I popped open my beer and guzzled it while it was still icy. The amount of pompous shit I would take from Nye for drinking mass-produced gnat’s piss from Milwaukee was considerable, but that was unimportant. Today was just the sunniest of marching days. The air was unmoving and marinated. This was a setting where even the terminally repressed can slip loose for a moment.
But more important, there was no way I was going to tell him.
The Mighty Messengers were an all-black ensemble, but there were plenty of self-conscious white tourists and lighter-hued locals in attendance further back, drinking from plastic cups, dancing mostly alone, taking pictures with cell phones or with complicated SLR cameras, and comprising a sizable minority in the egalitarian ranks of the second line. The Unity Soul Ten got things going with “Shrimp and Gumbo,” which was on a Rebirth recording I’d been listening to that very morning. We marched behind the Soul Ten as they in turn marched behind the Mighty Messengers, who stepped proud and high, sang out loud, the men turned out in white tuxedos and white hats and white patent leather shoes, the ladies spinning their dainty white parasols and trailing a haze of long white feathers behind them.
Progress was unhurried.
The band and the first line looked riotously sharp.
And with considerably less sartorial splendor, we brought up the rear.
On either side of the road, yellow tape was stretched along the length of the route, and more people walked on the sidewalk behind the flimsy barrier. A black cop paced us on one side, but mostly he laughed and he danced, in as much as a man of his considerable size could be said to dance. There were maybe thirty Messengers and they all strutted and sashayed. Every once in a while someone broke rank and moved to the tape to hug an acquaintance.
I was reminded that New Orleans is a small town that grew even smaller after the flood, which made it easy for some folks to leave, and then made it hard for them to come on back.
The Soul Ten broke down their first song enough to make it last almost half an hour. Most of us in the second line were loosely dressed for comfort, but the band members were decked out in several layers of the loudest lilac polyester. As they hauled along heavy brass instruments, the Ten were freely sweating. Entrepreneurial kids kept an endless flow of bottled water coming to them. I did notice that the Ten never had more than one band member taking a break at any one time.
At the hour mark, another dozen musicians suddenly augmented the Soul Ten. This was Royal Orleans and they would be our tour guides for the next quarter of the march. The changeover was seamless as both bands belted out “Tootie Ma is a Big Fine Thing” together for a while. There were a few weak groans from the assembled hardcore. This was clearly solid tourist fare, and we solid tourists lapped it up.
“This ain’t no Mardi Gras y’all,” someone shouted.
There was mostly good-natured laughter to accompany this.
At this point, a tall black kid with a banjo joined us. He walked right alongside me, a skinny beanpole in loose black sweatpants with pleather strips down both sides and green and yellow Nike shoes on his feet. The polo horseman on his shirt took up a quarter of his chest. The shirt was black. The horsey and his jockey were a close match for the shoes. The kid was maybe fifteen.
I watched him as we marched and he tried to play along. His head was scrunched over the neck of the instrument as he gently fingered the few chords he knew. He wasn’t strumming loud enough to be heard by anyone.
“How long have you been playing?” I inquired.
He grinned down at me.
“Just be tryin’ this shit out right now.”
“It’s not easy.”
“You play?” he asked me.
“A little guitar,” I said.
“I wanna learn to play more.”
“You should. Why the banjo?”
He looked down at the instrument. “Belonged to my Daddy. He died in Katrina.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He shrugged once. “I was little.”
“Could he play?”
He started to smile. “Everyone say ‘bout as well as I do. When I get better I’m gonna walk up front with the band.” He gestured towards Royal Orleans up ahead. “Make some pro money. Get me some new KDs.”
I must have looked blank.
He pointed down at his feet. “These last years.’”
I nodded as if I understood.
Royal Orleans now had the gig to themselves, as the Soul Ten melted back into the crowd at the next intersection. There were a dozen musicians in the new band, mostly on brass, two on drums, in classic Blues Brothers attire: black jackets and black trousers, white shirts and black ties, black hats with sharp brims and the band name in loud glitter stenciled across the hatband in the front. They looked like bus conductors. One of the two drummers was a woman. The trombone player looked very familiar. I smiled and he nodded back. It was the bass player from the bar in Algiers.
We got close during the next break.
He had recognized me. “You’re sure getting yourself out and about,” he said jokingly.
“You too. This is a lot of fun.” And I meant it.
“Glad to hear it. So where else have you been?”
We were both almost shouting.
“I saw the Meters last night.”
He smiled. “You don’t say. I was there.”
“It was busy.”
He nodded. “They’re a big draw these parts. And now you’re out here.”
“I went to St. Peter, too.”
He nodded approvingly. “Well you certainly shouldn’t miss that. Did you find some street music to listen to?”
“I bought a few compilations.”
He nodded approvingly. “That’s good. Which ones?”
I could suddenly only remember the one name.
“From Piety to Desire.”
“Which volumes?”
I was forced to confess: “I don’t remember.”
“They can be uneven. Gotta admire that weird old guy though. He puts them out at least once every year.”
“That weird old guy?”
