The Ragtime Fool (2 page)
Venice, California
Monday, April 2
Early afternoon
The old man banged the final notes of “Maple Leaf Rag” out of the piano, then jumped to his feet and spun around as he heard applause from a single pair of hands. The hands belonged to a young man with shining black eyes, ears off a loving cup, and a grin all over his face. “Jesus H. Christ, Cal, you scared the living crap outa me. I never even heard you comin’ in.”
Cal laughed. “Well, how
would
you hear me, the way you were beating the life out of that poor old piano? Who the hell keeps a piano in a barber shop, anyway?”
“A man whose wife don’t approve of ragtime and won’t let him play it in his own house,” Brun muttered.
Cal tried to hide his embarrassment for the old barber. “Come on, Brun. You wouldn’t have heard me if I’d set off a grenade. I said hello twice, but Scott Joplin had your ears, didn’t he? Bet he was telling you not to play his music too fast, that it’s never right to play ragtime fast. Right?”
Brun glanced at the sepiatone photograph on the wall above the piano, a dark-skinned Negro man and a white boy, side by side on a piano bench, looking over their shoulders at the photographer. “Don’t mock, Cal.”
The young man struggled to hear the whispered words, then walked across the room, and plopped into the barber chair. “Hey, Brun, I’d be pretty dumb to mock you right before you pick up your razor and scissors. Come on, let’s get it over with.”
Brun sighed. They never quit joshing him about how bad a barber he was, and he had to admit, there was something to what they said. He’d never wanted to be a barber, but a guy had to make a living, and forty years ago, he’d let his pop talk him into giving it a shot. Campbell and Son, Barbers. Just temporary, Brun had told himself, but as things worked out, it became temporary in the same way a man’s life is temporary. He shook his head, then reached to the shelf behind the chair, pulled a strip of tissue from the box, wrapped it around Cal’s neck, snapped the striped apron clean, and fastened it over the tissue.
Cal gave him a theatrical fish eye. “Still that same old clipper, huh? Jeez, Brun, go down and sell it to Molly Stearns in the antique store. It’s so damn old, I’ll bet you’d get more for it than you’d pay for a new one.”
Brun pushed the button, ran the clipper up the back of Cal’s neck. “Shut up, kid,” he growled. “I got a fondness for antiques. I’m one myself.”
“Ow-
ow
!” Cal jerked forward, grabbed at his neck. “Would you two antiques mind leaving just a little skin on me.”
Brun swallowed whatever he was going to say. For a couple of minutes, the only sound in the room was the whir of the clipper and the snipping of scissors, but Brun Campbell never could manage long periods of silence. “Betcha don’t know what yesterday was.”
Cal started to turn, thought better of it. “Sunday.”
“I don’t mean what day of the week. I mean what’s important about yesterday?”
Cal narrowed his eyes. “Today’s April second…okay. If you’re gonna tell me they gave you the Barber of the Year Award yesterday, I’ll tell you yesterday was April Fool’s Day—ow, my
ear
. Jesus Christ, Brun! You cut my ear.”
“Sorry,” the old man mumbled. “You got me all worked up. Yeah, yesterday was April Fool’s, all right, but it was also the day Scott Joplin died. April first, 1917. Thirty-four years ago. Died in that New York crazy house where he ended up after nobody would publish his opera.
Treemonisha
.”
What he died of was syphilis, Cal thought, but the young man wasn’t about to argue the point, not while the barber was trimming furiously above his right eye.
“Nothing in any of the papers yesterday,” Brun shouted. “Not a word on the radio. It’s like Scott Joplin never lived. Greatest American composer ever. I was working on a book, gonna call it
When Ragtime Was Young
, and it’d have everything in it about Scott Joplin that people oughta know. But last year, this guy Rudi Blesh from outa New York, he went all around the country and talked to everybody, me included, then he took what the people said and made it up into a book. But it’s all fulla mistakes. I tried telling him he shouldn’t do it that way, you know, too many chickens spoil the broth, but he didn’t want to listen. Now I don’t know if
my
book is ever get published, and if it don’t, when I’m gone, there ain’t gonna be nobody to tell people about Scott Joplin and his music.”
Cal’s eyes bulged. He raised a hand under the apron. “Brun, put down that razor.”
The barber glanced at his hand, then hunched his shoulders and stared at Cal. “What d’you mean, put down the razor? How the hell am I supposed to get the edges clean.”
