The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

  Brun walked on, passed a vacant lot where some teenaged boys played a loud and lively game of base ball. Brun figured he had a year or two on them, not more, but they seemed ages younger than himself, and he felt a curious sensation of superiority, sadness and envy, all mixed up together.

  Back across Ohio on Fifth as far as Moniteau, looking every which way, then up Moniteau to Fourth. A little fellow on an iron-wheeled tricycle shot past him, piping, “Whoo-whoo…MoPac Special, clear the tracks.” Brun smiled, but his eyes filled.

  At the next corner, just a little way up Kentucky, Brun saw what he’d been looking for, a crowd of small boys and girls at the edge of the street, pushing, shouting, arms out. He heard the familiar cry, “Ice-kadeem. Ice-kadeem,” and started to run. As he came up to the little push-wagon, raggedy Romulus Marcantonio scooped a serving into a paper cup and put it carefully into the hand of a little girl, then took the nickel from her other hand. “There-a you are, Missy. Bes’ ice-kadeem in Sedal’, vanill’. Maybe tomorra choc’late, who know?” Then he caught sight of Brun, and flashed a sly grin. “Hey-a, young mister. Where’s-a da pretty girl tonight, huh?”

  Brun tried a smile, wasn’t at all sure he’d pulled it off. “That’s for later, Romulus. Right now, I just need to talk to you.”

  ***

  By the time Brun finished with the ice-cream peddler, it was growing dark. The boy felt at sixes and sevens. He had to talk to someone, but who? John Stark? Then he could forget about any future he might ever have with Stark Music Publishing. Higdon? He might just as well get on the next train back to El Reno. The cops? Sure, if he wanted to share a cell and a chamberpot with some drunk bum. He could think of only one person who might possibly give him a sympathetic ear.

  He hustled back to Ohio, then up to Second. From the open windows above the St. Louis Clothing Store, he heard piano music, no question who was playing it. He took the stairs two at a time, paid his quarter at the door.

  At first, he didn’t see Higdon or Miss Gertie, but spotted Scott Joplin at the piano, the gaiety of the Fledermaus waltz he played as far from the impassiveness of his face as black is from white. Mr. Weiss stood at his side. Some fifty couples were on the dance floor, while a few others sat at small tables, sipping drinks and talking. As Brun caught sight of Higdon and Miss Gertie across the room, he did a quick doubletake. He’d have sworn that woman was too much a sobersides to dance at all, but there she was, gliding easily around the room in Higdon’s arms, smiling, and every now and again saying a few words up into his face.

  Then Joplin surprised Brun by throwing a little bridge into the music and crossing it, right out of Fledermaus into “Echoes of the Snowball Club.” One of the dancing couples stopped, looked at each other in clear confusion, and walked to the sidelines, shaking their heads. But the rest went right on dancing. Brun walked toward the piano, and when Weiss saw him, he put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Brunnie, hello!” He made a show of looking around. “What is this? You don’t have yourself a pretty girl with you?”

  Brun shook his head. “Just here by myself.”

  “So you come to hear Scott play, yes?” Weiss didn’t wait for an answer. “You see, then, what he does? Two lovely waltzes, one from Europe, one from America. One with syncopation, one without, but look.” He waved a hand, covering the entire range of the dance floor. “They can dance to one, they can dance to the other. Is waltzes, that’s all.”

  During Mr. Weiss’ speech, Joplin played his way across another short bridge back to Fledermaus, but now syncopating it. Then he transitioned to an unsyncopated “Echoes,” and finally he put the two together, a phrase from one, then the other, never missing the waltztime beat. When he finished the tune, the couples stood and applauded for over a minute.

  “So, Brunnie,” said Mr. Weiss. “You see now what a genius he’s got.”

  Joplin looked pleased, but as always, no smile came over his face. He stood, made an awkward bow, then sat back down and swung right into “Sidewalks of New York.” The boy stared at the composer, off in his own world of music, and tried to figure how to tell him and Professor Weiss that for a whole week, Brun had been hiding the one material object that bound them together. Sure, the idea was to save Joplin’s neck, but Brun had no trouble imagining Joplin, unreadable as any Chinaman, turning that unsmiling face on him, and saying, “So you thought I was guilty of murder,” then cutting him dead. “Yes, I see,” Brun said quietly, then left the dancers and went back to Higdon’s, to his room, to bed.

