The Ragtime Kid (4 page)

“No, they didn’t.” Isaac frowned. “But them two tunes… Mr. Stark, you know you ain’t never gonna make good cheese outa chalk. Not to mention, we didn’t exactly give those tunes any great push.”

“Well, but that’s part of the problem. It’s not enough for a music publisher to figure out what pieces to print and how many copies, he’s got to go out to shops and push his line, one day after another. Today’s hit is tomorrow’s history. We’ve already got a music publisher in town, and I don’t see Austin Perry moving into a mansion. Let Perry—or Daniels there, for that matter—do all that doggoned leg work and take those risks. I’ll just go on selling their sheets, and we’ll see who comes out better. This store’s done very well for my family and me. Won’t be long and I’ll be retired, and then it’ll all be up to Will. If he’s got publishing fancies, then
he
can take that fling.”

“We both of us know he’s gonna do just that,” Isaac said. “On’y question is when. All of the time he spendin’ in St. Lou these last few months, talkin’ with printers and pokin’ around in the big music stores? That Will’s a real go-getter, always was. He ain’t never been satisfied walking on a trail somebody else cut out.”

Little chuckle from Stark. “I’m afraid you’re right, Isaac. He’s not thirty yet. Lord, when I was his age…”

Isaac noticed that suddenly Stark stood straighter, all the slump gone from his shoulders, his blue eyes bright and clear. He seemed to drop twenty years the way a man might take off an overcoat. But then he sagged again. “I’m coming up on sixty, Isaac. That’s not when a man ought to be taking new risks in life.”

“Oh, stop that talk now, Mr. Stark.” Isaac was disgusted. “You got plenty good years left.”

“Go on.” Stark waved Isaac’s words out the door into the street. “Old people need to make room for the young, not get in their way. Another year or two, I’ll be ready for the rocking chair.”

Isaac seemed ready to argue the point further, but then changed course. “Did you see how that man looked when you told him where you served in the War?”

Stark nodded, but didn’t speak.

“I hate sayin’ it, Mr. Stark, but I hope we ain’t got us some trouble.”

Stark glanced at the shotgun under the counter, then turned weary eyes on Isaac. “Maybe not…I hope not. Blast it, I’m too old for any more trouble.”

Silence between the two men. Then Isaac said, “Mr. Stark, ain’t nobody in this world too old for trouble.”

Chapter Three

El Reno, Oklahoma
Sunday, July 16, 1899
Early morning

Brun Campbell found himself sitting up in bed, wide awake. The little alarm clock his father had gotten him so he wouldn’t be late for work told him it was a few minutes past one. As suddenly as he’d awakened, he realized he’d somehow come to a decision, a big one. He was going to run away.

Close to a year now since he’d met Otis Saunders in Oklahoma City, and it had been the worst year of his life. Schoolwork, chores, his old friends—none existed for him any more. There was only ragtime music. He played “Maple Leaf Rag” on the piano, over and over and over, struggled with rhythm breaks, fumbled with shifted and shifting accents, fiddled with the bass line. And the more he worked over the tune, the more he heard himself falling short. Like starting to read a book about something you figure is pretty well cut and dried, but the further you get into it, the more you see you really don’t know.

All through that long winter of ’ninety-eight into ’ninety-nine, Brun bought every ragtime music sheet he could find in El Reno, not a whole lot. “Mississippi Rag,” by someone named William Krell, couldn’t hold a candle to “Maple Leaf.” But he liked “Harlem Rag,” a tune with a good driving bass, written by a colored man from St. Louis, Tom Turpin. He worked his way through
Ben Harney’s Ragtime Instructor
, but in the end he felt disappointed. Harney’s exercises were no more than a bunch of different songs decked out in syncopation, and “Annie Laurie,” even with her beats shifted, could not begin to compare in Brun’s mind with “Maple Leaf Rag.” Come spring, he found a copy of “Original Rags,” by Scott Joplin, published by Carl Hoffman Music Company in Kansas City. He couldn’t run home fast enough, but when he played the music, he felt a bit disappointed. Not quite up to “Maple Leaf,” he thought, but a fair bit of likeness, and both tunes different somehow from Tom Turpin’s piece.

Evenings, Brun usually went out and listened to the colored piano men who played in restaurants and bars. Sometimes an owner let him fill in while the professor went for a stretch, and some nights the boy came home with a dollar or two in tips, which he hid in a poke under his mattress. Once, he got up the nerve to catch one of those professors on his break and ask for ragtime piano lessons. The professor, a hulk named Ollie the Bear, shook his head and rumbled, “Ragtime ain’t your music, boy, never will be. Ragtime is colored music. An’ until you gets to be a colored boy, you ain’t never gonna be able to play it.
Never
. You try an’ take my music…” Ollie spluttered, flung his cigar to the ground, pushed his stubbled face into Brun’s; the boy recoiled from the spray of saliva and the reek of stale tobacco and whiskey. “
Our
music.
Nigger
-music. You think you wanna steal it huh? Uh-uh. Not offa me, you ain’t.” Ollie raised one leg, and blew out a long crescendo of a fart. “Now, go on, boy. Get you’self away from here, an’ leave me be.” Ollie snatched up his cigar, then stomped back into the saloon. Brun dragged his humiliated self home and up to bed.

