Joplin's Ghost (9 page)

“Good girl, Peanut,” Sarge said, grinning. “You won’t be sorry.”

I’m already sorry,
Phoenix thought, suddenly so weary she couldn’t imagine another two minutes of rehearsal, never mind two hours. Then, under her father’s vigilant eyes, Phoenix joined her dancers on the brightly lighted, waiting stage.

St. Louis
1901

S
cott saw the teardrop of bright blood on Louis’s shirt collar before he noticed the rag wrapped around Louis’s right hand, liberally stained in crimson. Despite the frigid air outside, Louis’s thin overcoat hung open, buttons torn. Fresh snowflakes clung to his wind-wild hair.

“God in Heaven,” Scott said.

“I’ll answer to that.” Louis grinned in the doorway with a prettiness that had always seemed misplaced on a man. Louis reeked of lavender and whiskey. His youthful complexion and delicate curls made the boy grievously handsome despite his dishevelment. At nineteen, he lived in a world not sampled by most men their entire lives.

“What happened?”

“This nigger on Market got mouthy, tellin’ me he never did meet a Creole could fight. I told him I might be small, but I’d show him if Creoles could fight or not. Before he could blink, I took a swipe at him—” Louis took a half step and shunted to demonstrate, thrusting an invisible razor. “He got lucky and cut my hand, but he wished he hadn’t after that.”

This boy was a fool. An injury might destroy Louis’s ability to play. No insult was worth losing his music. “You need a doctor,” Scott said.

“
He’s
the one better go find a doctor. Bet he won’t say that no more.” Louis leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m hungry. Let’s get some grub. Where you been, Scotty?”

Belle was upstairs cooking supper, but Scott didn’t dare invite Louis to join them. She couldn’t abide liquor, and Louis smelled like a brewery. Belle tolerated Tom, Otis, Sam and Arthur fine, but Louis would confirm all of his wife’s misgivings about their move to the larger city two hundred miles from Sedalia, in a flat so close to the sporting districts. Lower Morgan and Chestnut Valley were too close for Belle’s comfort.

Behind Louis, a covered black Purina wagon loaded with bags of feed rumbled just ahead of a blustering horseless carriage. The day traffic of peddlers, furriers and delivery wagons on Morgan was thinning into the more languid pace of night traffic and its more dubious pursuits.

“I’ve been here,” Scott said. “Working.”

“Scribbling, you mean. Hey, you heard Mother’s moved her girls to Chestnut? She’s tryin’ to compete with the Rosebud. Paying top dollar for professors, too—not just tips. And twelve dollars to the winner of the Friday-night contests. She can afford it, ’cause I swear Mother charges for cooze like it’s plated in gold—”

“My
wife
is upstairs.” Scott gave Louis’s shoulder an irritated shake.

Louis clapped his good hand over his mouth. “Aw, shit,” he said, but he laughed.

Scott found the money he’d folded in his pocket after his last student left, three dollars for the week’s lessons. With his expensive habits, Louis spent more money than most people made, so Scott guessed he was begging for a meal. “Go to the Rosebud and eat. I’ll meet you later.”

“I ain’t gonna eat no food at Tom Turpin’s place. Something I ate there the other day tore a hole in my stomach. He’s tryin’ to poison me, he’s so damn jealous he can’t play as pretty as me,” Louis said, but took the money anyway.

“Tom’ll sit on you if I tell him how you’re talking. You’re drunk, Louis.”

“Man, Scotty, just let me in out the damn cold.”

“You smell like a bawdy house.”

“Old man, don’t make me go tell stories on you,” Louis said. “Scared of your wife! Shoot, your mademoiselle’s gonna like me better than you want her to.” He tipped his hat and flashed a smile toward an imaginary Belle, miming a peek at where her cleavage would be.

“You’re a sad excuse for a Creole, little man. A mademoiselle is unmarried,” Scott said.

“They all forget they’re married when I’m near, professor.”

Scott heard quick footsteps on the stairs behind him. It was too late to send Louis away.

“Your hand,”
Scott whispered. Louis gave him a maddeningly ignorant look for several seconds, mocking him, but Louis slid his bandaged hand into his coat pocket, hiding it from sight.

“Scott? It’s suppertime,” Belle said, a ready chide for whoever was at the door. She was a sturdy woman, nearly as tall as he and twenty-six, with a dark, comely face beneath strands of early silver hair dotting her temples. Scott noticed an ember of intrigue in his wife’s eye. Louis’s beauty, again.

