Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “I can’t imagine having more fun, or loving my husband more, that’s what I think.” Freddie’s voice became hoarse, a whisper. “I feel guilty for it, like I’ll be scolded.”

  “You’ll never be scolded by me,” he said, and this time his kiss met her lips. For all her talk about freedom from convention, Freddie only allowed his brazen kiss to linger a second or two before she pulled her mouth away, shy about the public display even on a darkened train. But she had no shyness behind closed doors, only unself-conscious curiosity. She’d known next to nothing of lovemaking, and wanted to know everything.

  A moving bulk told Scott one of the other passengers was waking. He couldn’t make out any features, but it was a large man. The man stood and started toward them in a way that made Scott sit up straight, tightening his grip across his young wife’s shoulder. He hoped he wouldn’t need the razor in his pocket, but he never traveled without one.

  “You looking for someone?” Scott said. If not for Freddie’s presence, he might have stayed quiet until the man announced his motives. Now that the stranger was closer, Scott saw the snowy white of his long beard and smelled strong spirits on his breath. This stranger might have bathed in the past week, but not in the interval. He was holding some kind of sack in front of him, and the scent of food made Scott’s stomach rumble.

  “I got fried chicken. Two pieces and a biscuit, twenty-five cent,” the man said.

  “That’s highway robbery. It’s worth a dime, if that,” Freddie whispered to him.

  “We’ll take four pieces, two biscuits,” Scott said. He reached into his pocket for two quarters, glad he wouldn’t have to bother his money clip. Usually he would have a sack of food for the train, but there hadn’t been any left for him to take after the picnic. Freddie had been polite enough not to mention it, but he knew she was hungry. Scott lapsed into a folksier tone to compensate for his sharpness. “Don’t make ’em all wings and drumsticks, neither. One of ’em better be a big ol’ hunk of white meat. Who cooked this bird?”

  “My grandmama cooked it,” the old man mumbled, and Scott appreciated the lie, at least.

  Scott hadn’t seen the man on the train earlier, so he might have gotten on at the last stop. As his eyes sharpened further still, he saw that the man was wearing a large necklace of shells and chicken feathers that looked like a conjurer’s costume over his stained shirt. I know what to expect now, he thought. Conjurers were the worst con artists, preying on hope and ignorance.

  “I’ll tell yo’ fortune,” the man said. “Twenty-five cent.”

  “I already got all the fortune I need right here,” Scott said. “Good night, now.”

  “I got John the Conqueror root and bags o’ luck. Twenty-five cent.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Ain’t nobody can’t use a bag o’ luck. Ten cent, then.”

  The man was only trying to earn extra money, Scott knew, but his persistence, coupled with his imposing size, made Scott uneasy. He was nearly as big as Tom Turpin. Scott guessed this con artist was accustomed to forcing sales just so his customers could be free of him. But he’d already spent half a dollar, and that was more than enough. Remembering Louis’s gullibility only fed his irritation. Bag of luck! Even Scott’s father had turned superstitious since Will’s death, blaming curses and lighting candles.

  “I said thank you and good night,” Scott said evenly. “You’re finished here.”

  The man laughed. “Oh, I’m finished?” he said, mocking him. “Nigga, where you from, tryin’ to talk so white? You too biggity for a bag o’ luck?”

  “Maybe one bag?” Freddie whispered, close to Scott’s ear. The man made her nervous.

  “You’ve already heard my answer,” Scott said, and rose to his feet to make his point. With a certain kind of man—men who were drunk, particularly—he’d learned to show he couldn’t be pushed. Softheartedness was a weakness to some men, an opportunity, and he didn’t know if this self-proclaimed conjurer was that kind.

  “Oh, I see how you gonna be,” said the man as he stepped back, reaching upward for the car’s safety bar to keep his balance. “You got yo’self a high-yella woman and you think you white, huh? Got you a suit, so you ain’t a nigga no’ mo’?”

  “I said good night, sir.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t choke on none o’ them bones…suh,” he said, and whistled a tune that might have been merry except for his morbid tone. He tipped an imaginary hat at Scott, a gesture as perfect as any hotel porter’s. “That’s right, don’t you choke.”

