Ragtime: A Novel

by E. L. Doctorow

  The District Attorney himself took the telephone. He sat on the edge of a table and held the speaker in his left hand and the receiver attached by a cord in his right. Hello, Mr. Walker, he said heartily, this is District Attorney Whitman. He was stunned by the calm businesslike tone of the black man. My demands are the same, said the voice on the phone. I want my car returned in just the condition it was when my way was blocked. You cannot bring back my Sarah, but I want for her life the life of Fire Chief Conklin. Coalhouse, Whitman said, you know that I as an officer of the court could never give over to you for sentencing outside the law a man who has not had due process. That puts me in an untenable position. What I can promise is to investigate the case and see what statutes apply, if any. But I can’t do anything for you until you’re out of there. Coalhouse Walker seemed not to have heard. I will give you twenty-four hours, he said, and then I will blow up this place and everything in it. And he rang off. Hello, Whitman said. Hello? He ordered the operator to get the number again. There was no answer.

  Whitman next sent off a telegram to Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish in Newport. He hoped she read the newspapers. His eyes, which tended to bulge when he was exercised, were now quite prominent. His face was florid. He removed his jacket and unbuttoned his vest. He asked one of the patrolmen to find him some whiskey. He knew that Red Emma Goldman, the anarchist, was in New York. He ordered her arrested. He stared out the window of the brownstone. The day was overcast and unnaturally dark. The air was close and a fine rain made the streets glisten. The lights of the city were on. The compact white Grecian palace across the street shone in the rain. It looked very peaceful. At this moment Whitman came to the realization that the deference shown by Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo and everyone else in the Police Department had tricked him into identifying himself with a politically dangerous situation. He had on one hand to guard the interests of Morgan, whose various Simon Pure reform committees of wealthy Republican Protestants had funded his investigations of corruption in the Democratic Catholic Police Department. He had on the other hand to preserve his own reputation as a tough D.A. who dealt handily with the criminal classes. For that nothing would do but the speediest unhorsing of the colored man. A glass of whiskey was brought to him. Just this one, to calm my nerves, he said to himself.

  In the meantime police knocked at the door of Emma Goldman on West 13th Street. Goldman was not surprised. She always kept packed and ready to go a small bag with a change of clothes and a book to read. Ever since the assassination of President McKinley she had been routinely accused of fomenting by word or deed most of the acts of violence or strikes or riots that occurred in America. There was a national obsession of law enforcement officers to connect her to every case just as a matter of principle whether they believed she was guilty or not. She put on her hat, picked up her bag and strode out the door. She rode in the police wagon with a young patrolman. You won’t believe this, she said to him, but I look forward to a spell in jail. It is the one place where I can get some rest.

  Goldman did not know of course that one of the Coalhouse band was the young man she had pitied as the bourgeois lover of an infamous whore. In front of the sergeant’s desk at police headquarters on Centre Street, she made a statement to reporters as she was booked for conspiracy. I am sorry for the firemen in Westchester. I wish they had not been killed. But the Negro was tormented into action, so I understand, by the cruel death of his fiancée, an innocent young woman. As an anarchist, I applaud his appropriation of the Morgan property. Mr. Morgan has done some appropriating of his own. At this the reporters shouted questions. Is he a follower of yours, Emma? Do you know him? Did you have anything to do with this? Goldman smiled and shook her head. The oppressor is wealth, my friends. Wealth is the oppressor. Coalhouse Walker did not need Red Emma to learn that. He needed only to suffer.

  Within an hour extra editions of the newspapers were on the streets featuring the news of the arrest. Goldman was liberally quoted. Whitman wondered if it had been wise to give her a forum. But he did derive one clear benefit from the move. The president of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Booker T. Washington, was in the city to do some fund-raising. He was delivering an address downtown at the great hall of Cooper Union on Astor Place and he departed from his prepared text to deplore Goldman’s remarks and condemn the actions of Coalhouse Walker. A reporter called Whitman to tell him of this. Immediately the District Attorney got in touch with the great educator, asking if he would come to the scene and use his moral authority to resolve the crisis. I will, Booker T. Washington replied. A police escort was sent downtown and Washington, apologizing to the hosts of the luncheon in his honor, left to ringing applause.

