The Ragtime Kid (26 page)

When Maisie came in, carrying a tray with a chocolate cake and a coffee pot, he was midway through “Good Old Wagon.” Maisie set the tray on a little table, clasped her hands in front of her chest, and sang along with the last lines of the tune. “Bye-bye my honey, if you call it gone, O Babe. Bye-bye my honey, if you call it gone. You’ve been a good ol’ wagon, but you done broke down.”

Brun was surprised no end. “I didn’t think you’d know that.”

“Huh!” Maisie pretended to be affronted. “Well, of course I know it. Why shouldn’t I?” She set to slicing cake and pouring coffee. Brun moved over to sit on the sofa. Maisie set two china coffee cups and two plates with cake onto the table, then positioned herself next to the boy. She brushed hair back behind her ear. “Brun…is it all right for me to call you Brun?”

“Sure. I don’t mind.”

Big smile. “Good. Then we’re friends. You can call me Maisie.”

Brun couldn’t bear to look at his slice of cake an instant longer, picked up his fork, took a large bite. Maisie turned a pout on him. “Didn’t you think I sang that song all right?”

“Oh, now, sure I did,” he said through a mouthful of chocolate. “I mean, you sang it more than just all right. You knew all the words right on, and you’ve got a very nice voice.”

She grabbed his hand like she hoped to squeeze more compliments out of it. “You really think so? Do you mean that?”

“I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

She let go of him and leaned back against the sofa cushion. “My mama and dad got me music lessons so I could sing and play, first for them, then for my husband, like a proper girl is supposed to do. But what I really wanted was to go on the stage, and my parents wouldn’t ever have let me do that. When I turned eighteen, they wanted me to marry Hugh Menton, one of those nice young men in Daddy’s bank, so I…I ran away. With a circus that was in the next town.”

Now that’s a capper, Brun thought. Running away to Sedalia was small pumpkins next to running away with a circus. Maybe that explained some things, like how much face powder and perfume Maisie used. And why she lived on her own, a young woman, supporting herself by giving piano lessons.

“I wanted to become a singing performer, but they needed an aerialist-girl, so I agreed to do that, at least at first. They taught me the tricks, and oh, I’ll admit, it was fun for a while. But I wanted to sing. I worked out a routine with the clowns, something I thought I might be able to develop into a vaudeville act, but the manager just kept putting me off, ‘Maybe soon, maybe soon.’ I was with them more than two years, and then one night when we were in Kansas City, I went to the theater to see Ben Harney—”

“So, that’s how you knew…he’s who wrote ‘Good Old Wagon.’”

“Well, of course. He played all his songs, and I don’t think there’s been a day since that I haven’t thought about it. He did a blackface routine with his wife, he played piano, and she sang and danced. They did ‘Wagon,’ and ‘Mr. Johnson, Turn Me Loose,’ and ‘I Love One Sweet Black Man’…oh, it was wonderful. I wanted to be right up there with them. Well, I knew by that time I was never going to get anywhere with the circus, so next day, I left. I couldn’t go home—my parents would’ve thrown me right back out, ruined as I was.” She caught Brun looking from his empty plate to the cake, smiled, cut another piece and slid it onto his plate. “At first I thought to stay in Kansas City and give piano lessons, but I couldn’t find any kind of decent living quarters with a piano. Then I heard about Sedalia, all the music here, so I decided to give it a try. Right off, I found this little house, and your Mr. Stark was kind enough to give me time payments on this second-hand piano out of one of the Broadway mansions, where an old woman had died and her children were cleaning out. I save every penny I can, and one day I’ll have enough of a stake so I can try a vaudeville circuit. But meanwhile, I keep my eyes open for possibilities—”

“Like being Freitag’s assistant?”

The instant the words were out, Brun realized how unkind they might have sounded. But Maisie didn’t seem to take offense. “Well, of course. His pay is all right, and it’s that much more than I’d make just giving piano lessons.” She leaned toward Brun, face close to his, eyes sparkling. “But I think I can see a better opportunity, and not just for me. The way you play piano? Why, if you really can write music like you say,
we
could be in vaudeville, you and I. Just like the Harneys.”

