The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

  “You’re a pretty good country salesman yourself, sir,” Brun said. “You sounded darned fine on that guitar.”

  “Huh! I’ve been playing those songs for fifty years and more. Don’t ask me to play any up-to-date tunes, or I will embarrass myself severely.”

  “Meaning no disrespect, sir, but I’d bet a man who plays guitar like I just heard could learn any song he set his mind to.”

  During the exchange, Isaac had walked to the front of the store. Stark scratched at his forehead, and chuckled. “I guess I’ve always had a knack for bringing music out of an instrument. I grew up on my brother’s farm in Indiana, learned banjo and guitar from the free colored, and piano from my sister-in-law. One day I found an old bugle in town, and I figured out how to make noises on that, well enough that when war broke out, I enlisted as a bugler. After the War, I homesteaded a while in northwestern Missouri, and if there’s a more dreary life on this earth, I don’t ever want to live it. Without my guitar to play of evenings, it would have been unbearable. I finally gave it up, and peddled Jesse French organs, so I had to learn to play those, too. There was a time I aspired to play music for a living, or perhaps teach at some academy, but my skills on any instrument were modest in respect to those goals. Which, I suppose, explains how it is I’m here today, running a music store.”

  “You was a mighty fine bugler.” Brun thought Isaac’s face said there was more to the matter, but Stark just coughed, walked over to the register, slipped on his spectacles and began going through receipts.

  A little after five, Brun helped Stark and Isaac close up, then took off toward the Y at a gallop. Not that he wanted to take the time, but he thought he’d be foolish to risk wearing his new suit outside the music store. Better to change into his old clothes before going down to the Maple Leaf Club to meet his piano teacher.

  ***

  Ohio Avenue, which divides east from west in Sedalia, had been a-bustle during Brun’s sprints back and forth between Stark’s and the St. Louis Clothing Store, but now all the banks, stores and offices were closed for the day, and the street was considerably more quiet. As Brun walked past the sandstone Missouri Trust Building on the corner of Fourth, a clattering caught his attention, and he turned to see a small dog shoot by, a tin can tied to his tail. He made a lunge for the pooch, missed, landed face-down on the sidewalk. Good thing he’d changed out of his suit.

  He turned right at Main, hustled past Archias’ Seed Store, dodged a wagon to cross over in front of Big Callie’s Grocery, then stood and gawked at Number 121. Blocher’s Feed Store on the ground floor had closed for the night, but up a story, windows stood open, and bits and snatches of piano music floated out and tickled Brun’s ears. No tune he could recognize, but knowing who was likely up there playing it got his legs moving double-time.

  The narrow paneled door at the corner of the building stuck, but he tugged it open and ran inside, up the stairs to a landing, then up another flight. Even before he reached the top, butterflies zipped full speed around in his stomach, and ants crawled inside his shirt and trousers. He was hundreds of miles from home, primed to go into a colored social club and ask for piano lessons from a colored man he’d never met. Nor could he know how many colored men he might actually be facing, or how inclined they might or might not be to let a white boy learn their music. What if they were all like Ollie the Bear?

  He stood on the landing, listened. Those piano notes and chords didn’t sound at all like music. More like the noises Brun used to make himself, his first year of piano lessons. A few melody notes, once, twice, then the left hand came in with a discordant crash, and after that, a few seconds of muffled voices. Then came that same short melody, but a little different now, with a D where the first time he’d heard a G. The idea of doing a quick turn-and-run entered the boy’s head, but he said, “No,” right out loud, and walked into the room.

  Fifty years later, Brun could describe that scene as if he’d been there just the day before. The Maple Leaf Club filled the entire second story of the building. Four great gas chandeliers hung off the ceiling. To Brun’s left was a massive bar, all carved walnut, practically covering the northern wall; to his right, three pool tables and several smaller tables for cards and dice. Between Brun and the pool tables, wooden tavern chairs were set around six square oak tables. Straight ahead, Brun saw what he’d come for. A black man sat on a bench, his back to Brun, fingers on the keyboard of an upright piano. Around the player clustered five men, two of whom were white. That pumped up Brun’s courage. If he did get sent away, less chance it’d be at the point of a knife.

