The RagTime Traveler

by Larry Karp

  As Alan paused to consider his next comment, a low whistle came from the backseat. “Jeez, man,” JJ half-whispered. “Now, we’re supposed to be takin’ that serious, right? That’s what you’re sayin’?”

  “Yes, JJ, that is what I’m sayin’. So far I’ve engineered five trips to 1899, and I’ve met some very interesting people. But I’m not asking you to believe I’ve really, actually, been traveling in time and space. Maybe I have been—it sure does feel like I have. But like it or not, I know I’m sick, got a very serious disease, and I can’t be sure that either the illness or the awful treatment isn’t doing weird things to my mind. Chemo does have mental effects—Tom said it: my memory’s in the toilet. And I’m a lot more irritable than I’ve ever been. I’ve got tingling and numbness in my hands and feet—it’s called neuropathy. The way the doctors explained it, those are all effects of damage to my nerve cells by the chemo. So put all that together with the fact that I’ve been studying ragtime and Joplin for more than sixty years, and maybe my mind and my imagination are playing tricks with me. Maybe Tom couldn’t find me that first trip because I was wandering around Sedalia with my brain just plain shut down. Maybe easier to swallow than time-travel. But I don’t think that’s what happened. The trips are just too detailed and consistent for me to believe I’m making it up…but of course I would think that, wouldn’t I?”

  Silence hung in the car like a heavy woolen blanket.

  “And here’s the kicker,” Alan continued. “I’ve made five trips back so far, and on every one, I’ve seen people and found out stuff that seem to be connected to Mickey and the music in the duffel bag. Saramae, the stories about your triple-great-grandfather Lathan could be very important. I think I saw him on one of my trips. What you know could prove whether I’m really going to 1899.”

  “Huh. But I told you about him first, before he showed up in your dream, or whatever. Don’t mean nothing.”

  “Right. But I think I saw his wife, too. You’ve never said anything about her. What can you tell me about her? Her name, whether she grew up in Sedalia, when they married. Anything like that?”

  “I get it. Lemme see. Daddy never told me anything about when Triple-great came to Sedalia, but I kinda got the idea it was after he was grown up. I wanna say his wife and son, Great-great Will, were with him then, but I don’t remember why I think so. And I don’t know the wife’s name. Pretty sure Daddy never said.”

  “Damn,” Alan muttered, then quickly added, “sorry. That would have been really useful. Anything else you can remember about Lathan?”

  “Well, I know Triple-great Lathan worked for one of the black newspapers, The Sedalia Times. Daddy’s real proud about that, even though he wasn’t a reporter or an editor. He did something mechanical with the press, I know that. But accordin’ to Daddy, he was the first Blackstone to work in the news business, and all the sons and grandsons are following him.” She looked up at the car’s ceiling and closed her eyes. “Only one other thing I can think of. Daddy said Great-great Will used to tell him Lathan was the least musical man he ever knew. He liked to listen to music just fine, but couldn’t sing or play a note. Great-great Will say, ‘It prove white folks who say all blacks got nat’ral rhythm is jus’ as wrong as the ones who say all blacks be lazy and stupid.’”

  Alan and the boys laughed, then Tom said “Sounds like your great-great grandfather was a pretty sharp guy. Way ahead of his time, y’know?”

  “Oh, yeah! I wish I knew more about him. Daddy was maybe seven or eight when he died. Wonder what he thought about the Panthers, and the civil rights movement, and all.”

  “Prob’ly thought they was a buncha pussies,” JJ said.

  “He does sound like a smart man,” Alan added, “Maybe we can come back to him later?”

  Saramae looked embarrassed. “Sorry. Was any of that useful?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Alan was silent for a few seconds, but went on before anyone could jump in. “It doesn’t contradict anything I think I learned in 1899, but it also doesn’t seem to support anything I couldn’t have already known.” He glanced to his right and into the rearview mirror. “Saramae, JJ, before I catch you up on the details, tell me what you’re thinking about all this.”

  “Not me, no way,” JJ said. “Granny give me what-for, if I say what I think ’bout time-travel.”