Brun wondered whether she might have taken leave of her mind. He’d seen the Harney show himself. Ben was a first-rate piano man, maybe white, maybe just a touch of the brush; his wife Jessie was a gorgeous songbird, a Kentucky girl, most definitely white. Brun could not for his life see how he and Maisie could make it with that kind of an act, and he told her so.

Which got him a pretty little laugh. She patted his hand. “Oh, Brun, think a little, would you. We’ve got the talent. And I’ve got a little money, enough to get us started. What we need is music. This is my dream, ever since I was a little girl, and I’m not about to just follow around after Mr. Freitag or anybody else until I’m too old to ever have a singing career. How about you? Do you want to sell sheet music for Mr. Stark until you’re forty or fifty, then he dies and his family closes down the store? How old are you, Brun? Really.”

“Sixteen. Seventeen later this year.”

“And I’m twenty-two. That’s not such a big difference. Brun and Maisie, The Ragtime Sweethearts. We’d play St. Louis, Kansas City, Baltimore, New York…” All of a sudden, she jumped off the sofa, grabbed Brun by the hand, and pulled him toward the piano. “Sit down. Do you know ‘At a Georgia Camp Meeting’?”

“Well, ’course I do. I’ve been playing it over a year now.”

“Go ahead, then. I’ll follow you.”

She practically pushed Brun onto the piano stool. He executed a little flourish, then went into the actual tune, watching Maisie, wondering what was she going to do. The girl bowed toward the middle of the room, turned her eyes on her audience, and began to sing.

For all the times he’d played that tune, Brun had never given a thought to the lyrics, but now as he conjured up that great gathering of foolish coons of all different shapes and sizes, he caught sight of Scott Joplin’s unsmiling face in the the crowd, and straightway lost his place in the music. Maisie brought him back in a hurry. “What’s the matter? I thought you said you knew this tune.”

She stood over him, hands on hips, and her face told him that his professional reputation was on the line. He rubbed at an eye. “Sorry, Miss Maisie—I must’ve got something in my eye.” He blinked. “Okay, now. Let’s just start it over.”

He waited while she got herself back in position. She really does have a voice, Brun thought, every note like a bell. “Here we go,” he called to her, and off he shot, playing with a vengeance. She didn’t miss a beat.

Maisie danced across the room and back as she sang, every now and again bending forward like she was singing to a man in the first row of her theater.

Brun played and Maisie sang, chorus and both verses, and by the time they finished, singer and pianist were soaking in sweat. Maisie, laughing, dropped down to the bench next to Brun. A lock of yellow hair covered her left eye. She slipped a hand behind his neck, and kissed him.

At fifteen, Brun had done some sparking. He’d meet Taffy, his girl friend, on Saturday afternoons, when his parents and hers thought their children were in town, in proper company of the same sex. They’d run out behind Old Mr. Rasmussen’s barn and lie down together in the tall weeds, and kiss and kiss and kiss. They must have kissed hundreds of times, but never like Maisie kissed Brun on that piano bench. Her lips pressed onto his like a lid on one of his mother’s jars of preserved fruit, and her tongue moved inside his mouth like a snail having the epileptic seizures. For a second, Brun thought he tasted Sen-Sen, but then his mind moved back to the matters at hand. Maisie held the back of his neck firmly enough to make sure the only way he might be able to pull back was to stamp on her foot.

When Maisie finally popped her lips free, Brun swallowed such a gulp as could be heard out on the street. Maisie slid a small, warm hand into his, laid her head on his shoulder, then sighed, “Oh, Brun,” a breathy whisper. “Please forgive me for being forward, but I got so happy and excited. We
were
good, weren’t we?”

Brun coughed his throat clear. “Truth, Miss Maisie, I didn’t have any idea you had such a voice.”

She picked strands of his hair between a couple of her fingers, and twisted. “Why, I’ll bet if we had some real ragtime numbers, we could bring down any house. And if we had our own music, not just have to sing other peoples’ songs…” She leaned forward again, and Brun prepared himself for another whopper kiss, but to his disappointment, she just kept on talking. “Just think what a start we’d get off to if we had Scott Joplin’s
Ragtime Dance
. You could write words to those tunes, and we’d be a sensation.”