His performance in school, never anything to write home about, dropped off to nothing at all. In June, just before the end of the school term, his teacher, Miss Logan, a dried-up little spinster with a face in eternal mourning, called in Brun’s parents and told them in his presence that he had more brains than any other boy in his class, and if he’d only apply himself, he could be a great success. “Music is all he seems to care about.” Miss Logan’s voice left no doubt as to just what kind of music she meant.

About that time, Brun commenced to think seriously about running away to Sedalia. Find Otis Saunders and Scott Joplin, get one of them to teach him ragtime piano. The idea raged in his brain like wildfire.

Then, summer. Brun’s father got him a job on Calvin Utley’s farm just outside town. “Time you learned what the world’s really like,” Mr. Campbell said. “Farming’s tough work. It’ll make a man of you.” For more than a month, Brun spent six days a week milking cows, feeding horses, slopping hogs, pulling weeds in the corn patch, and being pecked by chickens who didn’t cotton to the idea of him taking their eggs. After supper, he took a bath and went directly to bed, too fagged to even think of playing piano, and sorer than boils at the looks his parents gave each other.

One steaming Saturday afternoon, Mr. Utley caught Brun behind the barn, flopped in a shady spot, lollygagging about what it might be like to play piano for a living. Fancy clothes, good money, pretty girls to spend it on… The farmer gave the boy’s ears a cuffing like none before, then sent him off to shovel out the pig stalls. At the end of the day, Brun got no more than one foot inside the house before his mother hustled him out to the back yard and made him strip buck naked while she drew a tub of hot water. He scrubbed himself raw and put on clean clothes, but there was no getting rid of the stink inside his nose. Straightway after supper, he dragged himself up to bed, lowered his head onto the pillow, and became insensible.

Next he knew, he was awake, clear-minded, at one in the morning. Out of bed in a flash, into his clothes, muscles complaining every which way he turned. But the exhaustion from the day before was gone. Take a little care, he told himself, go easy. It wouldn’t do to wake his parents.

He sat at the wooden table in the kitchen long enough to write a note. “Dear Ma and Pop. It is not that I don’t love you, or that I’m ungrateful for what you have done for me.” He stopped to think. If his father and mother had any idea where he was headed, the police would likely be waiting to pick him up the minute he arrived. Brun closed his eyes, thought harder. Those stories in the newspapers the old man had been going on about, every night at supper, six months running? Pencil back to paper. “Pa, you always say a man has to strike while an iron is hot. Well, I’m old enough to make my own way now, and I don’t aim just to strike, I mean to strike it big. I’m going to Seattle, then up to the Klondike. When I see you again, I’ll have enough bags full of gold that none of us will ever have to work again.” He signed the note, “Your loving son, Brun.” That would do it. He laid the pencil on top of the note, carefully slid the chair away from the table, got up, slipped a couple of loaves of fresh-baked bread out of the breadbox, and wrapped them in a kerchief. Then he slipped out the back door.

The summer night air was warm and fragrant; a three-quarter moon sat low on the horizon. Brun’s heart pounded as he followed that moon to the railway depot. He’d hop a freight to Oklahoma City, change there, go through Tulsa and on to Kansas City, then change again for Sedalia. Easy.

But by the time he finally rolled out of Kay Cee, he was feeling a whole lot less enthusiastic. In Oklahoma City, he’d gotten chased by yard bulls, jumped aboard the wrong train, and found himself in Amarillo, not Tulsa. Coming back, he made a worse mistake, climbed into a car where two ’boes lost no time in relieving him of his bread and the little poke in his pocket with more than thirty-five dollars in it, every cent of his tips from playing piano. After the bums shoved him out, he settled himself into a blind baggage car, but as the train rolled out of Tulsa it pulled up short, and a little wooden box full of lead shot flew off a pile and delivered the boy a blow to the ribs that left him gasping and clutching at his side for several minutes. Now, chugging across Missouri out of Kansas City, he huddled behind stacks of lumber, and tried not to think of food. When he had to relieve himself, he turned sideways, opened his pants, and let fly against the wall. He willed himself to stay awake, crawled over to the door, cracked it. Raindrops pattered onto his face.

When he felt the train slow, he stretched his legs and peeked out the crack. In the glow of streetlights, he made out city buildings. Sedalia. He felt dizzy, whether from excitement or hunger, he couldn’t have said. Just before the train pulled into the station, he slid the door open far enough for him to squeeze through, then jumped to the ground, a good clean four-point landing.

The rain had stopped, though the air felt heavy enough to swim through. Brun wiped his wet hands on his pants, then started walking toward the buildings and lights he’d seen a few minutes before. All right, he’d lost his food and money, but now his luck was going to change. He knew how to play piano; he wouldn’t be hungry or broke for long. He’d get a job and find lodging. And then he’d look up Scott Joplin and somehow talk piano lessons out of him.