  Tom punched him in the shoulder. “Since she’s not here, I’ll do it for her.”

  “Hey!”

  “Knock it off, you two. Tom, it’s probably a good thing he’s skeptical. It won’t hurt to have somebody taking my story with a big grain of salt. What about you, Saramae? You agree with JJ?”

  Before Saramae could answer, Alan’s phone rang. He fumbled it out of his pocket without taking his eyes off the road and passed it over his shoulder to Tom. “Don’t answer. Just tell me who it is.”

  Tom flipped it open. “Caller ID says ‘Sedalia PD.’ Probably our pal, Detective Parks.”

  “Yeah. Thought it might be.” Alan waved his hand— ‘gimme’—and put the phone back in his pocket. “He can leave a message. I’ll call him back later. Saramae, what do you think? Am I crazy?”

  “Not gonna make up my mind yet. Sure, you’re probably nuts, but maybe not. And if it’s real, well, that’d be epic.”

  “Thank you. I think. As I said, I don’t believe I’m nuts. The trips are just too detailed and consistent for me to see how I’d be making it up. But whatever it really is, time-travel or mind tricks, I’m going to keep doing it, and see what I can come up with that might click into place and help us find the killer and thief. I’d like you to get yourself thinking about your long-ago family. If anything I say rings a bell, tell me. And when we get back to Sedalia, we’re going to have to talk some turkey to your Daddy. I hope you’re not sorry you’ve signed on with us.”

  “Hell, no! I might be a little scared here and there, but not sorry, not even a teensy bit. Wasn’t for you guys, I’d be half-asleep in Social Studies class right now.”

  Alan laughed. “We’re better than Social Studies? High praise!” He thought for a few seconds. “Thomas, you’ve heard the first part of this already, but these two should hear the whole thing. Like I said, the first time I went to the Maple Leaf Club in 1899, Joplin was just finishing the piece of music I had been studying. I talked to him and a few of his friends, including Otis Saunders, before I came back to the present. Saunders, Saramae—the man you mentioned before who was the ‘big troublemaker.’ He did have a long dispute with Joplin over who wrote which parts of ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, but until I started to time-travel, I’d never heard that anything went past angry words. But now I have to wonder if there was more going on in 1899 than historians ever got hold of.”

  “Otis…Saunders?” Saramae sounded puzzled. “That does sound kinda familiar, maybe. So he was at the club hanging out, even though he was fightin’ with Scott Joplin about ‘Maple Leaf Rag’? Huh!”

  “Nobody can argue all the time.” Alan changed lanes to pass a slow truck and glanced at the dash clock. “I want to finish this before we get to K.C., so I’ll stick with the important stuff.”

  “You’ll tell us more later?” Saramae asked. “I wanna hear everything, especially if it’s about my family.”

  “Fair enough. But yes, later.” Alan gathered his thoughts again. “When I got to the club on my third trip, I found out there’d been a fight the night before, and during the fight, the piano had been damaged, maybe destroyed. That’s also when I heard Mr. Joplin and Otis Saunders arguing. Well, actually, I didn’t hear the argument, but I saw it, and from something Mr. Joplin said later, it could have been about ‘Maple Leaf.’ But it might also have been about the fight in the club. The story about what happened to the piano sounded suspicious, so I made another trip back, to see the fight happen.”

  “Hang on,” JJ interrupted. “I’m confused. You go back to the night before the one y
ou went back to in the first place?”

  Alan had to think about that for a few seconds. “I went back to an afternoon in 1899, returned to the present, and then made another trip, to the night before the afternoon.”

  “My head hurt.”

  “Yours isn’t the only one. Mr. Joplin’s did too. Never mind, later for that. I think the fight was planned, and I’m not sure the piano was supposed to be the intended victim. The fight may have been an attempt to hurt Mr. Joplin. That’s a lot of speculation, I know. But I saw a couple, a man and a woman, acting suspiciously. I tried to follow them, but couldn’t keep up; I did get their name, though. According to Otis Saunders, it’s Nowlin.”

