The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

  Now Brun knew why Joplin spoke such a fine tongue. Have him and me talk, the boy thought, and a blindfolded listener would point at me and say, “That one there’s the nigger, sure enough.”

  “Scott is like my own son,” Weiss said. “He is a true genius. Maybe why God sent me to Texarkana was so Scott would have lessons and tutoring. When I left Texarkana, I gave to Scott a gift, a little money-clip I had brought from Europe, it played music. I wanted it would be a reminder for him about what a great talent he has got, and he must not ever stop trying to get better and better.”

  Joplin wiped his hand across his mouth, but said nothing. Brun worked fiercely to keep his face as straight as Joplin’s. He didn’t want to ask the question, tried not to. But out it came. “Could I…see it? That money-clip that plays music?”

  Joplin shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have it with me. But now you understand, Brun, why I’m pleased to have a white pupil.” Joplin pointed to a disorderly stack of music on the floor to the right of the piano. “That is a full-length performance in ragtime, a ballet, like Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, or Sleeping Beauty. I call it The Ragtime Dance, and I’m working to put it on later this year, at Wood’s Opera House. But first, I want to present the music at the Emancipation Day Festivities. People will come from all over Pettis County and beyond, a tremendous audience. There should be enough talk afterward that I think a lot of Negroes—and I hope whites as well—will come to Wood’s for a full performance.”

  As smoothly as Joplin had moved the talk off the money-clip, Brun figured he could take a lesson from the composer in more than music. “I guess that’ll be a real barnburner,” the boy said. “Emancipation Day is when?”

  “August the fourth.”

  “But that’s less than two weeks off.”

  “That’s why Professor Weiss is here. I sent him a letter and asked if he could possibly come up and help me.”

  “Hah! As if I would ever say no. I would not miss this performance for anything.”

  “If it weren’t for Professor Weiss,” said Joplin quietly, “I would be in Texarkana right now, pounding away with a hammer in a railroad shop.” Then he swung around on the piano bench with such suddenness, Brun jumped. “Now,” Joplin said. “I was trying to show you something, wasn’t I?” He held his hands lightly above the keyboard. “This ragtime tune has nothing at all to do with maple leaves. I could as easily have called it ‘Etude in Ragtime Number Two,’ by Scott Joplin, and maybe I should have.” Joplin’s fingers drifted back and forth along the keys. “It is not a musical painting of a sunny day, or a beautiful woman, or a fresh-baked sweet-potato pie. It is how you feel on that sunny day, seeing that woman, smelling that pie. But despite yourself, you know that inevitably the sun will set. That woman will grow old and bent and wrinkled. The pie will get eaten or moldy. While it lasts, though… You need to listen to the music with more than your ears. You and I may play the same notes, but there will be a difference between our performances, just as there will be differences in the way two singers perform a Schubert song. Beethoven and Schubert speak to the performers, and the performers tell the audience what they hear. Listen to ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ Brun. Then, speak it through the piano. All right? Now, let me give you some exercises that might help.”

  The hour-lesson lasted an hour and a quarter by the clock, if only about five minutes by Brun’s reckoning. When the boy put his half-dollar piece into Joplin’s hand, Joplin said a polite thank-you, and slipped the coin into his pocket. “Go and practice now. Come back eleven o’clock next Tuesday.”

  The boy was halfway to the door when Joplin called after him, “Are you working with your rubber ball?”

  Uh-oh. “I’m sorry, Mr. Joplin. Just haven’t had time yet to get one.”

  “If you do not have it by Tuesday—”

  “I’ll have it in five minutes. I’ll go right from here to Messerly’s.”

  Brun skipped down the stairs to the door; outside, the midday sun hit him smack in the face. He shaded his eyes. Across the way, a stoop-shouldered colored man worked a broom across the wooden sidewalk in front of Callie’s Grocery. East Main looked like a washed-out man after a night of carousing, getting too old for that kind of thing. But Brun Campbell was fifteen years old, on his own tack in Sedalia, Missouri, far away from Mr. Utley and his cursed farm, taking lessons in ragtime music from Scott Joplin. If he was going to go to hell for playing that music, he was in heaven now, and bound to enjoy every minute. A brief stop at Messerly’s Dry Goods Store, then he ran through the heat back to Higdon’s, squeezing the red, cast-rubber ball at each step.

