Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (26 page)

He knelt near Jacob’s stone, reached out and dusted the name where soot clogged the etched grooves. He swatted at a mosquito, cleared his throat, then placed his hand firmly on the stone and closed his eyes.

Embarrassed and feeling more than a little foolish, he mumbled words in his head, then decided to speak them out loud.

“Well, sir. You said you would fix this…this thing; you told daddy that you’d—” He cleared his throat again. “Uh, so, I mean, if you could help, somehow, I’d appreciate it. I just want to find daddy, you know, wherever he ended up, and I’ve got to get…”

He stopped and coughed against the lump that broke his voice. “I’ve just got to get Daddy’s land back. I need help. So if you could, you know—”

Like a twig breaking, something snapped inside him. What the hell was he doing? He looked around to see if anyone had seen him. Only one witness, as far as he could tell—a red-tailed hawk perched on a telephone wire high over his head. With the sharp light overhead, Julian squinted through watery eyes. “Yeah? What you looking at?” As if in response, the hawk fluttered, lifted itself, and flew away.

Damn. This was nuts. Amazing what no sleep and stress will do to you. He got up abruptly and clapped dust from his hands and wiped them on his jeans. He often wondered if, when folks lost their minds, if they could point to an exact moment when it happened. Maybe someday he’d look back and remember this day, begging for help from a dead man’s gravestone.

He closed his eyes and crossed his heart, even though he’d never been Catholic, but it couldn’t hurt. He looked up at the fading blue of the sky, and blinked tears from eyes too tired to fight them. Then he walked back toward the car.

Velmyra said nothing, just looked at him and smiled as he got back into the car. These last couple of days, she had played cooling showers to his dry desert. She had kept him sane. If ever there had been a time in his life when he needed someone beside him—quiet, assuring, strong—this was the time.

He stole sidelong glances at her now and then as he drove toward the interstate, her head tilted toward the window, sleeping now, her mouth slightly agape, a small track of drool trailing from the corner of her mouth. Even now, her face puffy from lack of sleep, mouth trickling spittle, her hair a wiry mess, he wanted to reach over and stroke the soft hollow beneath her cheekbone with the back of his hand.

Neither of them had spoken about their night together, it had seemed like ages ago, and there had been too much else on their minds. And considering the tumult they were caught up in, the rekindling of an ancient, used-to-be love seemed ridiculously trivial with all that had happened—to them, to their families, their friends.

To Simon.

But there was a burn of desire inside him, even while the world he’d known his whole life stood precariously on end.

When they crossed the bridge into Baton Rouge, the hotel and industrial lights from the river shone like uniformly cut stones against the pink bank of sunset clouds gathering along the horizon.

“We’re here already?” Velmyra stretched, frowned and rubbed her eyes. “Wow. Guess I was a little tired. Sorry I wasn’t exactly good company.”

He said nothing, but smiled in her direction, decreasing his speed as he exited onto the ramp that led off the highway into the city. Suddenly aware that in a few minutes Velmyra would be gone and he would be alone again, he felt the bloom of loneliness around him, and his pulse quickened with the certainty of her absence.

He slowed the car as he pulled into the lot of the Day’s Inn, and wheeled around to the back side of the motel where Vel’s parents’ room overlooked a large cement patio and swimming pool painted robin’s egg blue.

“Looks like they’re not even here,” she said, staring at the empty parking space. She looked at her watch. “She said they might go over to Copeland’s for something to eat. Do you want to come inside for a minute?”

“Just give your folks my best when you see them,” he said. He got out of the car and held open her door as she stepped out.

He put both hands in his pockets. “Vel, look…”

“I know,” she said. “We should talk…about everything.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. So much is going on. Let’s just keep in touch by phone.”

“Before you go, I just want to say how much I really appreciate…”

She touched his chin with her finger. “You don’t have to thank me. You know that.”

He nodded.

“Call me tomorrow?”

“For sure.”

She reached up to him and gave him a small hug. He could smell the burn of sun on her hair. And without looking again at him, she turned and went inside her room.

He was just getting back onto the highway when his cell phone rang.

It was Sylvia, her voice urgent.

“You OK?” he said.

“I’m fine, well, you know, OK. Are you heading back this way?”

“I’m in the car now.”

“It’s Matthew Parmenter. They took him to Baton Rouge General, and they’re not giving him much time at all. He’s asked to see you right away.”

Julian’s heart skipped. He pulled the car into the fast lane to pass the traffic.

“I’m on my way.”

A
nother city by the river—lights gleaming from ferries and barges cruising by. This one, though, a safe harbor from the other, its streets bulging with the overflow of the dispossessed. The once modest, workaday city of Baton Rouge had swelled into a bustling metropolis overnight, and the influx of evacuees had turned the city into one large, frayed nerve: intersections were choked with cars backed up at stoplights, drive-in bank lines snaked around corners, restaurant and grocery store parking lots bulged at their seams. Throughout the day, irritated drivers honked car horns, their patience worn as thin as the fine mist that settled over the Mississippi.

Located in the Mid-City section of town, Baton Rouge General unfolded like a city within itself; inside, it opened into a vast welter of fluorescent-lit corridors leading to wings in every possible direction. Julian inquired at the information desk, then got onto and off the wrong elevator, found the right one leading to the cardio care unit, and arrived at Matthew Parmenter’s private room.

The room was dimly lit except for the red and green glow of computer panels. The entire room chattered like a thicket of electronic chirps, whistles, and hums—a night garden of life-sustaining noises.

Matthew lay sunken into the white sheets, his white hair thick and tussled in vertical clumps, his skin ghostly pale and veiny, his closed eyes centered in dark rings. When Julian stepped across the room and sat in a wooden armchair next to the bed, the pale gray eyes opened.

