The RagTime Traveler

by Larry Karp

  Saramae grabbed the purse and hugged it to her chest. Angeline took her by the hand. “Come on, Saramae. I gonna play every one of my songs for you.”

  The two girls had barely vanished when Abigail stage-whispered, “Those fucking Blackstones. They must have the duffel bag again.”

  Nelson answered in a rough whisper. “Mama, they’re on to us. They know what we did. We gotta get rid a her.”

  “Jesus, boy! Don’t be such a pussy. If they be on to us, you think Charles gonna send his daughter here to haul you off to the jail? Just keep your fool mouth shut and we be fine. But this girl come in with one of Angeline’s manuscripts, one I put in the duffel bag myself. I gotta see what other music she got. An’ why she really come here to talk to me about it. You get rid a her, we ain’t never gonna find out where that duffel bag is.”

  “Damn it, Mama. You be lookin’ fo’ a few pieces a hundred-year-old music. But me? I went and killed two people fo’ you, that ol’ man in Sedalia an’ that douchebag antique dealer. So I be lookin’ at the rest of my life in stir. An’ that just ain’t gonna happen, hear?”

  “Nelson, it’s you be the douchebag if you says anything about that to her. Think! The Blackstones ain’t gonna send no li’l girl to talk to you about no murders. She be here about the music.”

  The big man shook his head in disgust. “Mama, that girl jus’ can’t walk outa here alive.”

  He lumbered back into the piano room, and returned a moment later with Saramae in tow. Behind them, the piano music continued, much louder and with considerably more mistakes. Nelson practically threw Saramae back into the overstuffed chair; he and Abigail hunched over her.

  “Now!” the big man roared. “You tell us, Saramae Blackstone, tell us fast and tell us straight. What you be doin’ here?”

  Abigail waved the manuscript in the girl’s face. “And what you be doin’ with this music, and what other music you got?”

  Tears—real ones—started down Saramae’s cheeks. “Okay, okay! I came here because I know a little bit from my daddy about how the Nowlins and the Blackstones have been fightin’ over this music for a zillion years. I found this music in Daddy’s filin’ cabinet, and figured it had somethin’ to do with my double-great granddaddy Will and his mama, my triple-great grandmamma.” She grabbed a tissue from the box on the table, blew her nose. “I’ve never met you, Ma’am, but I know you’re descended from that same lady, Angeline No-land, and I wanted to find out what you could tell me about her and Will.”

  Nelson made a shut-off motion toward Abigail. “I wants to know what you was talkin’ about when you said ‘You did it.’ I did what, huh?”

  Before the girl could answer, Abigail whacked Nelson’s shin with her cane. “I wants to know the truth. How’d you really get your hands on this music…and where be the rest of it?”

  “I already told you, Ma’am,” Saramae said, trying to make the story sound reasonable. “I found it in Daddy’s stuff, and I had no idea at all there was any more.”

  “You ain’t never seen no duffel bag with music inside?”

  Saramae shook her head, sniffled. “No, Ma’am. Only this piece. And I just wanted to find out more about my ancestors, that’s all.”

  “A Blackstone caring ’bout her ancestors?” Abigail said in a softer tone of voice. “Must be ’cause you the first girl I know born in that fam’ly since Angeline herself.” She turned on Nelson. “See here, Boy? She be a close relative. Her daddy’s your half-first cousin, ’r something like that. An’ I am your mother! I tell you to show respect to fam’ly, you do what I tell you!” The old woman turned to take hold of Saramae’s arm. “You wants to know about your great-great-great gramma? Well, I’ll tell you. Up, young lady. Come with me.”

  She gave her son a look that warned him to behave or else, and led Saramae into the piano room. She pointed a finger at Angeline, squawked, “Don’t go bangin’ away like that, hear? Practice right.” With a grand gesture, she threw open a door on the other side of the room and led Saramae inside. “Shut th’ door, Child,” she said, clearly expecting instant obedience.

