The Ragtime Kid (14 page)

***

Higdon laughed when Brun told the dinner company about his evening’s engagement to play piano. “The way you’re going, Brun, by this time next year you’ll own the city, and we’ll all be working for you.”

Miss Belle clucked and told her brother he shouldn’t tease Brun, that it was good to see a young man these days willing to work so hard. Then she turned Brun’s way and asked, “Is your engagement for just tonight?”

“Belle!” Luella had been sitting there like a mouse, but all of a sudden she looked mightily distracted.

Brun remembered how his father used to say it’s not easy to put up a shelter when you don’t know which direction a storm’s coming from. “Far as I know,” he said. “Mr. Boutell told me his regular player got bit by a kissing bug last night and went all swollen up. He’s better today, but not better enough.”

“Well, then, I’d guess he’ll be all right by tomorrow night. If he is, would you like to escort Luella to the young peoples’ church social? I thought that would be a nice opportunity for you to make some new friends here in town.”

Brun hoped with all his heart that what was in his mind was not showing on his face. He’d been looking forward to his first Saturday night in Sedalia, going down to West Main Street, maybe dropping into Miss Nellie Hall’s establishment and hearing how Big Froggy played. But he smiled at Luella, her face by now redder than the ripest raspberry in the bowl on the table, and looking everywhere but at him. “Why, I’d be real pleased to do that,” he said. “That is, if Miss Luella would agree.”

Luella instantly stopped looking flustered, and commenced to gaze at Brun like he was the grand prize in the Fourth of July raffle, and the number stamped on her ticket was also stamped across his forehead. “What time is the social and what church is it at?” Brun asked.

“Eight o’clock,” said Luella. “At the Central Presbyterian Church, on the corner of Sixth and Lamine.” Then, a concerned look came over her face. “You’re not a Catholic, are you?”

Brun laughed. “Truth, Miss Luella, I’m not much of anything when it comes to religious faiths. But I’m sure not any Catholic.”

“Oh, good. My friend, May O’Brien, says the nuns tell her she must never go into a Protestant church, else she’ll burn in the flames forever.”

Brun laughed. “I guess I’ll take my chances, Miss Luella. Somehow, I figure if I burn in the flames, it won’t be because I went to a social in the basement of a Presbyterian church.”

Chapter Seven

Sedalia
Friday, July 21, 1899

A little past ten that evening, a big man with more muscles than teeth and hair, and way too many drinks under his belt, wobbled up to Brun at Boutell’s piano and bellowed, “Play ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold.’ And play it straight, y’hear? Not like it was some kinda nigger tune.”

In a saloon the customer was always right. Beer on whiskey can be very risky, and piano players who ignored requests were likely to get themselves permanently silenced. So Brun played “Silver Threads” straight as any arrow, and tried not to watch the man snuffle and honk into his glass of brown lightning. Then, the drunk demanded “Aura Lee,” and after that, “When I Saw Sweet Nellie Home.” He snorted and sobbed his way through all three of those Godawful tear-jerkers, and by the last lines of “Nellie,” you could hear discontent grow in the room like a swarm of yellow jackets coming closer and closer. When the drunk demanded “Sweet Genevieve,” another voice boomed out, from the opposite side of the piano, “Fuck ‘Sweet Genevieve.’ Play something with some life in it, boy.”

A piano player’s nightmare. Very slowly, Brun edged off from the piano, but then saw Gaylord Boutell hustling full-bore out from behind the bar, and up to the sniveling drunk. “Come on, now, Horace, let’s you give somebody else a chance, huh?” He put a lock on Horace’s arm and wrestled the man off in the direction of the bar.

Brun eased back onto the stool, but before he could put hands to keys, he heard from behind him, “Hey, there, Young Mr. Piano Man, takin’ lessons from Scott Joplin. You play ‘Harlem Rag’?”