“Just use the scissors,” said Cal. “You’re waving that razor around like a sword.”
Brun couldn’t seem to decide what to do.
“Put it down.” Cal spoke gently. “Before you say one more word about Scott Joplin.”
Slowly, the old barber laid the razor on the shelf, picked up the scissors, and went back to work. “I’m trying everything,” a dull monotone. “I show young kids how to play the music right. I write articles about Joplin, they get published in important music magazines. I make phonograph records. I get interviewed by music professors and experts. I’m workin’ with Ethel Waters…you know who she is?”
“Yes, Brun. I know who Ethel Waters is. I’ve even heard her sing.”
“Well, then.” The wind picked up; Brun’s sails refilled. “I got Miss Waters interested in making a movie about Joplin’s life, but the people down there in Hollywood, they don’t want to let a colored woman say nothing but Yassir and Yas’m in a film, so I’m afraid that ain’t ever gonna happen. Christ, kid, I’m sixty-seven years old. How much longer do I—”
A howl from Cal broke off the barber’s speech. The young man reached from under the apron to grab the side of his head. “Jeez, Brun, can’t you sharpen those scissors once in a while? You’re pulling my hair out by the goddamn roots.”
The barber looked contrite. “Sorry. Sometimes I get myself carried away. But I ain’t givin’ up. People in Sedalia’re puttin’ on a big ceremony, couple of weeks from now. They’re gonna present a big bronze plaque to hang up in the colored high school there, saying how it was in Sedalia that Scott Joplin signed the contract with Mr. John Stark to publish ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’ I’m working along with them, gonna go out and play at the ceremony, but also, I think maybe I can talk Louis Armstrong into giving a scroll to Mrs. Joplin in New York, right at the same time as they present the plaque in Sedalia. And I want the radio people to broadcast the whole shebang over their network.”
Cal nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Brun read his thoughts. “I know, a plaque in a high school ain’t the same as a monument in front of the City Hall…or a museum, say. That’s really what they ought have in Sedalia, a museum. While I’m out there, I’m gonna see if I can’t get them cracking on setting one up for Mr. Joplin and ragtime. Hell, that town’s been on the edge of the grave since the Depression. Just think about the tourists who’d come in to see a museum, and hear ragtime music.”
A smile curved a corner of Cal’s lips. “So you’re going out to Missouri.”
If I can figure out how to get food for the Greyhound, Brun thought, and sighed. “I gotta.”
The old man pulled the apron away from Cal’s neck, then shook it with a quick downward flip of his wrists. A sharp crack, then a cloud of dark hair fluttered to the floor. Brun tore the tissue from Cal’s neck, held a mirror up to the back of the young man’s head. Cal cringed.
“Guess it ain’t one of my better jobs,” Brun mumbled. “Figure it’s on the house.”
Cal pushed a dollar bill into the barber’s hand. “It’s not the worst you’ve done. If you could only talk about something beside Scott Joplin and ragtime, at least while you’re cutting peoples’ hair.”
“Damn, boy, what in creation
should
I talk about? I ain’t never had anything in my life come close to Scott Joplin and ragtime.”
Cal considered the words in his mind, then spoke them. “Brun, not to offend you, but Joplin is dead, and so is his music. R.I.P. You’ve got to move on in life.”
The barber cocked his head, narrowed his eyes. “How old’re you, kid?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Hmmm.” Brun seemed to think that settled the question. He started toward the cash register.
Cal wasn’t finished. “Yeah, I know I’m still young. But I’m not going to end up like those old guys, sitting all day at the train station, jawing about how much better everything was fifty years ago. Yesterday’s gone, Brun, tomorrow’s coming. There’s a reason I write science fiction, and when I’m seventy, or eighty, or however old I get to be, my eyes are still going to be on what’s ahead, not what’s already been.”
Brun slipped the dollar into the register, then slowly looked Cal up and down. Cal thought if the old man had long, floppy ears, he’d be the spitting image of the little beagle that lived down his block. “How’s your book doing?” Brun asked.
The mildness of the barber’s voice took Cal aback. “Oh…good enough, I guess. Selling better than my first.”
“What’s it called?”
“
The Martian Hangover
. Tell you what. I’ll bring you a copy, and I’ll sign it for you.”
Brun smiled weakly. “That’d be nice. Hey, you really do make enough to live off, writing those books?”
“Short stories, too. And articles, you know, for magazines. I just sold one to
Science Fiction Quarterly
. A thousand words, they paid me two hundred bucks.”
