The Ragtime Fool (15 page)

Alan clutched the book bag to his chest. “You wouldn’t shoot me right here on the street.”

Slim’s jaw fell. Kid had moxie, give him that. “Look here, boy,” a growl. “You take just one step to run off, you ain’t never again gonna walk on them legs. Anybody sees, I gonna tell ’em I be a detective from Jersey, Dr. Broaca hired me to get back the five thousand dollars you stole offa him. Then you can go back home and spend the resta your life in a wheelchair.” Slim extended a hand. “Now, gimme here, real nice and easy.” He grabbed for the book bag.

Alan swung the bag to the side. “Get away from me, or I’ll yell for help. I don’t have the money.”

“You got that book then.” Slim wiggled fingers. “That’ll do. Gimme.”

“Hell I will.
Help! Help!
”

The boy dodged to the left, but ran squarely into Slim’s fist. He reeled back against the brick wall, then sank by degrees to the sidewalk. Slim yanked out the pistol, pointed it at Alan’s face. “I swear, boy, you have got me real close on my limit. You try shoutin’ or runnin’ again, you be full of lead.”

Alan shook his head, tried to focus his eyes.

Slim squatted, tore the book bag from the boy’s hand. But as he got to his feet, he heard, “Hands up, Nigger. Quick.”

Slim turned, pistol in one hand, book bag in the other. A rangy man with blue eyes and blond hair spilling down from under the bill of a blue baseball cap stood ten feet away, pointing a large gray pistol squarely at the black man’s chest. “Drop ’em both,” the intruder growled. “And put up your hands. I ain’t known much for my patience, and I ain’t gonna miss a fat piece of shit like you.”

Slim opened his fingers. The book bag thumped to the sidewalk, the gun beside it.

The white man gestured with his pistol. “Okay, now. Get your hands up on that wall and keep ’em there. Turn your head and I’ll blow it off.” He swept up Slim’s gun, stuffed it into his pocket.

Slim glanced sidewise at Alan, spat on the boy, then slowly moved into position.

Alan pushed himself to a crouch, grabbed the book bag, pulled it toward him. The white man bent over him, put fingers to his face. Alan winced. “Just a cut lip,” the white man said. “Lucky for you I come outa the restaurant right then. What the hell’s that buck want with you, anyway?”

Alan pointed at the book bag. “I think he’s crazy, sir. He says there’s five thousand dollars in here, and he wants it.”

“Listen here,” Slim shouted, being careful not to turn his head. “I come out from New Jersey to get back—”

The white man’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Shut it. When somebody’s pointin’ a gun at you, you speak only when spoken to. Now, get your black lard-ass the hell outa here. If you got a brain in that thick head, you’ll be on the next train to New Jersey.”

Slim lowered his hands, flashed Alan a look that sent the boy edging backward, then started to walk away. As he crossed Osage and snatched up his suitcase, the white man waggled his gun, and called, “Keep going. Train station’s a block down and across the tracks.”

Alan got to his feet. He and his rescuer watched Slim vanish around the corner. The white man put away his gun, then cleared his throat. “That true, what he said? You come out from Jersey with five thousand dollars in that bag?”

Alan paused just long enough to bring a tight smile to the man’s face. “No, ‘course not. I’m out here for the Scott Joplin ceremony Tuesday night, and I’ve got a journal that Mr. Joplin wrote. I’m going to—”

The man laughed in his throat. “Tell you what. You had dinner yet?”

“That’s why I was coming along here. I had supper last night at the Pacific Café, and I was starting to get hungry, so I decided to go back there.”

The man draped an arm around Alan’s shoulders. “Come on, I’ll stand you to dinner.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Alan said. “You did plenty for me already. Besides, you already ate.”

The man waved him off. “We got pride in our city, and we don’t feel right when a stranger who comes out to visit gets slugged by a nigger. So, figure dinner on the house is Sedalia’s way of sayin’ we’re sorry. I’ll have another cup of coffee, and while you’re eatin’, you can tell me the rest of why you’re here and what-all you got there in the bag.” He put out a hand. “I’m Jerry Barton.”

The boy gave Barton’s hand a quick shake. “Alan Chandler. I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Barton.”

“Jerry’ll do. Pleasure’s mine, Alan.”

***

Slim marched far enough up Osage to be sure he was out of sight. Then he set down his suitcase, took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tapped out a smoke, absently slipped it between his lips. Before he could get to his matches, a very dark Negro in a well-worn tan fedora walked up to him, flicked a lighter, and reached up to light Slim’s smoke. Slim nodded. “Thanks.”

