by Larry Karp
A lopsided smile came over Brun’s face. “We did have ourselves a nasty scrape or two over the years. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but once upon a time, I could throw a pretty good punch when some yahoo started yelling nigger.”
“So I heard.” Pepper grinned. “And considering that, it doesn’t seem right for me to profit from what you’re trying to do.”
Brun was shaking his head before Pepper stopped speaking. “What don’t seem right is for me to take advantage of you being kind and helping me.”
“We can argue all day,” Pepper said. “But those are my terms. Take them or leave them. If it makes you feel any better, you can figure that doing it this way makes it much less likely I could be charged with an ethics violation.”
Brun’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. Finally, he managed, “How about we at least split the difference. You take half of—”
“Not a penny,” Pepper said. “Roscoe told me you’re up to your neck in projects to give Joplin his proper place in history, so you can use the rest of the money for those.” A sly smile crossed his face. “Though I do have to say, Mr. Campbell, it’s mighty white of you to offer.”
***
Alan knew his way around New York City. For the past five or six years, he’d been going in on his own to take in a movie and stage show at the Roxy, a Sunday matinee at Carnegie Hall, or a baseball game up at the Polo Grounds. This particular morning, he got off the B train at St. Nick’s and 135th Street, two stops before the Polo Grounds. He took the stairs three at a time, and bounded up into bright sunlight. The April wind packed a chilly punch; the boy zipped his jacket, then started up Edgecombe Avenue.
His parents had often warned him not to go into Harlem, but he didn’t think it looked dangerous. Some of the pedestrians gave him a bit of a stare, but no one approached him or said anything. He passed grocery stores, confectionaries, clothing stores, small storefront restaurants that sent odors into the street he didn’t recognize, but liked. At 138th, he turned right, walked to Eighth Avenue and across the street. Mrs. Joplin lived at 212 West 138th. Should be on this block.
He crossed to the north side of the street, and stepped up his pace. A man, sitting on a stoop, called, “Hey, boy, you lookin’ for somebody?”
Alan slowed just a bit, tried to look casual, waved and shouted back, “I’m okay, thanks.” Don’t run, he told himself. His heart beat a Krupa riff.
The buildings on this street were different from the ones to the west: bigger, more gingerbread, better kept up. The boy tried not to hurry, but as the numbers fell, he couldn’t keep from walking faster and faster.
Number 212 was a large brownstone. Alan climbed the worn stairs, and rang the doorbell. Then he stood, shuffling from one foot to the other. After a minute, he raised a hand to ring again, paused, then took a breath and pushed the button.
He heard a sound from inside, a slow, steady thump, coming closer. Then the door opened slowly, and he found himself staring at the homeliest woman he’d ever seen, hands down. She looked old beyond reckoning, hunched over, twisted fingers clutching a cane. A shapeless housedress, white with flower prints, hung loosely from her shoulders. Her white hair was scraggly, eyes rheumy, and she had the face of someone who’d just caught a strong whiff from a bottle of ammonia. The old woman craned her neck to look up at Alan. “Who you be?” she rasped. “What you be wantin’ here?”
Her eyes bored holes through his skull. Alan gave serious thought to turning and running like hell. Go to a movie, then get back home in time to pretend he’d been at school all day. But the thought of meeting Scott Joplin’s only white pupil, giving him Joplin’s journal, and getting ragtime lessons from him kept the boy’s feet in place. “I…I’m here f-f-”
“Spit it out,” the old woman snapped. “I ain’t got all day to stand here and listen at you stutter.”
Alan closed his eyes. His throat was so dry, he couldn’t swallow. When he opened his eyes, the woman was still there, but her gaze was softer. “Well, come on inside,” she said, in a much more civil tone. “I shouldn’t be talkin’ at you like that. Just that it’s hard for me to stay on my feet for any time.”
Thoughts of Hansel and Gretel in his head, Alan walked into the vestibule. The walls were covered with photographs of colored people, mostly men. Alan paused in front of one he recognized; the woman chortled. “You know who that be, do you?”
“Well, sure,” Alan said. “Who wouldn’t know Duke Ellington? And he signed it.”