  37

  Booker T. Washington was at this time the most famous Negro in the country. Since the founding of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama he had become the leading exponent of vocational training for colored people. He was against all Negro agitation on questions of political and social equality. He had written a best-selling book about his life, a struggle up from slavery to self-realization, and about his ideas, which called for the Negro’s advancement with the help of his white neighbor. He counseled friendship between the races and spoke of the promise of the future. His views had been endorsed by four Presidents and most of the governors of Southern states. Andrew Carnegie had given him money for his school and Harvard had awarded him an honorary degree. He wore a black suit and homburg. He stood in the middle of 36th Street, a sturdy handsome man with all the pride of his achievement in the way he held himself, and he called out to Coalhouse to let him in the Library. He disdained the use of the megaphone. He was an orator and his voice was strong. There was nothing in his manner to indicate any other possibility than that the desperadoes would grant him his demand. I am coming in now, he called. And he stepped around the crater in the street and walked through the iron gates. He climbed the steps between the stone lionesses and stood in the shadow of the arched portico between the double Ionic columns and waited for the doors to open. There was now a silence and a stillness in the scene that allowed the horn of a cab many blocks away to be heard clearly. After some moments the doors opened. Booker T. Washington disappeared inside. The doors closed. Across the street District Attorney Whitman wiped his brow and sank into a chair.

  What Booker Washington found was the awesome gilded library of paintings and tiers of rare books, statuary and marbled floors, damask silk walls and priceless Florentine furniture, all wired for demolition. Fascia of dynamite were strapped to the marble pilasters of the entrance hall. Wires led from the East and West rooms along the floor to the rear of the entrance hall, where there was a small alcove. Here sat a man straddling a marble bench. On the bench was a box with a T-shaped plunger which he held with both hands. His back was to the brass doors and he was leaning forward so that if a bullet were to kill him instantly the weight of his falling body would depress the plunger. This fellow now turned to look over his shoulder at Washington and the great educator drew in his breath sharply as he saw it was not a Negro but a white in blackface, as if this were some minstrel show. Washington had entered in a stern and admonitory frame of mind but with the intention to be diplomatic. He disdained persuasion now. He looked in on the West Room and then walked across the hall to the doorway of the East Room. He had expected to find dozens of colored men but saw only three or four youths standing each beside a window with a rifle in his hands. Coalhouse stood waiting upon him in a well-pressed hound’s-tooth suit and a tie and collar, although he carried a pistol in his belt. Washington looked him over. His handsome brow furrowed and his eyes flashed. Summoning all his declamatory powers he spoke as follows: For my entire life I have worked in patience and hope for a Christian brotherhood. I have had to persuade the white man that he need not fear us or murder us, because we wanted only to improve ourselves and peaceably join him in enjoyment of the fruits of American democracy. Every Negro in prison, every shiftless no-good gambling and fornicating colored man has been my enemy,
and every incident of faulted Negro character has cost me a piece of my life. What will your misguided criminal recklessness cost me! What will it cost my students laboring to learn a trade by which they can earn their livelihood and still white criticism! A thousand honest industrious black men cannot undo the harm of one like you. And what is worse you are a trained musician, as I understand it, one who comes to this infamous enterprise from the lyceum of music, where harmony is reverenced and the strains of the harps and the trumpets of heaven are the models for song. Monstrous man! Had you been ignorant of the tragic struggle of our people, I could have pitied you this adventure. But you are a musician! I look about me and smell the sweat of rage, the impecunious rebellion of wild unthinking youth. What have you taught them! What injustice done to you, what loss you’ve suffered, can justify the doom you have led them into, these reckless youths? And, may you be damned, you add to this unholy company a white who smears himself with color and adds mockery to your arsenal.