“I wish you hadn’t come all the way down. My friend is leaving,” Scott said tightly. “Have you met Louis Chauvin? Louis—this is Belle Joplin, my wife.”

“Madam, sorry to bring you down all them stairs,” Louis said. He not only tipped his hat; he took it off and pressed it to his breast. Louis could imitate a gentleman’s behavior with an actor’s ease, which made Scott all the more impatient with the boy’s coarseness. “I’m one of the young men fortunate enough to look upon your husband as a great teacher and friend. I’ve known Mr. Joplin since I was a young Sunday school student in Sedalia. Belated congratulations on your marriage, madam. You must be very proud to be Mrs. Scott Joplin.”

Liar! Scott had met the boy in St. Louis two or three years ago, when Tom pointed him out at Mother’s and his ears had first thrilled to Louis’s elegant musicianship. Sometimes Louis lied for the sheer pleasure of telling a story. All musicians were liars, to hear Belle’s opinion, and he wasn’t sure she was wrong. Scott intervened before Louis could trip himself up. “Louis only stopped by—”

“Because I wanted to congratulate my old mentor on his success. We boys back at Holy Church have always known Mr. Joplin walked a higher plane. He’s no coon musician, madam, oh no. Our Mr. Joplin is an artiste. And it has been the joy of my life to see him held up beyond our small circles. It’s no time before he’ll be composing for the Governor’s Ball and eating with royalty in Germany. He is a true credit to his entire race.”

Scott nearly groaned at Louis’s sarcasm. “It’s a shame Louis can’t stay,” Scott said.

Belle looked disappointed. “Where are you going, Mr.…?”

“Chauvin,” Louis said, with a half bow. “Mr. Joplin says I should go to the Rosebud for supper, but my mama says St. Louis’s streets are too rough for an honest boy at night.”

“Tom’s place?” Belle said, looking at Scott, surprised. “But I just finished cooking.”

“We didn’t expect a guest,” Scott said.

“We have plenty.” Belle’s eyebrows scowled at Scott’s lack of manners. “You can’t send a gentle young boy to Chestnut Valley at night. After he’s come such a long way!”

“He’s been to St. Louis many times, Belle,” Scott said. “It’s like his second home.”

“Scott, for goodness sakes, let’s let your young friend in out of the cold.”

“Yes, Mr. Joplin, for goodness sakes, let your young friend in out of the cold…motherfucker.” Louis muttered the last word nearly inaudibly as he passed Scott in the narrow hallway. He stepped hard on Scott’s toe as he walked inside, a private insult.

While Louis spun fairy tales, embellishments and fantasies about his life for Belle, Scott directed him to the upstairs washroom, where he gave Louis a washrag to clean himself. Scott did not trust the mysterious smile on his wife’s face while she busied herself in the kitchen, but there would be more peace in the house that night if Belle kept smiling.

Scott found a clean white shirt in his wardrobe and knocked on the washroom door.

“We goin’ to a funeral?” Louis said when he saw it.

“Change that shirt. You have someone’s blood on your collar.”

Louis sighed and took the shirt without further argument. Scott stood in the doorway while Louis shaved in the mirror. Louis never went anywhere without his straight razor, and not because he needed one for his fine, spare facial hair.

“Let me see your hand.”

“It’s already seen after, Dr. Joplin. I rinsed it clean,” Louis said. “Don’t worry about me, worry for your own self. Yessir, you’re up here living the hincty life, scared I’ll shame you. No wonder you don’t want nobody stopping by. Tom told me about you, walking ’round with your nose stuck up in the air. You won’t play nowhere like you used to, huh? But I understand, Scotty. Listen, you got a nice little flat up here. You’ll never go hungry with a butcher shop next door. Folks say durin’ the war, this was a real pretty neighborhood.”

Scott lived upstairs at 2658-A Morgan, in a brick row house identical to every other building for blocks. Their five-room apartment had been improvised from a single town house, so two families now lived in the space intended for one, although the building’s refinement was still apparent in the long balcony winding the length of the building from the bedroom door. Scott noticed the apartment’s shortcomings most often as he climbed the mountain of steps—more than twenty!—his hand squeezing the rude pipe that had been fitted against the wall as a banister. At the upstairs landing, the pipe ended and met its regal ancestor, the shiny wooden globe that crowned the banister like a recollection.

