The RagTime Traveler

by Larry Karp

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ireland. I didn’t mean to suggest that I had a problem with Mr. Joplin. It’d be more accurate to say that I’m trying to solve a problem he doesn’t know he has. But yes, let me start at the beginning. I’m a musician myself, from Seattle. I had an opportunity to visit Sedalia on business, and used the chance to meet Mr. Joplin.” He paused. “Did you hear about the trouble at the Maple Leaf Club? The fight that damaged the piano?”

  “I did. Night before last, wasn’t it?”

  Alan blinked.

  Two nights ago? Three, isn’t it? No, wait! If I followed the piano string to Mr. Taylor’s store, Angeline hasn’t stolen it yet. If it was still there now, that means she won’t be there until this afternoon! Time-travel really does make my head hurt.

  “I’m convinced that the fight—and the damage—wasn’t random. Someone staged the whole affair as part of a plot against Mr. Joplin.”

  Ireland raised an eyebrow. “Plenty of folks who don’t like Scott, sure enough. But that seems very…indirect. Most people would be happy just to give someone they don’t like a punch in the nose. And most white folks who want to put an ‘uppity nigger’ in his place ain’t going to mess around; they’re gonna figure that’s what a rope is for.”

  “This isn’t that kind of mess, thank God. As far as I can tell, I’m the only white man involved. But it is more than a simple grudge that could be settled with a fist fight.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sure you know that Otis Saunders is saying he wrote the trio of Mr. Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’”

  At Ireland’s nod, he went on, “Did you know he’s not the only one?”

  “Oh. Her.”

  Alan was crestfallen. “You knew about Ms.—uh—Mrs. Blackstone, or Noland or whatever she’s calling herself? Why haven’t you done anything about her threats?”

  Ireland shrugged. “What threats, Mr. Chandler? What I hear is she talks a bunch about ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ but I haven’t heard about any threats—’cept for what you just said. And I don’t know you. Now, if Scott came to me and said he had a problem with Miz Angeline, that’d be different.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know the truth of her story either. Maybe she did write that music. So? Credit goes to the man who writes the music down. Always been that way.”

  “True. But people get excited when there’s a lot of money at stake. And I think Angeline’s gotten entirely too excited.”

  That drew a laugh. “And you want to tell her to settle down?”

  “If it were only that easy!” Alan said with a laugh of his own. “I doubt she’d be happy to hear anything of the sort, especially not from some old, interfering white man. No, I was hoping you could introduce me to her husband.”

  “Hmm. He is a sensible man. Not the smartest, no, but levelheaded. Loyal.”

  Alan waited while Ireland thought.

  “All right, Mr. Chandler. I don’t know if I believe there’s a problem between Scott and Miz Angeline, but I can see you believe it. I wouldn’t want to get between a man and his wife, like you’re planning, but hell, you’re a grown man. And even if I think you’re wrong, I’d hate to have anything bad happen to Scott. So I’ll introduce you to Lathan Blackstone. After that, you’re on your own.”

  “Fair enough, Mr. Ireland. I hope you’re right that I’m making more of the situation than it deserves. But I can’t sit by and do nothing on the chance that I’m wrong.” Alan stood and stretched. “I know it’s an awkward time of day, but would it be possible to get that introduction now? Unfortunately, my time is limited.”

  “Now?” Ireland considered. “Possibly. He might still be at the paper. You have the time to visit the Times?” He chuckled.

  “If it’s not too far, and you don’t mind walking slowly.”

  “Slow, I can do, Mr. Chandler. As to how far…” He eyed Alan’s posture. “Can you make it to Washington and St. Louis?”

  “If I have to, I will. At my own speed.”

  “‘Fair enough,’” Ireland quoted. “The way I see it, that’s how fast any man should go.”

  ***

  Lathan was at the Times. Ireland and Alan found him bent over the press, tapping something with a hammer. As they approached, a thunderous curse floated out of the depths of the machinery. Lathan straightened, kicked the frame—much more gently than the volume of his profanity seemed to warrant—and then noticed the visitors.

  “Mr. Ireland! Beg your pardon. Betsy here be stubborn as the mule Mr. Carter named her for. Sometime you jes’ gotta use a hammer to gets her ’tention.”

  Ireland nodded. “Never knowed a press wasn’t stubborn. Anythin’ serious?”