  Miss Belle and Miss Luella were nowhere to be seen, probably out grocery-shopping for supper. Brun sat at the piano, played “Maple Leaf Rag” and Joplin’s exercises until close to one o’clock. Then he ran upstairs to his room, changed into his good suit, and ran all the way to Stark and Son’s. Never gave even a passing thought to lunch.

  ***

  Toward midafternoon, traffic at Stark’s was light, and the proprietor told Brun to go down to the Boston Café and have a phosphate. The boy took off running. But as he flopped into a chair at a little table, he heard metal clink on metal in his pants pocket, and straightway his conscience commenced to hammer at him without mercy. He sucked halfheartedly at the straw in his phosphate. That money-clip, twenty-eight dollars and all, belonged to Scott Joplin. Brun tried to imagine Joplin, that shy and quiet man, with his calm, intelligent face and gentle voice, savagely throttling a woman, then leaving her body in a clump of weeds at a roadside. It didn’t add up.

  But Brun knew that if you push any man hard enough, there’s going to be trouble. The hidings his Pop dispensed for misbehavior were generally pretty moderate, but once, when the boy was seven, he got caught with his hand in the penny candy jar at Mr. Munson’s store, and no pennies in his pocket to pay. Pop, who admired Honest Abe Lincoln to considerable excess, was embarrassed by Mr. Munson’s tattle, and that night, Brun got a switch on his bare bottom to end all. “That’s for trying to take something not yours,” Pop shouted as he whaled away. “That’s for a hand that goes where it has no business. That’s for being a humiliation to your mother and father.” When the old man finally quit and stomped out of the shed, Brun looked around through two lakes of tears to see whether his butt was bleeding.

  And how long had Brun known Scott Joplin? All of two days. “Still water runs deep,” Ma used to say. Maybe that dead woman kept after Joplin about something or other until he couldn’t take another minute of it, so he grabbed her, and choked and choked and choked. Joplin might not even have realized what he was doing until it was too late. Maybe he panicked and ran, didn’t give a thought to the money-clip. So Brun could hardly give it back, then sit on a piano bench and concentrate on playing music with Joplin standing behind him.

  Could he walk on down to the Maple Leaf Club after work, give Joplin the clip, tell him he’d found it on the floor at Boutell’s? Or on the wooden sidewalk in front of the St. Louis Clothing Company? Would Joplin swallow that? Not likely.

  How about sneaking into the Maple Leaf Club and leaving the clip and the twenty-eight dollars on the piano? But someone else might come in first and pocket it all. Worse, someone might see Brun sneaking in, and tell Joplin or the police.

  Nothing he could think of sounded right. But one thing he knew, and for sure—he was going to take piano lessons from Scott Joplin. And that being the case, he needed to make certain neither he nor Joplin could be tied to that dead woman. He had to hide that money-clip in a safe place, maybe somewhere in his room at Higdon’s…

  “Well, hello, there, Mr. Campbell. How is it you’re not working at Mr. Stark’s today?”

  Brun snapped around, and found himself looking at Miss McAllister. Before he could answer, he heard a deep voice announce, “Maybe Stark gave him the can.”

  Brun shifted his eyes to take in the speaker. A big man, familiar round face, smiling, but not in a pleasant wa
y. Then it hit Brun. This was the man on the little picture inside that locket, and he was a dandy, a sight to behold in pearl-gray ice-cream pants and a swallow-tail jacket, blond pompadour neatly combed under a straw skimmer. Brun knew the type, a big talker, particularly with the ladies. So why was his photograph in a locket on a dead lady’s wrist? “No, he didn’t give me the can,” Brun said. “Just a break to have a phosphate.”

  “Pays you pretty good, does he?”

  The big man was still smiling, but his face had the look of a costume mask. “If you don’t mind me saying so,” the boy said, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  Now, the man laughed out loud. “Well, now, this young man’s got a backbone, don’t he, Maisie? I like that.”

  Maisie McAllister, Brun thought. He repeated it in his mind. Maisie smiled at him.

  The man swept his arm grandly in front of Brun’s face. “Let me explain,” he intoned. “Then, I think you’ll see that it just might be my business, and that your business and mine could be the same. First, let me introduce myself. I’m Elmo Freitag, from Kansas City. I’m in music publishing, and more.”