If Brun had been chewing gum, he’d have swallowed it. He looked up, up, up at the tallest person he’d ever seen, a young colored man not much older than himself. The man’s dark flat cap sat a good seven feet off the ground. Skin like milk chocolate, thick brows, a nose more Roman than negroid, surprisingly thin lips stretched over white, even teeth. The Negro was all angles, hands and fingers like twin brown daddy-longlegs, face skinnier than any horse’s. His was the first brown face Brun had seen in Boutell’s Saloon. Not that anybody seemed to care. “Hey, Henry, how y’ be,” hollered an old Reuben with a beard halfway down his shirtfront. From back near the bar came, “Well, if it ain’t High Henry—ain’t seen you in a coon’s age.” Everybody laughed.

Including High Henry. If the joke bothered him, he didn’t show it. “Go on now, Young Mr. Piano Man,” Henry crooned at Brun, that long face near-split by a friendly smile. “You jes’ play ‘Harlem,’ and I show you something I guarantee you ain’t never seen before.”

“Yeah, Henry,” someone shouted. Someone else yelled, “Show him your stuff, Henry.” “Play that boy his music,” called a third voice.

The men backed off from the piano and formed a wide circle around High Henry and Brun. Young Mr. Piano Man was more concerned than curious, but when he saw Boutell calm behind the bar, grinning, he turned back to the piano and commenced playing “Harlem Rag.” The crowd whooped and clapped, and in a quick glance over his shoulder, Brun saw Henry dancing, a kind of buck and wing, but in the most frantic manner. Henry’s legs bent, then straightened. His feet slapped the floor; his arms flew every which way but Sunday. And then without the least warning he fell forward, like a tree just cut down. Brun thought for sure he’d passed out from his exertions, was going to smash his face to bits and scatter those pearly teeth from one end of the saloon to the other. In one quick motion, the boy left off playing, jumped up from the stool, and ran to catch Henry before he hit ground. But as the colored man’s elbows touched the floor, up he bounced again, the felled tree going backwards, just like there was some sort of big spring between his chest and the floor. Then Henry stood and stared at Brun like that white boy was some kind of fool.

Brun realized the whole room was laughing, then laughed himself. “How the hell you do that?”

Henry wiped at his eyes. “Don’t exactly know, but it’s a thing I been doin’ since I was little. Guess I just kind of got me a knack.”

The men drifted away from the piano, back to their card games and drinks. Time for the piano player to take a break. “Buy you a beer?” he asked Henry.

The Negro shook his head. “Mr. Boutell’s a good man, but best a colored boy don’t go drinkin’ in a white ’stablishment.” As Henry began to edge toward the door, he leaned down to whisper, “Long as I do my dance, I be all right with white mens, but now I done with the dancin’, so time I take my colored face someplace else. I just wanted to hear you play. Arthur Marshall be my friend, an’ he tell me you be playin’ here tonight.”

“That’s how you knew I’m taking lessons from Scott Joplin.”

Henry grinned.

“And you wanted to see if I’m any good.”

Henry’s grin widened.

“Am I? Any good?”

“You got promise, Young Mr. Piano Man, I’ll sure say that much. Now, I’d best be on my way.”

Brun thought a beer would go well, never mind Apple John’s warnings. As he pushed through a knot of men drinking and arguing local politics at the bar, he caught sight of Mr. Fitzgerald, so he walked over and said hello.

Fitzgerald studied the boy over the top of a whiskey glass. “Well, Master Campbell. I’m pleased to see you again, I surely am. How are you coming along?”

“Couldn’t be better, thanks to the start you gave me.” Brun told Fitzgerald about his good fortune since that time, then added, “And since I’m boarding with Mr. Higdon, I got back a dollar from the Y when I left. So I can pay you back what I owe you.”

He reached for his pocket, but Fitzgerald stopped him with a gentle touch. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve not yet received your first pay.”

“No, that’ll be tomorrow. But with the tips I got here the other night and the ones I’ll be getting tonight—”

“There’s no such hurry.” Fitzgerald’s voice was firm. “You just wait ’til you’re more comfortable, and then you can repay me, if you’d like.”