“That’s not fair. Templeton Rowley is the name,” he said. “He’s a colorful resident, used to be from a fancy family up north; owned a couple of chemical plants up at Baton Rouge and they made a heap of money during the Second World War. Templeton was the family oddball. Didn’t want to have much to do with all their money, though they did cut him loose with more than enough of it so that he could show up in New Orleans one day all hell-bent on being another unauthorized local music historian in a town already bursting with them. He soon starts in, recording all sorts of local music. Anything he can find that fits his credo of religiously putting out only the most obscure artists, whose material is only original work. Rowley himself produces, all the recordings are made in a small studio he has somewhere, and it should be mentioned that for being a total amateur he gets a very respectable sound.”
“Have you recorded with him?”
“Never have had that particular honor. Shit. I need to stop talking. We’re only playing for the next hour. What are you doing after this?”
“Marching some more with the next band?” I said half-heartedly.
He pretended to frown. “You wanna do something else?”
“Such as?”
“Play a jazz funeral?”
“I’d like that,” I told him.
“Starts off at Washington Square. You know where that is?”
“I’m staying very close.”
“We finish up down beside the water at Crescent Park.”
“I’ve been there.”
“It’s a fifteen-block walk from the park to the river. The widower is bringing the ashes. We’ll be real close to Piety and Desire at the end. You’d sure as fuck better like ‘Amaz
ing Grace’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’ because we’ll be playing them for most of the way there. You could bring your guitar and play. They’re both easy.”
On our first meeting in the Algiers bar I had mentioned that I played badly.
Maybe he’d forgotten the badly part.
“I should warn you that when he lets her ashes go, we’re gonna be doing an Eagles song.”
“Which one?”
“Believe it’s called ‘Desperado.’ It was playing when they first met. Gotta confess I’ve never played it before. It’ll probably sound fine.” He sounded momentarily less than certain.
“A brass band playing the Eagles?”
“Sure. Why not? Everything in music is borrowed and everything is then remade into something else, into something that sounds like it’s new, even when it usually isn’t. How do you like our name?”
“I do. It sounds very fancy.”
“Well it’s a Led Zeppelin song. I really have to start playing now. Funeral starts at 3:30. Come and play, or at least come. Washington Park on the Elysian Fields side.”
He left me then as the Royal Orleans began playing “St. James Infirmary.” The tourists began to cheer as a number of the Mighty Messengers succumbed to what looked like a legitimate outbreak of swooning.
* * *
The mourners were already congregated on the sidewalk beside the park. There were maybe forty assembled. Most had to-go cups to sip from and the atmosphere was sunny on the surface with undercurrents of sadness. The event promised to be well organized. Flyers were being distributed and any inequities in bead and alcohol distribution were being hastily rectified.
I had brought my guitar, and I stood holding it self-consciously as the bass player introduced me to the rest of Royal Orleans. I was pleased. I could now stop referring to him as the bass player. His name, finally revealed, was Spencer.
The flyer enabled me to acquaint myself with the history of the recently deceased. Her name was Cheryl McAllister. She had been a chemistry professor at Loyola in the College of Humanities and Natural Sciences. She had two large dogs and no children. Her husband, Lewis, was also a professor at Loyola. He taught in the Art and Design Undergraduate Program. They were both nearing seventy and had planned to retire soon. They loved New Orleans. They danced together on Saturday mornings in the Evangeline Parish. They lived in the Garden District. He was born and raised in New Orleans. She was originally from Newport in Rhode Island. They owned a summer house in Jamestown.
The cancer had begun in her liver and shunted rapidly through her system. She had rejected almost all treatments, except the first few doses of chemo and a solitary blood transfusion. As she neared the end, she made her wishes very clear. She would die as gently as possible, with only orange juice to sip and as much morphine as the hospice could provide. As she put it: “I’ve been high a good many times in this life and I have no problem being high when I take my leave.”
It was five days since Cheryl’s body had been cremated. Lewis McAllister gripped his wife’s ashes in a tarnished metal flask. The mourners were mostly white and ran from late middle age to very late middle age. They wore comfortable sandals, baggy cargo shorts and faded jazz heritage T-shirts. The McAllisters had cultivated magnolias in their garden, and many participants clutched branches of the white and purple and pink flowers in their hands. Most of the petals had browning edges as the blooms in question were now well past their prime.
Spencer introduced me to Lewis McAllister. Photographs showed his wife had been tiny and fit. Lewis was a bear of a man exploding out of an ill-fitting dark suit, with only a handful of long ginger hairs leaping upwards unrestrained from his ruddy scalp.
He shook my hand with unforced vigor. I mumbled the customary words and he noticed my accent immediately. Did I know his roots were primarily Scots? His family was from Fife. He and Cheryl had been there many times. She loved to visit Perth. Had I been there? Could I play “Amazing Grace”? They both liked the tune even though they were by no means religious. Cheryl had little time for churches and dogma, he said, but now that she was gone he . . . but that last thought drifted away. He had wanted to have a piper play knowing she would have loved it, but he had been unable to find one at such short notice.
