Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  Annoyed, John swallowed his chuckles. “All these years you’ve said nary a peep, and now you’re chock-full of nonsense. Any other composer would be tickled by that story. You haven’t got a lick of humor, Scott.”

  That was true enough these days. “Where’s Nell? I can’t stay.”

  “Will you hold your horses? She’ll be here. We meet every Friday for lunch.”

  Scott had first visited Nellie’s studio on Lucas Avenue, hoping to see her without having to run into her father. He had just missed her, he was told. “How is she?” Scott said, deciding that John’s daughter, mutually loved, was their safest topic.

  “A busy young lady. She’s performing, of course. She’s finally even courting a bit. The fella’s a bit young, but I’m just glad someone’s caught her fancy at last.”

  Even Nellie’s good news felt discouraging. Scott had never entertained a union with John’s daughter Eleanor, nor she with him, but she had always served as his unfailing advocate. Nellie had convinced her father to publish at least an excerpt of Rag-Time Dance after his initial refusal, and then argued passionately on behalf of A Guest of Honor, ranting to Scott in tears when her arguments failed. She played his music as well as he did, like a Negro at heart, and she first introduced him to Alfred Ernst, helping Scott imagine himself accepted in white circles he had dared not dream of. Such a softhearted, talented and lovely girl! Could he ever hope to meet a woman like Nellie who was also a Negro?

  John’s voice grew soft. “You’ve had a run of bad luck, Scott. I’m sorry for it.”

  “Bad luck.” Scott repeated the words, assessing the phrase. Pure bad luck, Belle had called him before she left. Maybe their infant daughter’s death two years ago could be blamed on bad luck, and Belle leaving him after that. Perhaps his brother Will’s death that same year was only bad luck again. But whatever he was up against felt worse than bad luck.

  “You’ve got to keep your chin up, Scott. Take hold of your life. Give me a new piece, and I’d love to put some money in your pocket. Hell, maybe if you’d agree to expand the book for Guest of Honor like I told you all along, tinker with those lyrics—”

  “That’s the past.”

  “If that’s true, then why are you so ornery about it? ‘Palm Leaf Rag’ is grand work, sure, but you should have let me publish it. It’s a slap to my face, going to that Chicago house.”

  “Keep the darkie in his place, is that it?” This time, the intruder who had taken control of Scott’s tongue appalled even him.

  John’s face tightened as if he’d been struck. His pores blushed crimson. He raised his pipe to Scott like a gnarled, pointing finger. “How dare you give me that guff, Joplin. I wasn’t drafted in the war, I enlisted. I didn’t have to, but I did it, and there’s hardly a night I don’t dream about those graveyards they called battlefields. Lots of times I asked myself what the hell a Kentucky-born boy was doing in a blue uniform, but I did it because I gave a damn what happened to those slaves—people like your parents—so don’t talk to me about keeping darkies in their place. If you were anyone else, I’d sock you.”

  John had been a bugler more than a soldier in the Civil War, from what Nellie said, but it was true he had been willing to die for the cause of abolition. Scott looked away, toward John’s window. “I had no call to say it. I apologize.”

  John’s face relaxed again. “Well, at least now I see for myself the state you’re in.”

  “A poor one, I’m afraid,” Scott said reluctantly.

  “You’re earning steady. ‘Maple Leaf’ is selling close to three thousand a year, and it’s still climbing. It’s a classic rag, Scott. Those penny royalties add up, trust me.”

  That was typical John: He knew the business of a matter, not its heart. Writing the opera had helped Scott endure his losses after his baby died and his brother followed. He and Belle hadn’t dared give their baby a name, she’d been born so sickly; the three months she’d lived had been a miracle. Losing Will, the spitting image of their father, had cut something deeper out of him. By the time Belle left, her departure seemed almost trite, a predictable turn in his life.

  A Guest of Honor had rescued Scott’s heart, then it had seduced him with its promise. With proper backing, he could have taken his opera to Hamburg and Vienna and Paris, and once he was embraced in Europe, American scholars would have had no choice but to see beyond his skin color. Nellie had told him Negroes were treated as ordinary men in Europe. In Europe, he would find credibility he could spend two lifetimes seeking at home. But two years after Ernst’s promise to take him to Europe, Scott had given up hope of it. Ernst hadn’t even replied to his letter two months ago. Ernst was busy, of course, but it smarted.