  Give the man a chance? “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Brun said, then half-stood to shook hands. Like shaking with a catfish just hauled out of the river. The boy pulled free as quickly as he could. “Brun Campbell.”

  Freitag pulled out the chair to Brun’s left for Maisie, who smoothed her white skirts and sat; Freitag took the chair to Brun’s right. Brun noticed people staring from all around the café, and they weren’t looking at him or Freitag.

  “Now…” Freitag gestured with his hat. “I used to represent Carl Hoffman Music Publishers in Kans’ City, and if you know the business at all, you know there’s no bigger name in the game. But I’m striking out on my own now, and I’m going to blow every other outfit right out of the water. You know what’s the coming thing in music sheets…Bert, was it?”

  “Brun.”

  “Right, Brun. Sorry. Not a usual name. Well, let me answer my own question for you. It’s colored ragtime, and it’s going to make certain people rich.”

  None of them colored, Brun thought, but he kept his counsel.

  “And I don’t mind telling you, I’m going to be one of those people. Sedalia’s got more colored music than any place in the country, and that’s why I’m here.”

  Brun’s attention had wandered back to Maisie McAllister. Freitag picked right up. “I had the great fortune to meet Miss Maisie here, and she knows a good thing when she sees it. She’s signed on as secretary and general assistant. Now what I was saying, Brun…”

  Freitag leaned in close. Brun had no trouble deciding that the man had already held a serious business meeting that day with John Barleycorn. “A man has to know when the right moment is at hand,” Freitag said. “By the time I’m done, I’m going to have me a box two feet thick with colored ragtime music, and when I do, I’ll take the next train to Kay Cee and have a little talk with a printer I know. And before the year is out, I’ll have the hottest ragtime sheets in every store from New York to Topeka. But that’s not the whole story.”

  All the while Freitag talked, Brun sipped at his phosphate. “I guess that’s good,” he said. “But I don’t see what it has to do with me, and I need to get back to work.”

  He pushed his chair away from the table, but Freitag arrested him with a fleshy hand to the shoulder. “Hold on just a minute, there, Brun. I did tell you, didn’t I, that I believe your interests and ours might just coincide.”

  Brun went on alert. The man sounded like any number of two-bit country preachers he’d heard, warming up to the heart of their Sunday message to the flock just before they passed the plate.

  “I said that wasn’t the whole story. As much money as there is in music publishing, there’s more yet in performing. And Freitag Enterprises is going to be right there, too. I’m not just going to put this music on paper, I’m going to start up a colored troupe to play that music, sing and dance it on the stage. That’s what they’re good at. I’ll take care of all the business arrangements. Colored’ll just need to write down their music, play it on pianos and banjos, and sing and dance. They won’t have to bother themselves about where their next meal’s coming from, or the rent money. Just like in the old days, not a worry in the world, everybody’s happy. We’ll start in Kans’ City, then when we’ve got us a name, take it on the road. To New York. Give me two years, and Elmo Freitag’s gonna be the biggest name in show business. All the gold to be mined ain’t in the frozen north… Well, Brun, that’s an odd look you’ve got on your face. I bet you don’t believe me.”

  That odd look was because Freitag had reminded the boy about the note he’d left his parents just a few days before. “No, sir, I don’t disbelieve you,” he said. “It’s just you were talking about music publishing, then all of a sudden you’re onto the Gold Rush. I’m not sure I follow your drift.”

  “Ah, the young—so impatient.” Freitag shot Maisie an arch glance. Brun slurped down the last of his phosphate and made to slide sideways off his seat, but Freitag shifted to block his exit. “Now, Brun, you’d be smart to pay me mind. I’ve been in music publishing nearly twenty years. Ragtime music is going to take this country by storm, and I’m bound to ride that wave to my fortune. Maisie here…well, her dream is to have a singing career, and what with all these ragtime tunes I’m going to get, that little dream can’t help but come true. And so can yours. All you got to do is help me get Scott Joplin’s music, and bang, like magic, you’re vice-president of Freitag Enterprises. How does that sound?”

  Brun thought it sounded like the man was a nut case. Brun Campbell, of all people, was supposed to get Scott Joplin to give him music?

