The RagTime Traveler

by Larry Karp

  “Tom, how do I zoom in with this thing again?”

  “Touch with two fingers and spread them apart.”

  Alan turned the phone sideways and zoomed in on the music. Zoomed back out and scrolled back to the portrait, studied it. Scrolled again to the shot of the whole closet and zoomed in on the shelves. “Huh. Bunch of junk. Who keeps old lipsticks?” His mumbles trailed off into silence.

  “Alan.”

  No response.

  “Alan!” Tom tapped him on the shoulder. “Can I see?”

  “Sorry, Thomas. What does that piece of music look like to you?”

  Tom took time to study it. “Sounds familiar.” He hummed a couple of bars under his breath. “It’s almost the same as the trio from ‘Maple Leaf.’ Not quite, but darn close.”

  “Not as polished, I’d say,” Alan said. “Good ear.”

  Tom dug the snippet of wire out of his backpack and compared it to the piece JJ had photographed. “Looks about the same, but I can’t tell if they really go together. Maybe an expert could. Wait a sec!” He swiped back to the music. “‘A. Noland’?” He swiped over to the picture of the photo, held it up to Alan. “Does she look like the woman you saw in 1899?”

  Alan shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. This one’s easily forty years older than the one from 1899. There is a resemblance, but…” He shrugged again. “Well, in any case, good work, JJ. You’re right. It’s not the duffel, but I think your pig’s ready for the smokehouse.”

  JJ’s stomach growled, cutting off any reply. A moment later, Tom’s stomach growled in sympathy.

  Alan laughed. “Teenaged boys’ stomachs. I could do with a bite or three myself. How about we go find Saramae and make her watch us eat?”

  Tom gave JJ a final glare as he switched apps to send Saramae a text. “ruok?meetoutside10min”

  ***

  Alan slowed to a crawl as he drove past Niecie’s. No sign of Saramae. “No reply, Tom?”

  “Nothing. Pull around the corner where we dropped her off. If she’s not there, I’ll go in and look for her.”

  “You mean, I go look,” JJ said. “Still don’t want ol’ Ms. Abigail t’ rec’nize you.”

  JJ popped out of the car as soon as Alan stopped, saying “Keep the engine runnin’ but don’ go nowheres till I gets back, ’kay?” He strolled into the restaurant and looked around casually. The Nowlins were easy to spot at their long table, but at first, his eyes slid past Saramae. He expected her to be alone and ignored the young woman sitting with a little girl. It wasn’t until he had scanned the room twice that he recognized what he was seeing.

  “What the hell?”

  He didn’t want to attract the Nowlins’ attention, so he stayed a few steps inside the door, trying to catch Saramae’s eyes, but she was focused on the kid. Finally, he gave up on subtlety and took a step toward Saramae’s booth; naturally that was when she glanced up and spotted him. He looked at the kid, looked back at Saramae, and then jerked his head toward the door.

  Saramae nodded and held up an index finger to JJ, who nodded and left.

  Between mouthfuls of cobbler, Angeline was telling Saramae a rambling story about some kind of a battle. Saramae couldn’t quite figure who all the characters were and which ones were fighting with whom. She let the story flow past, since it seemed really important to Angeline, and tried to pick out something she could use to direct the conversation back to Old Angeline’s music.

  “…stole that music, an’ that’s why everybody hate Misser Saun.”

  Saramae jerked upright. “Stole it?”

  An enthusiastic nod. “He stoled Ol’ Grammy’s music and gived it to Misser Doplins.”

  “Well that was sure a mean thing to do.” Saramae realized JJ had come back into the restaurant and was standing by the door, doing everything but jumping up and down. She waved him off; he turned and stomped outside. Saramae turned back to Angeline. “And Mr. Doplins did what with Ol’ Grammy’s music?”

  Angeline pouted. “I tol’ you.”

  “I’m sorry, Honey. It’s a long story, and I forgot that part. You’re a very smart girl to remember all that.”

  “Well…” Angeline decided the compliment made up for the insult. “He play the music fo’ the white people and he get famous and maked lots and lots of money, and Ol’ Grammy didn’t get nothin’.”

  “Mr. Saun didn’t get anything either. Bet that taught him not to steal.”