  Saramae recognized the room from JJ’s pictures. A former walk-in closet, converted into a shrine through a rough white paint job and a blinding overhead lighting fixture. Table under the light holding a stack of music and several short pieces of corroded wire. Shelves on either side full of memorabilia: lipsticks, hair ornaments, and a few pieces of cheap jewelry; pens, pencils, and dried-up bottles of ink; faded photographs and badly executed pencil portraits. All rendered trivial by the large black-and-white photograph of an old woman on the rear wall. Her eyes projected an intense glare even more disturbing than in JJ’s smartphone photo.

  The old woman nodded at the picture, almost a bow. She picked up the top few sheets from the pile of music on the table and set “Will’s Way” in their place. “There she be, your great-great-great gramma. Angeline. She also be my great-gramma…I coulda been named Angeline too, but my mama, she was bound and determined I was gonna be named for somebody in her family, her Gramma Abigail. She tol’ my daddy, well, that was close enough to Angeline for her, ’cause my great-gramma was crazy. Can you imagine that?” A loud thump of her cane punctuated the question.

  “Well, they never got over that argument, an’ after Mama die, Great-gramma, she help bringin’ me up. I stay with her for days at a time, an’ I heard all about how she wrote some music for Scott Joplin, for his “Maple Leaf Rag.” Abigail spoke louder and louder. “But when she tried to get him to give her credit for it, he jus’ got real nasty. Then her…friend, Otis Saunders, tol’ her he’d get it done, but know what he did? He tol’ Joplin that he wrote that music.” Another thump of the cane. “So Great-gramma went out and wrote up her work herself, called it “Lowdown Rag” to rub that bastard Joplin’s face in it.”

  She waved the pages in her hand at Saramae. “Here it be, better’n anything ol’ Scott Joplin ever wrote. And she wrote a lotta other pieces, great music, too. But she couldn’t never get it published.”

  The more Abigail talked, the faster she went, a train with malfunctioning brakes on a downhill slope. “But Angeline was gonna make sure her music didn’t just get lost. When I was a child, she spent all kinda time with me, taught me piano and how to play her work right, and makin’ me promise I’d get her work published if she never did. An’ I promised, over an’ over, every day. She always tol’ me my real name was Angeline, an’ when she died, which she did when I was six, then I’d take over for her, and I should never tell my mama that I really was Angeline.”

  She raised the cane, waved it in tight circles just below the light fixture. “But I can tell you everything, Saramae, ’cause I be my great-gramma now, been her for full-on fifty-five years now. Fifty-five years, I been tryin’ to get my music published, but the Blackstones and them other Nowlins just been stoppin’ me at every turn. So I be doin’ with Li’l Angeline now what Great-gramma done with me, an’ if I die before I get this music published—” The cane jabbed at Saramae’s face—“Li’l Angeline’ll get it done. An’ even better now, I got you to help. I bet you can find the rest of the music, an’ then we’ll get it all published, you an’ me, and your great-great-great gramma will give you her undying blessing. And so’ll I. ’Cause we be the same person, and so will you be. An’ Li’l Angeline, too.”

  Saramae shivered. She felt more creeped out than she ever had in her life. She fought a terrible urge to make a run for safety—useless with Nelson standing guard—but just then the door flew open and Nelson blasted into the shrine. “Fuckin’ doorbell just rang again—you expectin’ more company, Mama?”

  “No, you damn fool, who the hell would I be expectin’?”

  Nelson growled an undecipherable message, then turned and left the room. Abigail gently set “Lowdown Rag” back on top of the pile of music, then followed him as fast as she could shift her cane.

  Rather than try
to find “Will’s Way,” Saramae shoved the entire pile of music into her oversized purse as she fled the shrine and its scary photograph of creepy Old Angeline. Little Angeline was still banging out error-filled ragtime in the piano room, and Saramae made a beeline for the comparative normality of a reluctant young piano student.

  ***

  In a perfect fury, Nelson threw the front door open and found five people, all shouting at him. “Shut the fuck up,” he roared at the top of his voice, hands raised, fists clenched. “Who the fuck are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?”

  As the overhead light glittered off the ring on Nelson’s right hand, time seemed to stop for Alan. A double image came before his eyes, Abigail’s ring…and the matching ring he’d seen on Lathan’s hand in 1899. And here was Lathan’s ring, more than a hundred years later, on the right hand of the huge Nowlin man Alan had glimpsed at the restaurant.

