The Ragtime Kid (13 page)

“Old Osawotomie Brown?” Brun shouted. “Well, sure. I grew up mostly in Kansas.”

Stark smiled. “Then you’ve heard plenty.”

“But everyone says different. Some say he was a saint and a martyr, and others say he was just a cold-blooded killer. And some say he was just plain bughouse.”

“He was all that,” Stark said. “And then some. But most important, more than anyone else, he was responsible for starting the Civil War. He believed slavery was an abomination, and prophesized that the crimes of this guilty land—as he put it—would be purged only with blood. Well, for five years, Brun, I saw more blood shed than ever I could have imagined.”

All the pain Brun had seen earlier flooded back into Stark’s eyes. The old man went on speaking, softly. “That was a long time ago…near-forty years. And now I’m a businessman in Sedalia, Missouri, I’ve got a good business, an even finer family, a good home. I’m respected here. I’m respectable.”

Brun thought Stark made respectability sound just a bit unseemly. But he said, “Yes, sir.”

“My daughter Nell learned piano, I sent her to Europe for two years to study with Moszkowski. You know of him, of course.”

Brun nodded. He’d never heard of the man, but it sounded like he should’ve.

“And now, my son Will wants to go into music publishing. He’s spending so much of his time in St. Louis, looking into possibilities, that I’ve had to hire a part-time boy for the shop.”

“Which I’m not going to complain about, sir.”

Stark felt surprise at how fond he’d become of this boy, and how quickly. He was just close enough to smart-alecky to be endearing. “No, I’m sure you’re not. But
I’m
concerned. Will thinks we can do better in music publishing than selling instruments, but I just don’t know. Music publishing wouldn’t be the first business to flame up, then burn out like a comet. I suppose if it did, Will’s young enough; he can start something else. But what about me? I’m fifty-eight years old.”

Stark saw Brun open his mouth, motioned for the boy to close it. He shook his head slowly, denial of all possibility. “You’re a live wire, Brun, and you do have real musical talent. I’ve been giving it some thought. You might be the right man in the right place. If Will decides to go ahead with publishing, he can’t go it alone, and maybe you’d be the man to work with him. The store should support Mrs. Stark and me the rest of our days. After I’ve gone, Will could decide what to do with it.”

Brun could hardly believe his ears. Thinking he might have been summoned into the office for a stern lecture about minding his own beeswax, he was being all but offered a junior partnership in the Stark Music Publishing Company. Well, when you’re being praised for a live wire, no point trying to pretend you’re a shy violet. “I’d be real interested in that, sir.”

“Well, you think about it, then,” said Stark. “And I will do the same. Now, I’ll tell you what. Sunday, you come by and have dinner with us, one o’clock. Mrs. Stark would like to meet you.”

“I’d be pleased, sir,” Brun said, but pleased didn’t even begin to cover what he felt. If Stark was considering him for bigger things, he’d need to be sure his Mrs. cottoned to the new boy. Brun vowed he’d make certain she would. For now, he’d show Stark he was on the ball. “I’ve got another question, sir. About that time payment—does it worry you? I mean, since you let them take away the organ.”

“Good thought, Brun. But no, it doesn’t worry me. You heard what Pastor Weston said about young Hayden having them jumping in the aisles? I’m sure he’s right. What do you suppose the pastor will do directly after that?”

Brun couldn’t help laughing. “Pass the plate.”

“So will I get paid sooner or later because they already have the organ in the church?”

Answer enough. Brun nodded.

Stark, though, was not finished. “And with everyone in that congregation knowing where the organ came from, and that John Stark and Son was willing to trust them, where do you think the men will go when they want a new banjo or a guitar? Or strings? Where will the mothers go when they want lesson books for their children? Will they go to Perry’s or Stark’s? The best salesman profits beyond his sales figures because he takes care that his customer is more than satisfied.” Stark stood and stretched. “All right, that’s enough for one day. I need a beer before supper.”

They were outside, re-locking the door, when a young man who’d been sitting in the doorway got to his feet, a human rail in a light blue shirt with red sleeve holders, and baggy brown worsted pants held up by red suspenders. He picked up a basket, shifted it onto his left shoulder, then shuffled up to Stark and Brun, tipped a tattered wide-brimmed straw hat, and said a polite, “H’lo, Mr. Stark.”

“Hello yourself, John,” said Stark. “Is there something we can do for you?”