  Every word of this speech could be heard by every member of the band. They were not so steeped in revolution that the sentiments of Booker T. Washington, of whom they had heard since they were children, could not awe them. It must have been crucial for them to know Coalhouse’s reply. Coalhouse spoke softly. It is a great honor for me to meet you, sir, he said. I have always stood in admiration for you. He looked at the marble floor. It is true I am a musician and a man of years. But I would hope this might suggest to you the solemn calculation of my mind. And that therefore, possibly, we might both be servants of our color who insist on the truth of our manhood and the respect it demands. Washington was so stunned by this suggestion that he began to lose consciousness. Coalhouse led him from the hall into the West Room and sat him down in one of the red plush chairs. Regaining his composure Washington mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He gazed at the marble mantel of the fireplace as tall as a man. He glanced upward at the polychrome carved ceiling that had originally come from the palace of Cardinal Gigli in Lucca. On the red silk walls were portraits of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder and several adorations of the Magi. The educator closed his eyes and locked his hands in his lap. Oh Lord, he said, lead my people to the Promised Land. Take them from under the Pharaoh’s whip. Free the shackles from their minds and loosen the bonds of sin that tie them to Hell. Over the mantel was a contemporary portrait of Pierpont Morgan himself when he was in his prime. Washington appraised the fierce face. In the meantime Coalhouse Walker had sat down in the adjoining chair and together the two well-dressed black men were the picture of probity and serious self-contemplation. Come out with me now, Booker Washington said in a soft voice, and I will intercede for the sake of mercy that your trial shall be swift and your execution painless. Dismantle these engines of the devil, he said waving his hands at the dynamite packs strapped in the corners of the carved ceiling and against every wall. Take my hand and come with me. For the sake of your young son and all those children of our race whose way is hard, and whose journey is long.

  Coalhouse sat lost in thought. Mr. Washington, he finally said, there is nothing I would like more than to conclude this business. He raised his eyes and the educator saw there the tears of his emotion. Let the Fire Chief restore my automobile and bring it to the front of this building. You will see me come out with my hands raised and no further harm will come to this place or any man from Coalhouse Walker.

  This statement constituted Coalhouse’s first modification of his demands since the night of the Emerald Isle, but Washington did not understand this. He heard only the rejection of his plea. Without another word he rose and walked out. He went back across the street believing his intervention had accomplished nothing. Afterwards Coalhouse paced the rooms. His young men stayed at their posts and followed him with their eyes. One lay on the roof atop the domed skylight of the portico. He lay in the rain on guard and felt, though he could not see, the presence of thousands of quietly watchful New Yorkers. During the night he thought they made a sound, some barely detectable mourning sound, not more than an exhalation, not louder than the mist of fine rain.

  38

  After Booker T. Washington conferred with the District Attorney he spoke with reporters in the parlor of the temporary headquarters. Mr. Morgan’s library is a dynamite bomb ready to go off at any moment, he said. We are faced with a desperately brainsick man. I can only pray the Lord in His Wisdom will bring us safely out of this sad affair. Washington then made a number of phone calls to friends and colleagues in Harlem—church pastors and community leaders—and invited them to come downtown and demonstrate the opposition of responsible Negroes to the cause of Coalhouse Walker. This took the form of a vigil in the street. District Attorney Whitman granted his permission even though the report brought back from the Library was grim enough to cause him to order an evacuation of every house and apartment within a two-block radius. Such was the state of things when Father arrived. He was escorted through the police lines and marched past the bareheaded silent black men standing in prayer. He looked for a moment at the Library and then went up the stairs of the brownstone. Inside he was left to himself. Nobody spoke with him or wanted anything from him. He turned around, facing this way and that, waiting for some word or notice from the authorities. None was forthcoming.