  Of course Abigail would give the second ring to her son! And the autopsy said a right-handed person gave Mickey those bruises. Abigail had to have had help, and who better than her son? He’s got to be the one who killed Mickey!

  In a unit, the gang shoved past Nelson, into the living room where Abigail, befuddled, leaned on her cane. Alan snapped, “Where’s the young woman who came here just a little while ago?”

  Charles Blackstone elbowed Alan aside. “Yeah,” he barked. “Where is my daughter?”

  Abigail shrugged. “Don’t know who you be talkin’ about.”

  Nelson shook his head in mock ignorance.

  Saramae rushed into the room, trailed by young Angeline. “I heard you, Daddy.” Nelson grabbed her roughly by the arm as she tried to run past him.

  Which set all Niagara bustin’ loose.

  Charles lunged at Nelson, but years of political infighting in the City Room of the Sedalia Democrat hadn’t prepared Charles for the physical fighting skills of his huge opponent. Nelson released the girl and grabbed an antique table lamp. He swung it, catching Charles across the face, shattering the glass shade and spraying fragments everywhere. As Charles staggered back, Nelson dropped the base of the lamp and caught Charles with a right cross that sent him to the floor.

  Miriam took a step toward Charles, then stopped, yanked out her cell phone, dialed 911.

  Tom and JJ exchanged a quick glance, then both rushed Nelson.

  “Sorry, Daddy!” Saramae shouted over her shoulder as she snatched Angeline by the hand and took off toward the door.

  In one smooth movement, Nelson shot a mean left fist into Tom’s solar plexus and followed it with a right-handed punch to his jaw. Tom went down like a poleaxed steer, twitched a couple of times, then lay still.

  JJ came in low, but the big man ignored the blow to his ribs. As Tom fell, Nelson spun and launched a vicious knee to the young man’s crotch, followed by a descending double blow to the crown of his head. JJ rocked back and forth on the floor, clutching his lower abdomen.

  “You have reached 911, Kansas City, Missouri,” spoke the recorded voice on Miriam’s phone. “Do not hang up.”

  Meanwhile, Abigail, spluttering incomprehensibly, began to slap at Miriam with her cane.

  “Hang up? Are you insane?” Miriam shrieked as she dodged. “We have a homicidal maniac here at 5708 Virginia Avenue. Get us the police before we have a house full of dead people!”

  Abigail took another shot at Miriam with the cane, the last straw. Miriam slapped her phone down on an end table, slammed Abigail into the overstuffed chair, yanked the cane away, and took a batting stance with it.

  “Just one more move from you—one goddamn twitch—and your head goes rolling across the floor.”

  Nelson, eyes bulging, spit flying from both corners of his mouth, started toward Alan, the last man standing in the room.

  Alan sighed. I thought it might come to this. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the pistol JJ had taken from Jarvis, and pointed the muzzle squarely at Nelson’s abdomen.

  “Yes, it’s loaded and I do know how to use it,” he said calmly. “And I will, if you take another step. You won’t be the first man I’ve had to kill.”

  “Fucker!” Nelson roared, shaking from top to bottom.

  “Turn around,” Alan snapped. “Stand in that corner, hands up on the wall. Now!”

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Alan and Miriam heard the door slam open, then close behind them. “Kansas City police. Put the gun down, Mister. Now!”

  The old couple exchanged a smile. “Gladly,” Alan murmured.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Just once more, Miriam.”

  “And then one more after that, and then another.”

  Alan shook his head. “This is probably my last chance. First thing in the morning, we’re going home, and I’m as sure as I can be I won’t be able to time-travel in Seattle.”

  Miriam lifted an eyebrow in what Alan had long recognized as her “You’ll have to pile it higher to convince me” expression.

  “It’s an unusual situation. The music on the invitation is something that was important to Scott Joplin, something he spent a lot of time working over. We’re here in Sedalia where the music was written, and that’s got to be part of it too. If you could time-travel just anywhere and any time, people would be doing it constantly.”

  Miriam’s eyebrow was still raised.

