The Ragtime Fool (23 page)

Mrs. Curd was crying. As she caught sight of Alan, she clapped a hand to her mouth. The look on Samson’s face was one Alan hoped never to see again. The boy prayed no one could hear the thumping of his heart. One step, another, a third, and he was within a pace of Barton. He thought Mrs. Curd’s eyes might pop out of her head.

The boy raised the ax, which threw him just a bit off balance. As he struggled not to fall sidewise, he came down hard on his left foot. The flooring groaned.

Barton pulled away from Susie, raising his gun as he turned. Alan stepped up, swung the ax. Too late, Barton saw the part he was playing in the ballet, moved directly into the blade, took it full in the face. He loosed a terrible noise, part moan, part howl, clutched at his ruined nose and mouth, then collapsed, slow-motion, into a half-crouch. The gun clattered to the floor. Alan raised the ax again, brought it down full force onto the crown of Barton’s head. Without another sound, the man sank to the ground.

Susie whisked her dress and underwear off the floor, and ran into the kitchen. Alan dropped the ax, retched mightily, but managed to hold onto his dinner. Curd felt at Barton’s neck, shook his head. His wife kicked at the body. “Pig!” she cried. “Filthy pig!”

Curd squeezed her shoulder, then wrapped both arms around Alan, who had begun to sob. “Boots startin’ to pinch a little?” Curd said softly. “Your skin look six shades darker than when I first laid eyes on you. You done put your life on the line for the colored, same as Mr. John Brown. Not many do that.”

“After what you did for me?” Alan wiped at his eyes. “What else was I going to do?”

“You coulda run off. Saved your own skin. But you didn’t.” Curd’s lips formed a grim smile. “Our Mr. Barton didn’t figure on findin’ a nigger in the woodpile.”

***

Inside an hour, the Curds and Alan had Barton’s body rolled up in an old blanket, and all the blood scrubbed off the living room floor and walls. They rinsed the buckets and the brushes, then flopped onto chairs around the kitchen table. It was Alan who finally spoke. “This doesn’t seem real. It’s like I’m having a bad dream and can’t wake up. Samson, did you ever kill a man?”

Curd shook his head. “That way, I been lucky.”

“What are we going to tell the police?”

Curd hauled himself to his feet, stood over the boy, rested a hand on his shoulder. “We ain’t gonna tell the police nothing. A boy just in from New York, sittin’ around in a house with a bunch of colored people, and a white man, a real important man in these parts, gets his head bashed with a ax? We’re all four of us lookin’ at a rope with a big knot in it. We never did set eyes on Mr. Barton, understand? Not for a minute, not the whole night through.”

Alan pointed into the living room, where the rolled-up blanket was easily visible. “But—”

“I gonna take care of that.”

“How? You going to bury him some place?”

“Just you trust me, okay?”

Alan nodded. “Sure.”

“Good. Now, then, we better get a move on. Nice of Mr. Barton to leave us his truck. Irma an’ Susie an’ me, we gonna take that truck out by Jeff’son City, where her sister live, and far’s anybody else knows, we been there since yesterday, came in on the train for a visit. B’fore we leave, I gonna draw you a map. You’ll go down this dirt road out front, through the woods to the Georgetown Road, into Lincolnville an’ right straight to Mr. Ireland’s. You tell him what happen’ here, but not a single soul other, understand?”

Alan had never known his hands to shake, but right then, he couldn’t hold them still. Curd noticed. “You be all right,” he said. “You can count on Mr. Ireland to help you. If’n I could, I’d take you there myself, but best nobody see me around here tonight, and for sure, not with you.”

“Can’t you take me along to Jefferson City?” Alan paused, then added, “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

Curd shook his head. “Wouldn’t be smart. We tryin’ to make nobody notice us, and nothin’ personal, but in the colored part of Jeff City, you gonna stand out like a cow in a field fulla sheep. An’ if Mr. Law see us on the road, we don’t want to be givin’ him no reason to go an’ look in the back of that truck.”

Four pairs of eyes glanced at the bundle on the living-room floor.

“But what if someone stops me on the road into town?” Alan asked.

“You’s comin’ in from Kans’ City, got you a ride along the big highway, but the man was goin’ on to St. Lou, so you got out and started walkin’. Happens all the time. Nobody gonna think a thing about it.” Curd grinned. “And I warrant that wouldn’t be the biggest story you ever told a person, now would it?”

Alan silently promised that if he got out of this alive, he’d never tell another lie. “No.”

