Farnsworth laughed, a dismissive sound. “Just figure some people’re more careless than they oughta be. A guy spends as many years as me workin’ as a blaster, you can give him a week, and he won’t have no trouble comin’ back with enough dynamite to bring down any building you’d like. That’s all you gotta know, and that’s all you’re gonna know…what the hell’s the matter with
you
, Rafe? You look like you got a fart stuck in your ass.”
Anderson shrugged. “I was just thinkin’. That’s all it’s gonna take? Just three sticks?”
Farnsworth’s face said he was through suffering fools. “Yeah, Rafe, that’s all it’s gonna take. Usin’ too much is as bad as not usin’ enough. Set up them three sticks just right, and you’ll have every person in that auditorium under six feet of plaster and stone.”
“The newspaper boys’ll take proper notice of
that
,” Klein crowed. “A schoolhouse fulla white and colored, all sittin’ together in the same room, gets blown to kingdom come? Bet it’ll be in the papers coast to coast for a good long while. Make people think mighty hard before they ever try’n do anything else like that again.”
“Be on all the news broadcasts too,” Anderson said. “Every station in Jew York’s gonna be hollerin’ about it.”
“Sure,” Cartwright said. “They sure’n hell will. And before we even got time to turn around, here comes the FBI.”
Johnny Farnsworth’s face said the concern was beneath consideration. “What the hell you sayin’, Luther? That we oughta run scared? Let the FBI stop us? And maybe one day we’ll see our grandchildren workin’ for the colored?”
“Wait a minute now, all of you. Just hold on.”
When Jerry Barton spoke in that tone, people went quiet. Everyone in the room turned his way. Even Klein looked deferential.
“Let’s not get too personal with Luther,” Barton said. “He’s got himself a fair point. Yeah, the feds’ll be here in nothing flat, people in town’re gonna talk, and that means we gotta be more than careful. We can’t figure to just do the job, then run on home afterwards and wait for guys with badges to knock on our doors.”
Klein looked around the room. Anderson and Clayton studied their feet; Cartwright shot glances at the cellar door. “Jerry’s right,” Klein said. “But shit, we got us more’n a week. Let’s do somethin’, then get back here next Sunday night and put the whole thing together, every detail, beginning to end. Make sure what we do gets in the history books, everything except our names.”
Grunts of general approval. Then, Farnsworth pointed at the three reddish sticks on the floor. “Bet I won’t even need an hour to poke around that school, and I’ll know exactly how to bring it down.”
Barton smirked. “Good. And speakin’ of school, that’s another thing. None of us can afford to go flappin’ his lips out of school.”
Anderson snickered.
“I ain’t pilin’ on the applesauce,” said Barton, and again, the room went silent. “All it’d take is for one of us to tie on a few too many, and then go blabbing to the guy across the table.” He glanced at Cartwright. “Or maybe to his wife. Or to have somebody get cold feet at the last minute, and run out and leave the rest of us high and dry. Time to shit or get off the pot. Who’s in?”
Barton put up a hand. Klein followed suit, then Farnsworth, Anderson, and Clayton, and finally Cartwright. Barton nodded. “Okay, then. We’re all in. Now. Do y’all swear that from this minute till after we’re all done, nobody’s gonna take a drop?” He looked at his glass of whiskey, stepped to the sink, poured it down the drain.
“Oh, that hurts,” Farnsworth groaned. But the little man picked up his glass and sent his undrunk liquor after Barton’s.
Barton grabbed an empty shot glass from the shelf next to the sink, blew dust off it, held it up. “Okay, everybody. Get out your knife.”
The men pulled jackknives from their pockets, flipped the blades open. Then, they went to work on their fingers. Three stabbed with the tips of the blades; the others drew knives across finger tips. One by one, they held their fingers over the shot glass in Barton’s hand, and pushed out drops of blood. Barton stirred the little pool with the tip of his knife, then applied the mixed blood to the wound on his finger. The other men did the same.
“Okay, then,” Barton said to the sound of knives clicking shut. “That’s a blood oath we just took, so now we’re all blood brothers in this thing. We’re gonna swear that this week, we’ll keep on thinkin’ about what-all we’re up to, but we ain’t gonna breathe one word about it to anybody else. Whoever breaks this oath, he’s no brother anymore, and it’s the responsibility of the rest of us to take a proper vengeance. I swear.”