“Yes, indeed.” The man pointed at Brun. “I got a message for your boy. I seed him and you in there, so I sat down here to wait.”

“You should have knocked. We’d have let you in.”

“Well, I thought not to disturb you, Mr. Stark. B’sides, this time of day, I grab whatever chance comes along for me to take a li’l rest.”

Stark smiled, then went on tiptoes to peer into the man’s basket. “Your oranges look good today.”

“They is,” John said. “Sweet and juicy. Better in the apples, but tomorrow, who knows?”

Stark dug into his pocket, dropped twenty cents into John’s hand. “I’ll take one, and another for Brun here—he’s our new boy. Brun, this is Mr. John Reynolds, Apple John. He sells the best fruit in Sedalia.”

Apple John considered his new acquaintance. “He’s the very one I come here to see. But whatever kind of a name is that, Brun?”

“Short for Brunson.” Which seemed to satisfy Apple John. He took off his hat, brushed lank, sweaty black hair off his forehead, then plunked the hat back on. “Mr. Boutell over by the saloon, he ask me to come tell you his piano man’s sick and can you play for him tonight?”

“Well, sure.
Sure
.”

“Mr. Boutell say be there nine o’clock. You get tips and food and beer.” Apple John made a face as he spoke the last word. “But you listen right to me, you take the tips and the food, but just you leave the beer. Any kinda liquor, it ain’t good for you. That and those cigarettes, they’s the worst kind of thing for your body. Cause liver troubles and consumption. Now, me, I walk to Smithton every day, pick up my eggs and butter and fruit, maybe fifty pounds, and I carry it back to Sedalia. Then I walk up and down the streets all day, sellin’ it. You think I could do that if I drank liquor, or smoked an’ chewed tobacca?” John cocked his head to give Brun a severe look. “I hope you pay heed, but ’course, I can’t no more than warn you, can I? Now, you gotta go tell Mr. Boutell yes or no yourself about tonight, ’cause I ain’t no messenger boy. Don’t mind doin’ a man a favor, he asks, but I got my own work, and I got to be on my way now.”

“I’ll go right over,” Brun said. “And thank you. I’m real glad to get that job.”

John shuffled off down the street, calling, “Apples and oranges…apples and oranges.” Stark and Brun walked to Boutell’s, where Stark lowered himself onto a stool at the bar, ordered a mug of Moerschel’s, and lit a cigar. So much for Apple John’s counsel, Brun thought. He told Boutell he’d be there at eight, then said good-bye to Stark, and set off back to Higdon’s.

***

Scott Joplin ran a handkerchief over his forehead, then shoved the soggy cloth back into his pocket. He looked up at Julius Weiss, then toward the bar, where two colored railroad workers had just sat down. As Walker Williams drew beer into glasses for them, all three suddenly burst out laughing. A joke, Joplin thought, or more likely, something to do with a woman. “I suppose we’d better quit for now,” he said to Julius Weiss. “The whole lot of them will be in, and then we won’t be able to hear ourselves think, let alone talk.”

Weiss shook his head sadly. “Scott, Scott…why you gotta be so fussy, you need such peace and quiet to write your music? Don’t some of your friends make up their music in saloons and…other places?”

Joplin pulled the red rubber ball from his pocket and began to squeeze, slowly, first with the left hand, then the right, then back to the left. “Of course you can write barrelhouse music in a barrelhouse.” The composer’s tone was that of a patient teacher, one he’d heard for enough years to pick up and make his own. “But I write classical music. Respectable music. I can’t do that with drunks shouting foolishness and obscenities into my ears.

“But, Scott—if you want to write ‘respectable,’ then why are you writing this ragtime? Why don’t you write symphonies? Operas? Ball—” He stopped mid-word as he saw the trap he’d stepped into.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” said Joplin. “
The Ragtime Dance
is a ballet. And one day I
will
write operas and symphonies—”

“In ragtime.”

“Yes.
Classical
ragtime.” Joplin squeezed with the right hand, then the left.

Weiss had to use all his restraint to resist an urge to grab that ball out of his protegé’s hands and throw it as far as he could. “Scott, if you want so bad to write like Beethoven, then why don’t you just
write
like Beethoven? Like Boone does.”

“Blind Boone makes his living performing in concert halls, so he plays Strauss’ waltzes, Chopin’s polonaises, and Liszt’s etudes. And when he writes waltzes and polonaises and etudes, they sound like what Strauss, Chopin, and Liszt might have written after a trip to Africa.” Squeeze left, squeeze right. “But I intend to succeed on my own terms. What I hear in ragtime, rough as it is, I will make over into art. Into a classical music no one in Europe has ever heard.”