It occurred to Brun that he might just need a little money the next night. Bad idea to have empty pockets when you go out with a young lady, to a church social or anywhere else. So he thanked Fitzgerald, and asked how much longer he expected to be in town.

“Another few days, at least. Perhaps a week. I’m making very satisfactory progress with my business.”

“Would it be okay for me to ask what your business is?”

Fitzgerald took a swallow of whiskey, then looked at Brun like the boy might have told him a joke that was moderately amusing. “Well, of course, Master Campbell. It’s not as though I were here on a secret mission. Since the end of the Great Conflict, my endeavors have been entirely above-board.” Another belt from the glass. “I work for Procter and Gamble, in Buffalo, New York. It’s a big company, getting bigger, and they are looking to expand their production into other areas of the country. Sedalia is attractive, a new city, growing and booming. There’s a Build Factories Drive here, and they’re prepared to make some attractive concessions to companies willing to locate in Sedalia. And there
are
advantages to a place where both raw materials and labor are much cheaper than on the east coast. My superiors have sent me to negotiate because, well…I speak the language.” He stopped talking just long enough for one of his sad little smiles to work its way across his face. “And I’d be telling less than the truth if I didn’t say that success would represent the finest sort of personal opportunity for me. So, there you have it.”

“I wish you luck,” Brun said. “And I will definitely pay you back next week.”

Fitzgerald took another sip. “You are a young man of honor,” he said. “You’ll go far in the world.”

Brun wondered, as he walked back to the piano, whether Mr. Fitzgerald’s ideas about honor had brought him far in the world, or whether that was just one of those things people say because saying it makes them feel better. Like drinking whiskey for hours in a saloon does.

Next time Brun looked around, Mr. Fitzgerald was gone, but there was Elmo Freitag, at a table with Maisie McAllister. He didn’t seem conscious of Brun, but Miss McAllister slipped the boy a wink that came close to disconnecting his fingers from his brain. Then he caught a glimpse of someone else he knew, carrying three glasses of whiskey up to the table. Otis Saunders. Saunders set down the drinks, slid onto a chair, and the three commenced to talk like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years.

Brun realized he’d lost his place in the music. Quickly, before he made a complete fool of himself, he swiveled back to face the piano, and commenced banging out “Good Old Wagon.” What on earth were those three discussing with such energy, and what in
hell
was Otis Saunders doing, drinking in a white saloon, at the same table with a white woman, never mind a white man? Then Brun realized—Saunders was doing a bit of passing. But why?

Brun was still trying to dope the trio as he played a wild “Down Went McGinty,” when he heard, “You play a good piano, kid. Too bad that’s all you’ll ever do—play piano in a third-rate saloon and sell my music sheets in a fifth-rate store. When I’m on Easy Street, and Miss Maisie’s right there with me.” Sneered from Brun’s left through a heavy cloud of secondhand scotch.

Brun glanced sidewise, and there stood Freitag. “Talk’s cheap,” Brun said. “Cheap enough so even you can afford it. If Mr. Boutell’s third-rate and Mr. Stark’s fifth-rate, I can’t count high enough to figure where you stand.”

Freitag laughed. “You talk big for a squirt. Think John Stark’s such a hero, do you? Well, fact is, he deserted from the Union Army, yes, he did. Just last month I went and looked up his record. His officer ordered him to shoot a nigger, been spying on them, and what do you think that hero of yours did? He ran off, just flat-out deserted. Six weeks later, back he comes with a cock and bull story about how him and the nigger got caught by a band of rebels, and they hung the nigger, but Stark got away. What do you think of that?”

For answer, Brun sang at the top of his voice, “Down went McGinty to the bottom of the sea.”

Freitag made a clucking sound. “You don’t believe me, go ask him. That is, if you ain’t afraid.”