  “Maybe if I find the right piece of paper in the duffel bag and go to St. Louis or New York, I might be able to time-travel there. But he never visited Seattle.”

  “Well…”

  Alan knew he was close. “When we get home, we can both talk to Dr. Fisch. He can check me over any way you want.” He held his breath.

  Miriam knew when to stop pushing. She sighed and shook her head. “All right. I don’t like it, but I can’t stop you.”

  ***

  Alan looked at the sign advertising Bast Storage, two blocks from the former location of the Maple Leaf Club. Twenty minutes later, he let himself into his freshly rented storage unit.

  Cheap. If it works, I’d’ve been happy to have paid five times as much. Let’s see…The street is that way.

  He taped the envelope containing the invitational card to the south wall, locked the door, and counted his steps down the length of the building, then took the same number of steps up the sidewalk. As close to the card as he could estimate, he leaned against the building.

  He pulled Miriam’s phone, last year’s top-of-the-line Samsung model, from his inside jacket pocket. His wife had stood between him and the hotel room door.

  “If you go off again, you’re going to settle the question of what’s really happening when you think you’re time-traveling. Take some pictures while you’re there. We’ll see what the camera shows. If you come back with a good shot of Scott Joplin, we won’t bother Dr. Fisch.”

  Alan unlocked the phone, launched the camera app, and stared at the screen.

  Yes, I’d love a picture of Mr. Joplin. Or better yet, a video of him playing. But if someone sees…?

  His thumb brushed the screen as he shoved the phone back into his pocket without shutting it off.

  He took a deep breath and pictured the card in its envelope on the wall, tried to make it as real as if it were on a table in front of him. Next, he imagined it in the lockbox under the bar at the Maple Leaf Club. He pictured Joplin and Lathan standing by the bar. Alan smiled—the sense of right and wrong he associated with time-travel was there, telling him his image was off. He seated the men at one of the tables. That felt a little better; he moved them to another table, one near the pool tables instead of the piano. Much better. He changed the light to late afternoon or early evening instead of mid-morning. Added a crowd of men around the room, drinking and talking. Someone at the piano. That was right. A final tweak—a ginger—no, cream soda—on the table in front of Joplin, nothing for Lathan.

 
; Alan stepped forward.

  “Alan! What fortunate timing! Please…take a seat and explain to this person that I’m in no danger.”

  “First I’d prefer to hear what kind of danger he thinks you’re in, Mr. Joplin.” Alan pulled a chair away from the next table. “Hello, Lathan. Are you okay?”

  “Tol’rable, Mr. Chandler. Jus’ tol’rable.”

  “Sorry to hear it. More trouble with Angeline?”

  Lathan nodded. His hands fidgeted on the table. “I throwed her out. I had to. She laugh at me after—” He stopped abruptly and glanced at Joplin before he went on. “When I get home, she were already packin’ up her clothes. Musta started even befo’ she an’ Otis go to, uh, you know.”

  Alan’s eye caught the small band of callus on Lathan’s finger where his ring had been. He nodded.

  “I tells her she gotta stop this messin’ ’round. It be too big, too dangerous. I tells her that an’ she laugh. She say nothin’ gonna stop her from gettin’ what she deserve. Then I knows I cain’t do nothin’ mo’. I gives her my ring and tells her she best not be there when I comes back. Been walkin’ ’round town all day. Don’ wanna go home.”

  Joplin stood. “Excuse me a moment.” He walked toward the bar.

  Lathan didn’t seem to notice Joplin’s departure.

  “What about Will?” Alan asked. “Where’s your son?”

  “Huh? Will? He be fine. Lady next do’ watch him when Angie an’ I be at work. He with her since las’ night.” Lathan put his head in his hands. “Gotta make up for what Angie done,” he mumbled.

  Joplin set a shot of whiskey in front of Lathan and resumed his seat.

  “I ain’t a drinkin’ man, Mr. Joplin.” Lathan’s gaze was slightly unfocused, and Alan realized belatedly Lathan had been awake and moving for at least a day and a half.

  “It’s not drinking when it’s medicinal.” Joplin’s expression was an odd mix of exasperation and pity.