Wading Home_ A Novel Of New Orleans Part 19

"Guess we gotta believe so."

A silver van pulled up to the front of the building and a stocky white man with a full salt-and-pepper beard got out, his keys jangling. "Sorry guys," he said. "Been waiting long?"

"Hey! Man! You made it!" Grady grabbed the man's hand and shook it. They had only gotten there fifteen minutes ago, Grady told him. "Hey, thanks a lot for letting us use your place."

The man, Charley Graviere, had owned the small bar for seventeen years, and had hired the band often. "Charley's Sweet Spot," like many of the businesses along the street, had not suffered flood damage but was still closed, since few of the employees had returned, and those who had tried couldn't find a place to stay.

Fifteen minutes or so after Charley unlocked the door, the musicians of the Soul Fire Bra.s.s Band began to arrive and crowded into the wood-paneled, slightly musty s.p.a.ce. Grady was right. Every one of them showed up.

They all had been fairly close when Julian was with the band, but two of the guys, Dereek Bradford, trombonist, and ba.s.s drummer Thaddeus "Easy Money" Church, had been among his closest friends during his dues-paying days of marching bands, second-line parades, and jazz funerals. Yet they had given him as much grief as the others had the night he announced his departure, not so much with words but snide grunts and cold, silent stares.

Of all the men, the one he most regretted disappointing was Dereek, the youngest in the group, who'd been in his late teens when Julian had played with them, and had shadowed Julian like a fawning little brother. When he'd phoned Dereek to say goodbye, his young friend had never returned his call. And when he dropped Easy Money a postcard from New York-Come on up, you always got a place to stay-he'd never heard back.

But this was no time for holding grudges-they had bigger things on their mind than whatever ax they had to grind with him. Each one had lost his home to flood water, and three had lost their instruments. But Parmenter, generous in death, had provided for the purchase of new instruments for those who needed them. It had taken Grady three days to locate and contact all of them-some had been scattered across the country as far away as California, New Mexico, and even Ma.s.sachusetts.

They all shook hands with Julian, some grabbing him in a bear hug-Thanks for the gig, man!-and the warm reception was a relief. In minutes, cases and instruments-trumpets, trombones, drums, a sax, a slightly tarnished sousaphone-lay strewn about the room, and the men ran through the standard New Orleans funeral and second-line music quickly. The minute they began to play, the music exploded, and Julian remembered: there was nothing like the sound of a New Orleans bra.s.s band. Thick, raucous, hot and free, with a life of its own. It pounded the walls of the small room, bursting it at the seams and spilling into the street.

After an hour or so, they adjourned to one of the few reopened bars about a block away. Once inside The Spotted Cat, already high on the music, they ordered a round of beers and shared flood stories.

Casey's tale of being trapped on the balcony of his apartment for forty-eight hours paled next to what they heard from the others. Dereek had watched the rolling sea from his rooftop for five days after sleeping in on the morning of the levee breach and waking to water floating his bed. The snare drummer, Claude Joubert, swam through neck-high currents to rescue his cousins from a burning house, only to bring them back to the dubious safety of his boiling hot rooftop, where they waited two days for the sweet music of U.S. Coast Guard helicopter blades. And Easy Money, the diminutive postal worker, silenced the table with his story of trudging miles through a river of oil, waste, and slime up to his chest and making a makeshift raft out of a mattress to rescue four elderly women from the brackish waters of his drowned neighborhood.

Once away from the flooded city, all had watched the tragedy play out on the TV screens of spare bedrooms, shelters, and church bas.e.m.e.nts around the country. As the men talked, the noise level rose with the alcohol levels in their blood. There was so much anger, so much that needed to be said, as the winds of betrayal had blown powerfully from every direction. The mayor. The governor. The president. The heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who had bungled the aftermath of the flood, and for days had turned a blind eye to the chaos in the city. The Army Corps of Engineers, architects of the poorly built levees that had been ignored for decades by uniformed commanders whose chests bulged with bars and stripes.

All had let them down, then pa.s.sed the blame from one to the other like a Christmas fruitcake. The blame was so abundant it would have taken the bandsmen days to dispense it fairly, but after a couple of therapeutic hours of drinking and venting, the men breathed easier, their joints loosened, their nerves calmed. Bonded by the music and the memories of growing up in the city, they reminisced and even laughed and joked as the dark closed in, the wood paneling holding the comforting scent of stale beer, a precious sign of normalcy in an abnormal world.

Miraculously, none of the other men had suffered the loss of loved ones, but all fell silent when Grady brought up the subject of "Pops," their nickname for Simon. "I sure will miss him, man." Easy Money looked over at Julian, bowed his head in reverence. Simon had fed them many a late night after gigs; sometimes, after a parade with his buddies in the Elegant Gents, Simon would open his door to find seven or eight pairs of young legs stretched across the furniture in his living room. As if that were his cue, he'd reach deep into a cabinet, grab his best iron pot, and start up the stove, still whistling "When the Saints Go Marching In." When one of the boys, knowing how much Simon loved Louis Armstrong, had called him "Pops," the name stuck-Simon loved nothing more than sharing a namesake with the greatest jazzman the city had ever produced.