He pointed at Farnsworth. The little man pushed, “I swear” through tight lips.
Barton directed a bloody finger at each of the other men in turn; they all swore allegiance to the oath.
Barton nodded satisfaction. “That’s it, then. Ten o’clock next Sunday night, back here. Anything comes up in the meanwhile, anybody hears anything, you call me, and I’ll get the word out. Right?”
A one-word chorus cut through the smoke. “Right!”
Monday, April 9
Morning
A few minutes before ten, Brun turned the corner onto Venice Boulevard, walked up the block to his barber shop, and pulled out his key ring. Before he could unlock the door, though, he saw he had a visitor. The woman smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Campbell. I thought it was time we had a talk.” She motioned with her eyes toward the barber shop.
“Well, yeah, Miss Vinson, sure.” Brun opened the door, then followed the woman inside, leaving the CLOSED sign facing outward. He gestured toward the piano bench, but Bess remained on her feet, still smiling. “What can I do for you?” Brun asked.
“You must have some idea, Mr. Campbell.”
“Well, I guess I do. But hey, Miss Vinson, give me a break, huh? Look around this place. He extended his arms, palms up. “You come by what, four days ago—”
“Five. Last Wednesday.”
“Whatever. Where do you think I’m gonna come up with five thousand dollars? I never had that much money in my life.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was level, patient. “My brother-in-law’s talked to Mrs. Joplin again, and that’s what she says it would take to get the journal away from Mr. Blesh. Time’s running out. Mr. Knopf will be back this coming weekend, and my brother-in-law says the editor and Mr. Blesh will be all over him the minute he gets a foot into the office. Then it will be too late. If we can’t get the money to Mrs. Joplin this week, we’ll have to forget the whole thing.”
Brun tapped a rhythm on the counter next to the cash register. “Okay, listen a minute. It’s too short of a time for me to send anybody a letter, and I already called everyone I know. Maybe we could make a deal with Mrs. Joplin. She wrote me some real nice letters a few years ago to say thank you for all I’m doing to get people to know about her husband, so how about if I give her a phone call? I could tell her if she lets me take the journal to Sedalia, I’ll use it to pitch the crowd about a ragtime museum, and get ahold of the deep pockets there. Pitch
them
for her five K. How’s that sound.”
Bess seemed to be thinking the matter through. “What if you don’t get the money from the people at Sedalia?”
“Well…I’ll think of something else.”
Bess favored Brun with a long fish eye. “Mr. Campbell, have you seen Mrs. Joplin lately? Talked to her?”
“I haven’t ever met her face to face. But like I said, she wrote me a bunch of nice letters—”
“She’s almost eighty, her hearing’s not so good, and she’s…how should I say this? Her mind isn’t all that it used to be. My brother-in-law heard Blesh tell the editor she’s gotten pretty flighty. I’m afraid if you try to sell her that idea over the phone, she might get confused or upset, and just hang up on you.”
Brun nodded, then raised a finger. “Hey, wait a minute. I been negotiating with some people in Hollywood to make a movie about Scott Joplin, Ethel Waters might be in it. Maybe they’d give us the money to read what’s in his journal and use it in the movie.”
Bess looked dubious. “You really think they’d give you five thousand dollars while they’re still negotiating with you, and you don’t even have the journal to show them? Besides, they’d probably just as soon make the story up, which they can do for free.”
Brun sighed. “You’re pretty good at shooting down a guy’s ideas.”
She smiled. “You’re pretty good at making up suits out of whole cloth. I’m sorry, Mr. Campbell, believe me, I am. We’ve got a chance here to make something happen, but it’s going to take some cold, hard cash in Mrs. Joplin’s hand.” She moved toward the door. “You’ve got my phone number. I hope you can find a way to get the money.”
“Not to be rude, Miss Vinson, but ain’t there any chance at all you could help a little, yourself?”
She shook her head. “I wish. I’ve got a beauty shop that’s no bigger than your place, a ten-year-old daughter, and no husband. You think
you’re
strapped every month?”
“Well, it was worth a try.”
She waved crossed fingers at him. “Good luck. I’ll talk to you later.”