  Although the man was retreating toward his end of the car, his words remained rooted in Scott’s memory, more potent than his physical presence. His warning about choking had sounded like a threat, as if he could will harm upon them. Scott cursed the quickening he felt of his heart. He might as well be an old woman clutching her gris-gris to ward off evil.

  “The chicken’s good,” Freddie said, already at work on her first piece, which she held unself-consciously with bare hands. Nothing stood between this girl and her appetite. “I’m glad he came by. I was famished.”

  Scott sat again. The man had returned to his own his seat, although Scott couldn’t make out his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a proper supper.”

  “We would’ve missed the train! We ate a very late lunch, anyway.” As always, Freddie refused to find any conclusions except the happiest ones. He should expect that trait to wear off after a time, but he would enjoy it while it lasted.

  Freddie coughed. The hacking sound alarmed Scott, as if somehow that conjurer had visited a curse on her through his chicken bones, but when Freddie took a breath and kept eating, he realized she wasn’t choking. He remembered hearing her cough once or twice before, but the sound hadn’t been so harsh, from her lungs. “Are you ill, Freddie?” he said, pressing his palm to her hot forehead. “I think you have a fever.”

  “I’ll be glad to sleep in a bed tonight,” Freddie said softly. “I’m sorry, colds have always been drawn to me, since I was a girl. But nothing cures them like rest.”

  “How long have you been sick? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tuesday, my throat started tickling. What could I say? Colds run their course.”

  “Not in drafty train cars. And on so little sleep, from town to town.”

  “Am I with my husband or my father?” Freddie said, annoyed.

  “Always tell me if you’re ill,” Scott said. “Don’t be an actress with me, Freddie.”

  Don’t sound so cross when you’re only angry with yourself, he thought. Belle had always said the house could burn down around him, and he wouldn’t notice, he was so lost inside his music. When he was at his piano and Belle was out, their baby might have cried thirty minutes before he heard a thing. He should have guessed much sooner that Freddie wasn’t well.

  “I’ve been feeling poorly, Scott,” Freddie said softly. “But you had your concerts. I didn’t want to slow you down.”

  He pulled her close to him again, nuzzling cheeks. “I should have noticed. But I saw you dancing today…”

  Freddie giggled, which drew another cough she politely hid behind her palm. “I couldn’t help that. I’ve been denied dancing so long, I forgot my cold.”

  “Olivia Dixon will pamper you to death, I’m afraid. She won’t let you out of bed.”

  “Yes, that sounds wonderful,” Freddie said. “A bed.”

  The conjurer got off at the next stop, in Windsor, twenty-seven miles outside Sedalia. In the lamplight from the tiny depot, Scott saw the man look toward him and Freddie before he lumbered down the train’s steps. Scott was relieved the man didn’t speak to them again.

  A white-coated colored porter poked his head into the car and announced they would reach Sedalia soon. “I sho’ am sorry they ain’t no light back here, Mr. Joplin,” the young porter said, darting inside their car with a hushed voice. “This colored car’s gone all to hell. Sorry to cuss, ma’am.”

  “I’ve been thinking that and worse
,” Freddie said.

  “The conditions aren’t your fault,” Scott told him. “How do you know me?”

  “Because you’re a famous man, silly,” Freddie whispered.

  “Who don’t know Scott Joplin? I seed you play lots of times in Sedalia. That’s where I live. I heard you was ridin’.” He came and stood directly before them, bending down to eye-level. “Ain’t nobody left in third-class, if you wanna move. It’s cooler down there, and better seats. Anybody tries to say nothin’, blame it on me. This ain’t my only job. I play piano, too.”

  The porter’s offer for better seats could hardly have been more tempting, at that hour. But Scott glanced around the car, and two other colored passengers remained. He couldn’t tell if they were sleeping or awake, but he felt confident that he knew his wife’s mind on the question.

  “What’s your name?” Scott said.

  “George.”

  “I mean your real name,” Scott said. White passengers called every Negro porter George, so it was no wonder they forgot who they were.