“And no one in the United States, either. Scott, let me tell you. Most people don’t take right away to something what’s new. It’d be hard enough for a white man to make music from the parlors respectable.”

“That’s one reason I agreed to take on the boy from Oklahoma as a pupil.” Joplin’s voice was soft, but Weiss couldn’t miss the fiber in his words. Squeeze right, squeeze left, squeeze right. “He has the talent, but I don’t know whether he has the ear. The way he plays…if I can teach that white boy to play my ragtime like a proper classical music, it might be the making of us both. If I need a pair of white hands to help me lift ragtime out of the gutter and put it into the drawing room and the concert hall, I will get those white hands. There’s no need for another Beethoven or another Lizst. Fifty years from now, mark my words, music critics will talk about Beethoven, Lizst and Joplin.”

Amazing, Weiss thought. From anybody else, that would sound like a ridiculous conceit. But from Scott Joplin… A rush of emotion flooded the old man’s head, as if this ink-black colored man might actually be his son. “But you need to get known, Scott. Even if you teach Brunnie to play right, if nobody knows
you
, neither one of you is ever going to get anywhere. Music sheets are so popular now, every day a new tune for people to buy and play. You should let someone publish your ragtime.”

Cramps ran up Joplin’s arm from his right hand; he relaxed his grip on the rubber ball. “I’d be glad to have my ragtime published on sheets, but only as
my
ragtime, composed and arranged. And under a royalties agreement.”

“Scott, that is just foolishness, you must know that. Even some white composers only get an outright purchase.”

“But many of them get royalties.” Joplin slipped the ball back into his pocket. “And if I want the public to take me seriously as a composer of classical music, I need to insist that publishers take
me
seriously.” Joplin’s face tightened. “As long as I’m willing to take their ten or twenty dollars, let them list someone else as arranger, and not object when they put out a cover with Negroes who look like monkeys with razors in their back pockets, no one will respect me
or
my music. I made a mistake last year with Carl Hoffman, but I won’t make it again.”

Weiss felt beyond defeated, guilty as sin itself. How many times had he drilled into that young colored boy’s head that he was as good as anyone, and in regard to music, better than anyone, the white Rodgers children included? How was Weiss supposed to argue with the man who’d grown from that boy? Weiss had planted the seed, watered and fertilized it, and now the mature plant was rooted more firmly than any oak tree. Despite his anguish, Weiss smiled. If he’d had a child of his own, he could never be prouder of him than he was of Scott Joplin.

The old German pulled at the composer’s arm. “Come on, Scott. It’s been a hot day and we’ve worked hard. Let’s go over by Mr. Williams there and have us a beer. It won’t hurt you to drink a beer every now and then.”

***

As Brun ran in through the front door, the smell of dinner cooking hit him full blast. A quick lean-through the kitchen doorway to say hello to Miss Belle and Miss Luella, then up the stairs to his room, shut the door. He took the locket and money-clip from his pocket, laid them on the bed, then picked up the locket, clicked it open, and looked hard at the picture. No question, Elmo Freitag. The boy cursed himself for running off with that locket, not leaving it for the police to find on the dead woman’s body.
Was
she Freitag’s wife? Which brought up a terrible notion in Brun’s mind. Would Freitag have put his own wife onto getting Joplin’s music to publish? Sure he would’ve. And no telling just what Mrs. Freitag had tried. Did she make Joplin so sore that he killed her?

So Brun couldn’t take the locket to the police any more than he could the money-clip. At best, his father would be on the next train down from Arkansas City; at worst, Freitag would tell a story about how he’d sent his wife to sweet-talk Joplin out of his music, and hadn’t seen her since. And a story like that would end with Joplin in a jail cell, or worse, hanging from a tree outside town.

Better hide the clip and locket where no one could possibly find them, then sort out what to do. Brun stared through the window into the back yard. No. Someone might hear him digging. Dresser drawer? Not nearly safe enough. Same for the writing table and under the armchair cushions. Under the mattress? He might break the money-clip, or set it to playing, by lying on the bed. The closet… Brun opened the door, stood on his toes, felt around above the door, found a little floored recess between beams, behind the top of the jamb. Perfect. He ran back to the bed, snatched up the money-clip and locket, carefully slid them into the cubby, then took off downstairs for dinner.