  All five men looked to have their full attention on the piano keyboard. In no particular order, they reached out to hit a note or play a chord, and all of them seemed to be talking at once. Brun had been part of such groups himself. The minute an itinerant piano player landed in a new city, he’d be off to trade music and ideas with the locals.

  The air in the room was oppressive, not a puff of breeze coming through the open windows. The thousands of cigarettes and cigars smoked over endless years worked with the mildew on the flaking plaster walls to create a bouquet you’d give only to a girl you wanted to get rid of forever. Brun drove his mind hard to come up with a line Scott Joplin could not possibly refuse, but before he could get his thoughts in line, he unleashed a holy whopper of a sneeze. The piano playing stopped as if Brun had fired a pistol. Five pairs of wide eyes stared at him. The boy stared back, dumbstruck. That sneeze had blown every sensible notion in his head straight out his nose.

  The man on the piano stool was very dark, the kind they used to call a blueskin. Close-cropped hair retreated back from his temples. His black suit fit him just so, tie to match, and his collar was spotless. Despite the heat, he looked cool and comfortable. His face asked a dozen questions, but he didn’t say a word. The two men to Brun’s right, now that he looked closer, were actually boys not much past his own age. One was almost as dark as the man on the piano bench, and with his ragged plaid shirt and ratty overalls, he looked like he’d just come in from farmwork. He sat open-mouthed, his forehead splattered with drops of water. The other boy was lighter-skinned, hair neatly trimmed and parted cleanly in the middle. He had a delicate look about him, lips sharply formed, and eyebrows that could’ve been painted on. Directly to the left of the piano player stood an older man, hard for Brun to guess his age. Could’ve been forty, might’ve been sixty, dark-skinned, with great gleaming teeth and an impressive bay window. Under his jaw lay a huge swelling, but that caught less of Brun’s attention than the man’s fingers, which looked a good six inches long. Next to him, leaning against the edge of the piano, was a white man, easily the oldest in the group, about John Stark’s age. No hair at all up on top, but a thick mess of gray curls on the sides and in back, such that Brun could not have sworn in a court that the man actually did have ears. His face was round and red, lips thick. What with his soiled white shirt, tails hanging free over baggy gray trousers, Brun thought if he saw the man on the street, he might give him a nickel or a dime.

  The last man in the group, dapper in a light suit and red-banded straw hat, chuckled. “Well, well, what do we got here? You sure got yourself a light step, boy. I didn’t even begin to hear you comin’ up them steps.”

  He looked white but talked colored. Recognition dawned in Brun’s mind, but before he could say anything, the big man with the goiter and long fingers spoke up. “Sheet, Crackerjack. Noise we was makin’ on this poor piano, we wouldn’a heard the U. S. Cavalry comin’ up them steps.”

  Brun strode the few steps to the grinning, duded-up man, and stuck out his hand. “Glad to see you again, Mr. Saunders.”

  The other men looked back and forth from Brun to Otis Saunders. Saunders squinted hard as he might, then finally took the boy’s hand and gave it a ceremonial shake. “Well, young sir, I’m afraid you’ve got me at a disadvantage. You do look familiar—”

  “Oklahoma City, Mr. Saunders. Last August. The Armstr
ong-Byrd Music Store.”

  A smile started across Saunders’ face.

  “You stood me to a fine lunch at Miss Minnie’s after you taught me to play ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’”

  “So I did. So…I…did! Well, Mr…”

  “Campbell. Brun Campbell.”

  “That’s right. Mr. Brun Campbell, make no mistake, a fine young piano player. Now, whatever is it brings you to Sedalia, and how did you chance to find me?”

  “Not chance at all,” said Brun. “Mr. Saunders—”

  Saunders cut Brun off with a wave. “We being friends of some considerable standing, you will please to call me Otis.”