  ***

  Sunday morning, the courthouse bell and the rail yard whistle didn’t blow, and turning a deaf ear to church bells had never been a problem for Brun. By the time he blinked his eyes open, the house was quiet, near ten by the clock in the kitchen. No doubt the Higdons were gone off to church, fine with Brun. He’d awakened with the makings of a plan in his head, and was grateful for solitude to work it through. He fried a couple of eggs, made coffee, and as he ate, he thought. By the time he washed and dried his dishes, he figured he might just have the matter in hand.

  But it was only about eleven, too early to turn thought into action. Best, though, to be away before the Higdons got back. He went to his room, took the locket out of the cubby, and headed out toward Liberty Park. All through town, a clangor of Methodist bells, Presbyterian bells, Catholic bells, each trying to shout down the others. Another few hours, the park would be mobbed with picnickers, but right now it was near-empty. Brun strolled around the lake, one hand on the locket in his trouser pocket, thinking his idea through and through. After an hour and a half, he turned off the path and made tracks to Stark’s.

  John Stark looked surprised as he opened the door to Brun. “I know it’s early, Mr. Stark,” the boy said. “Sorry to intrude on the Sabbath.”

  Stark’s eyes opened wide. He took a moment to regard Brun from over the upper rim of his reading spectacles. “Sabbath or not, the world has a habit of intruding. And somehow, I suspect there’s a degree of urgency to your visit.”

  “Yes, sir. I think there is.”

  “Then don’t just stand there, come in.”

  Stark led Brun to the back porch, where Mrs. Stark and Nell sat with Isaac. Mrs. Stark gave the boy her customary warm greeting, but he saw suspicion in Nell’s eyes.

  “Brun’s come to talk to me about a problem,” Stark said. “Do you wish privacy, Brun?”

  The boy shook his head, took a chair. “Not from anyone in your family, sir. It’s about Mr. Freitag—and that woman who was murdered last week. I was walking along the road this morning, out where they found the body, and I saw the sun shining off something in the grass.” He pulled out the locket, gave it to Mr. Stark. “Look inside.”

  Stark grunted, then popped the locket open. His eyes bugged. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

  Everyone was around him in an instant. Brun heard Isaac murmur something, but couldn’t quite pick up on it. Mrs. Stark asked who the man was.

  A hoarse staccato from Stark. “That Freitag nut.” He looked back to Brun. “You say you found this where the woman’s body was discovered?”

  “Yes, sir. The weeds were still trampled down.”

  “Why did you bring it here? Why didn’t you go to the police with it?”

  Brun was prepared. “Truth, I’d rather be answering your questions than the coppers’, especially what with me being a runaway. But if you want me to go there, I will.”

  Stark’s smile would have been sly, if not for the troubled way his brows beetled. “No, I don’t want you to do that, at least not until I’ve had more time to think about it. I’m sure Ed Love would wonder why you found this locket so readily, when his men had already combed the whole area and missed it.”

  “I thought of that,” said Brun. “I own, it does seem queer. But when I saw the sun shine off it, it was just for a second, then it was gone. I almost went on walking, but figured maybe somebody had dropped a gold piece in the grass, so I went to see. I was su
rprised when I saw what it was.”

  “But you thought right off about the murdered woman.”

  “No, sir, not exactly right off. What I first thought was just that some lady had lost it, and then I wondered what she would have been doing in the grass by the side of the road.”

  Stark smiled. Isaac chuckled. The women took care to look in another direction.

  “Then I remembered that was where Mr. Higdon said they’d found the woman. The weeds were knocked every which way to Sunday, so maybe the cops tromped the locket down underneath, and I just happened to see it from where I was standing right then.”

  Stark studied the photo. “Hmmm. Could the woman have been Freitag’s wife?”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald said she told him her name was Sallie Rudolph. Not Freitag.”

  Now, Mrs. Stark spoke up. “He wouldn’t be the only man, married or not, to have a lady friend, now, would he? And a man like him? Perhaps the poor thing showed up in town at an awkward moment. Or with a troublesome demand.”

  “Mother, you have a wicked mind.”

  Nell was teasing, and Mrs. Stark knew it. “We’ll wait until you’ve been on this earth as long as I,” she said. “Then, you can make judgments as to the wickedness of my mind.”