“Good.” Curd pounded the boy’s back. “Come on, then. Help me get that piece of human dirt in the truck, and then we all be on our way.”

Irma Curd pushed back her chair, hesitated, then rushed over to Alan. “I ain’t never gonna forget you and what you did,” she said. “I never did imagine, not even in my wildest dream, I’d be sayin’ anything like this to a white boy, but you be a son to me now.” She threw her arms around him. He choked back a sob, and embraced her.

***

By the time Irma and Susie came outside with a small, battered suitcase, Curd and Alan had stashed Barton and the blanket on the floor in the rear of the truck cab, under gunnysacks of sassafras root. The Curds got into the truck, Susie in the back seat, her parents up front. Curd started the motor. “We be seein’ you again,” he called, and waved at Alan. “In the meantime, good luck to all of us.”

The boy watched the truck all the way down the dirt road until it made a turn. When the tail lights vanished, he pulled Curd’s map from his pocket. His shoulders sagged. Every muscle in his body ached; his legs felt rubbery. What was it, five miles to Sedalia? Maybe more. He shuffled back to the house, walked inside, and flopped onto the sofa. Grab a few minutes’ rest before the hike.

***

Eileen turned the last page of Scott Joplin’s journal, closed the cover, stared off into space. Boy, there was some interesting stuff in there. She hadn’t had the least idea what a wild place Sedalia was in the 1890s, thought it would’ve been fun living there then. But she didn’t think Mr. Campbell was going to be very pleased with the book, not when he saw what Scott Joplin had written about him. And that girl, Luella Sheldon, what a fruitcake. Funny, she had the same first name as Mrs. Rohrbaugh, the same unusual way of spelling it. They couldn’t be the same person, though. Mrs. Rohrbaugh couldn’t in a million years ever have done what Luella Sheldon did.

Why on earth was her father so interested in that book? No members of their family were mentioned; if she’d read anything about Kleins or Bergschaffers, it would have jumped right off the page at her. And why had slimy Mr. Barton decided to bring Alan to their house in the first place? It didn’t make sense. None of it did.

The girl jumped as she heard the front door slam. She ran to the window, watched her father get into the car and drive away. Where was he going at almost eleven o’clock?

She walked back to the bed, sat, stared out her side window at the little expanse of roof over the parlor, saw the drainpipe. If Lew Gardiner could shinny up that pipe, why couldn’t she shinny down it.

Halfway to the window, she stopped and laughed. Who did she think she was, Nancy Drew? Her father was gone, her mother would be sound asleep down at the end of the hall. She grabbed a jacket from her closet, threw it on, then tiptoed down the stairs and out the front door.

***

The men outside Jerry Barton’s farm house were in a foul mood. Rafe Anderson peered through the dark at his wristwatch. “Christ Almighty, it’s near-on eleven-thirty,” he said. “Where the hell’s Jerry?”

Heads shook. There was a murmur like a cloud of bees, driven from their hive.

Klein, quiet till now, spoke. “He went out by Samson Curd’s place a few hours ago. He had a score he wanted to settle.”

“A score? With that foolish coon?” Luther Cartwright slapped his thigh. “What kind of score’s so important that we gotta stand out here like cigar-store Indians?”

Klein tried to sound casual. “He said Curd sassed him in town this afternoon. Got real uppity.”

“And that’s why he ain’t here?” Clay Clayton was furious. “Shit, Jerry must be dumber than Curd, runnin’ out tonight of all times to teach a lesson to a smart-mouth nigger. An’ now, we’re supposed to just stand around with our finger up our ass, waitin’ for him to get done? Fuck that and fuck Jerry. I say let’s just bust in the cellar door, get the stuff, and go ahead without him.”

Klein held up both hands. “Hold on, now. We break up Jerry’s cellar door and leave his house wide open, I don’t want to be the one to try and tell him why.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Clayton shouted. “Jerry says, ‘Shit,’ and you say, ‘How much and what color.’” He walked toward the cellar door. “Just a little turn-bolt inside. Couple good kicks, we’re inside easy.”

“Hey, shut the hell up a minute. Alla you.”

Everyone turned to Johnny Farnsworth.

“Listen, we got to work together, else we’re gonna screw this thing up past fixin’. We ain’t against the wall yet. Maybe Barton run into some trouble out there, or maybe he’s havin’ too good of a time and lost track of the hour. I say let’s get in somebody’s car and go on out by Curd’s. If Jerry’s there, we can straighten him out, and if he ain’t, well, then we can come back here and do what we gotta do. At least we can tell him we tried.”