  The young man grinned. “George is the name my mama give me. I’m Lessie Mae’s nephew, from ’round by the depot. Lessie Mae’s brother Ben is my stepdaddy.”

  Lessie Mae was East Main Street’s most successful colored madam, but so well-liked that she joined political groups and social clubs with no fear of exclusion. Her brother, Ben, was a respected minister—and one of their clan, Lionel, was a good singer and dancer Scott had hired alongside his brother Will for The Ragtime Dance at the Wood’s Opera House. Scott could only imagine the far-ranging conversations at their family Christmas dinners. Scott hadn’t seen Lessie Mae in years, but she had given him work when he needed it.

  “Be sure to tell Lessie Mae I’ll be dropping by to see if she’s well,” Scott said. “Thanks for your offer, George, but if this is the car for coloreds, this is where we’d better ride. Next time I come through, maybe I can afford a car of my own.”

  “I heard your Scott Joplin minstrel troupe was fifty folks strong. Musta been a sight!”

  Maybe last year’s tour hadn’t been forgotten, Scott thought. “Well, we weren’t that big, but we were an opera troupe. Started out that way, anyway.” By the time most of the troupe’s members had deserted, even before the final theft, they had to call themselves a minstrel company to get bookings.

  Scott didn’t know what the word opera meant to a boy who might never have heard one, but the porter’s grin widened. “Yes, sir, an opera!” The boy shook his hand, then studied his own palm as if he were trying to see his lines. “I just shook hands with Mr. Scott Joplin, who wrote the ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ I better go pinch myself and make sure I ain’t ’sleep.”

  Then the whistle sounded, and the porter vanished like a jackrabbit through the door.

  “You have such a gift, Scott,” Freddie said, as the train lurched forward.

  “Music? Yes, it’s quite a blessing.” Without music, Scott imagined he might be a porter like George, or picking cotton, or else a railroad worker like his father, brother and so many Sedalia residents, braving terrible conditions. That work would have made him miserable, and he was damned lucky to have avoided it. He never forgot that, not a single day.

  “Your real gift is for making Negroes feel proud,” Freddie said. “I’m not as fond of Booker T. Washington as you—he doesn’t make enough demands!—but if you think he’s one kind of Moses, then you can be another. Those were your words, not his, you wrote in that opera. Your music can help free our people from their binds, so no one can make slaves of us again.”

  Scott couldn’t discard Freddie’s talk of Negroes as slaves again. He might have laughed a few years ago, but not anymore. True, the number of colored doctors, lawyers, ministers and clerks was growing all the time, and their race now bore writers and poets, including Freddie’s beloved Dunbar, whose love poems she now recited to him nightly. But Scott had traveled enough to see the fear and despair. The growth of segregated facilities after the ominous Plessy ruling in ’96 was the first wind of it. A violent storm was spreading, and closer to home.

  He’d heard about a young trombone player, Louis Wright, who’d been lynched in New Madrid a couple years ago, near Missouri’s Kentucky and Tennessee borders. The way Scott had heard it, the young man had cursed at whites throwing snowballs at him, and one thing had led to another until there was a riot at a theater. The entire troupe had been jailed, and Wright had died at the end of the rope. Scott’s father had told him he couldn’t remember a time he’d heard about more lynchings, even before Emancipation. And anyone who wasn’t a blind fool could see that Reconstruction had failed, with little hope of resurrection. Times were dire.

  But what could a musician do?

  “I’m well liked in Sedalia among Negroes and whites both, and I aim to get my feet under me,” Scott said, eager to change the subject. Freddie’s admiration felt burdensome. He’d be satisfied with a reliable bank account these days. “I don’t give speeches. I write music. I’m lucky to be in demand for picnics and dances.”

  “What you see in yourself doesn’t matter,” Freddie said. “It’s what they see. You’re a Negro, and you’ve reached a high station. President Roosevelt probably knows your name.”

