Free The Ragtime Fool by Larry Karp

book publisher who’d want to publish Mr. Joplin’s journal, and then the five K would be a…what do you call it again?”
    Cal’s face was smeared with doubt. “An advance?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. But it looks like you don’t think too much of the idea.”
    “Brun, it’s crazy. No, I don’t know a publisher who’d do that. Mine sure wouldn’t. And you say you’ve got only a week or two to beat out Blesh. Any way you cut it, a deal like that would take months. No publisher in his right mind is going to hand you a contract and five thousand dollars without seeing the journal and reading a sample from your book. I’m sorry, Brun, I really am. But there’s no way that’s going to work.”
    The barber got to his feet and stretched. “Okay, then. Thanks for listening. And thanks for the beer.” He walked halfway to the door, then looked over his shoulder. “See you at Roscoe’s funeral?”
    “Sure,” Cal said. “Friday, ten o’clock, right?”
    Brun nodded. “First Baptist Church.”

Chapter Six
    Fri, April 6
Early afternoon
    There was barely room in the little barber shop for the five men. Brun sat in one barber’s chair, like a king on his throne, while Cal perched between two colored men on the piano bench. A third colored man lounged against the piano. “I say it’s a cryin’ shame,” Brun growled. “A good man like Roscoe dies, and nobody shows up to see him off.”
    The man at the side of the piano, a round Negro with no visible neck, spoke in a high voice incongruous with his build. “Hey, Brun, I don’t exactly think I’m nobody.”
    “Come on, Charley, you know what I mean,” the barber said. “If Roscoe’d died forty years ago in St. Lou, there’d be more people than the church coulda held. But with everybody out here he did stuff for, all them old ladies, nobody except for the five of us could bother to show up.”
    “Most of them old ladies was white,” Charley said. “They ain’t gonna come down and sit in a colored church.”
    “Well, why the hell not?” Brun barked. “Sorry, it still don’t seem right to me. Just like how he died don’t seem right.”
    “You gonna go on about thinking he was killed?” That from the Negro to Cal’s right on the piano bench. “Man takes a little too much to drink, slips and falls down the stairs onto a cee-ment floor, it sure sounds like an accident to me.”
    “I ain’t never seen Roscoe fried,” Brun said. “Sure, he’d have himself a shot or two, but that was it.”
    “Just because you ain’t seen it don’t mean it didn’t happen,” the dark man replied.
    “Fred, now you cut that out,” Charley piped. “You ain’t supposed to talk bad about the dead.”
    “Hey, Charley,” Brun shouted. “Don’t get yourself all worked up, and bust your fat ass through my piano.” The barber turned his attention to the trio on the bench. “Monday afternoon, when Roscoe come in here and said he had to talk to me, he didn’t look like he just wanted to pass a little time. I wish to God I’d took a few minutes to hear him out right then and there.”
    “You didn’t have any way to know,” Cal murmured.
    The day’s mail slid through the slot in the door below the CLOSED FOR FUNERAL sign, and spread across the floor. Brun walked over, bent laboriously, picked up the envelopes. “Fraternal Order of Eagles, crap.” He tossed the envelope onto the little counter next to the cash register. “Bill for light and power.” That quickly joined the F.O.E. on the counter. The third white envelope sported a red, white, and blue border; the barber waved it at his friends. “Air-mail, from New Jersey. To ‘Brun Recording Company.’”
    Cal spoke. “Maybe you’re getting famous, Brun. Could be a big record company wants to give you a contract.”
    The colored men snickered.
    “Wiseass,” Brun muttered, then took up his barber scissors, slit the top of the envelope, pulled out the letter, unfolded it. He read slowly, moving his