The Ragtime Fool

by Larry Karp

  The editor coughed politely. “All right, Rudi. As usual, you make a strong argument. But I simply can not give you a go-ahead right now.” He ticked off points on his fingers. “Number One, Mr. Knopf will have some reservations about sales possibilities. Number Two, as for Joplin’s hundreds of unpublished manuscripts—”

  “Might be thousands.”

  Radcliffe blew. “Damn it to hell, Rudi, I don’t care if it’s millions. Knopf is not a music publishing house. Not to say we wouldn’t consider something unusual, but I’d have to be insane to tell Mr. Knopf I gave you final approval on my own. And Number Three, you said it yourself. Mrs. Joplin is elderly and flighty. Before I’d ever agree to a project like this, I’d need to check with our legal department. By the way, have you even discussed the matter of money with Mrs. Joplin? What are her expectations?”

  “There won’t be any problem. She’d want five hundred up front, which you can take out of my advance. Then, she and I would split the royalties.”

  Radcliffe couldn’t help smiling. “All right.” He started to unroll his shirt sleeves. “I’ll talk to the lawyers, and have everything together by the time Mr. Knopf is back.”

  “Which will be when?”

  Radcliffe turned as stern an eye on Blesh as he could manage. “Probably the end of next week.”

  Now, Blesh exploded. “The end of…suffering catfish, Ellie! Where is he? Can’t you call him?”

  “He is in Europe, and no, I’m not going to call him there to present a proposal of this sort. He’d question my judgment damn seriously, and he’d be right. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to wait.”

  “I don’t want to lose this chance,” Blesh snapped. “If you’re not interested, I suspect Columbia University Press would snap it up.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. But you’d better think about what you and Mrs. Joplin would earn if you go that route. Look. Tell her I’m definitely interested, and her terms would be acceptable, but I need to wait a week and a half to hear what The Boss says.” Radcliffe stood, pulled his jacket off the back seat of his chair, slipped it on. “If she can’t understand that, I’m not sure it would be reasonable to work with her. Now, that’s it, Rudi. I’m going home.”

  Radcliffe got to his feet with an “Oomph,” grabbed his briefcase from the floor, and with the other hand, took Blesh by the elbow and steered him toward the door. They walked through the outer office, past dark-skinned Mickey Thurman, in his janitor’s coverall, emptying the secretary’s wastebasket into a large sack. Thurman watched them go out the doorway and disappear into the hall. Like they couldn’t see me, he thought. Like they didn’t even know I’m here. Like I don’t have ears. He smiled.

  ***

  The few late-afternoon customers in Ozzie’s Bar, a half-block off the Venice boardwalk, fell silent as Brun shouted, “Okay, everybody. Roscoe Spanner here’s eighty today, an’ we’re gonna sing Happy Birthday to him.” There were a few giggles as the barber stood, pulled a cupcake out of a white cardboard bakery box, and set it in front of the old colored man beside him at the table. Then he took a small candle from his pocket, stuck it atop the pastry, flicked a lighter into flame, and lit the candle.

  “Oh, jeez, come on.” Brun’s companion covered his face.

  The barber waved his hands in imitation of a conductor, and started to sing. Most of the crowd joined in. As they finished, to scattered applause, Brun pointed at the candle. “Hey, Roscoe, you gotta blow it out now. Else you ain’t gonna get your wish.”

  The old man turned a wry face onto his friend. “Shit, Brun. What the hell’s an eighty-year-old man supposed to wish for?”

  “That he was twenty again. Come on, Roscoe. Blow.

  The old Negro’s expression said he’d humor the pest. He puffed out his cheeks, then blew out the candle. Brun raised his whiskey glass, clinked it against Roscoe’s. As he sat, he noticed his friend’s eyes had filled.

  “Way you treats me.” The old man’s voice was husky. “You’s the best friend a man could have.”

  “Well, hell. We been friends more’n fifty years.”

  “Fifty-one, to be exact. It was 1900, first time you come inside Tom Turpin’s. I was behind the bar.”

  “I remember. Not half an hour after I got there, some redneck called you nigger.”

  “An’ I remembers. You hit him so damn hard, he didn’t wake up for more’n ten minutes. I thought you killed him.”

  Brun started to laugh. “And then you got me upstairs with the best girl in the house. Free for nothin’.”