  “Sho did. He get nothin’ and nobody like him, even Misser Doplins. They had a big fight an—”

  “It’s time to go home, Angie. Go say your good nights.”

  “Aw, Mama, I was jus’—”

  “Now!” Angeline’s mother turned to Saramae as her daughter flounced back to the Nowlins’ table. “Thank you much for keeping company with Angie. She weren’t too bad, were she?”

  “Oh, no. She was real good, Ma’am. Uh…I wondered. Are you an Angeline too? Seems like almost every woman Angie knows is one.”

  She laughed. “It do seem that way, don’ it? Nah, I’se a Mary, not a Angeline. But I weren’t born a Nowlin, I done married one. Tha’s my husband over there, the big lug in the awful red shirt. Nelson Nowlin, an’ ain’t that a hoot of a name?”

  Saramae laughed along with her. “It sure is, Ms. Nowlin. I appreciate you lettin’ Angie sit with me. The company sure made my dinner go down nice.”

  Angeline returned, towing her father. “Bye, Miss Saramae.”

  “Good night, Angeline. Hope I see you again.”

  “Me too!”

  Saramae waited several minutes to let Angeline and her parents get clear of the restaurant. While she sat, another couple left the table. She cocked an ear toward the remaining members of the group. Jarvis and Abigail were still going after each other full blast while the others just threw in an occasional word. Saramae shook her head as she stood.

  Some people don’t know when to shut up.

  On the way out, she checked her phone and found Tom’s text. Whoops!

  “Sorry,” she said as she settled herself in the car behind Alan. “Those Nowlins were so loud I didn’t hear my phone. Let’s get over to Jarvis’ place! He’s got the music!”

  Alan caught himself before pulling away from the curb. “You sure? How’d you find out?”

  “I made a little friend named Angeline. She told me lots about that family. But let’s get going. I don’t know how much longer Jarvis and Abigail will keep snipin’ at each other, so we gotta hurry.”

  Tom said, “His house has an alarm. JJ, you think you can get past an alarm?”

  “Maybe. Depend on the ’larm. Some’s easy, some ain’t. Can take me a look.”

  Tom rested a hand on Alan’s shoulder. “I don’t want to go back to Sedalia without trying to get that music, and I bet you don’t either.”

  “No argument, Thomas. JJ, if we all stand lookout, are you willing to try to get into that house and look for the music?”

  “’Course!”

  “All right.” Alan put the car in gear and headed back to Forest Avenue. “Saramae, what else did your friend tell you?”

  “She said Ol’ Angeline, the same one who’s my triple-great gran, is her triple-great too. Jarvis has the music now, and he ain’t gonna give it back to Abigail. You shoulda heard her yellin’ at Jarvis. Not that he’s any better. Anyway, Abigail worships the ground Ol’ Angeline walked on. She’s got some of her music and everythin’. She wants to use the duffel music to prove Ol’ Angeline was a great composer. Jarvis wants to sell it and cash in on Joplin’s name. And a couple of Nowlins nobody paid any attention to want to burn it and be done with the whole mess.”

  She stopped and thought. “There was somethin’ else…Oh, yeah. They think Ol’ Angeline is the one who really wrote “Maple Leaf Rag,” and that Otis Saunders stole it and gave it to Scott Joplin. How abou
t that?”

  Alan’s mouth was hanging open. The two boys gawked at Saramae.

  “What? I got syrup on my face or somethin’?”

  “You get all that from the kid I seed you talkin’ too? Damn!”

  “She’s one smart girl. Probably knows a lot more, too!”

  “That’s not going to help us much,” Alan pointed out. “We don’t know where she lives—or how reliable her information is.”

  “I got Angeline’s Daddy’s and Momma’s names, so I bet we can find ’em if we want to. Can’t be too many Nelson Nowlins around, even in a city this big. Reliable?” She shrugged. “Sure, we gotta take what she says about Ol’ Angeline with a big grain of salt, but it sure sounded like the Nowlins believe it. Heck, she’s probably as reliable about that as I am about Triple-great Granddaddy Lathan.”

