The Ragtime Kid Read online

  Brun swallowed a mouthful of collards. “George R. Smith College for Negroes?”

  Saunders wiped at his mouth with the edge of the tablecloth. “Oh yes. Yes, indeed. Mr. George R. Smith founded Sedalia in 1860, an’ it was a big outpost for the Union all through the war. Afterwards, the railroads come on through, so they need plenty of workers, don’t they, good hard workers. Colored come up from the south, bring they music with ’em. An’ when Mr. George R. Smith die, he leave money in his will for a school for colored, supposed to teach all the subjects, but most of all, music. I say if a man don’t like music a whole lot, why, then he best go’n live someplace else besides Sedalia.”

  Brun left Minnie’s that day feeling like he’d walked inside a building, then come back out the same door to find himself standing on a road he wouldn’t find on any map, in a world he never knew existed, You might think the beer had something to do with that, and you might wonder if it was just tobacco the boy smoked with Otis Saunders. But Brun always insisted it was “Maple Leaf Rag” working on him, more powerful by a long shot than any drink or smoke. The notes barreled through his head, rearranged his every thought, made whatever he saw or heard or touched or smelled or tasted seem somehow different.

  On the sidewalk in front of Minnie’s, Otis Saunders said good-bye. “Now, you be sure’n keep up your piano work—do that, an’ maybe one day I be comin’ to hear you play in a big concert hall. But before we go our ways, you let me give you one li’l piece of advice. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right, then. When you in a city, you got to be careful of some things. Like best you leave your money in your front pants pocket. Or in your shirt pocket, ’neath your coat or vest. But never—not ever—in the back pocket of your trousers.”

  Brun frantically slid a hand into his back pocket, where he’d put some twenty dollars’ worth of folded bills that morning. At the sight of the boy’s face, Saunders laughed, then reached behind his vest and came out with a wad of money, which he placed into the boy’s hand. “They’s bad people in cities, young Mr. Piano Man. You don’t want to be helpin’ them to help themselves, you get my drift.”

  “I’d be pretty dumb if I didn’t,” Brun said, though his voice shook considerably. Saunders, still laughing, put out a hand; they shook. The boy pushed his money down as far as it would go into his shirt pocket.

  Brun told me he could never remember what he did the rest of that day, or how he managed to get back home. But he had no trouble recalling the hiding his father gave him. “You worried your mother,” Mr. Campbell shouted, as he swung the thick, black razor strop. “You had both of us worried to death.” Brun did feel a little bad about that, but having met Otis Saunders and learned to play “Maple Leaf Rag,” he would not have taken the day back for the world. That strop his father laid again and again across his bottom seemed to be hitting another boy. It inflamed Brun’s mind a whole lot more than it did his butt.

  Chapter Two

  Sedalia, Missouri

  June, 1899

  A dull pounding sprang up behind Scott Joplin’s left eye. Why didn’t Saunders write his own damned music, and quit bothering him about the trio section in “Maple Leaf Rag”? “I appreciate you wanting to help, Otis,” Joplin said. “But ‘Maple Leaf’ is done. You know I’ve got a bigger fish to fry right now, but I can’t fry him unless I catch him, and I can’t catch him if I don’t throw him a line.”

  Like he hadn’t said a word. Saunders went right on grinning like a fool. “Yeah, Scott, but just you listen for a minute, okay? Just one little minute. The way you startin’ that trio right now…”

  The hammer in Joplin’s head beat harder. He closed his eyes. That was his way when he was among people and needed to develop a musical idea. Out of sight, out of hearing, out of mind. He lived in a lively boardinghouse, earned his living playing piano at taverns and dance clubs. If he could write music only when he was alone, he’d never write music.

  During the summer, weekday afternoons were quiet in the Maple Leaf Club, a large room up on the second floor at 121 East Main. Joplin had come here today, hoping for some time to himself. Walker Williams, one of the club’s owners, stood behind the bar, talking quietly over mugs of beer with Tom Ireland, a colored newspaperman who played a first-rate clarinet in the Queen City Concert Band. They knew why Joplin was there, so they’d done no more than smile and nod a hello as he and Saunders walked over to the piano and sat side by side on the bench. Joplin sighed. If he didn’t get The Ragtime Dance down on paper pretty soon, the whole kit and caboodle might just float right out of his head, gone forever. Music did that. Like a woman who thought her man wasn’t paying her enough mind. He’d lost other half-composed pieces that way; he didn’t want to lose this one.