Wednesday, April 11
Afternoon
Alan ran into the kitchen, dropped his books on the chair at the end of the white formica table, then froze as he noticed the air-mail envelope addressed to him in his own handwriting. He snatched it up, started to tear it open—and saw someone had been there before him. The boy took a couple of heavy steps toward the living room, but curiosity trumped anger. He pulled out the letter, sank into a chair, started to read.
The old-time writing style with its classic Ws and Ms took Alan back to second grade, a room full of kids moving their pencils up, then down, to the rhythm of Miss Baxter’s chant of “Push-pull-Palmer, push-pull-Palmer.” The letter filled three pages, and by the time Alan mouthed, “Sincerely yours, Brun Campbell,” his heart was pounding so hard, he could barely breathe. There it all was, what he should play, how he should play it, all straight from the man who’d learned from the master. If Brun Campbell lived in Hobart, or even New York, Alan would have run directly to the old man’s home, and apprenticed himself without another thought. But California?
With desire ruled out by geography, anger reasserted itself. The boy stormed into the living room, where he found his mother on the green tufted armchair, feet up on the matching footrest, nose buried in a novel.
All the King’s Men
. She didn’t notice him.
“Mother!” he shouted.
She looked up, reluctantly, he thought. “Well, hello, dear. I thought I might have heard you come in. Did you have a nice day at school?”
He brandished the envelope. “You opened my mail.”
She seemed to find the reproach in his voice incomprehensible. “Why, yes. I couldn’t imagine who might have sent you an airmail letter from California. Who
is
this Brun Campbell person, and where on earth did you ever turn him up? That letter reads as if a grade-school child might have written it, and not a very bright grade-school child, at that. ‘Practice, p-r-a-c-t-i-z-e?’” She shook her head. And ‘r-e-c-i-e-v-e.’ I before e, except after c—”
“Mother, shut up.”
That got her attention. “Don’t you dare speak to me—”
“Why did you open my mail?”
She set her book on the end table, a clear declaration of war. “Because you are not yet of age, and Lord help me, you are still my responsibility.” Her voice was as severe as her face. “I’d be negligent if I didn’t know with whom you associate, and I can’t say I’m pleased, or that I approve. This phase you’re going through with that ragtime music worries me.”
“It’s not a ‘phase’ and I’m not ‘going through’ it. Ragtime is good music. Not anybody can play it, at least not right.”
“I’m sure they’ll be impressed with you at Juillard, playing ragtime!” She clucked disapproval. “Oh, Alan! One day I want to walk into Carnegie Hall, and as the usher seats me in the first row, I want to hear the people all around whispering, ‘That’s his mother.’ Please don’t spoil it for me.” She pointed toward the piano. “Practice your lesson. I’ll sit here and pretend I’m in Carnegie Hall, and—”
“Mother, you opened my mail. That’s a federal offense.”
Patronizing smile. “After you practice and do your homework, you can call the police and turn me in.” She picked up her book.
Alan tore the novel from her hands, flung it across the room.
She drew herself poker-straight. “Mister, you will pick up that book and apologize for your behavior. Now.”
“
You
apologize for opening my mail,” Alan howled. “And then you can get your fat ass out of that chair and pick up the book yourself.” He wheeled around, stormed out of the room, out of the house and down the sidewalk.
***
Fifteen minutes later, he rang the doorbell at the stone and marble mansion on Park Avenue. Slim opened the door, looked the sweating boy up and down. “Horse gets in a lather like this, you put a blanket on him.”
Alan gulped air. “I…ran…all the way…from my house.”
“Must be important then.” Slim pointed to a little wooden seat just inside the door, next to an umbrella rack. “Have yourself a sit-down, else you ain’t gonna be able to tell Miriam nothing about it.”
Alan nodded. “Thanks.”
By the time Miriam hurried up the hall, the boy had pretty well recovered. Miriam tried to smile. “What’s cooking?”
He waved the envelope. “Not exactly…” He peered down the hall. “Tell you what. Let’s go sit in the park.”
She got it. “I’ll tell Sally we’re going out.”
***
Within three minutes, Miriam was back, a light pink sweater over her blouse, small leather purse swinging from one shoulder. Alan ushered her across Park Avenue, into the park, to a bench under a gigantic oak tree. The instant they sat, the boy started to talk. “Remember the barber I told you about in California? The one who took lessons from Scott Joplin?”
She had to laugh. “How could I not? You’ve told me about him at least once every day. Why?”
