Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (32 page)

“Hold on, man.” Julian said. “Don’t let them take your land. Do whatever it takes. It’s yours. You fight for it.”

Dereek nodded. “Yeah. I will.”

“What are you going to do? You OK where you’re staying now?”

He told Julian his plans to go back to Austin after the funeral, where he was staying with a cousin who had a spare bedroom in a townhouse close to the university. He’d get a day gig, then check out the music scene and see what freelance work he could get.

“Then I’m gonna come back and rebuild my house,” he said.

Julian nodded, smiled. “All right, then.” He looked at his watch. “Get some good sleep. I’ll see you in the morning. Bright and early.”

They shook hands. As Dereek turned to walk away, Julian called after him.

“You keep your head up, Little D!”

Dereek looked back and smiled at the nickname his friend had given him years ago, when they had been as close as brothers.

“Keep my head up? Don’t worry. With all that water, I had plenty of practice.”

On a cloudless morning beneath a brilliant sun, a shout of brass and a rhythmic rumble of drums split the hot, thick air.

No one knew exactly when the tradition got started—the funereal cadence, the somber march in slow, studied steps, the swell of trumpets and trombones wailing a mournful cry before escorting the departed soul to a jubilant release—but of the music’s source there was no doubt. Born on a breeze that swept across the African plains, it winged west to the cotton fields of America and seated itself in the soul of the South. It slumbered through the long night of slavery, stirred in the hopeful air of campground meetings and Sunday-morning-witness prayer circles before finding life and breath in the beating heart of New Orleans. The marriage of jazz and funerals may have been an unlikely pairing, but once done, the love-match was as much a part of life in the city as the river that shouldered its shore.

In singles, in pairs, and in small clusters, the mourners of Matthew Parmenter gather at the St. Louis Cathedral near Jackson Square. When the short service ends, strains of “A Closer Walk With Thee” roll out, elegant and elegiac, as the procession of bandsmen, friends, former employees, a small knot of family from out of town, and the stately black hearse begins from the Cathedral down the cobbled streets of the Vieux Carré. Parmenter’s mourners are many, but when the music starts, dozens more who have never heard of the wealthy restaurateur appear, straggling out of the reopened bars and restaurants to join the procession, longing for what has been missing in the city since the flood—the martial roll and snap of snare drums, the blast of trumpets and the gritty growl of trombones, the deep
blaatt
of the sousaphone and the booming
thump
of the bass drum, and later, after the soul’s full release, the strut and swagger of second liners, footsteps high and arms waving, shoulders shaking, their flared umbrellas lifted, their white handkerchiefs like linen doves fluttering high above their heads.

Leading the musicians of Soul Fire, Julian lifts his horn in the air to signal a turn at the corner, and the notes and chords of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” come so easily to mind it is like spelling out his name. He spreads his shoulders as his tone swells in the open blue and the other bandsmen follow his lead, as he is testifying now, blowing clean and pure as if there is no bulk of brass, as if the shiny coil of metal is just a conduit for the song in his soul.

The music filling the air around them, they stroll on for blocks before turning onto Esplanade. When finally the hearse picks up speed, breaks away from the group, and heads toward the highway and Baton Rouge (where Matthew would be buried alongside his wife), the group of mourners, now numbering more than a hundred, circle around to head back to the Square, and the bass drum thumps out a livelier beat.

Now it’s time to ‘cut the body loose,’ as the band breaks into an upbeat “I’ll Fly Away
,”
and the second liners—the friends and strangers and family stepping behind the band—start to sing as mournful dirge becomes exultant dance;
Some glad mornin’, when my life is over, I’ll fly away. …
The bells and slides of horns, once low or level, now tilt upward to the trees and balconies of the Quarter and the blazing sun, and the trumpets let out a joyful scream, and the trombones peal in a gritty moan and the snares and bass drum snap and boom in tight two/four time. Horns swinging side to side, the bandsmen declare every man for himself now, each flying high in his own groove, wrapping their notes around each others’ in a hot embrace, keys abandoned, harmony and dissonance squabbling like irascible lovers, notes locking horns and bumping heads, and nobody caring.

And for a brief speck on the long arc of time, they have all forgotten—hearts unburdened, minds swept clean. No flood, no broken levees. No death, no drowned city. Only grief drowned by song. Only the triumph of a trumpet lifted to the sky. Defiant against the mad turns of fate, hopeful against all reason, the revelers pick up their heels, their umbrellas, their skirts, and in a rocking sea of rhythm, dance their troubles away.

In the middle of it all, Julian stops playing—eyes wet, throat clogged with unexpected tears. He begins a new tune, the one that he heard over and over on the belted turntable in the living room from the time he was six years old. One by one, each man picks up the tune, the one they’d heard whistled over a boiling pot on a kitchen stove on a Saturday afternoon—and “When the Saints Go Marching In” rolls out, sweet and sassy, in the mid-morning air.

After an hour or so, exhaustion claimed all the revelers and mourners and as they parted company, laughter replaced tears. All the members of Soul Fire hugged each other, rubbed heads, clapped backs, wished each other luck in the coming weeks and months of difficult life-rebuilding, and promised to keep in touch.

Grady grinned at Julian, punched him in the shoulder. “I never heard you play better man. I swear it.”

Julian nodded. Yes, he felt it, somewhere in the middle of all that sound. He was a player again. He was back.