But right then, food seemed like the first consideration, and after that, a place to sleep. He even thought a nice tub of hot water didn’t sound too bad, and laughed out loud, thinking of his mother’s face if she could’ve heard that particular thought.

Clouds sailed across the dark sky, but a full moon shone uncovered. Brun figured it was probably a little after midnight. His side ached where the box of shot had caught him; he stretched his arms over his head. Hobo life wasn’t for him, no sir. Dress in rags, all filthy and smelly? Live by train-hopping and begging food and money? He shook his head. Playing piano, a man could make real good jack, and if he didn’t drink it away, he could eat high off the hog, wear spiffy clothes, and when he felt sand in his shoes, travel like a sport inside the passenger coach of a train. Brun was so caught up in his fancies, he didn’t notice a log in the weeds at the side of the street. He stumbled, staggered comically, all the while misusing the Lord’s name in a most serious manner. Finally, he recovered, and aimed a kick at the log, just to show it who was really boss. As he landed the blow, it occurred to the boy that the log was soft. It shifted just a bit, and by the light of the moon, Brun saw that this particular log wore a long white dress and petticoats.

***

Dr. Walter Overstreet wondered just how long this goddamned meeting would go on. Why in all hell had he ever let Bud Hastain sweet-talk him into running for mayor of Sedalia? Overstreet’s prize for winning that race was two years of political shit to shovel off his desk every single day, never mind he had an active medical practice to keep up. Today, he’d started with a breech delivery at six in the morning, and what with the usual hospital rounds and house calls, afternoon office visits, a meeting with a bunch of irate citizens, two kids with firecracker burns, and a City Council meeting, he’d gone nonstop until ten that night. By then, he thought he might just be home free, but no. Martha Smith, daughter of George Smith, the founder of his fair city, was having one of her so-called spells. If Sarah Cotton, Martha’s sister, had heard what the good doctor said after she’d hung up the phone, he never again would have been allowed to set foot inside the Smith mansion in any capacity. Wearily, he grabbed up his bag, and was off to the huge stone house on East Broadway to dispense smelling salts, a touch of laudanum, and close to two hours of gentle sympathy and encouragement. By the time he dragged himself back, Bud Hastain and John Bothwell were waiting for him in his office, directly below his bachelor apartments. “No,” Bothwell told him. “This can’t wait until tomorrow. I have appointments all day tomorrow.”

Dr. Overstreet slung his bag into a corner, pulled a decanter labeled
SCOTCH
and three glasses from a little cabinet next to the red-leather armchair behind his consultation desk. Hastain and Bothwell sipped at their drinks, but Overstreet threw his down in one swallow, then refilled his glass.

His visitors glanced at each other, then Bothwell spoke. He was a good-looking man just past fifty, with a full head of dark hair, pompadoured in front, long sideburns and a thick mustache. Dark eyes peered out from below craggy, bushy brows. His bearing and tone of voice never left doubt that if he was not getting his way right then, he shortly would be. “Sorry to keep you up, Doc, but we need to keep moving forward on this State Fair business. We’ve got to be good and goddamn sure we don’t lose the Fair the way we lost out on the Capital.”

Hastain, a stocky, light-haired man a few years younger than Bothwell, nodded.

For a moment, Overstreet gave serious thought to asking the two men to leave, then resigning as mayor. Doctors had no business being in politics; he had no trouble imagining what his father would have had to say about that. Two of Overstreet’s patients had died that day, one from a heart attack, another from a railyard accident, and now he was supposed to get all worked up about Sedalia’s having lost out on the Capital and maybe losing the State Fair as well. But Bothwell and Hastain owned considerable real estate in Sedalia, were officers in banks, operated lucrative farms in the area; if Sedalia failed, the two of them would be just another couple of dime-a-dozen lawyers. That’s why Bothwell had got himself elected State Representative from Pettis County, and Hastain had served two terms as mayor. But Bud wasn’t allowed to stand for a third term in 1898, so he persuaded his friend, Dr. Walter Overstreet, that it was Walter’s civic duty to run for mayor. No worry, Hastain and Bothwell would give him all the help he needed. Some help. When Jefferson City managed to hold onto the State Capital, Sedalia was left holding a large plot of land where the capitol building was supposed to go, and Bothwell and Charlie Yeater, the Pettis County State Senator, were bound and determined that the state legislature would vote that fall to use Sedalia’s available acreage as the site for the Missouri State Fair. Not as good as getting the Capital, but a decent consolation prize, one that would bring considerable business into town, year after year. Overstreet had heard so much palaver about cows and sheep and horses, he thought he’d be better off had he gone into veterinary medicine.

“Walter, God
damn
it. Are you listening to me?”

Overstreet, blasted out of his reverie, nodded. “Yes, John, I’m listening to you.”

“Well, then, what the hell
do
you intend to do about getting the merchants to support the September street fair? We’ve gotten off to a good start—even with the rain, we drew a nice out-of-town crowd for the Fourth. But we need to do something big right before the legislature meets to show them we
will
get people to come to the Fair from all over the state. Don’t those damn fools on Ohio Avenue understand that?”