  “Alfred Ernst will be musical director for the World’s Fair. That’s the rumor,” John said, as if he knew Scott’s mind.

  “Will he?” Scott didn’t bother to brighten his voice.

  “I tell you, a musician who got a proper introduction there would be heard by the whole country, by and by. That’s a real sendoff.”

  “‘Ah, yes, Joplin, you’re a genius, young man. I’ll dedicate an evening to the music of Scott Joplin, und naturally have you on our grandest concert stage,’” Scott said with a sweep of his arm, imitating Ernst’s German accent. “And then he won’t remember saying it.”

  “He means well.” John looked defensive, lowering his eyes. Ernst was a family friend.

  “Meaning isn’t doing.”

  “There are politics at the fair,” John said quietly.

  “You mean I’m a Negro. Say it plain.” Scott remembered how the Negro musicians had been shunted to alleyways and saloons at the Chicago Fair in 1893, while white musicians enjoyed the large venues where everyone could hear them. He couldn’t expect this one to be different.

  John made a sour face. He had no patience for Scott’s complaints about the traps of his skin color. “You don’t need Ernst. Write me a piece in time for the fair, and we’ll have it playing all over town, in the places fairgoers go at night. And there’ll be a breezeway at the fair. It won’t be the same as a concert stage, but it’s a place to play. We can’t have the World’s Fair in St. Louis without the King of Ragtime.”

  Scott saw the light in John’s eyes when he’d said that, a quicksilver reminder of John’s awe of him. But John reserved his awe for the familiar, what was expected. John was a stubborn sonofabitch, so tight with a nickel that he didn’t trust Scott’s talents to elevate him beyond rags. And this was the one person who should know he had already proven himself! Scott remembered the Indianapolis Freeman newspaper notice about him last year, which had sounded like a chide as much as encouragement: The day is fast approaching when a great colored composer will be recognized in this country, especially if he advances from being a ragtime idol.

  “I don’t feel any new rags coming,” Scott said.

  “Sometimes you don’t need to feel ’em ’til they’re done, Scott. You know that. Write something fast. I don’t mean to pry in what isn’t my concern, but if the tour bled you dry—”

  Scott laughed, a dry chuckle from deep in his throat. That was an understatement. He was as close to penniless as he’d been since he was a teenager, and he’d lost his dream in the transaction. “That tour bled me every way it could,” Scott said. “The money’s the smallest part.”

  “Well, you’re a composer, Scotty—compose. Climb on down out of the clouds and try to get along with us earthbound folks. Leave the clouds to those Wright brothers.”

  Scott stood suddenly, buttoning his coat. He couldn’t stomach another of John’s lectures on the necessary union of art and commerce. “I can’t wait for Nellie. I have to go.”

  John pretended he hadn’t heard, talking on. “I’ll tell you one thing, Scott, and it may be the only good advice I’m capable of giving you anymore: You’ve got the idea somehow that everyone is supposed to recognize what you are on sight. Well, you need to shake that idea out of your head. A composer who can’t work because he’s c
onvinced he ought to be revered is a composer who seals his own fate. Swallow your damn disappointments like the rest of us.”

  John’s tongue was as coarse as Louis’s, only less profane. Despite a few enthusiastic audiences starved for entertainment, A Guest of Honor had never shown itself to be anything but a failure. Why had God given him the inspiration and teased him with promises that were lofty only in their delusion? How had he believed he could use his music to carry his brethren on his back when he couldn’t find his own footing? There wasn’t enough time in one lifetime to climb to those heights from the low place he had started.

  “No one will know me until fifty years after I’m dead,” Scott said, half to himself.

  John laughed. “You’d still be luckier than most, fella.”

  Back out in the cold, Scott realized John was right about one thing: He needed money. He wasn’t a pampered artisan in a European noble’s court. When he came back from visiting his family in Texarkana, he’d need to start booking concerts in Sedialia, St. Louis and Chicago—no costumes or dancers or choruses, and no one to share the earnings with. Plenty of folks will pay top dollar for a private concert by Scott Joplin, the Rag Time King.

  With his bad luck, that title would follow him to his tombstone.

  But better the king of the ragtimers, he thought, than a pauper with no place to call home.