  Roscoe shrugged. “I don’t like owin’ people.”

  The two old men stared at each other, then burst into full laughter. “Lord, what we’ve been through together,” Brun said. “St. Lou to Tulsa to California. We couldn’t even begin to keep records on what we owe each other.”

  “Ain’t never even had one argument.”

  Brun’s laugh was laced with sarcasm. “Maybe I shoulda married you.”

  Roscoe’s hands went up. “Don’t even go thinkin’ about that kinda thing.”

  “Hey, you know I’m kiddin’. Just sayin’ how you were a whole lot smarter’n me, not ever gettin’ married.”

  “Maybe just luckier.” Roscoe looked up at the clock on the wall behind the bar. “You better start gettin’ on home. Your old lady’s gonna have some kinda fit.”

  Brun shook his head. “Won’t be anything new or different. Go on, now, eat up your cake. It’s your favorite, all chocolate.” Brun waved to the bartender. “Hey, Oz, two more Jack Daniels.” He grinned at Roscoe. “Gotta have somethin’ to wash it down with.”

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, April 3

  Afternoon

  Roscoe turned the knob on the barber-shop door, but it wouldn’t open. Only then did he notice the CLOSED sign on the other side of the glass panel. He shaded his eyes. There was Brun at the piano, stomping his usual hell out of the beat with his left foot, banging notes as if the keyboard was some kind of mortal enemy. Three men, two white, one black, stood around the bench. Roscoe pounded at the door. “Brun…hey, Brun. Open up.”

  The black man on the near side of the piano bench turned.

  Roscoe pointed toward Brun, then toward himself, then again toward Brun. “Open the door,” he shouted.

  The black man tapped Brun’s shoulder. The barber looked around, startled, saw Roscoe, hustled off the piano bench to open the door.

  Roscoe turned a hard eye on the barber. “Only three o’clock and you’re closed?”

  Brun laughed. “Yeah, you bet. Hey, Roscoe…” He gestured toward the three men at the piano. “These guys’re from Chicago, terrific trio…what’d you say your name was again?”

  “The Windy City Ragtimers,” said one of the white men.

  “That’s it. Sorry, it just slipped outa my mind. They’re in town to do a show this weekend, so they come by to learn how old Brun plays ragtime. Let’s see how I can do with their names. Harry Willis, George Baldwin, Terry Singleton. That right?”

  The three men looked at each and nodded exaggerated surprise.

  “Boys, this here’s Roscoe Spanner, him and me been friends longer than any of you’ve been on earth. He was one of Tom Turpin’s guys in St. Lou, best damn bartender you ever did see. Now he lives out here, like me. Couple old guys getting away from the crappy weather.”

  Roscoe and the musicians shook hands.

  “I’m showing them how Scott Joplin taught me,” said Brun.

  Roscoe nodded. “Somehow, that don’t surprise me overly much. You’re gonna be a while, then, I suspect.”

  “I guess. Why don’t you hang around and listen?” Brun pointed to the barber chair. “Go on, get a load off. I won’t even sneak up on you with scissors.”

  Everyone chuckled. Roscoe shook his head. “I gotta go fix a loose step by old Mrs. Vollmer’s before she breaks a leg on it. But I was goin’ right past here, so I thought I’d stop a minute. Com
e by my place tonight after supper, okay?”

  Brun shrugged. “Well, sure, I can do that. ‘Bout seven, seven-thirty be all right?”

  Roscoe nodded. I’ll see you then. He waved toward the Windy City Ragtimers. “Nice meetin’ you boys.”

  Three yeahs.

  As Roscoe closed the door behind him, Willis, the black man, murmured, “Something’s on that man’s mind.”

  Brun sighed. “I hope he ain’t gonna tell me some doctor just gave him bad news. Get to be my age, never mind his, you don’t know who of your pals is still gonna be there when you wake up in the morning…if you wake up in the morning.” He walked quickly to the upright piano, opened the lid, pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, unscrewed the cap, took a long swallow. Then, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and passed the bottle to Harry Willis, who took a more moderate swig. Brun coughed his throat clear. “Well, we’re all of us still here today, so let’s play us some ragtime.” He sat on the bench. “Here, now, I’m gonna show you exactly how Scott Joplin did.”