He turned when a familiar voice caught his attention. Sylvia, whom he’d spotted earlier, had brought up the rear of the second liners, strutting along with a red satin umbrella trimmed in black fringe.

“Thank you, baby. I needed this,” she told him, dabbing at her eyes. She was dressed in a fitted suit of Navy blue, her hair pulled back, makeup impeccably applied. She gave him a hug, and promised to call him later. Their work, finding Simon, was not yet done.

He was heading back towards his car when he spotted Cedric Cole standing next to his black Jaguar parked near the empty stalls of the French Market. He wore a tailored gray suit, dark shades, and a respectful smile.

He clapped his hands as Julian approached him.

“That was awesome,” he told Julian. “Mr. Parmenter would have been pleased.”

“Thanks,” Julian said, shaking the big man’s extended hand. “It was a good thing, I think, for everybody.”

Cole nodded. “Indeed. By the way, I got your message. That won’t be a problem.”

“Great. Thanks, man.”

Julian had asked if it were possible that the fee for each musician (not including himself) be increased to two thousand. Somehow, he explained, the men had gotten the wrong idea of the pay. But he figured Grady, either thinking wishfully or remembering incorrectly, had relayed a more generous fee to the men than Julian had quoted.

“There’s something else I need to tell you,” Cole said. “Your presence is requested one more time. Tomorrow at my office over on the West Bank—the address on the card I gave you. Around two, if it’s convenient. If not, we can change the time.”

Julian didn’t have anything pressing. “Sure. But there’s no rush. You can just mail those checks to me at the motel.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that.” Cedric Cole took off his jacket and his shades as he opened his car door. “You’ll need to be present,” he said, stepping in and starting the car, “at the reading of Mr. Parmenter’s will.”

C
edric Cole’s office, just across the river in the flood-spared West Bank town of Harvey, was slickly appointed with original oil paintings in bold flashes of color adorning the wheatcolored grasscloth walls, and two pieces of abstract metal sculpture on wood pedestals lit with columns of soft florescence from track lights above. On the wall opposite a huge canvas of a New Mexican sunset in the mountains, bookcases of brown, leatherbound law books reached toward the ceiling.

As soon as Julian arrived, Cole’s secretary, a plump and smiling middle-aged woman, escorted him down a long hallway and into the conference room, where seated around the oblong table of dark walnut were four people he’d never seen before: a thirtysomething man with a long, dark ponytail, and dressed in jeans and a black shirt; two suntanned, auburn-haired women, one in her twenties and the other forty-something; and an older man with thin locks of whitish hair, dressed in a well-tailored black suit and staring constantly at his Blackberry.

Shortly after Julian took a seat, the door opened. Cole entered smiling and sat at the head of the table.

He opened his black briefcase, shuffled papers, then looked up. “OK. So. Everybody’s here. Has everybody met everybody else?”

They proceeded with the awkward introductions. The two women, Matilda and Brittany Jacklyn, a divorced mother and her daughter who’d flown in for the funeral from Minneapolis, were Parmenter’s grandniece and great-grandniece, descended from his deceased older brother, Mark Abraham Parmenter. The thirtysomething man was Freddy Tallent, Parmenter’s gardener, driver, and sometime cook for the last eleven years. The older man was Jackson Buckner, Parmenter’s wife’s nephew by marriage, now living in Chicago.

Julian, Cole explained to all, was the son of Parmenter’s best friend, the well-known head chef at Parmenter’s restaurant. “And you might recognize him as the leader of the brass band at the services yesterday,” he added.

At this, they all smiled and nodded, chattered about how “amazing” the music was, how special the tradition, and how unique to hear such “interesting” music played at a funeral.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life! Uncle Matthew would have been thrilled!” the grandniece Matilda said.

The others nodded, smiled, making approving noises.

“Well,” Cole said, “That’s the New Orleans way.”

He removed a manila folder from his briefcase. “All right. Here we go.”

The reading of the will went quickly. The majority of Parmenter’s liquid assets, a little more than $170,000, he left to the endowment fund of the New Orleans Opera and to the medical school of Tulane University. To the two women, Parmenter left the deed to a vacation condominium in Destin, Florida. To the gardener/ driver, Parmenter left his automobile, a 2004 Cadillac Escalade, and $15,000 cash from his personal account. Parmenter’s wife’s nephew received $13,000 and the shares of two major companies’ stocks Parmenter owned.

Cole turned to Julian, and every pair of eyes in the room shifted in his direction.

“And to Simon Fortier, the best chef in New Orleans and my best friend in the world, and in the event of the aforesaid’s premature death, to his son and heir, Julian Fortier, I leave my New Orleans home on St. Charles Avenue and all the contents therein…”

Julian’s choked cough was clearly audible, and around the room there were the sharp intakes of breath, the clearing of throats and shuffling of feet.

“…as well as full ownership of Parmenter’s Creole Kitchen Red Beans and Rice Mix.”

Again, Cole shuffled papers, removing another sheet from the folder. “And days before his death, Mr. Parmenter added this codicil,” he said.

“And to my friend Simon, my heartfelt apologies.”

Frowns and puzzled looks traveled around the room.

Cole closed the folder and clasped his hands together on the table.

“This ends the reading of Matthew Parmenter’s last will and testament. Are there any questions?”

Silence around the table.

“Good. If there are no questions and no contesting of the will, you’ll all be contacted by my office soon to be advised of how Mr. Parmenter’s bequests are to be carried out.”