  Freitag’s laugh filled the café. “Listen up, I’ll explain it to you. I got to know Joplin at Hoffman, from when we published his ‘Original Rags,’ and he’s a whole different kind of nigger. Don’t drink hardly at all, don’t fool around—the man’s a ragtime-writing machine, that’s all he ever thinks about. Now, if I’ve got his music, I’ve got the best that’s being written, and on top of that, with Scott Joplin in my company, every nigger in Sedalia and for miles around is going to come in line. Problem is…” Freitag stopped long enough to snicker, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Joplin says he’ll only publish under a royalties contract. A nigger talking royalties, can you imagine that? Where’d he ever get that idea from? You ever meet a nigger who could tell you what a percent is?”

  Brun’s impatience rose like a creek in flood time and washed over the banks. Mr. Stark was going to give him hell for taking too long on his break. “Truth, Mr. Freitag, I’ve met more than my share of white men in Kansas and Missouri who’d hear the word percent and figure you were probably talking Latin or Greek.”

  Freitag ignored the wisecrack. “Now, Brun, I do know you’re in a hurry to get back to your job, but just give me two minutes—not a second more—of your time, and listen to my idea. I don’t think you’ll regret it.”

  Many years later, Brun told me he knew he should have just said a nice-to-meet-you to Freitag and gone out the door, fast as he could walk. But he looked at Maisie McAllister, in her lace-trimmed turquoise silk waist and bright plaid skirt, smiling and blinking her eyes at him, and asked out loud what he would better have just kept wondering about. “Why do you need me to get Scott Joplin to publish with you?”

  “Joplin seems well inclined toward you,” Freitag said. “So take your lessons with him, learn to play his music. Learn his music. Get so he trusts you. Then, maybe you can persuade him that his future lies with Freitag Enterprises. But if you can’t, well, that wouldn’t really be all that much of a problem. Once you’ve learned Joplin’s music, what’s going to stop you from writing it down and bringing it to me? And then…” Freitag spread his arms grandly. “Then, it will be Mr. Brun Campbell, the Boy-King of Ragtime. You’ll be on Easy Street right there with Miss McAllister and me. How
does that sound, my lad?”

  For answer, Brun pushed away from the table, gave Freitag a hard shove to the chest, and stamped across the floor and outside. His brain was hotter than the thermometer next to the door, and that read ninety-six. Steal Scott Joplin’s music? Bad enough he’d made off with a money-clip and a locket from a murdered woman. But if he ever stole Scott Joplin’s music, he’d have to crawl out of Sedalia on his stomach the next time Joplin even looked at him.

  But how did Freitag know he was taking piano lessons from Scott Joplin? Miss McAllister? He hadn’t said anything to her the day before. He was sure he hadn’t.

  Chapter Six

  Sedalia

  Friday, July 21,1899

  Afternoon

  From behind the counter, John Stark watched with no real interest as a man and two women browsed the sheet music racks. Time was, he’d have been out there, asking them what they might be looking for, and had they tried the newest hit from St. Louis or New York, but now, more often than not, he just let browsers be. How many years had he been selling, selling, selling? Stark wasn’t a rich man, never would be, but he was comfortable. His wife and children always had what they needed, and Stark himself had the luxury, nights, of reading whatever he pleased, history, theology, science. Will was looking to branch into music publishing, but the idea of learning a whole new business, once an exhilarating notion to Stark, now just made him feel tuckered. And the thought of risking everything he’d worked for all those years just scared the bejesus out of him. A rocking chair and a book, with a glass of lemonade in the afternoon and whiskey after dinner, sounded better to him every day. He was almost sixty. An old man.

  He breathed a sigh of bravura proportions, then glanced at the big clock up on the wall behind him. His new boy was taking himself a pretty good break, twenty minutes already. Probably saw a sweet little girl at the Boston, bought two phosphates, sat himself next to her, and started talking. The boy had the kind of mouth that would likely bring him either success or an early grave; Stark hoped it would be the former. Brun was a likable kid, willing and eager, didn’t act like the world owed him a living. You couldn’t exactly call him a liar, just that he was not overly inclined to let truth stand in the way of convenience. Like telling his real age, or where he’d really run off from. Still, Stark thought when chips were down on the table, Brun could be counted on.