  Hey, folks, lookie who we have in our midst here tonight! It’s Scott Joplin!”

  Tom Turpin, that great bear of a man, brought a hush to the room when he made the announcement from the piano. Scott had slipped into the Rosebud unnoticed from Eugenia Street in the rear, hoping to avoid Market’s nighttime bustle, but Tom’s announcement ended his anonymity as he made his way to an empty table. Tom had been playing the hell out of the upright the moment before, but now gasps replaced the hypnotic currents of the “Blue Danube.” Dancers stopped their synchronized twirling, ladies’ skirts deflating. Scott heard necks crack as people craned backward. Next, a swell of applause and rowdy hoots, a room of grins. There were many familiar faces, but more unfamiliar ones. These were admirers, not friends.

  Scott had never seen so many people gathered here, shoulder to shoulder, and his face flared with embarrassment. Their attire wasn’t overly ostentatious, but the customers had come to preen. The women wore their celebration clothes—fur wraps, satin bows and evening hats—and their escorts nearly outdid them in their silk hats, pearl gray derbies and canes with silver heads. There were more whites than usual at the Rosebud tonight, a sign that word had spread, but most of the patrons were Negroes with high expectations in their gazes.

  Scott tipped his hat to Tom and took his seat.

  Good for Tom. His gentleman’s club was exactly what he’d planned it to be, a showcase for the best ragtime players, and Scott was proud of his friend. Lighted with electricity and with rooms enough for drinking, dancing, dining, gambling and the company of willing women in the hotel upstairs, the Rosebud was nearly as big as a city block. It was truly a world unto itself, much bigger than the Maple Leaf Club in Sedalia. He should write a piece to honor the Rosebud. That would be effortless enough. Already, Scott could hear a six-eight march tempo in his head.

  Three young men at the table beside Scott’s whipped off their brown caps, leaning close to him with hands outstretched. They each had a mug, although Scott suspected they were barely out of short pants, much less old enough for beer. “Hey, sir, we didn’t know you was Scott Joplin. I taught myself piano from hearin’ “Maple Leaf Rag”! I can’t believe I’m sittin’ next to you! I’m here for the contest,” said the tallest boy, shaking Scott’s hand with vigor.

  “I’m a professor, too, Mr. Joplin,” said an even younger boy, this one probably not yet fourteen. “All you gotta remember is Lightning Jack from Carthage!”

  “No, Billy the Kid from East St. Louis!” the third boy said. “Those fools can’t play.”

  A restless scuffle followed, with the boys jostling.

  “Learn to read music, boys. And write it, so you’ll have something on paper. Paper lives forever,” Scott said, but he wondered if they had heard him over the room’s din. Belle had complained that he spoke so softly, he might as well be talking to no one but himself.

  “All you need is a robe, and you could be a preacher. Leave those kids be,” a familiar voice behind Scott said. The voice had changed since he’d last heard it, more man than boy now, but he couldn’t mistake Louis.

  “Louis!” Scott said, rising to his feet. He hugged his friend.

  “You sound surprised. Where else am I gonna be tonight?” Louis wore his oversized white Stetson, an immaculate suit of clothes—Parisian, no doubt—and a bright purple ascot. Louis only dressed up when he was working.

  “Is that Chauvin?” Scott heard one of the boys whisper. “Ain’t nobody gon’ beat him.”

  “Damn right you ain’t. And all three of your mamas is outside waitin’ with a switch to whip you for losing,” Louis told the boys, winking. The crowd growing around them laughed, and Scott saw three young faces turn mournful. Louis had been that young when Scott met him, he realized. Neither of them seemed young anymore.

  “You gonna play, Mr. Joplin?” the youngest boy asked, an anxious afterthought.

  “No,” Scott said, his eyes darting to Louis’s. These boys weren’t the only ones who wouldn’t relish competing against Louis Chauvin. “Just a visit to see friends.”

  Tom made his way back to Scott’s table, clasping Scott’s hand with a meaty palm. Perspiration shone from Tom’s forehead, the effort of his exertions at the piano and the heat generated by the excited Friday-night contest crowd. A group of eager men stood ringing the table, but none had the nerve to step forward. Tom Turpin, Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin were the closest thing they knew to royalty, and no one dared disturb their circle.