  “Fair enough. Nice work, Saramae. You and JJ both hit it big today.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the way to Jarvis Nowlin’s house, JJ laid out the possibilities. “If he just got a li’l alarm sign on his front lawn and there really ain’t no alarm on the house, I be inside in two minutes. But if there be an alarm, mebbe I can deal with it, mebbe I can’t. If it gots magnetic sensors, that ain’t bad. I brung magnets fo’ that. But to crack a fancy wireless set-up, that take radio equipment. Back in Sedalia, I knows someone who’d lend me one. But he ain’t here. So here’s what we do: I go up and open the front door slow and careful, checkin’ for magnetic sensors. If nothin’ happen, I’m cool. But if the alarm goes off, or somebody see me and start shoutin’, I’m back in nothin’ flat, we’re outa here in less time than that, an’ we come back another time. Got it?”

  Soft yeahs filled the car as Alan eased up to the curb across the street from Jarvis’ house and cut the engine. JJ threw the rear door open. “Be ready to move in one big hurry,” he snapped, then jumped to the ground, leaving the car door ajar. He trotted up to the house and worked at the front door for not more than a minute and a half before he gave it a push. No alarm sounded and he vanished inside, closing the door behind himself. Three people in a car exhaled noisily.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, another car came down the street and parked in front of Jarvis’ house. A large black man got out and walked around the front of the car.

  “Oh, fuck!” Saramae breathed. “That’s him.”

  Alan passed his cell phone to Tom. “Give JJ a call,” he barked. “Quick! Tell him to go out the back way. I’ll start the motor when I see him.”

  “I can’t! He didn’t take my phone.”

  Jarvis Nowlin put his key into the front door, stopped, and stared at the lock.

  “Oh, shit,” Alan muttered. “JJ left it unlocked. Jarvis knows something’s up.”

  The big man disappeared into his house, leaving the door ajar. Immediately, Tom opened the car door and charged up the concrete walkway.

  “Tom!” Alan called after him. “Hold up.”

  But the boy kept going, through the doorway, into the house, out of sight of Alan and Saramae. The girl started to open her car door, but Alan reached back to stop her.

  “Wait,” he said. “It’s two against one there, and they’re our two best bets. Better we should hope they come out, and be ready to bail when they do.”

  Inside the front hall, Tom paused, blinked his eyes several times. There was a faint light ahead, toward the back of the house. Suddenly, the light brightened, and a voice snarled, “Okay, you scrawny nigger. You dead if you move.”

  Tom flinched. Then, realizing the words couldn’t have been addressed to him, he moved out of the hall into a dimly lit living room. There he saw Jarvis Nowlin’s massive back; the man was facing JJ at a distance of three or four feet, and his right hand pointed a mean-looking pistol at his young opponent.

  “Who you be, boy?” Jarvis roared. “What trash dump did Abigail pull you offa, huh?”

  Well, that’s something. He thinks Abigail hired JJ to get the music for her. Hope JJ goes along with him and doesn’t give me away. Tom put a finger to his lips. Play along, JJ!

  “I ast you a question, but I don’t hear no answer. That’s bad manners, and I don’t like no bad manners. You don’t make them manners better, you ain’t never gonna talk to nobody no more.”

  Tom looked frantically around the living room. Fireplace. Set of tools hanging on a round holder. Without thinking, he moved silently, grabbed the fire iron, and walked as quickly and quietly as he could toward Jarvis’ back.

  “Hey, put the gun away, okay?” said JJ. “I ain’t carryin’, don’t even got a knife. Miss Abigail, she tell me you got somethin’ a hers, and she gimme a hundred bucks to get it for her. How I gonna say no to that, huh?”

  “Easy.” Nowlin sneered. “You just say it, ‘no’. That’s what you shoulda done, but it be a li’l late now.”

  Tom saw the man’s right arm tense, his body bending slightly forward, his legs shifting to firing stance.

  JJ recognized the movement. “You ain’t gonna kill me for somethin’ like this, is you?” For the first time, Tom heard a quaver in JJ’s voice.

  “Sure thing,” taunted Nowlin. “Then I gonna cut off your balls an’ dick, and give ’em to Abigail. Bitch oughta know better’n to bring an outsider inta fam’ly bidness.”

  Now or never. Tom told himself to keep breathing, raised the fire iron, paused an instant to draw back his weapon, then swung.

  Jarvis Nowlin loosed a howl worthy of a wounded coyote, and dropped to his knees. The gun clattered to the floor. JJ leaped forward to grab it. Tom swung the fire iron a second time, bringing it down onto the top of Nowlin’s head with every ounce of force at his command. Nowlin collapsed into a silent heap.

