The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

  Brun deliberated a moment, then said to Stark, “You don’t mind me saying so, sir, but I suspect you’ve made yourself an enemy.”

  Stark’s face went dead-serious. “I hope so, Brun. A man’s character can be gauged at least as well by his enemies as by his friends. You’ll do well to keep that in mind.”

  ***

  Fritz Alteneder stared out the window of Boutell’s Saloon. He bit off a chunk of his beef sandwich, washed it down with an immoderate swallow of beer, then looked across the table. “Hey, Pa—wanna go shoot squirrel ’safternoon?”

  His father shook his head. “Damn, boy, I already told you. We’re goin’ over to Widda Folsom’s, gonna shoe her new horses. Mr. Fehr gives me a half-day off, we ain’t gonna waste the time and a bunch of shot besides. Anyways, you got to start learnin’ the business. Make a little money yourself.”

  Fritz laughed, not an agreeable sound. “Who says I want to be a blacksmith, huh? But if I ever do go an’ be one, I sure ain’t gonna work for some other man, got to ask his permission to take off long enough to have a piss. I’d have my own shop—”

  Emil Alteneder cut his son short with an open hand across the cheek that brought tears to the boy’s eyes. “You talk pretty good, let’s wait an’ see how you do when it comes to workin’,” Emil growled. “You ain’t got no call talkin’ like that. Your sandwich there, the beer you’re drinkin’, they was bought with money I earned and Mr. Fehr paid me. You wanna bite the hand that feeds you, go someplace else.”

  Behind the counter, polishing bar glasses, Gaylord Boutell shook his head. The saloon-keeper wished the Alteneders would take their business elsewhere. Not only did no one ever sit with them, no one would take a table to either side of them, so disgusting as it was to see them eat, so foul their smell. Boutell swore he’d rather spend time on Hubert Marshall’s pig farm east of town than have to breathe the air around Emil and Fritz. Father and son had identical broad, flat noses and thin lips. Bullet-shaped heads sat directly on their shoulders, same barrel chests, same bay windows below. They looked at the world through brown piggy eyes behind slitted lids, as if forever squinting into a low sun. Fritz had more spiky hair than his father, but the kid was only sixteen, give him time. Word in Sedalia was that the Alteneders were as they were because they lived without the civilizing influence of a woman, Emil’s wife having died years before in some sort of accident. But Boutell figured people had the story backward: would any woman be desperate enough to take up with those two cavemen? Bad enough they looked and smelled the way they did, but Fritz was as quick as his father to settle a problem with a fist, and a woman in that household would have a body perpetually covered with bruises. “Look at Doc Overstreet,” was Boutell’s usual observation on the subject. “He ain’t never been married, and is he anything like them?”

  Emil went back to attacking his food, but Fritz sat and sulked. Somebody’s going to get it, Boutell thought. Somebody smaller and weaker than Fritz’s old man is going to pay for that slap.

  Emil leaned across the table to poke a finger into Fritz’s ribs. “That there’s lunch,” he snarled. “When I’m done, we’re leavin’. You get hungry later, gonna just be too bad.”

  Fritz picked up the sandwich, rested his head against his palm, nibbled a few bites. He swallowed some beer, gazed through the window. A couple went by, the man carrying a suitcase in each hand, real leather, nice. They were headed in the direction of the railway station—on their way out of Sedalia, lucky them. Fritz’s stupid old man thought Sedalia was the beginning and the end of the world, but one of these mornings, he was going to wake up and find his son’s bed empty. Fritz Alteneder wasn’t about to spend his whole life in Sedalia, sweating blood in front of an open fire, burning his fingers, saying ‘Yes sir,’ and ‘Thank you, sir’ to Mr. Herman Fehr, who wasn’t no better in any way than him, and didn’t deserve…

  Fritz dropped the last uneaten bit of sandwich onto his plate, smiled, snickered. He pointed through the window. “Hey, Pa, lookit there.”

  Emil shaded his eyes. “What the hell you talkin’ about, boy? All I see’s a bunch a people.”

  Fritz pointed. “Li’l pickaninny there, lookit her. You think niggers ought to be walkin’ around all dressed up white?”