The Negro nodded, replaced the lighter into his pocket. “You don’t mind me sayin’ so, Mister, that was not real clever of you. Tryin’ to do that boy right there on West Main Street, an’ in broad daylight.”

Slim’s eyes flared, but the fire receded quickly. “I come all the way out from Jersey to find the kid, and not an hour after I get to town, I walk right into him on the street. So, yeah, I got hasty. Sheet! Shoulda drug him in an alley, sapped him, and just took…just left him there.”

“What’s that boy matter to you, huh?”

Slim took a moment to study the man’s face, but got no enlightenment. “He stole a bunch of money from my boss, and my boss think I done it. He say ‘less I get it back, I don’t have a job no more.”

The dark man shrugged. “I think if a man tell me I stole his money and I didn’t, I’d just tell him where to put his job.”

Slim wondered whether he ought to come clean, but decided he’d already been dumb once that afternoon, which was one time too many. “I thought about doing that,” he said. “But there’s more to the story.”

The dark man adjusted his hat. “Seems like there always be more to a story. Like that boy gave your boss’ five grand to Scott Joplin’s widow, and now he’s got Joplin’s personal journal in his book bag.”

Slim’s cigarette dropped to the ground. “How you know that? Who you be, anyway?”

“Alonzo Green.” The man stuck out a hand. “And you.”

“Slim Sanders. But you still ain’t told me how you know—”

“I’m working for a man here, he wants that journal bad.” Green pointed down the block to where wooden soda bottle cases stood in piles in front of a brick storefront. “Come on, take a load off, an’ let’s do a li’l talkin’. We can see from over there when the boy comes out, and whether his friend’s stayin’ with him. Oh, and by the by, it’s a good thing you didn’t mess with that man. There ain’t a better shot in all Pettis County than Jerry Barton, and he wouldn’t give a first thought, never mind a second one, to air-conditioning a nigger.”

“So you do got white trash,” Slim said. “I’d been thinking, people here’re really nice.”

“Most of ’em are,” said Green. “But I ain’t sure you can rightly call Barton white trash. He runs one of the biggest wheat farms in the county. Got him some livestock too.”

“Sometimes trash come wrapped in a pretty package,” Slim growled.

Green laughed. “Ain’t gonna argue that.”

***

While Alan wolfed down a heap of meat loaf and potatoes, he told his rescuer something close to the real story. “Mr. Brun Campbell was Scott Joplin’s only white pupil,” the boy said. “And he’ll be here for the ceremony Tuesday night, to honor Scott Joplin. Do you know about it?”

Barton smiled. “Well, sure. You already said that’s the reason you came out.”

Alan swallowed a mouthful. “Yes, sir. And Mr. Campbell wants to do better for Mr. Joplin than just hanging a plaque in the high school. He says he could use Mr. Joplin’s journal to get people talking about putting up a statue of Mr. Joplin, and maybe even starting up a ragtime museum. So he asked me to get the journal from Mr. Joplin’s widow in New York, and bring it out to him.”

Both pairs of eyes went to the book bag in Alan’s lap. “And you got that journal in there,” said Barton.

Alan nodded, and without thinking, pulled the bag in closer to his body.

The motion was not lost on Barton. “Well, that’s really interesting. But why did that colored man think you had five thousand dollars in there?”

Alan laughed. “Well, I did, back in New York. I gave it to Mrs. Joplin, to pay for the journal.”

“You did? Five thousand dollars?” Barton loosed a low whistle. “You don’t mind me asking, where’d a kid like you…I mean, how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

Barton half-closed one eye. “Hmmm. Not many folks ever get to have five thousand bucks to spare their whole lives long. Not to be nosy, but how’d you ever come up with that kind of scratch?”

“I guess Mr. Campbell’s got money to burn. He said he didn’t want to send it straight to Mrs. Joplin, ‘cause she’s pretty old and sick. Besides, he didn’t want to take a chance that the journal might get lost in the mail. So he told me if I would go get it and bring out here, he’d wire me the five thousand, and also pay my train fare.”

“When are you supposed to meet him?”

“I’m not sure. He just said to get the journal, and he’d meet me here.”

Barton kept his response to a bland smile. Was he supposed to believe a man would wire a boy five thousand dollars to bring a book out from New Jersey to Missouri, and not set up a time and place to meet him? But what kind of idiot would spend anything like that kind of money on a diary from some spade who played piano in cat houses fifty years ago? “What about the big colored guy, the one who said you stole the money off his boss?” Barton asked. “Why was he hasslin’ you?”