“He answered the letter I wrote to him.” Alan slapped the envelope into her hand.
All the while Miriam read, the boy wiggled on the bench. Finally, she looked up, eyes shining behind thick lenses. “Alan…you ran all the way over here, just to show this to me?”
“My mother opened it.”
Miriam looked him questions.
“I came home and found it on the kitchen table. She’d opened it and read it, because she wanted to know who was writing me airmail letters from California. She didn’t approve of his grammar or his spelling.”
Miriam laughed.
Anger rose, bitter, into Alan’s throat. “I don’t think it’s so goddamn funny.”
She reached for his hand, seemed to think twice, but grabbed it anyway. “No, no, that’s not what I mean. It’s not funny that she opened your letter. I was laughing because your mother’s so worried about what you’re doing, she has to spy on you, and
my
parents couldn’t care less about what
I
do. But hey, what are we just sitting around for? Let’s go down to Selvin’s and get some of that music he’s talking about. Then, we’ll come back to my house, and you can play it for me.”
***
Alan ran a loving hand over the side of the lustrous piano in the Broaca parlor. Miriam felt a twinge. “You look absolutely moonstruck.”
“Yeah, I guess. But when I played ‘Maple Leaf’ for Slim the other night, that was the first time I’d ever touched the keyboard of a nine-foot Steinway. It hurt to be finished.”
“Well, you should hear my father.” Miriam cleared her throat. “‘That is a Steinway nine-foot concert grand. Style D. Mahogany, of course. I wouldn’t have anything less for the artists I bring here to play for my people.’”
“I’ve only seen them in concert halls,” Alan breathed. “Never in somebody’s house.”
Miriam gave him a little shove. “Go ahead. Play that ragtime we just bought. It’ll be a nice new experience for the piano, too.”
He worked his way through “Harlem Rag” and “Bowery Buck,” and was trying “Eli Green’s Cake Walk,” when Sally marched up to the piano bench. “I hate interruptin’ you,” the cook said to Alan, then turned to Miriam. “But I’m gonna serve dinner in five minutes, and you knows how your daddy is when it’s late.”
Alan started to gather his music, but Miriam grabbed his arm. “Wait, don’t go. I’ll ask my mother if it’s okay for you to stay for dinner. Then, afterward, you can play the rest.”
“I don’t know…”
The girl was halfway to the door. “Don’t worry, she’ll say yes. She won’t care.” Miriam pointed to the telephone on a little mahogany table beside a huge brass music stand. “Call your mother and tell her you’re having dinner here.” Then she was gone.
Sally looked at Alan, and guffawed. “I guess you’ learnin’ in a hurry, that girl don’t never take no for an answer. Go on, now, call up your mama. Then, come on down the hall there, second door on your left, that’s the dining room.”
“I’ll follow my nose,” Alan said, and started toward the phone.
Sally laughed again. “You all right, boy.”
As the cook walked away, Alan dialed his home number. When his mother answered, he said, “It’s me, Ma. I’m at Broacas’. I’m going to stay here for dinner.”
“No, you’re not,” Mrs. Chandler snapped. “What you’re going to do is come right home and have a little talk with your father.”
“Oh. Well, fine. Miriam and I are working on a project, it’s due tomorrow—”
“What kind of ‘project’ are you working on?”
“History. The teacher assigned boy-girl pairs to look at different kinds of art in different civilizations, and we’re doing music in early America. We went downtown to the library and got material, now we’re putting it together. If we don’t get it in on time, we both get automatic F’s, and if that’s what you want, I’ll be right home.”
He could have predicted the silence, waited just long enough, then said, “Look, Ma, they’re sitting down to eat now. It’d be impolite to keep them waiting.”
“All right.” His mother’s response was far short of full-hearted, but gained steam as she added, “Your father will be waiting for you.”
Alan smiled as he followed his nose down the hall. Maybe he should have felt ashamed of himself, lying like that, but he didn’t. He thought he’d done pretty darned well, coming up with a story that good on the spur of the moment.
***
Miriam’s parents greeted Alan pleasantly enough, but with no apparent interest or enthusiasm. All through dinner, Dr. and Mrs. Broaca talked only to each other, as if Miriam and Alan weren’t there. They discussed the father’s trying day at his medical office, and the mother’s afternoon at someone named Georgia’s, where Mrs. Broaca and a bunch of women had played four hours-worth of mah jongg. Miriam’s mother accompanied her story with movements of her bracelet-clad arms. The incessant clatter drove Alan to imagine driving forks through the woman’s hands to pin them to the table.