  Saunders was a magpie, near impossible to shake, thoroughly impossible to shut up. But it wasn’t in Joplin’s nature to just out and tell the man to go away. Instead, eyes closed, ears blocked, he directed his mind toward the passage in The Ragtime Dance he’d been working at. Saunders’ words became a hum in the background. The breeze through the open window put a damper on the throb in Joplin’s head. He heard the music. His right hand twitched. Left hand up. Fingers struck ivory and ebony. He corrected the chord, played on for a few seconds, then snatched the pencil off the music rack and wrote down what he’d just played.

  Saunders said something, no more than a blur in Joplin’s ear. If the man said one word, just one word, about the “Maple Leaf” trio…

  “Gettin’ company, Scott.” Saunders aimed a hitchhiker’s thumb toward the doorway, across the room.

  Joplin turned and saw two white men standing just inside the door. His headache mounted a comeback. Beethoven didn’t have to put up with anything like this. When he wanted to write music, he locked himself away in a room with a keyboard for hours at a time. And when Beethoven played his music of an evening, it was for audiences who appreciated his art, not for a roomful of men who liked a little lively background to get drunk to, or a bunch of prostitutes and johns who wanted a bit of musical foreplay. Why couldn’t Scott Joplin find a patron with money? The last time he’d seen Mr. Weiss, Joplin had complained to that effect, which had set the old German to waving a finger under his pupil’s nose. “Scott, you got more talent in your little finger than any other student I ever taught got in his whole body. What you don’t got is time to waste feeling sorry for yourself. Least you got a chance, which your mama and daddy never did.”

  The two white men began to walk across the room toward the piano. Walker Williams glanced under the bar, where his pistol lay on a shelf within easy reach. Ireland shifted on his stool so as to keep the white men in sight without giving the appearance of looking or listening.

  As the men approached them, Joplin and Saunders swung their legs over the bench, then stood. “Trouble?” Saunders whispered from the corner of his mouth.

  Joplin answered with an almost imperceptible shrug. His face was a poker master’s dream. He stared at the younger of the white men, a slicker not much over twenty, with wide-set brown eyes above a friendly enough smile, snappy in a dark tailored suit and rakish derby. “Good afternoon, Mr. Daniels,” Joplin said.

  “Good afternoon to you, Scott.”

  Joplin extended a hand; Daniels gave it a brief pump. “Mr. Daniels, my friend Otis Saunders. A fine pianist and musician. Otis, this is Mr. Charles Daniels. From Carl Hoffman Music Company in Kansas City.”

  Saunders’ eyes went wide. He nodded to Daniels, who returned the slight bow.

  Joplin turned his attention to Daniels’ companion, a heavy-set man of forty-some years, with light skin and blue eyes. Some kind of Swede or Norwegian, Joplin thought. White suit, wide blue tie with a fake-diamond stickpin, boater set a little cockeyed on his head. He sweated freely, but his smile dazzled, lots of teeth, and he leaned forward from the waist to bring that smile right up to Joplin’s face. Joplin thought of alligators. “Scott, this is Mr. Elmo Freitag, my associate
,” Daniels said.

  Right there, Joplin knew something was out of whack. A man with a boss half his age is like a man with a wife half his age. Joplin looked directly at Daniels. “What can I do for you?”

  Daniels’ smile extended. “Why, I’ve come to see you, Scott. I hear you’re working on a full-score ragtime ballet—The Ragtime Dance? You’ll be needing a publisher, won’t you?”

  Anger bubbled up from Joplin’s chest; the skin of his face felt like it might catch on fire. But that emotionless mask didn’t change, not a trace. “I guess that’s true,” he said, mild as you please.

  “We’ve done well with ‘Original Rags,’” said Daniels. “And we can do just as well with this music, maybe better. How many tunes are there in your ballet?”

  “It’s not yet finished, Mr. Daniels.”