“He’s a detective,” Alan said. “From back in New Jersey…well, all right. My parents weren’t going to let me come out here all by myself, so I ran off without their permission. My father hired that guy to come here and drag me back home.”

Barton grinned. “You didn’t just happen to run off with five thousand of your old man’s dollars, did you?”

“No! I told you, Mr. Campbell sent it. But that was another thing. My parents were afraid I’d get robbed or maybe even killed, carrying all that money around.” Alan scooped the last bit of potato onto his fork, licked it off, pushed his plate aside.

Barton signaled the waitress. Alan and he were now the only customers in the restaurant. As the girl came up to the table, Barton said, “I think this young man could do with a piece of your world-famous apple pie. Fact, I suspect he could also put away a scoop of ice cream to go with it.” He shifted his gaze to Alan, winked.

“I’ll give it my best,” Alan said.

The waitress fluttered her eyelashes at him, blushed, then walked off. Barton watched her all the way back to the counter. “You’ve got a way with the ladies,” he said.

Now, Alan blushed. “I don’t know.”

Barton reached across the table to punch his arm lightly. “Coming out half-way across the country all by yourself, to bring that journal out here? I’d say you are a most determined young man.”

“I am that, sir, though I guess my mother would say I’m just stubborn. Whatever, when I set my mind to do something, it’s pretty hard to stop me.”

“I’ll warrant that. But why are you so bound to do this?”

“It’s the music, Mr…Jerry. The first time I heard ragtime, I was hooked. Mr. Campbell’s been writing to me, telling me how to play it, and when he asked if I’d help him out with this ceremony, I jumped at the chance. It’s something I’ll remember all my life.”

Barton grinned again. “Must be great to be young, and have that kind of enthusiasm. I can’t say I care much for any kind of music myself, but on the other hand, I know if a man’s community don’t prosper, neither will he. So, I do what I can to make my community prosper. If a museum’s going to bring in bunches of tourists, then I’m all for that museum. That’s why I’m on the committee for the ceremony you’ve been talking about.”

“You are? Really?”

Barton grinned again. “Cross my heart.”

Alan shifted forward in his seat, leaned across the table. “I’ve been hoping I’d find somebody like you while I’m waiting for Mr. Campbell. Maybe
I
could play a piece in the ceremony, you know, show the people that it’s not just old men who like ragtime. If a white kid from New Jersey goes up on the stage and plays ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ I bet the newspapers would notice that, and so would the radio station Mr. Campbell said was going to broadcast the whole thing.”

Barton’s eyes widened; he nodded in time with Alan’s speech. “You know, you just might have something there. Tell you what. The committee’s having a meeting tonight, and I’ll talk to them. Bet they’ll be interested.”

“You’d do that for me? You haven’t even heard me play piano.”

Barton noticed that the boy’s growing passion did nothing to loosen his hold on the bag in his lap. The waitress smiled as she set a piece of pie in front of him, twice the usual size, with a monster scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, but he barely thanked the girl. His eyes locked with Barton’s.

“Put it this way, Alan,” Barton said. “A boy as determined as you ain’t likely to be blowing smoke about how he can play piana. ‘Cause he knows if he can’t deliver the goods, there’s no way he’s gonna be able to fake it. So, I figure I’m looking at good odds. Where’re you staying?”

Alan took a moment to swallow a mouthful of pie. “Milner Hotel, over on East Second Street. Why?”

“’Cause you don’t have to spend your money on a hotel. You can stay at my place.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t put you out like that.”

“Won’t be any trouble at all. I’ve got a farm off toward Smithton, a little way down the road, and there’s plenty of room. It’s just me living there. You don’t think that colored detective actually did run off and get on a train, do you? Bunk at my house, and you won’t have to worry about him sneaking up on you again. Next time he tries, I might not be around to help.”

Alan nodded. “It sure was good luck you were here this time.”

“It sure was. My old man always used to say, better lucky than good.”

Alan put away another chunk of pie. “I guess it makes sense, if it really wouldn’t be any trouble.”

Barton laughed out loud. “This ain’t the east coast, Alan. Out here, folks go outa their way to make a stranger welcome.” He brushed hair back from in front of his eyes, then pushed back from the table. “Okay, then, it’s settled. I’ll take you by the Milner, and you can check out. Then we’ll go back to my place.”