The woman waved her free hand. “I always get ’em to sign for me, been doin’ it more’n forty years now. Ain’t one colored musician or composer in New York City hasn’t been here one time or another. Lots of them as boarders.”
She motioned Alan into a room to the left; he took three steps inside, then stopped and stared. A gleaming mahogany grand piano, draped with a faded blue and yellow scarf, held dominion over the room. Massive scarlet drapes framed two windows which looked out onto the street; an old oak record player, lid up, sat on an oak table under the near window. Not a square inch of wall showed between the framed photographs. The woman chuckled. “Ain’t never seen a room like this, huh, boy? If you’da come here in 1920, it woulda looked just exactly the same. With a “Whoof!” she collapsed into a well-used tan wingback chair. “Now.” She patted a matching chair beside hers. “Sit you down, and tell me what is it?” Her words floated on wheezes. “You can just take you’ time, I sittin’ now.”
The woman gave off the same odor as Alan’s grandmother, a mild, sweetish smell of decay. She was still incredibly ugly, but now, relaxed in her chair, she seemed far less scary. “You’re Mrs. Joplin? Lottie Joplin?”
Her eyes lit. “That’s who I be, all right. How about you?”
“My name is Alan Chandler, Mrs. Joplin, and I—”
She waved him silent. “You can stop with the ‘Mrs. Joplin’ stuff. ‘Lottie’ be just fine. Now, what on earth can I be doin’ for you, huh?”
Alan patted the thick envelope in his pocket. “I’m here to get Mr. Joplin’s journal, to give it to Mr.—”
“Oh, well, for heaven’s sake. I shoulda knowed. That man was just bound and determined he was gonna get that book. He sent the money with you?”
Alan pulled the envelope from his pocket, gave it to Lottie. “Here it is. I’m going to take the journal to him—”
He intended to say, “In Sedalia, for the ceremony,” but she cut him off. “Boy, what be goin’ on here?” She jabbed a finger into the envelope. “This ain’t no five hundred dollars.”
“Well, no, it’s five thousand. That’s what he said I’m supposed to give you.”
Lottie looked from Alan to the money, then back to the boy. “What you say is your name again?”
“Alan. Alan Chandler.”
“And how old you be.”
“Seventeen.”
The boy thought he’d never seen a sadder smile. “Well, Alan, I got to tell you, gettin’ old ain’t no stroll through the park. Once upon a time, I could remember ‘most anything. Forty years now, I been runnin’ a boardin’ house, and time was, I could tell you the name of every single one a my boarders, and how long he’d been there, and if his rent wasn’t paid up, how much he owed. But now? Jeesh! I be lucky if I remember my own name sometimes. I got it in my head that I was supposed to get five hundred for that journal.”
“No, ma’am…Lottie. I’m sure it was five thousand. I have it in writing.”
The old woman started to cry silently. A drop fell onto the envelope. “Now, I’m gonna go and get all embarrassed.” She wiped a sleeve against her face. “Well, God bless you, Alan, I just can’t believe my good fortune. This’ll probably keep me for as long as I get to stay on earth.”
Alan wanted to cheer her. “It’s really going to make people know who Scott Joplin was,” he said. “It’ll be a real splash in Sedalia, at the ceremony.”
Lottie looked puzzled. “Hmmm, you don’t say. I th
ought he was just gonna publish it.”
“I think he will. But first, he’s going to show it to people at that ceremony, and persuade them to build a statue for Mr. Joplin, and maybe a museum, too.”
“A statue and a museum…” Alan could barely hear the old woman’s murmur. Then, she seemed to recollect herself. “All right, now, listen here.” She pointed out the open doorway. “Go on out there, down the hall, first doorway on the right-hand side. Watch your step goin’ down the stairs. At the bottom, pull on the light-string, an’ you’ll see a li’l table just off to your right. The journal gonna be sittin’ right there, waitin’ for you. Go ‘long, now.”
Alan’s hands shook as he gripped the handrail and started down the staircase to the cellar. As he came to the last step, a string brushed his cheek; he pulled it. A light bulb above the middle of the room came on.