  Daniels’ smile gave him the look of an appealing little boy. “Oh, now, Scott, why do you want to play games with me? I’m interested in your work. You can tell me more than ‘It’s not yet finished.’”

  Joplin swallowed hard. “All right. I’m trying to work it out with an introductory section, then a preparation for the dance, and after that, thirteen dances with a caller, over maybe five to ten strains—”

  “Well, that sounds just wonderful. Fifteen pieces altogether. I’ll arrange them for separate publication. And then if they catch on, we can put out a folio of the entire work. I’d say that would make your reputation.”

  My reputation and your fortune, Joplin thought, but he said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Daniels, but with all due respect, I’ll never publish a piece of music again that credits someone else as arranger.”

  Seeing Daniels’ cheeks go red gave Joplin pleasure, malicious and satisfying. “Now, Scott—I know you didn’t like seeing my name as arranger on ‘Original Rags.’ But that’s just the business. Everyone knows that.”

  Which means, Joplin thought, most white people think they can’t play music by a colored man unless a white man makes it over for them. So just put a white man’s name on the cover, even if that white man didn’t change a single note. Joplin shook his head. “I mean what I say. I do my own arranging, and will not under any circumstances publish another piece of music that says otherwise.”

  The expression on Freitag’s face set off a chuckle inside Joplin’s head. But he kept silent, his face indifferent.

  “Wait a minute, Scott…” Daniels looked to be in pain. He stared, tightened his lips, then finally let out a little laugh. “My God, you are a stubborn man. Well, all right. All right. If you insist, we’ll do it that way. Your name will be the only one on the cover, composer and arranger. I’ll give you my word on that.”

  “Will you put it in the contract?”

  Daniels looked thoroughly buffaloed. “In the…what contract, Scott? What do we need a contract for? You deliver me all those tunes, I’m prepared to pay you three hundred dollars, cash.”

  Joplin heard Saunders suck in his breath.

  “I’d say that’s pretty generous.” Freitag’s first contribution to the discussion.

  “I’m sure you think it is,” Joplin said. “But I don’t intend to sell The Ragtime Dance, or any more of my music, outright. I’d want a contract that provides for royalties, and if that’s not acceptable to you, I really don’t want to waste your time.”

  Daniels pressed his lips together until they were bloodless. “Oh, come on, Scott. You know Mr. Hoffman would never agree to that. If you don’t want to publish with us, why don’t you just say that. Then, I’ll ask you why not, and maybe we can make some headway.”

  “That is not what I’m saying. I said exactly what I meant. Full credit for composing and arranging. And a contract providing for royalties and specifying that I would keep all rights to put on performances.”

  Daniels exploded. “Rights to put on…Damn, Scott, what in hell are you thinking? A colored man, producing his own performances? If you want to lose your shirt, why don’t you just take it off and throw it away, and be done?”

  “Cole and Johnson didn’t lose their shirts. And neither did Cook and Dunbar. Two all-colored shows in New York last year, and they both did pretty well. I don’t see why I can’t do it, too.”

  Daniels wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Scott, I don’t mean to insult you, but you’re not Cole or Johnson or Cook or Dunbar, at least not yet. When you get yourself that well known, then I’d say maybe you could pull it off. But nobody—and I mean nobody—right now is going to give Scott Joplin a royalties contract with performance rights reserved.”

  “Then nobody is going to publish this music.” Joplin’s tone was as mild as his face. “But I’ve been talking to Mr. Will Stark, and he said he’d consider it.”

  “Will Stark?” Daniels looked at Freitag, who shrugged.

  “Mr. Will Stark’s in business with his father. Stark and Son, on East Fifth.”

  “Old Man Stark? For the love of heaven, Scott, that’s a music store. They’re not publishers.”

  “Mr. Will Stark is looking into expanding,” said Joplin, stolid as the Sphinx.

  The men stared at each other. Daniels looked away first. Then, he said, quietly, “You’re serious, Scott? You really mean all this?”

  “I would never fool around in any way with my music.”

  Daniels’ cheeks went pasty. “All right, then. I guess we don’t have anything more to say. Thanks for your time.”

  Joplin watched the men stamp to the doorway, then vanish. As they clumped down the stairs, Saunders let out a low whistle. “Whoo-whee, Scott. You just got two buckras mighty displeased with you.”