  “Nah. I has her right as rain pret’ darn quick.” He glanced at Alan with a puzzled expression as he set his hammer on the frame of the press.

  “Tha’s good. Mr. Carter be happy ’bout that. Listen, Lathan, this is Mr. Alan Chandler. He’s a musician, an’ he got a problem maybe you can help him fix.”

  “Sho’ thing, Mr. Ireland. Be glad to. Mr. Chandler.” He wiped grease off his hands onto his pants before he took the hand Alan held out. His heavy ring pinched Alan’s finger as they shook.

  He’s as light-skinned as Otis Saunders. But he could tear Otis into confetti without even working up a sweat. The thought flickered through Alan’s mind as he checked to be sure his fingers were all intact.

  Lathan rolled down his sleeves and dug a pair of cufflinks out of a pocket. “What kin I do fer ya, Sir?” he asked while he fumbled the left link closed.

  Before Alan could answer, Ireland added, “Lathan, I got to get to a band rehearsal. You come to the concert at the park Wednesday an’ tell me how you fix Mr. Chandler’s problem, okay?”

  “I do that, Mr. Ireland. I were gonna come to the park anyhow.”

  Alan nodded to show he understood the message, and wouldn’t give Ireland cause to regret introducing him to Lathan. “Well, Mr. Blackstone,” he said, “I know you need to get back to work, so I’ll come straight to the point. What your wife is doing is dangerous. Arranging that fight, wrecking the piano—someone could have gotten hurt, even killed.”

  Lathan started, but shook his head. “I don’ know what youse talkin’ bout, Mr. Chandler, Sir. What fight an’ what piano?”

  “Don’t lie, Lathan. I saw you at the Maple Leaf Club two nights ago, and I saw Angeline pour that mess into the piano. All this trouble over a few bars of music.” He shook his head sadly.

  Lathan clamped his lips shut, folded his arms, and glared at Alan.

  “Keep going the way you are, and the police are going to get involved.”

  “Ain’t no need for the po-lice, iff’n—” The big man stopped and glanced at his hammer.

  “They won’t have a choice, Lathan.” Alan stepped to the side, forcing Lathan to turn his back on the press. “Lotta powerful people already want to close down the black clubs. If the trouble doesn’t stop, they’ll make sure the police step in. Probably crack down on black musicians all over, not just the clubs. You don’t want that. I don’t want it either. You have to talk to me. Let me help you end this trouble before they do shut everyone down.”

  Lathan stood mute for several seconds, then visibly deflated. “Don’t got no choice,” he muttered, staring at the floor. He looked up at Alan. “It be a real mess, Mr. Chandler, an’ it be my fault, too.”

  “Your fault?”

  “I the one who tell Angie it weren’t fair what Mr. Joplin done.” He waved at the press behind him with his left hand. “If I invents somethin’, like the guy who invent the printin’ press, I gets a patent and anyone what wants to build one hasta pay me. Oughta be the same with music, is what I tells Angie. It ain’t right that Mr. Joplin, he use the music she write ’thout payin’ for it.”

  Alan nodded. “I agree with you about that. That’s what copyright is for. But you can’t copyrig
ht something until you write it down. Without a copyright, the most you can do is ask Mr. Joplin to pay—like Otis Saunders did.”

  “Otis Saunders! That lyin’ weasel! Lissen, Mr. Chandler. Angie go to Mr. Joplin, jus’ like you say. Went t’ the Maple Leaf Club, sit down ’cross the table. Tol’ him he owe her for the music what she writ. She say she didn’ want no money, just fo’ him t’ put her name on the music and innerduce her to Mr. Stark, the publisher. You know what he say? He say he don’ owe Angie nothin’ on account of he get the music from Otis Lyin’ Saunders, an’ he don’ owe him nothin’ neither, ’cause Mr. Joplin, he the one what write the music down! An’ then he go too far.”

  Lathan sighed. “We not rich, Mr. Chandler. Never had much money.” He tapped his ring. “I wanteda buy Angie a ring when I ast her to marry me, but I couldn’ ’ford that. So I done make us both rings. Carved steel and paint with the first letters of our names. ’Tain’t fancy, but it get the job done. Things is better now, but still woulda been hard to pay a lawyer to go after Mr. Joplin. I woulda done it for Angie anyhow, but when that man go an’ say Angie couldn’ta writ the music nohow, he make it too much fo’ any lawyer. He say there ain’t no way no woman coulda writ that music.”