  “Nowlin! Like the guy who bashed m’ old man!”

  “And like the old bitch in Kansas City that had the duffel bag!”

  “Thomas! Better not let your grandmother hear you use language like that. But the most interesting thing is what I learned on my last trip. Nowlin is, or rather was, her maiden name. Her husband was Lathan Blackstone.”

  “What?!” three voices chorused.

  “According to my source, Mrs. Blackstone used her maiden name while working as a pianist at a number of establishments polite gentlemen don’t speak of.”

  “He mean ho’ houses, Girl.”

  “Well, duh! Shut up, JJ. She played ragtime, Mr. Chandler?”

  “At that time and place, most likely.”

  “So she knew Saunders. Why’d he tell you her husband was a Nowlin?”

  “An excellent question. Even more interesting, what Otis said was that her husband was Mr. Nowlin, but that he had never met her. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Whoa, yeah!”

  “Assumin’,” JJ added, “that you’re not crazy.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Tom said with a sneer. “Can we pretend my grandfather is at least as sane as you are?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “Did you pick up anything else?”

  “Two more things. The 1899 Nowlin’s first name is Angeline. And she stole both of the A-flat 1 strings from the Maple Leaf Club piano. She seemed to be after those strings in particular. Assuming, as Mr. Jackson would say, that I’m not crazy.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Tom carefully asked “Are you suggesting that Mickey was strangled with Scott Joplin’s piano string?”

  “Sounds pretty crazy, Thomas, and the piano didn’t actually belong to him, but you could look at it that way. Remember how corroded the wire is? Being splashed with beer and piss, then sitting around for a century or so, could have done that.” Alan held up a hand to prevent Tom from interrupting. “I know, it wouldn’t necessarily take that long or need anything more than being touched by bare hands to corrode that much. But it’s certainly not impossible. Maybe JJ’s right, and this is all just my subconscious telling me there’s more of a connection between Mickey and the not-so-charming Ms. A. Nowlin in K.C. than just the duffel bag. But if we’re going to consider the possibility that I really have visited 1899, then there are two things we should do.”

  “Only two?” Saramae asked.

  “Two that we weren’t already doing.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, while we’re looking for anything on Jarvis Nowlin, let’s keep an eye open for stuff about Angeline too.”

  “An’ what else?”

  “Remember that the killer might have more piano strings. I’d hate for any of us to wind up with one wrapped around his or her throat—even if it is a historical artifact.”

  As Alan half-turned to give Saramae what he hoped was a reassuring smile, he saw JJ writing in his notebook again. He came close to asking what the boy had been writing, but caught himself up, and locked his jaw.

  “None of my business, really,” he silently admonished himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At Lee’s Summit, Alan turned off Route 50 onto 476, then headed west on I-70. Coming up on three-thirty, traffic was building toward rush hour.

  “You know how late the museum’s open?” JJ called from the backseat. “We gonna have long enough to do our thing?”

  “No trouble,” said Alan. “It’s open till six, and with four of us splitting up the research, it should be a piece of cake. But we need to get organized. Much as I hate to say it, it’s not the greatest museum in the world. You could see the whole thing in an hour and a half, two hours at the most. There’re a lot of neon signs, some of the exhibits aren’t working, and they don’t have much in the way of historical information. But that can work to our advantage; it won’t take long to go through what they have got. Either we’ll find something or we won’t. JJ, you and I can look for anything about Jarvis Nowlin. Tom, you get your hands on a phone book; check for our Mr. Nowlin and nasty Ms. Nowlin. And Saramae—”

  “I want to see if I can find anything about your Angeline Nowlin in 1899. Or is it Angeline Blackstone? I oughta be the one to find out if she’s my triple-great granny.”

  “Good. A personal motivation won’t hurt at all. Try both names. Can’t hurt.”

  They got off the highway at the Paseo exit, headed east, and lucked into a space at 18th and Vine, right in front of the museum’s gift shop. “Good parking space, good omen,” Alan said. “Okay. We ready?”

  JJ snapped off a slick salute. “Yes suh, Mr. General Alan, suh! Let’s go.”