Was there no end of wonders in this house? Beyond a little table holding a thick book covered in faded brown leather lay piles of paper, some on broken-down chairs, more on the floor. Alan walked slowly into the room, taking care not to step on anything. He plucked a handful of papers off the floor. Music manuscripts, most of them heavily syncopated. Some filled a page, some were just a few notes.
The boy wandered, sampling as he went. His head swam. There had to be thousands of pages here. He was too excited to think clearly, wondered whether he could sweep up an armful and take it away with the journal, but a shrill shout brought him back. “Boy…Alan! You find that journal okay?”
He cupped a hand around his mouth. “Yes. I’ll be right there.”
As he walked back into the sitting room, he held up the journal to Lottie. The old woman nodded. “Uh-huh. That be it, all right. Why’d you take so long?”
“I was looking at all the music down there. Is it Mr. Joplin’s work?”
“Sure is. That man musta published only one piece outa every hundred he wrote. They had to be good enough, at least accordin’ to him, else they just sat there.”
Alan lowered himself into the chair. “What’s going to happen to them?”
The old woman shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. Sometimes I think I oughta give them to somebody, get ’em copyrighted and published, but I don’t know who. What if they use their own name, an’ just steal the music offa Scott? And then, if Scott didn’t like ’em good enough to publish them hisself, would he be sore at me if I do it? Anyway, ain’t nobody these days I can think of who’d want to publish music by Scott Joplin.”
I can think of someone, Alan thought, but decided to keep the idea to himself, at least until he got to Sedalia and had a chance to talk to Brun Campbell. Maybe he could put more than a journal into Mr. Campbell’s hands. Come back from Sedalia, pay Lottie another visit, get all that music together and ship it to California. How many folios could be made out of that mountain of paper? ‘The Music of Scott Joplin. Collected by Brun Campbell and Alan Chandler.’”
“Boy, where be your mind? You look like you’s a thousand miles away.”
Alan laughed. “I guess maybe I was. That’s how far it is from here to Sedalia.”
“Mmm-mmm. Don’t pay proper heed, you can find you’self a mess of trouble.”
“I’ll be careful.”
***
Penn Station at mid-day was Pandemonium. Alan pushed through the mob toward the Western Union kiosk in the grand lobby. He had a little more than half an hour; if there was no line, he’d be okay.
The clerk, gray and bespectacled, sat behind the little glass window, his face as blank as the form Alan took from the holder on the counter. “To Mr. Brun Campbell,” he wrote. “711 Venice Boulevard, Venice, California. I got Joplin journal STOP Bringing it to Sedalia STOP Be there tomorrow STOP. Alan Chandler.” He ticked off the words with the pen, muttered “Damn, eleven,” then crossed out the ‘I’.
The clerk glanced at the form, then at the boy. “You want a night letter? That’s the cheapest.”
Alan shook his head. “I want to get it there soon as possible.” He slid one of Dr. Broaca’s twenty-dollar bills across the counter.
The clerk counted out his change. “Hope Mr. Campbell’s got a good heart.”
Alan gave him a blank look.
“It scares people, getting a telegram on Friday the thirteenth.” The clerk loosed a phlegmy laugh, showing two lines of smooth, pink gums.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be glad to get this one.” Alan hoisted his blue book bag, stuffed with the Joplin journal, fresh underwear, socks and shirts, and a toothbrush. He had eighteen minutes to get onto the St. Louisan. Change in St. Louis, and he’d be in Sedalia by nightfall tomorrow.
***
Friday was always a big day for haircuts, the men and boys of Venice preparing to pass muster at weekend frolics. Brun started cutting the minute he returned from Samuel Pepper’s office, and didn’t stop all day, not even for lunch. A little after four, he was finishing up a butch-cut on a fourteen-year-old boy, while two men waited their turn, side-by-side on the piano bench. All of a sudden, the door to the shop slammed open. Bess Vinson blasted through the doorway, stomped up to the barber, hissed into his ear, “I’ve got to talk to you.”
Brun snapped the striped cloth off the boy’s neck, shook the cut hair onto the floor. One of the men on the piano bench stood, and started to walk toward the chair. “Didn’t you get my message yesterday?” Brun asked Bess. “From the guy in the drug store?”