  Lathan had been swinging his fists through his whole speech, apparently punching imaginary Saunderses and Joplins. On the last word, he’d flung both hands into the air before slouching back against the press.

  Alan blinked and held up a hand. “Whoa, Lathan. That doesn’t sound like something Mr. Joplin would say. Hell, he knows that isn’t true. You know ‘Eli Green’s Cake Walk,’ don’t you? Think Sadie Kominsky wasn’t a woman?”

  That caught Lathan’s attention. “I ’members that song, yeah.” He hummed a couple of bars. Alan thought they sounded more like Schoenberg than Kominsky. “Didn’ know was a woman wrote it.”

  “And there are plenty of others. Mr. Joplin would know, and a man who loves music like he does would never say that.”

  Lathan’s face clouded. “She tell me that what he say. You sayin’ she lyin’ t’ me?”

  Of course I am! Alan kept the anger out of his voice. “I’m saying maybe she exaggerated. Or misremembered. I’m sure Mr. Joplin said he didn’t owe her anything. Legally, that’s true.” He shrugged. “But the other? No way. Maybe he said he didn’t believe she had written it. It’s not so far from ‘didn’t’ to ‘couldn’t’ for someone who’s too upset to listen.”

  The distinction went right past Lathan. “I don’ think so, Mr. Chandler. That ain’t Angie. She love me, she love our little boy, William, but she love the music more’n both of us put together. I knowed that when I marry her.”

  He smiled, eyes focused on the past. “We had us some real fights ’bout her givin’ up playin’ in the houses, but I knowed all along she wouldn’ stop playin’ or writin’ her music, no matter what.” The smile vanished when he refocused on Alan. “She wouldn’—couldn’—lie ’bout her music. She say Mr. Joplin tol’ her she couldn’ta writ that music, that what happen.”

  Alan took that claim with an entire salt mine. Okay, the horse isn’t going to drink here. Keep leading it. “All right. So what did Angeline do after that?”

  Lathan grinned. “She look at Mr. Joplin and say all polite-like, ‘If that what you think, I guess there ain’t no real composers here at all, jus’ a half-trained monkey what think he a piano player,’ and she walk out.”

  “Oh, nasty.” Alan winced. That sounds like the kind of thing she might have wished she said. Assuming any of this story’s true. “And now she wants to prove she’s the better composer?”

  “No, Sir, Mr. Chandler. Now she want revenge. Mebbe later, after she hurt Mr. Joplin the way he hurt her, then she come back t’ her music.” Lathan folded his arms, hands cupping his elbows. “I don’ like it none, Mr. Chandler. I help her, sure, ’cause she my wife. I puts that bladder in her dress so’s she can mess up Mr. Joplin’s piano, an’ I pays them thugs she find—but I tells ’em iff’n someone get hurt, they don’ get paid. I don’ want nobody to get hurt, Mr. Chandler. I jus’ want my Angie back.”

  “You know, it’s not Mr. Joplin’s piano. Losing it didn’t hurt him much at all. The person it hurt is Mr. Williams. Getting that piano fixed up is going to cost him a lot of money.”

  “I’se sorry ’bout troublin’ Mr. Williams, but Angie need t’ get the piano outa the Maple Leaf Club so’s she kin get somethin’ from it.”

  “The strings.”

  Lathan’s face was a study in confusion. “How you know that? She only tell me ’bout them strings.”

  “I have ways of finding things out that you wouldn’t believe. I know she wants the strings. I even know which strings she wants. But I don’t know why.” Alan drew himself up, feeling faintly foolish—even on tip-toes, he’d still be a good eight inches shorter than Lathan—and was surprised to see the big man take a step back and cringe. “Why, Lathan? Tell me!”

  “Don’ hex me, Mr. Chandler! Mr. Ireland, he not like that.”

  Oh, that’s why he’s about to shit his pants. “I’m not going to hex you, Lathan. I don’t need a hex. You’re just going to tell me what I need to know, right?”

  Lathan shook his head vigorously. “I done said too much already.”

