Ragtime

Father and the boy go to the baseball game. Two reporters follow them on their excursion. Father reflects on the current state of the game, which he feels has none of the decorum and professionalism as when he was a child. At one point, the boy catches a foul ball. He gives it back to one of the players, Charles Victor Faust. Faust will later be fired from the team for no reason and remanded to an insane asylum, which is where he will also die.

Father and the boy take the trolley home. Father feels like himself for the first time in months; “a kind of resolute serenity carried them through the evening” (234). Mother and Father have sex that night. They decide the answer to their family’s troubles is a vacation to Atlantic City in New Jersey. Mother decides to take her Black maid along so that Sarah’s infant won’t look out of place. Meanwhile, in New York City, the pressure to locate Coalhouse Walker ramps up as the police suspect that Walker has Communist sympathies. The press investigates Coalhouse’s background and find his Model T in the mud near Emerald Isle. City authorities are embarrassed that their role in Coalhouse’s radicalism has been revealed. The Conklins, the Fire Chief’s family, goes into hiding to evade Coalhouse. Father takes his family to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, and they depart for Atlantic City.

Mother’s Younger Brother has been largely absent at home and does not accompany the family to Atlantic City. Several days after Coalhouse’s attack on Emerald Isle, Mother’s Younger Brother hunts down Walker’s whereabouts. He finds several well-dressed Black men and follows them to a basement. When he enters, he faces Walker. Several young Black men, all in Walker’s “characteristically neat and well-groomed manner” (243), surround him. Coalhouse interrogates Mother’s Younger Brother as to why he has barged into their hideaway. Younger Brother offers to make bombs for their cause. He is welcomed into Coalhouse’s movement.

After Mother’s Younger Brother joins, Coalhouse has six followers. As a leader, Coalhouse “was never harsh or autocratic. He treated his followers with courtesy […] He dealt with them out of his constant sorrow” (245). Mother’s Younger Brother helps Coalhouse bomb the second firehouse. The group studies the newspaper headlines in awe; they read that their second bomb caused Conklin to flee and encouraged journalists to hunt down the Model T car that started it all. Empowered by the effect of their actions, the group collectively refers to itself as “Coalhouse”.

In Atlantic City, the family enjoys their summer days of upper class bliss. The boy enjoys the freedom of exploration, while Mother and Father take a daily swim and have sex in the afternoons. One night, they see a Black band playing ragtime music, and Mother thinks of Coalhouse Walker. She grows sad with her memories of Coalhouse and Sarah: “Mother’s joy in the seashore was more tenuous” in the days after (251). She finds comfort in socializing with Atlantic City’s foreign guests, fascinated by their travels. She takes a strong liking to a well-dressed man who travels with a beautiful little girl.

Mother studies the man who wears a rectangular glass on a chain around his neck. He “often held [it] up to his face as if to compose a mental photograph” (254). One morning, Mother is caught in one of the man’s faux photos. The man apologizes to Mother and introduces himself as Baron Ashkenazy. He is a filmmaker, and the glass helps him compose shots for his movies. The Baron and his little girl have dinner with Mother and Father, who are enraptured by the Baron’s energy and entertaining stories. Father is particularly stunned by the money that the Baron is able to make through filmmaking, which is increasingly popular. Meanwhile, the boy and the Baron’s little girl enjoy their own company.

The Baron is revealed to be Tateh. He has become a filmmaker after the success of his silhouette movie books. Tateh reinvented himself as a Baron to construct a façade of wealth, hoping that he can achieve a secure, wealthy marriage for his little girl when she is older. He wishes “to drive from her memory every tenement stench and filthy immigrant street” (259). The boy and the little girl become close friends and spend every day with each other. One day, they are caught in a storm and hide under the boardwalk from the fierce rain. Tateh and Mother run out on the beach in a panic looking for the children. With relief, they eventually find the boy and little girl. Tateh is struck by Mother’s beauty in the rain. Father, meanwhile, grows impatient to return home. The next morning, he wakes up to the newspapers reporting that Coalhouse and his followers have broken into Pierpont Morgan’s library in New York City. They have barricaded the building and demand a negotiation with the city authorities. An hour later, New York City’s District Attorney calls Father. Father leaves for Manhattan while Mother remains in Atlantic City.