  Emil studied the small colored girl walking past Boutell’s, hair in two neat braids that bounced with each step. Her dress was almost blindingly white. Then he looked back at Fritz, and like on cue, the two jumped up from the table and ran outside. Emil pulled Fritz by the arm. “Come on, boy, move it along. Get her ’fore she makes it to the corner.” Father and son took off running, shoved past Apple John, spilling fruit from his basket. The peddler knew better than to complain.

  ***

  Freitag and Maisie walked the half-block from Stark and Son to Ohio, Freitag storming at every step about the way he was going to fix Stark’s wagon, just wait and see. Maisie didn’t say a word. When they got to Ohio, she turned south. “See you later.” Her voice was just a touch sharp.

  “I’ll walk with you—”

  “Elmo, you can’t come over now. I’ve got a piano lesson in five minutes, little Henrietta Holmvig. Her mother’s the biggest gossip in town, never mind that the Holmvigs have more money than God. Now, go get yourself a beer and cool off. I’ll be free in an hour.”

  He watched her strut away, his eyes fixed on her backside. Some woman. Sallie was no cold potato, but this Maisie was something else altogether. Freitag frowned. Just like Sallie, wasn’t it, to try to put the kibosh on his game. Lucky he’d caught her in time. He did an about-face, walked slowly up Ohio. Have a beer, Maisie said? Well, why not?

  As he crossed the street at Fourth, he noticed a small crowd of men clustered around two stocky yahoos and a little colored girl in a white dress. The girl was in tears. Freitag watched her try to get past the rednecks, but whichever way she moved, the younger one shifted so as to block her path. “Hey, Pa,” he called to the older man. “This pickaninny don’t give way no matter what.”

  Pa laughed. “Them people ain’t got the brains of an ape.” He pointed a finger at the girl. “Think you’re as good as a white man, do you?”

  The girl let out a honker of a sob, then moved right and tried to get past her tormentor, but he blocked her path. “Well, gol damn, if she don’t move every which way I do, Pa. Listen, pickaninny—you’re supposed to give way to a white man. Didn’t your mama teach you that?”

  A horse tethered to a post picked that moment to relieve itself, tail up, loud splashes into the street, a couple of plops.

  “Her mama was prob’ly too busy at Lottie Wright’s or Nellie Hall’s to bother teachin’ her anything,” said the older man. “Guess it’s up to us to give her lessons.”

  Freitag watched the little girl turn, then start running back the other way, but before she’d taken three steps, the boy was in front of her. “I…beg your pardon,” the child sobbed. “Won’t you please let me pass.”

  “She got her some manners, Fritz,” called the older man. “Now, if she’d only give way, she could go along.”

  Fritz gestured with his hand to the open space next to him, but as soon as the girl moved sideways and tried to go forward, he had her blocked again. “Maybe she got talkin’ manners, Pa,” Fritz shouted. “But that’s all. I think maybe we got to learn her some manners ’bout how a nigger’s supposed to behave with white folks.”

  He grabbed the front of the girl’s dress and pulled. Freitag heard the rip, then the girl split the air with a screech. Fritz slapped her, hard, on the cheek. “You learnin’ something, pickaninny? Well? You think you can just go ’round town in a white dress an’ that makes you good as me?”

  Pa walked up to Fritz and the girl, a sneer all over his face, hands full of steaming horse droppings. Freitag scanned the circle of men. Some were grinning, others looked consternated, but no one moved forward to stop what was clearly going to happen. The girl screamed, wriggled, tried to run, but Fritz grabbe
d her from behind and held her still while his father smeared the girl’s dress from top to bottom, then wiped his hands on her hair.

  A man walking smartly up Ohio did a double-take, then rushed into the crowd and snatched the girl away from Fritz. The man was smaller than either Fritz or his Pa, but what he lacked in size, he made up in passion. “You cowards,” he spat. “Is this all you can think to do of an afternoon?” He worked the little colored girl behind him; she clung to his coat-tails. The man seemed not to notice or not to mind that his coat would shortly be in need of a trip to the cleaners.

  Pa jabbed a finger at the intruder. “Looks like we got us a nigger-lover, Fritz.”