  “Wicked your mind may be, my dear,” said Mr. Stark. “But I’ve never known it to be unfair, unkind, or off the mark.” Stark got to his feet with such suddenness that Brun jumped. “I think I’ll have a talk with Bob Higdon, and see whether there was a chain on the woman’s body, one that the locket could have been torn away from. I’d guess he ought to be home from church by now.” He bent to kiss his wife. “I’ll be back for dinner, my dear. Brun will be staying.”

  “Well, of course he will,” said Mrs. Stark. “I invited him when he was here last Sunday. Or have you forgotten?”

  ***

  Not half an hour later, John Stark marched through the living room and onto the porch. Conversation stopped as if cut off by a sharp knife. Stark chuckled. “Bob thought something was up, what with my coming over before dinner on a Sunday, and he was curious, to say the least, as to why I was asking such a question about a locket chain. But he said yes, the police did find a small torn chain at the roadside, near the woman’s body.” Stark sat, surveyed his audience. “Now, suppose we take this locket to the police. They’ll call in Freitag, who’ll swear up and down he knows nothing about the dead woman. He’ll ask what evidence there is to suggest the locket was in fact hers. And would you doubt that Miss McAllister, close as she’s become to Freitag, might swear that the locket, with Freitag’s picture, belonged to her, and she just happened to notice last night that she had lost it somewhere? It leaves us in a difficult position.”

  “I’ve got an idea, Mr. Stark.”

  Everyone looked at Brun.

  “I heard Mr. Joplin say Freitag used to work for Carl Hoffman in Kansas City, and he was here last month with a man named Daniels, trying to get Mr. Joplin to let them publish his Ragtime Dance…”

  Brun stopped talking as he saw the look that passed between Stark and Isaac. “That’s Charles Daniels,” Stark said. “A little bit of a hot shot, but a capable young man, and I think decent enough. The two of them also came to our store that day. Well, all right, Brun. Just what are you considering?”

  Brun’s stomach felt like a half-full jug on the deck of a boat during a heavy storm. He licked his lips. “I was thinking I could take the early train to Kansas City tomorrow morning, go to Carl Hoffman’s, talk to Daniels and see what I can find out about Freitag. I’d work the line around to how a woman named Sallie Rudolph found herself a whole mess of trouble in Sedalia. I could probably do that and get back to work on time, but in case I don’t, I wouldn’t want you thinking I was dogging it. That’s why I’m telling you now.”

  Smiles came over all the faces in the company, the women’s warm, the men’s tight. Stark said, “I believe we can manage to get along without you in the store for at least part of a day. Let’s talk more over dinner. I for one have worked up a hearty appetite.”

  ***

  Six o’clock before Brun left Stark’s. He had a double sawbuck in his pocket, and a paper with Carl Hoffman’s address, both courtesy of John Stark. The boy had eaten considerably more of Mrs. Stark’s roasted chicken and cherry pie with rich vanilla ice cream than his mother would have considered polite, and now he felt logy. At the corner of Sixth and Ohio, he decided he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with the Higdons, whether over the locket or his behavior with Maisie, so he changed direction and wandered out to Liberty Park, found a comfortable spot under a huge old maple, stretched himself on the grass and stared at the sky. A flock of wild geese passed overhead, partly blotting out the sun. Their honking call set off the same lonesome tug below the boy’s ribs that he’d felt during his long ride to Sedalia, when he heard the train’s whistle long and low in the night. He closed his eyes.

  Next he knew, it was full darkness. He blinked, then pulled himself to his feet, stretched, brushed at his trousers, and started hoofing back to town. At Third, corner of Osage, he thought he heard a sound coming out of a patch of brier bushes, so he walked up, carefully spread branches, and peered through. Now, he definitely heard a moan. “He’p me.”

  The stickers pulled at his pants and shirt, and he had to cover his face with his arms to get down and look at the body in the middle of the brier patch. When he reached to touch the person, there came a scream of such pain and fear as to cover the boy’s body with goosebumps. “I won’t hurt you,” Brun said. “What happened?”

  “They beat me turrible.” The voice was familiar; Brun bent for a closer look. A colored man, head curled tightly to his chest, upper body rocking back and forth, long legs lying stretched and motionless. “Henry?” Brun asked. “High Henry?”