  JJ and Tom faced each other for a moment, neither able to speak. JJ recovered first. “Thanks, man. I owes you big time. But let’s move, huh?”

  Tom dropped the fire iron and turned around.

  “Hey, wake up. Don’t be leavin’ that thing with your prints all over it.”

  Tom blinked, shook his head, bent to pick up the weapon, and followed JJ outside.

  Alan gave the fire iron an odd look, but he had the car moving before the two boys had their doors shut. “Looks like we’re coming back for another visit, another time.”

  “I don’t think so, Man,” said JJ. “We’re gonna have to talk, change our plans a li’l.”

  “You can fill us in on the way back to Sedalia,” said Alan.

  “No way,” said JJ. “Saramae done had herself a good dinner, but not the rest of us. An’ I wasn’t sure there for a minute that I was ever gonna eat nothin’ again, ’ceptin’ dirt in my grave. How ’bout we stops somewhere, gets us a li’l somethin’, an’ Tom and me, we’ll fill you in while we eats.”

  ***

  After a quick dinner at Gates BBQ on Emanuel Cleaver, the gang piled back into the car, and Alan steered his way back to Route 50. According to some reviewers, Gates rivals Arthur Bryant’s for the best BBQ in Kansas City, but the way Alan’s stomach was churning, he doubted that claim. On the other hand, he admitted, he’d eaten fast and heavy, a full order of ribs downed in less than twenty minutes. Should have known better. He’d long ago learned there’s no compromising with chemo, and if you don’t eat slowly and carefully, you’re going to pay. He loosed a belch that set Saramae into a loud giggle, then passed his little pillholder to Tom.

  “Get me a Compazine, would you, please, Thomas?” he said. “The little round orange one.”

  That ginger ale just made it worse—and didn’t taste nearly as good as what I had in 1899. Chemo poisoning my tastebuds? Or was soda really different then? Maybe I am hallucinating, after all. But it doesn’t make sense for that to be the only thing that seems off.

  The dinner conversation was more than a little manic, peppered with random bursts of laughter. Once in the car, though, the conversation stopped. A
drenaline crash, Alan told himself, trying to pull his thoughts away from possible hallucinations. He mused on a comment JJ had made.

  “On’y seven-thirty. I be at work with plenty a time t’ spare. Tha’s good. I gots a perfec’ record an’ don’ wanna ruin it. Saramae’s daddy, I sees him every day when my shift be over and his getting’ started, an’ every day he give me some advice. He call me Mr. Ireland, ’cause old Mr. Tom Ireland never was late on his shift at the Democrat neither. He came to work every night at midnight, same as me, ridin’ his bicycle, and he used to give the younger guys hell when they was late. ‘I’m up in my eighties,’ he say, ‘and if I can still pedal to the paper before most of you kids get in, you’s got no excuse.”

  Saramae’s face had turned quizzical. “My daddy gives you advice? Pretty strange.”

  JJ saw he’d embarrassed himself, but had no way to go but forward. “Oh, yeah. He a smart man, your daddy an’ a good guy. He know I likes the newspaper work. Always somethin’ happening. You can’t never move fast enough for the foreman, but it still way more interestin’ than school.” JJ hesitated. “Workin’ the press is okay, but not so’s I wants to do it for the next fifty years. I wants to be a reporter, and Mr. Blackstone tell me what I gotta do to make that happen. He say Mr. Ireland were a great man, but in his time, no black guy could be a reporter or an editor on no white paper. But today, things is different.”

  Alan swung past Elvira’s to drop off JJ. As the young man was getting out of the car, Alan lowered his window. “JJ—I saw something in your hand when you came out of Jarvis’ house.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Yeah so, give it here.”

  “Hey—”

  “I’m not kidding, JJ. Get caught packing heat, and none of us will ever see you again. Now, give me that cannon…I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a trade. Tom, give him the fire iron. Get rid of it for us, JJ. Bury it somewhere, deep. And give…me…that…gun.”

  JJ tucked his notebook into his pocket, and then, a big smile on his face, slowly withdrew the pistol, and passed it to Alan. “You do like livin’ dangerously. But you be careful with this baby. It be loaded.” He took the fire iron from Tom, waved at the car, and went up to the door.