  ***

  Tom was back in the neon-studded lobby in less than ten minutes. He killed three-quarters of an hour wandering around the perimeter of the room, trying to guess what had become of the businesses where the signs had originally hung. When Alan and JJ appeared, Tom could tell by their expressions they’d been successful.

  “So?” he asked as they approached.

  “Let’s wait for Saramae,” Alan said. “Go through everything once, then head out.

  “While we’re waiting,” said Tom. “That call from Detective Parks—you want to return it?”

  Alan grinned. “In a word, no. Let’s catch up with him after we get back to Sedalia. Let him stew a little.”

  “You like livin’ dangerously.” There was respect in JJ’s tone.

  “Know what?” Alan punched the boy’s arm lightly. “I think you’re right.”

  Ten minutes later, Saramae danced into the room. “Well, lookie her.” JJ snickered. “Betcha she thinks she found somethin’ sweet.”

  Alan shepherded the little group to a spot beneath colorful signs for the Top Hat Grill and The Pink Door. “Okay,” he said. “JJ and I found a little something, probably not of much practical use. Jarvis Nowlin, our ‘sometime critic’ wrote an article for the museum on Ella Fitzgerald, about six years ago, and another one on Louis Armstrong a year later. He seems to know what he’s talking about. Not that that’ll help us a whole lot. Tom, what did you find?”

  The boy waved a small slip of paper. “Something more useful. Jarvis Nowlin’s phone number and address. And a phone number for ‘A. Nowlin’. Same address we met the old you-know-what at. But no first name.”

  “Too bad,” Alan murmured. “But finding Jarvis’ information—excellent.” He turned to Saramae. “Okay now, let’s hear from you.”

  “’Fore you piss your pants,” said JJ.

  “Piss on you, wiseass.” The girl waved a sheet of paper at Alan. “I went on back and found a guy I could talk my way around pretty good. He took me back to somethin’ he called a ‘resource room’—I call it a junk room, because all it’s got is two lousy boxes of stuff, mostly letters and things like that. And lookie what I found.”

  She pushed the sheet of paper into Alan’s hand. The old man’s eyes bugged. “If you hadn’t told us about that Brun guy, I mighta just turned it over and never noticed it’s about my triple-great gran. Miz Angeline, I mean.”

  Alan scanned the paper, read aloud. “‘A Woman Pianist in the Sporting Houses. By Brun Campbell. I
only ever knew of one woman who played piano in the sporting houses in Kansas City, St. Louis, and other places in the Midwest. Her name was Angeline, and she used her maiden name, Noland. She came from a very well-off family in St. Louis, and got piano lessons starting when she was four years old. But she liked a good time and had a real liking for the bottle, and she didn’t much care for playing in opera houses and tent shows.

  “‘Angeline was married to a guy named Blackstone, and if you ever wanted to meet a man who did not have a musical note in his body, that was him. Yes! He was very mechanical, though. There was trouble because Angeline liked the men as much as she liked playing ragtime and having a few drinks, and while she was in Sedalia one time, she took up with Otis Saunders, who was Scott Joplin’s best pal who helped him with the third theme in ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ Well, Angeline left her husband and their kids, and took off from Sedalia and went to Wichita. Saunders followed her there, and after that they went to Arkansas City, Kansas (my old home town), Oklahoma City, and El Reno, Oklahoma. Then they went back to Sedalia, but it got to be all over between them, and they went their own ways on the ragtime circuit…’ Saramae, you just might’ve hit the jackpot.”

  The girl clapped her hands. “Maybe you ain’t crazy after all.” She shot JJ a withering look.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Alan. “To be honest, I can’t swear I’ve never seen this article before, in all my years of research. Or maybe Brun told me about it when I was out in California in 1951. Also, it looks like Angeline’s maiden name was N-o-l-a-n-d, not N-o-w-l-i-n, so maybe Ms. Nowlin really doesn’t have anything to do with all this. I might’ve misheard what Otis Saunders said, back in 1899.”

  “But the names are awfully similar,” said Tom. “And that duffel bag came to light in her house.”