  The house was filled with police in uniform and men of indeterminate responsibility. Everyone milled about. Father wandered back to the kitchen. Here were the reporters. They had eaten the food in the icebox. They sat with their feet on the table and stood leaning against the cupboards. They wore their hats. They used the sink for a spittoon. Father listened to the conversation and heard the details of Booker T. Washington’s interview with Coalhouse. He marveled at the fame of the man who had played piano in his parlor. But it sounded to him as if Coalhouse had modified his demands. Was this so? Nobody seemed to perceive it. Yet if the life of Willie Conklin the Fire Chief was either conceded or at least negotiable, he ought to inform someone. He looked for an official and came upon the District Attorney himself, whom he recognized from his pictures in the paper. Whitman was at the bay window in the parlor, a pair of binoculars in his hands. I beg your pardon, Father said, and introducing himself he told Whitman what he thought. The District Attorney regarded him with startled eyes. Father noted small broken veins in his face. Whitman turned back to the window and raised his binoculars and stared out like a sea admiral. Not knowing what else to do Father remained with him.

  Whitman was waiting for the reply from Mr. Morgan. He kept looking at his watch. Then someone ran by in the street. There was a commotion in the hallway. A boy came into the parlor followed by the curators and several policemen. He had a wireless from the Carmania. The District Attorney tore at the envelope. He read the wire and shook his head in disbelief. Goddamnit, he muttered. Goddamnit to hell. Suddenly he was shouting at everyone in the room. Out! Get out! He herded everyone through the doors. But he held Father’s arm and kept him there. The doors closed. Whitman thrust the cable into Father’s hands. GIVE HIM HIS AUTOMOBILE AND HANG HIM, the text read.

  Father looked up and found the District Attorney glaring at him. This is the one way I would never consider, Whitman said. I can’t give in to the coon. Even to hang him. I can’t afford it. It would finish me. Goddamnit, I took care of that son of a bitch Becker. The crime of the century. That’s what the papers called it. And now the D.A. giving in to a nigger? No, sir! It can’t be done!

  Whitman paced the room. Father experienced an infusion of boldness. He was holding in his hands a private message from J. Pierpont Morgan. It enabled him to accept immediately and without question his investiture as confidant of the District Attorney of New York.

  Father saw clearly that the situation was ready to be negotiated. Even across the world Morgan had understood this. Coalhouse seemed to have softened on one of his demands, that Conklin be turned over to him. It was Father’s opinion, furthermore, that since Sarah’s death Coalhouse Walker’s most fervent wish was to die. He informed the
District Attorney of this. The whole matter might be resolved quickly, he said. The car has no real value. Besides, it’s Mr. Morgan’s idea. I’ll say, said Whitman. Only Pierpont Morgan could think of it. Who else would have the nerve. No, Father said, I mean it’s his idea. Of course I don’t know anything about politics, but doesn’t that absolve you of the responsibility? Whitman stopped in his tracks and gazed at Father. Right this minute, he said, I am supposed to be in Newport with the Stuyvesant Fishes, he said.

  And so it happened just after midnight that a team of dray horses was backed up to Coalhouse Walker’s ruined Model T sitting by Firehouse Pond in New Rochelle. The rain had gone and the stars were out. The horses were hitched to the bumper and they pulled the car up to the road. Then they began the long journey to the city, clip-clopping along, the driver standing up in the front seat holding the reins in one hand, grasping the steering wheel with the other. The tires were all flat, the car rocked as it went, and every revolution of the wheels grated on the ears.

  Even as the Ford was advancing toward Manhattan, Whitman managed to get Coalhouse on the phone. He told him he wanted to talk about his demands. He proposed Father as the intermediary to carry the discussion back and forth. This was more private than the telephone. You can trust him and I can trust him, Whitman said of Father. After all, he’s your former employer. No, Father said in Whitman’s other ear. I was never his employer. Father now had grave misgivings. In too few minutes he found himself outside in the chill early morning, walking across the floodlit street around the crater and up the steps past the stone lions. He reminded himself that he was a retired officer of the United States Army. He had explored the North Pole. The brass doors opened, not widely, and he stepped in. He heard his own footsteps ring on the polished marble floor. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light. He looked for the black man and saw instead his brother-in-law undressed to the waist but with his face blackened and a holstered pistol under his arm. You! Father cried. Younger Brother pulled out the pistol and tapped the barrel against his temple in a kind of salute. Father’s knees buckled. He was helped to a chair. Coalhouse brought him a canteen with water.