  “An’ when you gets to be his goooood frien’, you can call him Crackerjack.” That from the big man with the goiter. The others chuckled, all but the black man on the piano bench. He didn’t crack a smile.

  “Okay,” Brun said. “Otis. Like I was saying, it’s not chance that I’m here. I ran off from home, just especially to find you. And Mr. Scott Joplin.”

  Everyone looked at the man on the piano bench.

  “Are you Scott Joplin?” Brun hoped that what was flying around inside his stomach didn’t show on his face.

  Joplin nodded. “What do you want with me?”

  No fear in Joplin’s voice, no antagonism. The man’s face was impassive. Just a shirt-sleeve question, and Brun gave him a shirt-sleeve answer. “I want to take piano lessons from you. I want to learn how to play colored ragtime.”

  Joplin looked up at the older white man, and to Brun’s great surprise, the white man commenced to laugh. Joplin’s expression didn’t change; he seemed to be thinking. But Brun couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Please, Mr. Joplin. Ever since Otis there taught me the ‘Maple Leaf,’ it’s had me by the neck. I played it all winter and spring, I went out and bought all the other ragtime music I could find, and I played and I played, but I just couldn’t seem to get any better. Otis told me last year that you and he lived here in Sedalia, so I ran off, just got in yesterday. Today, I got me a job, working afternoons for Mr. John Stark, at his music store.”

  “You don’t waste time,” Joplin said. The others laughed again.

  Joplin’s face stayed a mask, but his voice sounded kind, which heartened Brun. “What do you charge for lessons?” the boy asked.

  Joplin held up a hand. “Let’s not go quite so fast. You said Otis taught you ‘Maple Leaf’? And you’ve been playing it almost a year now?”

  Brun thought Joplin’s speech was a thing of wonder. The boy had heard tell of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, colored who’d gone to school and were making their mark, but he’d never heard any of them talk. Joplin sounded like some kind of college professor who ought to be wearing a fine suit, and have a monocle in front of one eye. Where did he learn to talk like that? Brun finally managed a mumbled, “Yes, sir.”

  Joplin got up from the bench, and motioned Brun down. “Play it for me, then. Play me ‘Maple Leaf.’”

  Brun settled onto the hard wooden seat and began to play. He cruised through the A and B strains of “Maple Leaf Rag,” no mistakes, but as he swung into the trio section, Joplin said, “Stop.” The boy had no trouble making out the intensity of the displeasure in that one word.

  Joplin settled himself on the bench beside Brun, then commenced to play “Maple Leaf” exactly as Brun had. The men standing around broke into laughter, all but the old, fat white man. The big colored man with the goiter guffawed so hard, Brun thought he might split wide open.

  “Do you hear that?” Joplin asked.

  Hear what, Brun thought, and was suddenly soaking in sweat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Joplin, but I don’t know what it is you want me to hear.”

  “I want you to hear just how I played that tune.” Joplin swung back to face the piano, then banged out an overdone version of Chopin’s “Funeral March,” and sang along, “Da, da, da-da, da, da-da-da-da-da-da!” Again, everybody laughed, except for the old man. And Joplin. And Brun Campbell.

  Brun glanced at Saunders, then turned back to Joplin. “When I played it for Otis there, he told me if you ever heard me play it so fast as I was doing, you were not going to talk pleasant to me. All this last year, I must’ve played that tune five thousand times…” The boy’s voice petered out.

  Joplin glanced at Saunders. Saunders’ grin wavered. “Working by yourself, you can develop bad habits,” Joplin said quietly.

  Again, the boy took encouragement from the gentleness of Joplin’s tone. “No one would help me. No regular piano teacher would give ragtime the time of day, and none of the professors in saloons and restaurants would give me the time of day. Besides, the ragtime those professors played wasn’t really like ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ I liked it good enough, but…”

  Otis Saunders smiled openly, put a hand to Brun’s back. “You remember how you played that music before I said you was playing too fast?”

  “Yes. I played it like all the professors played their ragtime.”

  “Well, then, show the man. Go on, now.”