  ***

  Brun moved his napkin to his mouth to cover a burp. His wife shot him a sour look. “If you’d get home on time, and didn’t keep supper waiting, it would go down better.”

  Face on her like she spent all day at a funeral. “Now, May, come on. I was only a few minutes late.”

  “Nearly an hour’s not a few minutes. And would it hurt you to come home a little before dinner time? Some men come from work, sit in a chair a bit, and tell their wives about what went on at their job that day.”

  Some men’s wives have a drink waiting when their husbands come in through the door, Brun thought. But no point throwing gas on a fire. “Well, okay. I can try.”

  May’s face said she’d believe it when she saw it.

  “I had me a visit at the shop today, three boys from Chicago, great musicians. Yes. They came in special, just to see how I play rag…music the way Scott Joplin taught me.”

  May set down her fork with a deliberateness that set Brun’s nerve endings tingling. “Wonderful. You took off time from work to play that filthy music you’ve wasted your whole life on. You promised you’d give up ragtime, and cigarettes and whiskey too, if I’d marry you. Your promises aren’t worth listening to.”

  Brun slammed a fist on the table. Silverware danced. “When a girl asks a man for a promise at just the right time, he’ll swear off breathing for her. I might’ve had a chance if you’d just stopped with the smokes and the hootch.”

  “Oh, it’s my fault, is it? You made a promise and you broke it, so now it’s my fault for asking you. Brun Campbell, your whole life has been one big broken promise.”

  Any appetite he had left vanished. Yeah, he’d wrecked his life over a broken promise, but not the one she was talking about. The promise that mattered was the one he’d made to Scott Joplin, who’d taken a fifteen-year-old white boy under his wing, and taught him how ragtime should be played. Then Brun had gone forth to spread the gospel according to Joplin, in hotels and restaurants, in tonks and pool halls, in theaters and on steamboats, and the looks on faces as he played told him the people understood Scott Joplin was High Lord of Ragtime, and Brun Campbell was his prophet. But on the first day of April, 1917, Scott Joplin died, and when they laid him to rest, they put ragtime in the ground with him. Jazz became the be-all and end-all, and joints that had welcomed Brun for years started looking the other way, at trumpets, clarinets, and saxophones. The High Lord was dead, and the prophet lost faith. Opened a barber shop, met pretty May Gibson, and yeah, she did seem to have a bit more enthusiasm for churches and preachers than Brun would have preferred, but her old man was a good joe, liked to tell stories and share a bottle with his daughter’s suitor. It looked to be a good life. Trying to make up for the broken promise to his teacher, Brun made some new ones.

  “I gather you have nothing to say.”

  Brun blinked back to the present. He looked around the little kitchen. What had that good life come down to? A wife and three daughters, all of them convinced that one fine day, while they were sitting around on nice white clouds, playing gold harps, their husband and father would be down you-know-where, choking on sulfur and brimstone while Old Scratch played “Maple Leaf Rag” on a battered, out-of-tune piano. Which, of course, grieved the four women no end.

  “No,” he murmured. “I don’t suppose I do.”

  May’s face softened. She pointed toward his plate. “Go ahead, eat up. I made your favorite, pork chops, the old Oklahoma way.”

  He nodded, forced a forkful in and down. “Good. Real good.”

  May put on the smile of a woman trying to convince her child that the cough medicine in the spoon was actually pretty tasty. “Your daughter had an interview for a new job today, and she thinks she’s going to get it. Would you like to hear about it?”

  “Sure. Shoot.” Brun filled his mouth with pork.

  ***

  He washed, she dried. He squeezed out the dishcloth, hung it on the edge of the drainer, looked up at the white plastic clock over the sink. Almost seven-thirty. Brun sighed; she wasn’t going to like this. “I’ve got to go out,” he ventured. “Roscoe came by the shop earlier, and he wanted to talk to me about something. Sounded like it might be important.”

  She surprised him. “I hope he’s not sick.”

  “That’s what I’m worrying about. He looked okay, but you never do know. Get to be eighty, you’ve already beaten a lot of the odds.”

  May sighed. “Well, I’ll say a prayer. He’s a good man, even if he is colored.”

  Brun bit on his tongue. If she knew what-all Roscoe did in St. Louis fifty years ago, serving up liquor and running traffic for the rooms upstairs, she’d be saying how it’d be God’s punishment, never mind why it took the Almighty all that time to get around to it. He bent to kiss her cheek.