  “St. Louis ain’t the same without you, Scotty,” Tom said.

  “Looks the same to me.”

  Tom, unlike John, had the delicacy not to bring up A Guest of Honor. Scott was sure the story of his opera’s grand failure had wound its way through town, but Tom wasn’t one to pry. Even after Scott moved in with Tom for a time after Belle left him, Tom never brought up personal questions without an invitation even if they sat up talking about music for hours.

  “How long you back?” Tom said. “I’m having my Third Annual Ball and Piano Contest on the twenty-second, and it’ll be a sight to see. We’re doin’ it up big, at the New Douglass Hall on Beaumont. You don’t wanna miss that, no sir. Folks who swear they’ve never set foot in Chestnut Valley will show for that one, and in high dress.”

  “Me and the big man are goin’ toe-to-toe,” Louis said.

  “I’ll have to miss it. I’m on a train for Little Rock tomorrow,” Scott said. He could stay longer if he chose, but he wouldn’t want to. He had hoped to feel happier here.

  “Well, come on back for the fair, hear?” Tom said, taking a seat beside Scott. He motioned to a bartender behind the long, mirrored counter, signaling for drinks. “We’re gonna do a ragtime contest like nobody’s ever seen.”

  “It’ll be the biggest one I’ve ever won,” Louis said, slapping Tom’s back.

  “Why do I feel some fool’s dainty little hand on me, Chauvin?” Tom said, eyeing Louis over his shoulder. He did not like to be touched, especially by Louis. When Louis wasn’t intoxicated, Scott wasn’t sure any living man could beat him, and Tom knew it, too. Luckily for Tom, Louis was just as likely to show up drunk as not. Tonight, so far, it was hard to tell.

  “There’s somethin’ so regal about a big man in a suit,” Louis said. “Ain’t there, Scotty?”

  “I know your hand ain’t still on me.”

  Louis dropped his hand as the barkeep dropped three whiskey glasses on the table. “Go on and drink up,” Tom said, rising. “It’s time.”

  Louis laughed, watching Tom lumber off as the crowd parted to let him pass. “You see him runnin’ scared?” Louis said. “He didn’t touch
his whiskey, and he knows you can’t drink worth shit. That big ol’ nigger thinks he’s clever, but he ain’t.” Nonetheless, Louis downed the first shot and took the second glass in his hand.

  At a stage in front of the room, Tom whistled to command quiet, and the bustling bar became a funeral parlor in an instant, except for the sound of silverware and conversation in the adjacent dining room. Tom’s voice rose like a riverboat’s foghorn on the Mississippi. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the Friday-night contest at the Rosebud Bar, and we’ve got fourteen professors here to compete for title of best rag player in Chestnut Valley—which means the best in the world. Anybody who aims to win has to get past yours truly first. Let’s draw places!”

  Tom drew from the hat first—proprietor’s privilege—and also claimed the first spot in the contest, the least coveted. In the wine room, Tom’s favorite piano was elevated on blocks so he didn’t have to sit on a stool with his three-hundred-pound bulk, but in a contest he had to take his seat like everyone else.

  To Scott, Tom looked like a bullfrog perched on a toadstool. When he started playing, Scott knew after only a few measures that even with three drinks in him, Louis would beat Tom with ease. Tom was a solid composer and performer, but Louis’s assessment was probably best: Tom attacked the piano like a tasty meal, beating the keys into submission.

  When Louis’s turn came, he stood over the piano and shook his hands melodramatically before he sat. Then, he paused on the stool, as if deep in thought. Word of Louis’s upcoming performance had reached the girls working upstairs, who stood watching from the wooden staircase with grins as large as the bosoms showing through their sheer, colorful costumes. The crowd stirred restlessly, sending up calls and whistles. Then, Louis began.

  Louis launched into an homage to “Maple Leaf,” the famous B section rendered at a dizzying pace, then he teased in a little of Tom’s “Harlem Rag,” playing in a purposely stodgy style. Louis’s fingers flew, making the melody its own surprising, electrifying creature. His music was wizardry; Scott’s heart pounded as his friend played tenths with his left hand even while his right-hand harmonics demanded more skill. Louis sounded like two men playing at once. Shouts rose from the crowd midway through, and by the time Louis finished, the shouts were a roar. Scott came to his feet, joining the tumult.