  The moaning and screaming stopped. “Who you be?”

  “Brun Campbell. Scott Joplin’s young piano man. What happened to you?”

  “They beat me,” Henry said again. “He’p me, please. My head hurts somethin’ awful, an’ I don’t feel nothin’ in my legs at all. I think I gonna die.”

  No way for Brun to get the Negro out of those briers by himself. “Henry, listen up. I’m going for Doc Overstreet—”

  “Do he treat colored?”

  “Mr. Stark sent Isaac there when he got hurt by the Alteneders—”

  “Them’s who did it to me.”

  “The Alteneders?”

  “The very same. I was goin’ along to Lincolnville, mindin’ my own business, an’ I hear somebody say, ‘That him.’ Then Mist’ Alteneder an’ his boy, they grab me, pull me out back of Adams’ blacksmith shop, an’ say where is that music I tol’ Mr. Freitag I’d give him. I say I ain’t got it on me, gotta go home an’ get it, but then they start hittin’ me with clubs an’ kickin’ me an’ sayin’ this what happens to a lyin’ nigger who tell Mr. Freitag he gonna give him some music, then never do. The boy punch my face an’ say I done missed my chance ’cause Mist’ Freitag gonna get all the music he want later tonight outa the Maple Leaf Club.”

  That seemed to exhaust Henry; he closed his eyes and his head lolled. Brun bent over him. “Just hang on, Henry, okay? Be right back with the doc.”

  When Overstreet opened the door to Brun’s pounding, the boy quickly apologized for making such a racket late on a Sunday evening. “But there’s a man down the street, needs your help in a hurry. He got beat up and thrown in the briers, and he’s hurt real bad. Please, will you come?”

  The doctor’s Adam’s apple bobbed; his shoulders slumped. “I’ll get my bag,” he said, through a cloud of recycled whiskey.

  No sound as Brun and Overstreet approached the briers. The doctor put down his bag, then he and Brun broke their way in to Henry, who now lay still. “He’s not…dead, is he, Doc?” Brun asked.

  Dr. Overstreet had already reached his hand along the side of Henry’s neck. “No, just unconscious. Let’s get him out of here,
where I can get a better look at him. Take his feet, I’ll carry his head and neck.”

  They lifted Henry slowly, carefully. As the long body unfurled, Overstreet whistled low. “God blast me—it’s High Henry Ramberg. What happened to him?”

  “He said Fritz and Emil Alteneder gave him what-for ’cause he wouldn’t sell his music to Mr. Freitag.”

  “Christ Almighty!” Overstreet turned his head and spat. He opened his bag, poked the Negro here and there, tapped him with a little hammer, listened at his chest. After a couple of minutes, the doctor stood, his face grim. “Can you help me get him back to my office?”

  For answer, Brun bent, but before he could lift Henry’s feet, Overstreet tapped his shoulder. “You’ve got to be careful. We both do. His back’s broken, and we don’t want to make it worse. Handle him as if he were a bag of dynamite.”

  As Brun and the doctor came up to Overstreet’s office, two men and their wives approached from the opposite direction. The small group rubbernecked, then Brun heard one of the men say, “Doc Overstreet and some kid, carrying a nigger.” Whereupon one of the women said, loud enough to be sure of being heard, “Hmph! He’d do better to go to Sunday vespers than go scratching around town looking for drunk niggers to treat.”

  Overstreet called out, “Jack, Ernie, one of you please be so good as to open the door.”

  The men looked at each other, then one moved forward, opened the door, and held it long enough for Brun and the doctor to carry Henry through. “Thank you, Ernie,” Overstreet called back over his shoulder.

  They laid Henry gently on the table in the examining room, then peeled off his shirt and trousers. The sight moved Brun to near-sickness. Bruises covered Henry’s body, cuts everywhere, scratches from the briers. That beautiful chocolate face was a mass of lumps and patches of dark discoloration; one eye was swollen shut. His legs lay at strange angles to each other. Overstreet shucked off his vest and tossed it on the back of a chair, then rolled up his sleeves and went to work on Henry, who showed no sign of life beyond breathing and letting out an occasional, “Oooooooo.” Brun wanted to tell the doctor about the plan Henry had overheard, but didn’t dare interrupt him. The little clock on the wall next to the examination table chimed ten-thirty. Brun fidgeted. “Is he going to live?”