“Twenty cents a word? No fooling?”
“God’s truth.”
“Well, I guess I’m in the wrong business. All them words I shoot out in the air, if I just put ’em on paper, I’d be a millionaire ten times over.” Brun waved toward the door. “Better go on. You already lost ten bucks standing here, talking to me.”
Cal chuckled, then started for the door, but halfway there, turned around. “Brun don’t you ever take off that hat?”
The old man reached a hand to his gray fedora, as if to remind himself it was there. He loosed a hoarse laugh. “Hell, no. You think I want people to see what a lousy barber
I
go to?”
***
A continent away, in the living room of a solidly middle-class house in Hobart, New Jersey, Alan Chandler sat at a Steinway baby grand, playing “Maple Leaf Rag.” A week earlier, he’d pulled the piece from the Old Sheet Music rack at Mrs. Selvin’s Music House, along with one called “Crazy Bone Rag,” and another, “Magnetic Rag.” He’d also bought a handful of 78s, all of whose titles ended with the word, “rag.” Mrs. Selvin had looked surprised as she thumbed through the material on the counter. “Since when have you been interested in ragtime, Alan?” Her eyes glistened behind rimless glasses. “These were all so popular when I was a girl.”
“I listen to Oscar Brand, you know, the folksinger,” Alan said. “He’s on WNYC Sunday mornings, and yesterday, he played a bunch of tunes he said had been recorded a few years ago by an old barber, who lives in California. Mrs. Selvin, I just couldn’t keep my feet still! The man told Mr. Brand he was the only white pupil of a colored ragtime pianist named Scott Joplin. Did you ever hear of him?”
She nodded. “He was very famous for a while. He wrote the first big ragtime hit, the sheet you’ve got right here. ‘Maple Leaf Rag.’”
Alan’s eyes widened. He spread the sleeved 78s across the counter, then grabbed one and held it up to the shopkeeper. “See here? ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ played by that barber, Brun Campbell. Oscar Brand played this same record on the radio, and I’ve never heard anything like it. I’ve got to learn it.”
Mrs. Selvin smiled. “It’s not an easy piece. For most people, I’d suggest one of the simplified folio arrangements, but I imagine you can handle the original. It will take some practice, though.”
“That doesn’t bother me. I don’t waste my time on simplified folios. Do you have anything else you think I’d like?”
The boy’s cheeks glowed. His chest heaved. Mrs. Selvin embarrassed herself with the thought that if she were seventeen again, she’d lock the door, take him in the back, and give him something he’d really like. She reached back into the window display, brought out a book. “You might enjoy this, dear. It was just published last year, and it will tell you all about ragtime music and Scott Joplin. In fact…let me see…yes, here. It’s even got a few pages about your barber.”
Alan took the book from her with a move that could have been considered rude, if his enthusiasm were not taken into account. “
They All Played Ragtime
.” He ran a finger down the table of contents, then laid the book on top of the pile of sheet music. “Great, Mrs. Selvin, thanks. I can’t wait to read it.”
But first things first. He was home in record time, into the living room, onto the piano bench. In one motion, he threw the sheet music for “Maple Leaf Rag” up on the rack, drew a huge breath, and hit the keys.
It took only a couple of minutes for him to decide Mrs. Selvin had been right on the money. This was as tough a piece of music as he’d ever tried to play. His right hand kept tripping over his left. But the tune had him by the throat. He played “Maple Leaf Rag” all that afternoon, and every afternoon the rest of the week.
Now, after six days of practice, he’d gotten a decent handle on it. He stretched his arms, took it from the top. Through the A strain, into the B, back to the A, yeah. He ignored the sweat dripping from his forehead onto the keys as he swung into the C strain.
“Alan! For the love of God, can’t you play anything but that silly tune? You’re driving me crazy.”
He muffed a G-chord, struggled to recover.
“Alan, I’m talking to you.”
The boy let his hands flop to his lap, and stared up into his mother’s face.
“Don’t you give me that look.”
“Damn it, Ma. I was finally getting it right, and you made me blow it.”
“Out the window is where I’d
like
to blow it. And don’t you swear at me or give me backtalk. You’ve spent a whole week playing that one tune, over and over again, until I could just scream. Mr. Bletter wasn’t happy with your lesson last Friday, and I’m not surprised. I don’t think you spent fifteen minutes the whole week long practicing real music.”