  “You won’t be late, will you?”

  He shook his head, almost said, “Promise,” but swallowed the word. Then he walked to the front door, picked up his fedora, planted it on his head, strode outside.

  ***

  The sun was setting as Brun walked to the corner. He took in a deep breath, blew it out very slowly. A puff of breeze came off the ocean; the hair on his arms stood up. Little chilly. Maybe he should go back and get a jacket? Nah, he’d be okay. Besides, he was already late.

  He walked quickly down Crestmore to Oakwood, turned left onto Woodlawn, then continued all the way down to Roscoe’s small white stucco house on Zeno, in a neighborhood a rank below Brun’s middle-class surroundings. Some of the lazy bums who’d been living in the cheap rents around the canals had moved up here; they called themselves Beats, Brun guessed, because they were too beat from staying up all night writing poetry and smoking reefer to get an honest job. They didn’t get on with the old-timers, and there had been some nasty scenes, cops coming in with sirens howling, heads getting bashed with billy clubs. Brun didn’t like for Roscoe to be living there, but what choice was there for an old colored man who made his living doing odd jobs?

  The barber walked up a narrow concrete strip from the street to the little stoop at the front door. Doggone place needed painting, probably also a roof, and at least a couple new windows. Roscoe never seemed to have time to take care of his own property. Like the shoemaker and his kids, Brun thought. He climbed the three rickety steps to the porch, and knocked at the door.

  No answer. Brun looked at the grimy doorbell, but that hadn’t worked in more years than he could remember. “Roscoe,” he shouted. “Hey, Roscoe! Where the hell are you?”

  The barber pulled the screen door open, then turned the knob on the front door. Roscoe never locked up. Whenever Brun suggested that might not be a good idea any more, his friend shrugged mildly, and said, “Anybody want to try and steal what I got in that house just be wastin’ his time.”

  Brun called Roscoe’s name again, still no answer. He trotted through the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, then walked ba
ck into the living room. No luck. Maybe when Brun didn’t show on time, Roscoe got impatient, and went on over to Brun’s? Naw. They’d have had to cross somewhere along the way.

  Then, Brun noticed the basement door was open. Well, sure. Roscoe was probably down at his workbench, fixing a chair or a little table that Mrs. Vollmer or one of the other old white ladies who kept him in pocket change had sent home with him. Down there, he wouldn’t have heard anyone calling him.

  The barber hustled to the door, started down the stairs, but stopped as he saw it was dark below. Shoot! Roscoe just plain wasn’t here. Might as well go back home, try and catch up with him tomorrow. But as Brun turned to leave, he caught a familiar smell. Whiskey. There was rotgut down there, or his name wasn’t Sanford Brunson Campbell.

  He reached around the corner of the top stair, flipped the light switch, froze. “Roscoe,” a moan. He whipped down the stairs.

  His friend sprawled a couple of feet from the stairway. A thin line of blood ran from the lower corner of his mouth to form a small pool on the concrete floor. Two teeth lay just past the blood. The reason for the whiskey odor was obvious, a wide dark stain on the concrete next to Roscoe, with chunks, splinters, and flakes of glass scattered through the puddle and beyond. Roscoe’s left hand lay across the capped bottle neck at the edge of the stain, as if his last thought had been to try to get just one more drink out of life. Brun squatted, felt at the wrist, then dropped the doughy hand and stood, clutching at his chest. Shaking fingers pulled a little metal pillbox from his shirt pocket; he extracted a small green tablet, slipped it under his tongue, then breathed slowly, deeply. Pain receded, another stay of execution. The old barber trudged up the stairs and outside, back along Woodlawn to Oakwood, then out to Venice Boulevard and into the Venice Police Station, a block down from his barber shop.

  ***

  Brun sat on the gray twill couch in Roscoe’s living room, taking care to avoid the spring that poked through the fabric of the middle section. A uniformed cop stood beside him. At the far end of the couch, a detective in street clothes sat, taking notes as Brun told his story. The coroner had come and gone, attendants had removed the body, and the cops had been talking to Brun for nearly an hour. Finally, the detective, a slim man in his forties, with a sand-colored crew cut and a mouth like a gash, shut his notebook. “Thanks, Mr. Campbell. I appreciate your help.”