When the evening wore on into the next morning, the men got ready to head back to their motels; the funeral was only a few hours away. When Julian headed to his car, Dereek called out to him.

"Hey! Wait a minute."

He caught up with Julian just before he got into his car.

"So sorry, man," he said. "About your daddy."

"Thank you."

"Hey, look. If there's anything I can do."

"Yeah, thanks, man."

He put his hands in his pockets, looked up toward the sky, then leveled his gaze at Julian. "I was pretty p.i.s.sed at you when you left, you know."

"I know. I don't much blame you."

"I just want to say that, you know, it's OK. I get it now. I get why you left."

Julian's heart sank. He knew what his old friend was saying.

He looked Dereek in the eye. "No, man. I love this place. This is home. I just...at the time, I just had to get away. To try something new."

Dereek nodded, looked across the street at the vacant buildings. "I know. Everybody got to do his own thing, right?"

Julian clapped his friend on the shoulder. "How you making it, man? You dealing with everything OK?"

Dereek told him again about his last day in the Ninth Ward house he'd grown up in, which, having lasted through four previous generations in his family, was swallowed in minutes by the flood. When the helicopter's rescue basket lifted him high above the neighborhood, he had looked down at the horror. As he rose higher, so did the water, it seemed, engulfing the house as it collapsed and floated in the current, disappearing from view. He knew his house and every other house of the block would not survive this. The world he'd known was gone.

He had promised his father years before when he died that he would take good care of the house and pa.s.s it down the line. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Each new generation of Bradfords born with a house waiting for them. He had plans to b.u.mp out the kitchen the way his mother, who years before lost a mid-life battle with diabetes, had always wanted. But now, the rumors about the future of the Lower Nine kept him awake at night.

"My granddaddy owned that land, free and clear, and so did his daddy before him," he said shaking his head. "That piece of land is all I got, you know what I'm sayin? It's like family. It's mine. mine. They got no right to it." They got no right to it."

Julian had heard the rumors, floating mostly from meetings held around town as city officials grappled with the fragile future of New Orleans. To many, it seemed the close-knit black community was as disposable as the land near his father's house in the Treme that had been destroyed forty years ago to make way for the 1-10 overpa.s.s. He understood who "they" were: the planners and players, movers and shakers who, now that so much of the city was uninhabitable, talked of reshaping it with a different footprint, one that left out the lower-lying neighborhoods of the working cla.s.s. The guys in the suits didn't seem to know much about how their ancestors-freed slaves, many of them-had all sweated blood over their own patch of land for the future of their children and children's children, and they didn't much care.

Julian's life in New York was far removed from the thrust and parry, the pull and give of precious family land. His thousand square foot co-op over a Brooklyn Wash-a-teria was free of the ties of ancestral history. But hearing Dereek's words, he thought of Silver Creek. That plot of land had placed him, alongside his old friends, square in the middle of a struggle to preserve the past. His father had tried so many times to tell him-land meant history, and history meant you knew who you were. It was the legend that helped decipher the map of your life.

Even if you were poor and didn't have, as his father used to say, two dimes to rub together, land meant you always had a place in the world. Julian had grown up with folks who owned little more than a ragged patch of dirt, but held their heads up high. At least they had that that.

With the street lamps not working, the only light on the block was the glimmer of the pale autumn moon. Dereek had always had a youthful face, and usually looked younger than his twentysomething years. But now, washed in hard angles of light and shadow, it glowed with the deep pallor of a man in struggle, the young eyes aged by a reflection of all he had seen. It was a look that had become too familiar in New Orleans lately: lost, despairing, stunned. But somehow, Dereek's large, dark eyes still reflected the faintest trace of hope.

"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."

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On a cloudless morning beneath a brilliant sun, a shout of bra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e.

In singles, in pairs, and in small cl.u.s.ters, 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 hea.r.s.e begins from the Cathedral down the cobbled streets of the Vieux Carre. 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 blaatt of the sousaphone and the booming of the sousaphone and the booming thump thump of the ba.s.s 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. of the ba.s.s 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 bra.s.s, 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 hea.r.s.e 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 ba.s.s 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; 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. ... 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 ba.s.s 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 b.u.mping heads, and n.o.body caring. 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 ba.s.s 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 b.u.mping heads, and n.o.body 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 Sat.u.r.day afternoon-and "When the Saints Go Marching In" rolls out, sweet and sa.s.sy, in the mid-morning air.

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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."

19.

Cedric 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 gra.s.scloth 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 grand-niece 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 bra.s.s 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 grand-niece 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 a.s.sets, 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."

Another moment of quiet. Everyone looked at each other with a mixture of curiosity and a measure of satisfaction at their own good fortunes. But eyes lingered on Julian as each one said their goodbyes and left the room.

Moments later, the room was empty except for Cole and Julian.

"Got a minute?" Cole said. "Let me buy you a drink."