  “Indeed you do not.” Freitag noticed the man’s thick Southern pronunciation. “How dare you call me that? When I was younger than that boy there, I was taking spies around Washington during the War. Did you lift arms in support of the Confederacy?” The man swept a look around the crowd. There came a chorus of coughs; then singly and in small groups, the men began to move away. “Cowards, all of you!” the furious little man shouted. “To just stand there and permit two grown men to torment and begrime a child—a girl child, no less! When the newspapers up North print this story, and the Yankees tell us we still haven’t learned how to behave like civilized people, not a one of you can dare say a word in opposition.” He looked at Fritz and Emil. “Now, get along with you,” he snapped. “You Neanderthals.”

  Neither Emil nor Fritz had ever heard that word before, but they knew it was no compliment. Emil spat, motioned to Fritz, then the two started northward on Ohio. As they stomped past Apple John, the peddler moved out of their path.

  Freitag watched the southern gentleman bend down, wipe the girl’s face with a handkerchief, then turn the cloth over and dry her eyes. She raised a hand and pointed in a southwesterly direction, past the courthouse. The man stood, put an arm around the girl’s shoulder, started walking her across Ohio.

  Freitag took off after Fritz and Emil like he’d been shot from a cannon. “Hey, there, wait up a minute.”

  The men stopped and stood, glaring suspiciously at the man in the yellow checkered suit, pink shirt and white boater. As Freitag rushed up, he wrinkled his nose. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “My name is Elmo Freitag, and I have a business proposition for you. Can I buy you a beer while we talk about it?”

  ***

  Brun barely took notice of Mr. Fitzgerald, leading a little colored girl into the shop and past him, toward Isaac, who was stringing a guitar for a young woman. As Fitzgerald and the girl went by, Brun got a strong whiff of horse manure, but it didn’t distract him from talking to the fourteen-year-old girl with black hair and cute dimples who wanted some hot new sheets to play after she finished her daily classical piano practice.

  Brun was capping the sale, five sheets, when he sniffed horse shit again. He turned to see Isaac and the little girl standing beside him, and the look on the colored man’s face was one Brun never again in his life wanted to see. The girl held onto Isaac’s hand with both of hers, as she launched one gasping sob after another. Isaac bent to wipe her face with his handkerchief, then said, “Brun, when you done ringin’ up your customer, you think you can finish stringin’ this guitar? I got me some urgent business.”

  Isaac’s voice was low and calm. Brun remembered a few years back, when a tornado blasted through El Reno, how still and heavy the air was just before the wild wind hit. “Sure, Isaac.”

  The cute girl on the other side of the counter moved a few steps away. Isaac didn’t say another word, just put the guitar and strings into Brun’s hand, and disappeared out the doorway with the little girl. Brun looked toward the back of the shop, saw Fitzgerald in a highly animated conversation with Stark, but couldn’t make out any words.

  Miss Dimples was through the doorway right behind Isaac, no chance any more of making time with her. Brun turned his attention to Isaac’s customer, not a bad looker herself, and no engagement or wedding ring on her finger. He smiled. “I’ll get your guitar strung for you right quick.”

  As Fitzgerald left the store, he paused just long enough to tip his hat to Brun, who called a hello as he set the C-string into place and began winding it on the peg.

  ***

  With Isaac gone, Brun and Stark ran double-time. When he needed to talk to his boss, Brun thought Stark’s answers were clipped, just this side of uncivil.

  After a bit more than an hour, Isaac returned with the girl, who was now considerably improved. Her face was clean, she’d stopped crying, and she had on a different dress, a blue one, not nearly so fancy as her white dress, but in far better condition. She carried a small blackboard and a couple of pieces of chalk. Isaac walked her up to Brun, and said, “Brun, this is my li’l girl, Belinda. Lindy, can you say a good afternoon to Mr. Brun?”

  The girl was all eyes. She stared at Brun, then up at her father. He gave her a little push. Finally, she managed a curtsy around her blackboard, and piped, “Good afte’noon, Mr. Brun.”

  “Well, a good afternoon to you, Miss Belinda.” Brun exaggerated a low bow. The little girl giggled and buried her face against her father’s leg. Isaac smiled, if a little grimly. “You really do got yourself a way with the ladies, don’t you, Brun?” Then he herded Belinda into Stark’s office, sat her down at the desk, and she started at work, head low and cocked to one side over the blackboard, gripping a piece of chalk in a fist. Isaac came back out, said thank-you to Brun, and went right to work, not another word.