Still, it was the finest home he had ever had, and Louis knew it. It was a long way from the packed-dirt floors of his youth, and music lived in the very walls. Scott awoke each morning with the memory of a new tune from the previous night’s dreams.
Da-daa-da-daaa-da-daaa.
Even now, a worrying musical strain cried for attention in Scott’s head. He would rush Louis home after dinner so he could begin capturing it.

“We’re doing fine,” Scott said. He’d learned never to discuss money with Louis unless he wanted his affairs made public. The first two years had been slow, but last week John had told him that John Stark & Son could barely keep pace with the orders for “Maple Leaf Rag.” Already, ragtime brought out something in him like nothing else in all his years performing, and no one expected him to blacken his face. It was a small miracle, and getting bigger.

“Whatever you’re doing, it ain’t what Mother’s paying,” Louis said. “Folks are comin’ from Kansas City and everywhere else to hear those cuttin’ contests.”

Yes, but I don’t have to spend my nights in a whorehouse trying to convince myself I’m in Heaven,
Scott thought. He almost uttered it aloud, but decided if he was going to say anything, he might as well say the thing that was most true. “Cutting contests aren’t for me anymore,” Scott said. “I don’t play like I need to.”

Louis half shrugged, but Louis, of all people, couldn’t argue. The last time Scott had tried to compete, Mo the Show had shamed him with “Maple Leaf Rag,” no less, dressing his own child with needless embellishments and turning it against him.

“I’ll give you lessons cheap,” Louis said.

Scott chuckled. Louis was joking, but he might need lessons if he ever hoped to play the wild piece that kept chattering in his head, one he hadn’t had time to chase with his pen yet. Not that he would ever take lessons from Louis, who had been only seventeen when they met. “What you’ve got can’t be taught, youngster.”

“I gotta agree with you on that one, professor.”

Louis looked like a new man by the time he’d washed, shaved, and buttoned his clean shirt. Scott handed him a spare tie to finish his transformation.

“What the hell is this?” Louis said.

“A tie. It’s Sunday dinner.”

Louis muttered curses as he whipped the tie around his neck. “If you got to wear a tie to eat in your own house, Scotty, then you ain’t home.”

But Louis was wrong: For the first time in his life, he
was
home. And it was a proper home on his own terms, not in any white man’s cornfield or cotton patches, kitchen or railroad yard. He didn’t play a fiddle for the pleasure of his master, like his father. And he didn’t play in a whorehouse, not anymore. Scott knew musicians who played pianos by peepholes in brothels so they could improvise music to match the ardor in the bedroom!

Money wasn’t enough to lure him back to that. It was bad enough that so many white men John and Nellie introduced him to raised their voices and spoke to him in simplified language, as if addressing a deaf foreigner, or a child. He couldn’t have them thinking he worked in a bawdy house, too. Stupid
and
bestial, they would say. Scott Joplin did not work in a brothel. He worked in his home. A gentleman’s vocation.

Scott gazed at his new bedroom, where the fireplace glowed, lighting the room. His window’s view was confined to the patterns of bricks from the building next door, but he had memories enough of open fields and oak trees. The quilt from Belle’s grandmother lay snugly across their mattress, as it always did, her anchor to the family she missed so much that she’d cried every day their first two weeks in St. Louis. The braided rug from the Starks, their wedding gift, covered the length of the bedroom; he and Belle had discussed using it in the parlor instead, but they agreed they didn’t want to expose the handsome rug to visitors, especially with so many students in and out. In the bedroom, the rug was theirs alone, a private luxury to keep their bare feet warm when they first climbed out of bed.

Scott realized he had never been happier. He was thirty-three, but he might as well be as young as Louis. He might be overshadowed as a musician, but he was a
composer
now. Music and royalties lived for years. Forever, sometimes. And Alfred Ernst, the director of the St. Louis Choral Symphony, seemed determined to take him to Germany next summer. Ernst had been kind enough to allow him to hear rehearsals for a striking opera called
Tannhäuser
by German composer Richard Wagner, and Ernst insisted an American composer might also gain notice in Germany—even if he was a Negro. Scott would have considered Europe beyond his reach a few years ago, when bawdy houses and cakewalk contests were his mainstay, but things were different now. Everything was different. Even Louis had to know that, whether or not he could admit it. Life as a married man was only one thing that had changed about Scott’s prospects.