A pause, then Clayton said, “Okay. I’m for that.” A momentary mumbled agreement, then the five men piled into Clayton’s black Oldsmobile, and took off down the county road toward Georgetown.

***

Curd left Irma and Susie at his sister-in-law’s house on the outskirts of Jefferson City, then drove into town, through the business district, and up to Williams’ Funeral Home. No one around, not at this time of night. Curd walked around the side of the building, and up a gravel driveway to the back door. He pushed the button next to the door. No answer. He rang again.

A minute later, the door opened. An elderly colored man with a shiny dome and a fringe of cotton above his ears, blinked sleepy eyes at Curd.

“Mr. Williams, I be Richard Curd, from Georgetown. I got me a problem.”

All of a sudden, Williams looked fully awake. “Problem, huh? With Mr. Charlie, I bet.”

“He come by my place with a gun, was bound to shame my daughter. Had all her clothes off when I sneaked ‘round behind him with a ax.”

“Son of a bitch,” Williams murmured. “There ain’t no end to them hellhounds, is there?”

“I reckon not.”

Williams sighed. “Okay, then. Where you got him?”

“Truck out front.”

“Drive up to here, so we can bring him in easy. I can manage the feet-end.”

Curd started to walk away, then turned. “One other thing. That be his truck I got him in.”

“Sweet Jesus.” Williams shook his head. “You don’t make things easy, do you?”

“Sorry, Mr. Williams. But some things just ain’t easy, no matter how you cuts ’em.”

“How I knows that. Okay, when we done gettin’ him in here, I’ll back out the hearse into the driveway, and you put the truck inside. We’ll get off the license plates, then first thing in the morning, I’ll call Little Harry, and he’ll take it away. Time he be done with it, no one gonna be able to tell.”

“How much that gonna cost me?”

Williams shook his head. “Harry’ll sell the truck, a piece in St. Lou, a piece in Kay Cee. Everybody’ll come out okay. ‘cept maybe your friend out there. An’ I guess he won’t care none.”

***

In the crematory, Curd and Williams unrolled the blanket from around Barton’s body. “Leave it underneath him,” Williams said. “That way, we can just lift him inside, blanket and all. Won’t be nothin’ left but a li’l ashes.” The old man looked into what remained of the corpse’s face. “You did some number on him,” the mortician said. “Thought you tol’ me you come up from behind.”

“That I did do,” said Curd. “But he heard me, and started to come around.”

“Well, fine and dandy. Good he got to see what was comin’ his way.” Williams turned to address the body. “Guess it’s time to say a last prayer for you, Mr. Charlie. I’m prayin’ that every white devil ends up in the fire, both on this earth and below. Like you gonna do now.”

Curd saw a young white boy, a bloody ax at his feet, shaking like he had the St. Vitus Dance. “Ain’t all white folks bad,” he said softly.

“No, I guess not,” said Williams. “Problem is, you go tryin’ to sort ’em out, you like to end up dead yourself.” He swung the crematory door open. “Let’s get this done.”

***

The sound of a car door slamming sent Alan up off the couch and onto his feet. Voices outside, coming closer. The boy took a step toward the front door, then reversed course and ran back, fast as he dared in the darkness, through the kitchen, and out onto the little porch. He left the door part-way open, crouched low, listened.

At first, just voices, but then someone shouted, “Jerry. Hey, Jerry. You here?”

The boy heard bangs and thuds, saw shafts of light darting this way and that. Flashlights. Were they moving furniture, looking under chairs?

“This…shithouse,” someone said. “Way these people live. Don’t want…touch anything.”

“Too bad…didn’t…sawdust,” a tenor whine, hard to follow. “Do…like…school.”

Alan rubbed his ears, tried to listen harder, but all he could make out was the shifting and banging of furniture, and occasionally the sound of glass or china breaking. Then, a familiar voice said, “Jerry musta come and gone, else his truck…out front.”

Klein’s voice. Alan almost shouted it.

Another man said, “I’ll check…back.”

Alan glanced left, then right. He’d never make it to the woodshed or the privy. And if he tried to run off into the woods, they’d hear him crashing through underbrush. But the house was up on cinder blocks, and the crawl space looked high enough for him to squeeze into. He dove off the porch, got his head under cover, swung his legs around and inside. Something furry brushed his cheek, then skittered away. A possum? Rat? The boy covered his mouth with a hand.