When Lewis spoke, he kept slipping between tenses. In some his Cheryl was still present, while in others she was past.
Lewis McAllister was talking in lieu of falling apart.
When it was finally my turn to speak, it was difficult to locate the best words. I had been to Perth many times. Would it be okay to play “Amazing Grace” in C? It was a shame about the pipes and the piper. I was very sorry for his loss.
And by and large my answers seemed to be suitable.
He was happy with the C key so I was able to assure him that “Amazing Grace” was well within my limited abilities. He smiled then.
It was clear that my heritage was of more importance than my prowess on the guitar. That was equally fine with me.
We did play “Amazing Grace” in C. We played it in C many times. While it was simple enough, the experience of walking and playing at the same time was a novel one for me. The mourners sang with us. The words to the hymn had been printed on the back of the flyer, superimposed over pictures of Cheryl—artistically rendered in sepia—pulling hard against the twin bulk of her dogs, on her knees in a garden with a stretch of beach and the ocean and a high suspension bridge in the far background, and two-stepping hard on a cracked linoleum dance floor with a game and sweaty Lewis in tow.
There was some confusion as we neared the river and the park. There was either a high bridge to climb over, or the train tracks to navigate a little further along. Lewis was consulted and the gentler gradient of the tracks was selected. The band kept on walking. Each time we got to the end of the song, the mourners began anew. They were loud, especially at the first verse. We played it as slowly as they sang it. Spencer took an appropriately doleful solo on one pass through. On another there were several nods in my direction, an unspoken indication that I could take a turn and solo if I so desired. But I shook my head. I knew I wasn’t good enough or confident enough or belonged enough to do much of anything except strum along quietly in the background and try not to smirk at the absurd amount of pleasure this event was providing me.
We passed people on the street. Tourists took cell phone pictures; all species of hats were solemnly doffed in our wake.
As we crossed the tracks, a woman jogged across our path in a bright red sports bra and shorts with matching red iPod and earbuds. I’m not truly certain she even noticed us.
Beyond the tracks, the footpath followed the curve of the river. A half-dozen wooden steps dropped down to the edge of the water. Royal Orleans arrived first and we stood there awkward and uncertain for a moment before Spencer called out for “We Shall Overcome.”
We played it in G; I was able to keep up.
When the rest of the procession had caught up with us, Lewis walked to the front of the crowd. He gripped the container tightly in his hand as he pulled several sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. He had clearly prepared a speech that he began to unfold with a shaking hand. This process threatened to take forever with the container in the one hand slowing him down. He made to place it on the ground. Then he changed his mind. Someone offered to take it from him. Lewis began to hand it over. Then he stopped again. So it was that he stood there, hopeless and confused, utterly defeated.
It was a time-trapped heartbreak of a performance we were observing.
Two women stepped to save him. Papers were held and collated, and the urn was placed gently on the ground, close to Lewis, so that he could begin his speech.
Royal Orleans stood silently holding their instruments. The mourners awkwardly gripped their sprigs of magnolia and their drinks and their sheets of paper. The two ladies stood on either side of Lewis like end tabl
es. Both were petite compared to him. One was even smaller than Cheryl McAllister. A closer observation revealed that, by default, she could only be the deceased’s younger sister.
We all looked toward Lewis. His beginning was far from encouraging. He stared at the sheets of paper as if he had never seen them before in his life. Was he uttering some of the words silently to himself? Then he opened his mouth wide and his big, round red face collapsed in grief.
Royal Orleans began to play “Desperado” with stilted deliberation as Lewis’ shaking bulk was delicately supported by the two doll-sized ladies. Several extended minutes passed before he composed himself, opened the flask, and began to walk towards the water.
It was reasonable to suppose that he would pause at the edge, but he kept right on going into the water. It was as high as his knees when he stopped and turned to face us. We watched him as he mouthed four words and emptied the ashes onto the water reluctantly.
“Goodbye my little one.”
Cheryl McAllister’s ashes lay on the surface. With a single beckoning gesture, Lewis invited others to join him. Several mourners walked out into the water, and soon the fading magnolia blooms were falling amid the ashes.
When it was over, the mourners waddled wet-footed back to the parking lot beside the bridge. As I heard the flapping of old Birkenstocks, I did wonder if the aquatic portion of the afternoon had been planned.
A number of cars had clearly been positioned there for the aftermath. We lost a few of the faithful at that point, but Lewis and many of his friends had gotten their second wind. Could we walk with him back to the park? Could we play some more? Royal Orleans never hesitated for a second. They surely could, because in truth this was what had pretty much been expected all along.
So “We Shall Overcome” was reprised. Things got a lot more jovial after that. If we had walked all the way to the river in a spirit of studied sadness, we returned to the park in jubilation. Lewis and his friends opted to dance all the way back to the park. Could we play “Tootie Ma”? Hell yes we could! Or rather, they could. And for the second time that day Royal Orleans played the song and, not having the faintest clue what chords to play, I beat out the rhythm on my guitar and did my best to sing along
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