He thought she might swing her purse and clout him on the ear. “Oh yes. I got it all right.”
The boy gave Brun two quarters and ran out. The man from the piano bench settled into the barber chair. Brun pushed the fifty cents into his pocket. “Well, okay, then. We’re all set.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’re all set?’ You may think you’re all set, Buster, but you’ve got another think coming.”
Brun gestured toward the man still on the piano bench. “Look, Miss Vinson, I can’t talk to you right now, I got customers waiting. I close at five, that’s less’n an hour. I don’t know what’s eatin’ you, but come back then and we’ll get it square, okay?”
The woman shot a furious glance at each customer, then at Brun. “Okay! I’ll be here at five. And you’d better be too, if you know what’s good for you.” She executed a military about-face, and stormed out the door.
A nervous laugh snaked through the room. The man in the barber chair craned his neck to look at Brun. “Hey, there, now what’s going on? You got some secret you want to tell us, like how an old goat like you gets a woman half your age into a state?”
Brun fastened the cloth around the man’s neck, just a little more tightly than usual. “I don’t go tellin’ people my trade secrets.”
***
He was nearly finished with the last customer when the door opened again. “Western Union. Mr. Brun Campbell?”
Brun looked over his shoulder. Skinny kid, six feet-plus, uniform trousers easily three inches too short. The barber nodded. “That’s me.”
“Got a telegram for you.”
As Brun half-turned to reach a hand for the message, the man in the chair let out a howl of pain and grabbed at the side of his head. “Blast it Brun, pay your mind to your business. I’m gettin’ to where I’d as soon go to the dentist as come here.”
Brun mumbled, “Sorry,” then jerked his head toward the counter. “Leave it there.” He plucked a quarter from his pocket, flipped it to the delivery boy, who caught it neatly. “Thanks, Mr. Campbell.” He laid the telegram next to the cash register, and ran out.
“Christ Almighty, Friday afternoons,” Brun mumbled. He brandished his scissors and comb, and went back to work.
***
Five o’clock, customers gone. Brun turned the CLOSED sign outward, limped to the sink, pulled a bottle of aspirin out of the cabinet. He shook two pills into his hand, threw them into his mouth, and swallowed them with a mouthful of water straight from the tap. Then he lowered himself into the barber chair
, put up his feet, and waited.
She arrived five minutes later, by all appearances even hotter than she’d been an hour earlier. Brun started out of the chair, but thought the hell with it, he’d just stay where he was. Bess slammed the door behind her, and marched over to the barber. “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”
Brun cocked his head. “Lady, I don’t got the least idea what you’re talking about. I called you yesterday, and told you I’d—”
“Yes, I know. That you’d have the money for me today. Very cute. How did you manage to get somebody back there to steal my father’s journal?”
Brun sat straight up in the chair. “Steal?”
“Stop it,” a screech. “God damn you, you lying, bunko-chiseler son of a bitch! Don’t you just sit there and look innocent. If you know what’s good for you, you’re going to come across with the money. Now.”
A woman gets sore at a man, Brun thought, she talks to him like he was her kid, just turned the outhouse over. Slowly, he worked himself out of the chair and to his feet. “Now, you listen,” he said. “I’m telling you, and I’m telling you true. If that journal’s missing, it ain’t me that snagged it, and if you think you can feed me some cockamamie story and then I’m gonna hand over five grand, you’re out of your mind. If I don’t see that book in the flesh, you don’t get a plugged nickel out of me.”
“Cockamamie story? You old bastard! Some kid went to see Mrs. Joplin this morning, told her he was there to pick up the journal, and it was going to be a big deal at a ceremony in Sedalia. He told her the journal would make people want to put up a statue of my father, and build a museum in his honor. Does that sound just the least little bit familiar to you?”
Face to face now, both angry past reason. “Yeah, sure it does. First time you came here, I told you—”
“In a pig’s eye, you did. You never said boo about any statues or museums.”
“Well, if I didn’t, how is it you know now? And for that matter, how do you even know some kid stole the journal in the first place?”
“That’s none of your business.”