Brun was up like a shot, but Maisie grabbed his hand and pulled him back down, then put a finger to his lips and shushed him. “Just listen for a minute, Brun, all right? Can you imagine the act we could put together with that music? Thirteen different tunes, isn’t it?”

“Something like that. I didn’t count them. But a lot.”

“Enough for a couple of acts, easy. You’ll play, I’ll sing and dance. We’ll sell the music to a publisher, and I don’t mean Freitag. We’ll go big time, right to the top, New York. Witmark? Or Stern and Marks? Why not?”

“Why not is that when Scott Joplin found out, he’d know exactly what happened. And how many people here already know the music is his?”

Maisie shrugged. “What of it? What’s some colored man in Sedalia going to do, take us to court?” She giggled, then took Brun’s hand between both of hers, squeezed it, and looked squarely at the boy from not more than four inches away. He thought he might fall into those blue eyes and drown. “Oh, Brun, please don’t think badly of me. Maybe it’s not exactly a nice thing to do, but this is my chance—
our
chance. People who don’t take a chance usually die without ever having their dreams come true, and I’m not going to do that. You shouldn’t, either. This is perfect for the two of us. The minute I saw you the other day at that piano in Mr. Stark’s, I knew.”

“And you’re going to just up and tell Freitag to get lost?”

“Faster than you can blink your eyes. Think what it would be like for us. The Ragtime Sweethearts, topping bills for Keith-Albee, or the Orpheum. Tony Pastor’s. Then we’d go off to tour Europe.”

All of a sudden, being part-time clerk and future vice-president at Stark and Son didn’t look like such great shakes anymore. Not next to the notion of playing hell out of a piano while a theater full of people clapped and cheered, then waking up next morning with a certain face on the pillow next to his. Was stealing written music really that far past stealing another man’s tune off a piano performance? Brun knew he should’ve just up and walked out the door, but Maisie’s face a few inches away was as effective at keeping him in the room as if she’d been holding a revolver. Maybe more so. He shook his head, chuckled deep in his throat. “You sure don’t do things by halves.”

She squinched her eyes. “I don’t do anything by halves, Brun.” She got up and stretched, then took a couple of steps toward the back of the house. “Too hot tonight to be wearing all these clothes. I’m going to get out of them.”

“Okay,” Brun said, and started back to the piano. “I’ll wait for you here.”

“Brun!”

She was halfway to the door, hokey displeasure all over her face. “What kind of a gentleman are you, anyway? Aren’t you going to come help me out of all these hot clothes?”

***

Fifty years later, Brun could recall every detail of that night. With no clothes on, Maisie put her experience as a circus aerialist to amazing use on the mattress, put poor Rita Hodges all to shame. Afterward, Brun slept like a dead man, and when he woke the next morning, it was broad daylight and the house was full of the smell of eggs and bacon. He stretched, and as he rolled over, he noticed a purple discoloration on his left arm, just below the shoulder. He grinned, then hustled into his clothes and ran out and into the kitchen.

Over breakfast, Maisie asked whether she’d convinced him to be her ragtime sweetheart. Brun told her she’d made a strong case. “But just thinking about stealing Mr. Joplin’s music makes me feel so bad, I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if I actually did it.”

One more time, he thought of the money-clip hidden in his closet. If that ever came to light, Scott Joplin would have no further use for his music, nor would there be any accusations when
The Ragtime Dance
, by Brun Campbell, sold thousands of copies and had them dancing in the aisles in New York. He actually had to stop eating for a moment.

“Well…” Maisie squeezed his hand. “I thought you might not just say yes right off, but I was hoping, and I still am. At least think about it, would you, Brun? Please?”

He nodded. “Truth, Miss Maisie, I don’t think I could help doing that.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “O-kay. Just don’t think too long and miss the train.”

Or run too fast, stumble and fall underneath, Brun thought.

“And, Brun…”

He looked at her. Those blue eyes. Maybe before he left, she’d like to do a little more persuading.