GODS OF RIVERWORLD

19

Others might be uncertain about whom they wanted to resurrect to populate their private worlds, but Thomas Million Turpin was not one of them. He wanted Scott Joplin, Louis Chauvin, James Scott, Sam Patterson, Otis Saunders, Artie Mathews, Eubie Blake, Joe Jordan. Lots of others, those whom he knew and loved in the ragtime days, great musicians all, though the greatest were Joplin and Chauvin. Tom could play the piano like an angel, but those two were three circles of Heaven above him, and he loved them.

The women? Most of those he'd known on Earth were whores, but some of them were easy to get along with and better to look at. When he'd been in The Valley, he'd fallen in love with a woman he'd never fallen out of love with, an ancient-Egyptian broad named Menti. Maybe she was filed away; if so, he could bring her back. It'd been thirteen years since he'd seen her, but she wasn't going to forget him. She was a Caucasian, but she was darker than he was, and she wasn't prejudiced against blacks. She was the daughter of a merchant in Memphis. Memphis, Egypt, not Te

He had even composed a ragtime tune for her, "My Egyptian Belle," which he'd play for her after she got adjusted to this life.

Smack dab in the center of his world, Turpinville, would be his New Rosebud Cafe. It wouldn't be the original, the square red-brick building at 2220 Market Street in the black red-light district of St. Louis. It'd be ten stories high, round, its walls of gold alloy, thick with diamonds and emeralds. The roof would be topped with a big gold alloy T. T for Turpin.

The streets around it would be paved with gold bricks, and parked around it would be Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs, Stude-bakers, Mercedeses, Stutz Bearcats, Cords.

The little town would have other buildings around it, three stories high, also made of gold alloy and encrusted with jewels. He'd really be dogging it. There'd be a big fountain in front of the Rosebud, which would spout bourbon day and night onto a golden statue of a piano. There'd be other fountains spraying up champagne and gin and liqueurs onto the statues of Joplin and' Chauvin and Turpin. The decorations and the furniture in the buildings would make J. P. Morgan turn green with envy. Not that that old pirate would ever see them.

There'd be a thousand pianos in Turpinville, and violins, trumpets, drums, every instrument that might be needed. The servants would be androids, all white-ski

Outside the forty-building town would be a forest with a river and creeks and several huge marshes and steep hills here and there. A concrete road would wind through the forest so that Tom and his buddies and fancy women could ride in their expensive cars whenever they felt like it. The woods and marshes and streams would be alive with rabbits and wild pigs and foxes and ducks and geese and pheasants and grouse and turkeys and fish and turtles and alligators. Tom loved to hunt; he figured on bagging lots of rabbits and ducks.

"You're pla

"Maybe not forever," Tom said. "Just as long as it lasts."

Nur's expression made him uneasy, though he did not know why.

"It'll be a jumping world," he told Nur, and from then on, when he referred to his private universe, he called it "the Jum-pin' Planet."

"You've come a long way, baby," he told himself.

"What?" Nur said.

"I've come a long way. I was born in an old run-down shack in Sava

There was even more trouble with the white folks in Mississippi, so they moved on to St. Louis. There they settled down in the black tenderloin district, and "Honest John" Turpin made a fortune with his Silver Dollar Saloon and his livery stable.

"My pa said he'd never done a day's work for another man after the slaves was freed, and he'd never fought with his fists. He was a fighting man, though. He'd grab his man by the wrist, bend them wrist bones together, and butt his head against the man's. Pa had the thickest skull west of the Mississippi, east, too. He always knocked his man out. The man staggered around blind and seeing shooting stars for a week. Nobody fucked around with my pa."

Like so many Negro musicians, Tom taught himself, but, unlike many, he could read music.

"When I was eighteen, me and my brother Charlie went West just to see the country. We was looking for gold, too, lots of it around then, though it wasn't easy getting it out of the ground. We spent a year in Nevada, but that gold just up and hid when we was around.

"I died August 13, 1922. Old Man Death, he had a harder head than Pa's, and I couldn't pay him off. Old Man Death, the only honest man in St. Louis. No bribes, no money under the counter. This is it, I got a job to do, and 1 always do it. I didn't have no children, but they called me the father of St. Louis ragtime."

"Your wife was more than well-off, and your brother Charlie did all right, too," Frigate said. "He was a constable, the first black elected to public office in Missouri. When he died, I think it was Christmas Day, 1935, he left a hundred and five thousand dollars in a trust fund for his family. Big money in those days."

"Even bigger money for a nigger," Tom said. "Nineteen thirty-five, you say?"

"I'll ask the Computer if it's got a book titled They All Played Ragtime," Frigate said. "You'll like to read it. Lots about you. It'll make you proud."

"I don't need no book for that, but I'll get it."

The day after the Computer told him that his Jumpin' Planet was finished, Tom Turpin entered it. It was ten in the morning; the sky was blue except for a few high-seeming, thin, cotton-white clouds. Tom went down the steps leading into it and found, as he had ordered, his chauffeur and his pink 1920 convertible Mercedes-Benz waiting for him. The android chauffeur was six feet three inches tall, pale-ski

He got in the back seat and said, "Home, James." The beauty started up fine, its motor purring, and they began the long winding drive through the tu

"Shouldn't of made the road so narrow," Tom muttered. "But, what the hell, there won't be any oncoming traffic."

After a while the woods thi

The road took them away from Turpinville near the edge of the vast chamber. "Wouldn't know it if I didn't know it," Tom said. "Looks like more forest and hills there. I ain't go

From the entrance, a straight path to Turpinville was only two and seven-tenths miles. The road designed by Turpin took up almost ten miles, however, to the town, and he could have taken a branch road and made the trip twenty-two miles. Now and then he glimpsed the roof of his town, and his heart surged with pride. "Mine, all mine."