  Brun thought he might rather just crawl out the door on his hands and knees, but he went to work and hammered out “Maple Leaf Rag,” somewhere between double and triple-time. After only six or seven measures, Joplin tapped his shoulder. “All right, that’s enough. Let me show you something.” Just for a second, Joplin stared at his friends, a warning, Brun thought. Then the composer looked directly at the boy. “My ragtime is different from barrelhouse ragtime. My ragtime has form—it is classical music. Of course there are syncopations and flatted sevenths, but they are set into a structure as well defined as any waltz Strauss ever wrote.”

  He stopped just long enough to shoot a glance at that fat, smiling old white man, who then said the first word Brun had heard from him. “Pre-cisely.” With some kind of foreign accent.

  Joplin spoke on. “And just as you would not play a Strauss waltz in either rapid-march time or funeral-march time, you should not play ragtime too slow or too fast. Do you remember the time signature I wrote at the top of my manuscript?”

  Brun shook his head.

  “Tempo di marcia! Spirited and lively, but closer to allegretto than allegro. Certainly not presto. And you should not accent the beat to the point of a march. The music itself will carry you along, if you only let it.” Joplin played a few bars, banging the bass as Brun had, then said, “Watch my left hand closely.” Then, he replayed the passage. “You see?”

  “Yes. Your left hand does strike harder. But only a little.”

  “And you hear the difference?”

  Brun nodded. “Yes.”

  “Look at it like this, boy.” The man with the goiter talked like he had gravel in his throat. His grinning face was smeared with mischief. “It be like with a woman. You don’t wanna go an’ rip off her beautiful clothes, now do you? Nicer, you open up that dress, one button at a time.”

  Brun felt his face go red. He’d done a bit of fumbling with buttons behind barns and in cornfields, but had never been permitted to go exploring below the equator. The two young black men smiled, and made a point of looking anywhere but at him. Otis Saunders snickered. “Hey, now, Froggy—what you think this li’l boy know about women, huh?”

  Scott Joplin’s expression never changed. Brun wondered if the man ever smiled.

  Saunders clapped Brun’s shoulder. “Now, I am just coming to see, we ain’t got us no manners, do we, young Mr. Campbell? You know me, and you just met Mr. Scott Joplin. And this here is Mr. Arthur Marshall and Mr. Scott Hayden.” Saunders pointed first at the dark young man in the ragged clothing, then at the lighter one. “They both fine piano players, even if they still be wet behind they ears. Mr. Joplin’s showin’ them how to play and write his kind of ragtime music.”

  Envy such as Brun had never felt clutched at his throat and his temples. But he managed to smile and shake hands with each of those fortunate boys, and tell them he was pleased to know them. First Marshall
’s face, then Hayden’s, told Brun how unaccustomed the colored boys were to exchanging social pleasantries with whites.

  “And then this great philosopher here…” Saunders stuck a finger into the fat man’s belly, and wiggled it with fake malice. “This here’s Big Froggy. Plays Number One piano at Miss Nellie Hall’s, over to West Main…where they th’ow you out in the street if’n you try’n open up more’n one button at a time.”

  Brun’s smile left Joplin as the only person in the room with a straight face. The composer pointed at the mussy white man. “This is Professor Julius Weiss, my teacher and my friend.” Joplin’s tone was one a person might use to introduce a king, or at the least, a duke. “Without Professor Weiss’ help, I would not ever have—”

  Weiss waved his hand back and forth like he might’ve been chasing a pesky horsefly. “Nah, nah, nah, Scott. That is not true. A genius like yours would have succeeded with or without any help from me.”

  “So what you say, then, Scott?” Saunders talking now. “You gonna take on this boy?”

  Joplin stared at Brun, not a word. Impossible to know what was going on behind that mask of a face. Then he glanced up at Weiss, who turned a smile on him like the sun bursting out from behind a cloud.

  “Boy lef’ his home and come all this way, just to take lessons from you,” growled Big Froggy. “How old was you, first time you go on the road?”