  Closer. I’ll make this horse drink yet. “Lathan, I know you’re a sensible man. Matter of fact, that’s the first thing Mr. Ireland told me about you. So if you think this mess is your fault, why are you making it worse? A sensible man would be trying to fix what he broke.”

  “But, Angie…”

  “Revenge isn’t what Angeline needs. Revenge breeds revenge. Nobody needs that. If you want to help her, then help her get past looking for revenge and back to her music.”

  “But…” Lathan spun around and looked heavenward for a long moment before turning back to Alan. “If I don’ help Angie, someone else will. An’…” He fell silent again.

  Ah. “Otis Saunders.”

  Lathan’s face twisted. “He take her music an’ play it fo’ Mr. Joplin, sayin’ it be his. Ain’t the first time he play her music and say it be his, neither. But she still trus’ him to help, and he happy t’ do it. Happy t’ do more’n that, once or twicet, but she swear that be over.”

  Another long silence, then Lathan nodded decisively. “Mr. Chandler, it just ain’t in me t’ work ’gainst Angie. She my wife, an’ I think she got the right on her side. But you be right ’bout revenge bein’ no good to nobody. I tell you what I knows, an’ I hope you kin make somethin’ good from it. I don’ know what Angie gone do with the piano wires, but I knows it be soon. She want those two partic’lar strings, right enough. She tell me they’s the lowest note of the ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ an’ she gone use ’em t’ show Mr. Joplin he be the lowest of the low. I don’ see how a piano string can show nothin’, but she got it all figgered out, an’ she prob’ly get that bastard Saunders t’ help her do it.”

  Alan let that hang in the air while he thought.

  History doesn’t say anything about Mr. Joplin and a piano string, but there are an awful lot of things history doesn’t talk about.

  “Thank you, Mr. Blackstone. I can see how hard it was to tell me that. I’ll do what I can—for your sake.” He held out his hand again, and after several seconds, Lathan took it.

  ***

  Tom woke just before ten. No sign of Alan other than the wire on the table.

  He woulda woke me up if he had to go see Parks again. Time-traveling, I guess.

  Tom bundled the wire back into his pack and went about his morning routine. Showered and dressed, he dropped into the chair to call Alan. But before he could reach for his phone, the door lock snapped open and Alan came in.

  “Oh, good, you’re up. How about some breakfast?”

  “You’re sure cheerful this morning. Good visit with Mr. Joplin?”

  Alan laughed. “I didn’t see M
r. Joplin, and I shouldn’t be so happy, but I learned a lot. Can’t prove any of it, of course, but it all hangs together.” He glanced at his watch. “Think there’s any place around here where we can get some pancakes at this hour?…Oh, wait. Hold on a minute.”

  He walked across the room, picked up his cell phone. “Yep. Your grandmother has reported in. Her plane lands at 2:33, so what with renting a car and driving out here, she should arrive by five.”

  Tom chuckled. “We’ll keep that strictly in mind.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  ***

  “As long as you allow for Old Angeline being a complete loon, that does kinda make sense,” Tom said after he absorbed Alan’s story and a stack of pancakes. “I don’t see how it helps us, though.”

  “If nothing else, it gives us insight into that fight Saramae heard at the restaurant. Those people are still trying to tear down Scott Joplin, and promote Angeline.” Alan paused in thought. “Too bad JJ didn’t take a few more pictures of that music in Aunt Abigail’s shrine. Be interesting to know how talented she was.”

  Tom shrugged. “I guess. Still wouldn’t help us any, though. So what do we do while we wait for Gramma?”

  “Two things we can do immediately, maybe more later. First, you find Saramae and bring her up-to-date. She’s going to want to hear about her many-greats grandmother, no matter how unreliable the source. Second, while you’re doing that, I’m going to find out everything about the Noland/Nowlin/Blackstone connection.”

  Tom choked on the last swig of orange juice. “Everything?” he said when he got his breath back. “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’ve got a source. Betty Singer…Betty Wasson Singer. The Wassons have lived in this area practically since General Smith founded Sedalia, and Betty has spent endless hours, days, and years tramping through cemeteries to compose genealogies that could knock your eye out. If she can’t find the answers, nobody can.”

  He dug out a credit card and looked around for the waitress. “When I’m done with that, you, Saramae, and I are going to have another talk with Mr. Blackstone, so wait at Saramae’s for me to call you. I’m sure you can find some way to keep yourselves occupied.”