Finally, over dessert, Dr. Broaca turned to Miriam. “What about General Motors today? Buy or sell?”
The girl coughed, grabbed her water glass, swallowed a mouthful. She wiped at her eyes with her napkin. “Dad…” She inclined her head toward Alan.
Dr. Broaca looked puzzled. “What?”
“I don’t think Alan’s interested in the stock market.”
“If he’s not, maybe he should be. Come on, Miriam. Buy or sell?”
“Neither one. It’s down three-eighths, that’s one and seven-eighths for the week. I think it’s going lower, and if it drops another point, I might buy a hundred shares.”
The doctor looked pleased. “Good thinking.” He beamed a smug smile at Alan. “So money management doesn’t interest you, eh?”
The boy shook his head. “Not really.”
“Miriam tells me you’re quite the little musician, you’re going to Julliard. Do you think you’ll be able to make a living as a musician?”
The pace of Alan’s speech was like that of someone walking across a meadow he knew had been mined. “Some people do. But I haven’t thought that much yet about making a living.”
“Hmm.” Dr. Broaca frowned; then his face relaxed. “Are your parents musical? There’s a great deal to show that musical abilities run in families. Probably it’s some kind of genetic trait.”
Like I’m a freak, Alan thought. “No, I seem to be the only one. My father’s a physics professor, and neither he or my mother plays an instrument.”
“Really!” The doctor’s eyebrows went up. “How on earth did you happen to discover your talent?”
Alan shrugged. “When I was little, I would hear a song on the radio, then I’d go to the piano and pick it out.”
“But you said your parents aren’t musical. How did there happen to be a piano there?”
“It’s my mother’s. Her father bought it for her when she was a girl, but she never got very far with her lessons. She kept the piano, though, because it looks good in the living room when she has company.”
Dr. Broaca took a moment to decide whether the boy was being deliberately impertinent. His jangle-armed wife filled the breach. “What kind of music was that I heard you playing in there before dinner?”
“Ragtime.”
“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Broaca simpered. “Irving Berlin, that sort of thing. I remember it from when I was younger than you.” She began to sing, not nearly in tune, “Come on and hear, come on and hear, Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
Alan took care not to look at Miriam.
“Come on and hear, da-da! Come on and hear, da-da! Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Why on earth are you interested in that old stuff?”
“The same reason people are interested in old stuff by Beethoven and Mozart,” said Alan. “Because it’s great music.”
Yes, Dr. Broaca, thought. He
is
being deliberately impertinent. “Now, wait just a minute,” the doctor intoned. “Are you trying to tell me you think this ragtime is in the same class as work by Beethoven and Mozart? Why, I don’t even know the names of the composers of that cheap stuff.”
Alan winced as Miriam kicked him sharply under the table. “Well, sir, I think it’s terrific,” he said in a tone much milder than he had been about to use. “The most famous of the composers was Scott Joplin.” Alan paused. It wouldn’t do to tell this turkey that a small town in Missouri was going to honor Joplin by hanging a plaque in a high school. “In fact, there’s going to be a big ceremony next week. They’re going to unveil a statue in the main part of a city, and also start work on a museum in his honor.”
The doctor’s lips twisted into a sneer; he cocked his head and regarded Alan as if the boy were a half-wit who needed to be humored, lest he explode into a tantrum. “Well, that’s very interesting. Just where is this big ceremony to be held?”
“Sedalia. Sedalia, Missouri. That’s where Joplin was living when he wrote ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’”
“Sedalia…Sedalia…” The doctor looked toward the ceiling, made a show of thinking hard. “Isn’t that right down the road from Podunk?”
“Oh, I remember that song.” Mrs. Broaca raised both hands. “You know it, Marty.” She began to hum a melody, accompanying herself with her bracelets. To Alan’s ear, it sounded nothing like “Maple Leaf Rag,” nor, for that matter, like any tune he’d ever heard. Dr. Broaca’s upper lip curled.
For once, Alan felt himself in sympathy with his host. “It’s going to make musical history,” the boy said. “One of Scott Joplin’s pupils who lives in California now will be there, playing piano and giving a speech. I’d sure like to be able to go.”