  “I was polite,” said Joplin. “I said no, but I said it in a civil way. You know what I got for ‘Original Rags.’ How much money do you think Carl Hoffman made?”

  Saunders looked doubtful. “Did Will Stark really say he’d give you a contract with royalties?”

  Joplin swiveled on the bench to rest his hands on the keyboard. “We talked about it. Now, I’m sorry, Otis, but I need to get back to writing this tune. I’ve wasted more than enough of my time today.”

  Saunders grinned wide. “Well, I guess I can take a hint. See you for supper? I’ll come by for you.” He tipped his tan straw hat and strode across the room to the bar. Joplin bent his head forward, played a chord, then another.

  Walker Williams slid a pint of Moerschel’s Sedalia Brew across to Saunders, who took a long pull at the glass, then set it down and groaned. Like someone had given a signal, the three men looked back at Joplin, hunched over the keyboard, scribbling at the papers on the music rack. Williams shook his head. “Don’t even know we’s here.”

  “Boy’s got music in his head,” said Tom Ireland. “And not much of anything else.”

  Williams snorted. “Sometimes I think he don’t even know he’s a colored man.”

  Saunders leaned forward, spoke low. “Scott tell me one time, back a few years, he was in the Texarkana Minstrels, and they give a show there for the Confederate Veterans to raise money to build a monument for Jeff Davis.”

  “No!” Williams put his hand to his mouth, too late. Three heads swung around as one, but if Joplin heard, he gave no sign.

  Saunders went on in a whisper. “Made a real fuss among the colored, and not just in Texarkana. Scott and them minstrels caught all manner of hell in the colored New Orleans papers. But Scott, he just say he figured Jeff Davis was dead, an’ long as the minstrels got their forty percent of the gate, what’s it matter to them if people want to be fool enough to spend money to carve Jeff Davis’ name on a stone?”

  Ireland shook his head. Williams refilled his glass.

  “Colored man don’t dare forget for one minute that he be colored,” the bartender said. Ireland nodded agreement.

  “Scott had this white man in Texarkana, teach him piano,” said Saunders. “Professor Julius Weiss. A real professor, out of a school in Germany.”

  Williams’ smile went sly. “Julius Weiss. Cl
ipdick, huh?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” said Saunders. “But Scott say Mr. Weiss always tell him he just as good as anybody else, never mind white or colored.”

  Tom Ireland set down his glass. His face was sad as eternity. “That man must’ve been straight over from the old country. They hear we got set free, but past that, they don’t know a thing. He didn’t do Scott any favor.”

  “Mmmm-mmm.” Williams nodded sharply. “Boy’s gonna find himself some real trouble one day.”

  Ireland got up to leave, pulled a five-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the counter. Williams laughed. “What you think, three o’clock in the afternoon, I got anything in the till to change that?” He cupped a hand to his mouth. “Scott! Hey, Scott. Joplin!”

  Joplin finally looked up. Like a man coming out of a coma, Ireland thought.

  Williams motioned him toward the bar. “Hey, Scott, I hate botherin’ you, but can you break a fin for me so I can give Tom here his change?”

  Joplin walked slowly to the bar, trying to hold the elusive musical strain in his mind. Robot-like, he fished a money-clip from his pocket, gleaming yellow metal in the shape of a musical lyre. He peeled off five singles, gave them to Williams, took the fiver, and slipped it into the clip. But before he could return it to his pocket, Tom Ireland held out his hand. “Let’s see that a minute, Scott.”

  Joplin placed the clip in Ireland’s hand. “Nice,” Ireland said. “That’s enamel-work on the front, isn’t it?” He rolled the clip over, then stared at it.

  “Push that little button,” Joplin said.

  Ireland pressed his thumb against a tiny bit of metal sticking out from the back of the money-clip, and straightway a tune began to play, a faint tinkle that lasted about ten seconds. Ireland smiled. Williams stared. “Scott, what is that thing?”

  “A kind of little music box, from Europe. The best friend I ever had gave it to me as a token of his regard. You have no idea how I treasure it.” Joplin pointed at the clip, near the metal play button. “That’s where you wind it—just pull up on that little key head, and give it a couple of turns.”