  Well, I guess none of my business, Brun thought. It was getting close on to four o’clock, and the crowd had slackened, so he sat down at the piano, and began to play “Original Rags.” He’d just about finished when he noticed a man standing at his side, a heavy-set yap in a dirty blue work shirt and overalls to match, bald in front, but with spikes of black hair that Brun would’ve warranted had not seen a brush in weeks. Thick arms bent at the elbows, both fists balled, and snorting like a bull on a short chain with a cow in clear sight. He pointed toward the back of the store at Isaac, who was showing a lady a mandolin. “Boy, you go on back there, and tell that nigger to get up here, fast.”

  Brun considered running Stark’s knee-grow routine past the clod, but knew that would be foolish at best. “Isaac’s waiting on a customer,” Brun said. “He’ll be done pretty soon, and then you can talk to him.”

  The man reacted like Brun had put a cattle prod to his hindquarters. “Well, gol damn,” he shouted, at which point everyone in the store turned to look. “What kinda place is it you run, boy, you tell a white man he’s gotta wait on a nigger? Ain’t no wonder he’s the kinda nigger he is, him an’ his whole fam’ly.” Then, the man cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted so loud it seemed to Brun he’d been whispering before. “Hey, Snowball—you get your black ass up here, and I mean now. Right now. ’Fore I come back there and drag it up.”

  A couple of girls stopped looking over music sheets, glanced at each other, then made a beeline for the door. Isaac left his customer and started toward the piano, but Stark got there first. Brun noticed he was limping slightly, but he still covered ground in a hurry. “Just what do you mean,” he shouted at the angry man. “Coming into my store like this, shouting obscenities and chasing my customers away? Get yourself back outside, and don’t ever set foot in here again.”

  Whatever the man might have said or done by way of reply, Brun never got to hear, because Isaac was now up front as well, and the man turned all his attention in that direction. He waved a fist in Isaac’s face. “Nigger, I hope you know, you just done bought yourself more trouble than you’ll ever know what to do with.”

  Isaac turned a fiery eye onto the yahoo, but said not a single word. Which seemed to make the man even sorer. “Gol damn, Rastus, cat got your tongue or something? I ask you a question, I expect I’m gonna get an answer! Talkin’ to my boy like you did? Pushing his face in the dirt? Why, no colored ever dast do such to a white boy. You’re in line for some
big-time trouble, and I mean right now.”

  Brun looked hard, but best he could tell, the man wasn’t carrying a gun. Neither did he seem about to pull a knife.

  “That boy’s lucky I didn’t jes’ break botha his arms.” Isaac’s words seemed to hang, shimmering, in the air. “Scarin’ a li’l girl half-outa her mind, rippin’ up her dress and smearin’ her all over with horse shit? That boy of yours ever gets a notion to try anything like that again, you’ll be goin’ to see him in the hospital. That, or be goin’ to his funeral.”

  The spike-haired man howled, jabbed a finger to the sky. “Okay,” he roared. “I couldn’t for the life of me figure where a pickaninny comes off sassin’ a white boy, won’t step aside when he’s comin’ down the sidewalk, not even when he tells her to move. Well, now I guess I see what’s what. She gets it right from her daddy. An’ if anybody was lucky, nigger, it was you. Walkin’ right inside of a white saloon, grabbin’ a white boy away from a respectable gen’lman he’s talkin’ to, draggin’ him out in the street… Hadn’t been I was out takin’ a piss right then, you’d already be dancin’ off a tree. Now you an’ me gonna settle this matter.” The man jabbed a finger toward the doorway. “Outside.”

  Isaac took a step toward the doorway. Brun clutched the edge of the counter. Stark said one word. “Don’t.”

  “Best I do,” Isaac called back over his shoulder. “If it ain’t now, it’s gonna be some other time.”

  The big man laughed. “You’re a sassy nigger, all right, but you sure ain’t dumb, I give you that. You’re likely smarter than that nigger-lover boss of yours.”

  Brun let go of the counter and ran after the men. Isaac was no more out the doorway before four men surrounded him. Aside from the spike-haired lunk who’d caused the commotion in the store, there was Elmo Freitag and a smaller, younger version of Spike-hair. The fourth man, Brun had never seen. The boy looked all around, but saw no ropes or horses, and no pot of tar, which reassured him, though only moderately. Across the street, Apple John stood and watched, his basket on the courthouse lawn.