  Scott covered his face, shaking his head. “Come now, Freddie. I doubt that.” He had dreamed of seeing A Guest of Honor performed at the White House one day, but that notion had been another casualty of the tour. How had he expected to make it to the White House when he couldn’t survive a handful of performances? Or overcome the treachery of low character in the theft by another Negro?

  “You can help us all get better seats on the trains, and equal treatment everywhere. Your music gives you a platform, Scott. You’ll be heard.” Freddie spoke so emphatically that her words triggered a coughing fit, and Scott was ready to leap up to find a tin of water for her when Freddie waved with both hands to tell him she was all right. Her gray gloves swooped like doves in the dark. “The smoke excites me, I think. I’ll have to stop talking so much.”

  “All I want,” Scott said, “is to get my wife out of this smoky car. And safely to bed.”

  “I’m sorry I got sick. I should have stayed in Little Rock,” Freddie said, sounding tired; her new bride’s facade cracking at last. “Don’t come too close to me, or you’ll be sick, too. That would be a catastrophe. You have to be well to play.”

  Belle had thought his concerts were a bore at best, a nuisance at worst, but Freddie was still charmed by them, protective. Scott prayed that would last awhile. If so, he was married for certain! He kissed his wife’s feverish forehead and held her to his side, feeling her heartbeat against his breast. “I would rather have you with me, sick or well,” he said. “And you’ll be well soon, dancing to make up for all the time you’ve missed. I’ll teach you how to cakewalk, so no one will guess how behind the times you are. I’ll teach you all the dances I know.”

  “And you’ll bare your soul like Paul Laurence Dunbar? You’ll go back to your opera?”

  Truly, she was relentless. “One day, I suppose, Freddie. Of course I will, by and by.”

  Satisfied with his promise, Freddie closed her eyes and slept.

  Marching music accompanied the train’s moans and hisses as it came to a rocking stop inside Sedalia’s stately Katy Depot. Scott wiped dark dust from his window with his handkerchief to see the ruckus: A dozen members of the Negro Queen City Band were assembled on the platform, playing a rousing rendition of the “Washington Post March,” the cornets, clarinets and trombones bobbing to the tempo. The soaring structure amplified their music, making it all the grander. The band members were even wearing snappy uniforms in blue and red, and matching caps, no longer a bedraggled group. Emmett Cook, as usual, played the bass drum, and Scott was glad to see his friend wasn’t in jail, which had been the rumor. Scott didn’t know most of the other young men’s faces. He had been gone too long.

  Emmett saluted Scott with his drum mallet raised high, then spun it, grinni
ng, before he found the beat again. At that hour, they’d be lucky if they weren’t locked up for disturbing the peace! At least there was little fear of lynching here. Scott had been reared in Texarkana—and he would always love St. Louis—but Sedalia might have been his home all along.

  “I’ve married a prince,” Freddie said, leaning over him to take in the sight of the band.

  “No,” he said, smiling. “They’re good folks, and I’m missed here.”

  The night Scott Joplin arrived with his new bride in the town where he had composed his most beloved song, he couldn’t imagine needing any luck beyond that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Los Angeles

  Phoenix was congratulating herself on a night of normal sleep when she saw the piano.

  Since she was not in her own bed, first she had to remind herself where she was: This is Carlos Harris’s bedroom. I agreed to sleep in here last night. Carlos’s queen-sized bed was big enough to give them space without touching, as he’d promised. First question answered. But although Phoenix had been dead tired when he dragged her to bed at midnight, she was sure she would have remembered seeing a shiny piano with a tall, old-fashioned wood cabinet blocking his closet door, so big and misplaced that it jutted almost as far as the bedroom doorway. This piano didn’t belong in Carlos Harris’s bedroom. ROSENKRANZ, said the label painted in gold across the upraised key cover, above the keys.

  This piano especially didn’t belong here, she realized, examining the instrument in the silvery morning light. The piano’s appearance was all wrong, dramatically altered—but she knew this piano. She knew its height, its width, its decoratively carved legs, its engraved flowers on the pale rosewood cabinet, and especially its two candelabra spaced above the keys to give light in the time before electricity. She knew its stare. This piano was a ghost, its youth restored. This piano had chased her down the stairs.