After Freitag left, his taunt echoed in Brun’s ear, and no matter how hard the boy banged at the keys, or how fast he played the tunes, the voice in his head got louder and clearer. He played until two in the morning, and in the process of trying to shut Freitag up over the course of the long evening, Brun found out for himself that beer on whiskey was in fact very risky. When he reeled out the front door of the saloon, for the first time in his young life he was truly three sheets to the wind. At the corner of Ohio and Sixth, he stopped long enough to empty into the gutter what poisons remained in his stomach, after which he felt enough better to make it to Higdon’s without falling down. He watched carefully as he came up to the house; it would not have done to have Mr. Higdon see his niece’s escort for the coming evening drunk as a skunk. But all was dark, so he carefully removed his shoes, tiptoed up the stairs to his room, closed the door, then fell onto the bed, fully clothed. All night, Elmo Freitag’s voice echoed in his head. “You don’t believe me, go ask him. That is, if you ain’t afraid.”

***

Next he knew, bright sunlight streamed through the window into his face. He wiped sleep from his eyes, drool from his cheek. To put it mildly, he’d seen better mornings. Pounding eyes and churning stomach, the calling cards of Mr. Beer and Mr. Whiskey, led the boy to promise himself he’d never again in his life get drunk, not ever. He willed himself out of bed, navigated his way downstairs. No one home, good. He staggered out back to the privy, relieved himself of his night’s accumulation of coffee and beer, then made his slow way up Sixth to Ohio, to the Boston Café.

He blinked at the clock on the wall, a little past eleven. Good thing he didn’t need to be at work until one. He took a seat at the counter, and threw himself on the mercy of Mr. Walch, the owner, a kindly old gent whose white chin whiskers, thin face, large ears and bright brown eyes gave him an amazing resemblance to a goat. Mr. Walch nodded with sympathy when Brun told him his story. “I treat more hangovers than any doc in town,” the old guy said, then went off and came back in a moment with a glass full of tomato juice, and a little bowl. Four raw eggs in that bowl, yolks swimming around in the gooey uncooked white. Brun felt his stomach go upside-down, and he estimated how long it would take him, if necessary, to make it out into the street. Mr. Walch pointed at the juice. “This’ll fix you up. Go on now. Drink it down.”

Brun swallowed half the glass, then grabbed at his throat, which felt like it had caught fire. “Rooster shit,” he thought he heard Mr. Walch say, but then the old man repeated, “Worcestershire. Go on, boy. Drink the rest, fast.”

Brun did as he was told, then managed to get down the raw eggs. Mr. Walch nodded, all encouragement. “Good boy. Now, hang on here, and I’ll get you some coffee and toast with jelly. No butter.” He squinted at Brun. “Maybe you’ll remember how you’re feelin’ next time you’ve got a notion to get yourself plastered.”

Brun winced. “I already took the pledge.”

Mr. Walch smiled benignly. He’d heard it before; he’d hear it again.

By the time Brun got back to his lodgings, it was coming up on twelve o’clock. Still no one home. He went upstairs, washed his face and brushed his teeth. Then, he changed into his new suit and spent an hour at the piano, practicing the exercises Joplin had given him. Finally, a little before one, he went out the door to work, squeezing his red rubber ball, right hand, left hand.

***

Saturday afternoon was busy time in a music store. When Brun walked in, Stark and Isaac were hopping, looking after two and three customers at once. Brun jumped to, couldn’t even think of trying to push music sheets by playing them, but no matter, there was a six-person wait at the piano. Guitar picks, fiddle bows, rosin, clarinet reeds flew out of racks and cabinets faster than the men could ring up sales.

All of a sudden it dawned upon Brun that he was listening to something a little different on the piano. Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
. And who was the pianist but High Henry, the incredible seven-foot dancing fool from the night before, playing off a sheet, note-perfect, no hesitations, never a missed key. Brun listened with one ear as he rang up purchases, heard applause as Henry played the final notes. Then a man said, “Well, I’ll be. Say, friend, I never would have believed a nigger could play that kind of music. You are mighty good, you know that?”