A small
hnnnn
came from Parmenter’s throat, not so much a groan, as Julian first thought, but more a noise of acknowledgement, of recognition. The old man tried to prop himself up with his elbows.

Julian stood and reached behind Parmenter’s head to plump the pillows. “Careful. I’ll help you.”

A faint smile curled Parmenter’s thin lips.

“Doctors,” he said. “One thinks I’m too old to survive surgery, the other thinks it’s the only chance I have. I told them both to leave, and let me be.”

He leaned back and let out a labored sigh.

“Thank you, Julian,” he said. “I hoped that you would come, that I would see you again before I…”

He strained against the pull of cords and tubes, one carrying a supply of blood into his arm, another feeding him oxygen.

“Hell of a way to go, considering, huh?” he said in a near whisper.

Julian guessed at the intended sarcasm. It was true—it wasn’t only hurricanes, broken levees, and floods that moved the hands of fate these days.

Matthew fixed a sharp gaze on Julian, though his voice was paled by exhaustion and a weakened heart. “Have you found him?”

“No sir.”

He leaned his head back and sighed again. “Don’t give up hope, son. You have to keep looking.” He coughed again.

“Don’t worry. I will.”

Parmenter let out a choked wheeze, then sat back on the bank of pillows, and rolled his eyes upward toward the ceiling.

“I am so sorry that nothing came of my inquiries about your father. The police were…well, you would not believe how they’ve struggled with all this.” He pointed to the television, and told Julian about a ninety-year-old man who was found recently in a shelter in Denver, Colorado. “So you see, it’s still possible.”

He pointed to the wooden chair next to the bed, and Julian sat again. “Thank you for coming. Did I say that already?”

“It’s OK, sir.” Julian didn’t know what else to say, so he continued, “I, uh, I got here as soon as I heard. Sylvia called me. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m feeling lousy,” he said. “But I’ll get right to the point. I know your father told you about our little business deal a few years ago.”

His voice was whispery as words rushed out in a long, labored breath, then another struggling breath and another rush of words. Julian fidgeted in his chair, crossed his right leg over his left.

“And I know you think I cheated your father.”

The man’s bluntness shocked Julian. He looked away a moment, and folded his hands across his lap. “Well, I…”

“You don’t have to worry. You can speak freely to a dying man. You thought I cheated him.” His voice was insistent.

“Yes, sir, I did.”

He nodded, with a faint smile on his lips. “I appreciate your honesty. But let me tell you, I had no idea your father’s recipe would take off the way it did. It was a gamble for both of us. It was entirely possible that the product would not earn even as much as I paid Simon. The fact that it became wildly popular was highly unlikely, but fate is peculiar sometimes. You never know how things will turn out.

“But all that was many years ago. Since then I’ve learned that some things are more important than business. I saw how your father struggled with money when your mother was ill. I offered to help him. But he refused. My wife, Clarisse…” He coughed again, sitting forward, again straining against the restrictive cords.

“Clarisse never let me forget that we had money while Simon struggled, and why things were that way. She thought of me…well, the way you did. I have tried many times since then to get your father to accept money from me, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Your father is a proud, stubborn man.

“So I wanted you to bring your father to me when you found him. As I mentioned before, he owes me something. And I have something for him he’ll not be able to refuse.”

Julian shrugged. He didn’t know what the old man could be talking about. “If….when I find him, and he’s…OK, I’ll bring him here.”

“Good. And I have another favor to ask you.”

Parmenter’s words dissolved into a sharp fit of coughs. A monitor beeped steadily and a nurse rushed in. Julian stepped aside, and as another nurse entered, began to move toward the door.

And that was when he noticed him. Julian hadn’t even heard the stranger enter the room. He was a tall, broad-shouldered black man who looked to be in his late-forties, and dressed in a finely tailored dark blue pinstriped suit that hugged his muscular frame perfectly. His head was shaved; a thick bushy mustache and bristly beard consumed the bottom half of his face, and a diamond stud blinked from his left earlobe. His well-heeled look, given the recent realities in Louisiana, made Julian think he must be an insurance agent (a highly successful one), a lawyer, or a funeral home director.

The man waited silently at the doorway until Julian headed to leave.

“Mr. Fortier. If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you.”

In the coffee lounge/waiting room at the east end of the wing, the man introduced himself as Cedric Cole, Matthew Parmenter’s attorney. He and Julian sat together opposite each other on low faux-leather sofas in front of a coffee machine.

When the man placed two Styrofoam cups of coffee on the table between them, Julian thanked him and took a sip from the one nearest him. With his black leather briefcase placed on the floor next to his feet, Cole leaned forward.

“Mr. Fortier, Mr. Parmenter has instructed me to hire you—that is, you and your band, or whatever group of musicians you can organize—to play for his funeral. That is, if you’re willing. A traditional New Orleans jazz funeral with parade, second line, the full works.”

Julian was speechless. Stunned, first by the presence of Parmenter’s slick-looking black attorney who dressed like a million bucks, and second by the request itself. A jazz funeral for Parmenter? Well, that figures—everybody in New Orleans wants a jazz funeral. He blinked twice, then leaned back against the sofa pillow, rubbing his knees with his palms.

“Certain things will have to be arranged slightly differently, the conditions in the city being what they are,” Cole continued. “He wants the second-line parade to course through the French Quarter, ending at the location where his restaurant used to be. There are a few other specifics Mr. Parmenter has asked for, certain musical selections, et cetera. And you and your friends will be generously paid, of course.”

Still dumbstruck, Julian looked at Cole in bewilderment, and it struck him that his father’s oldest friend was actually dying. He hadn’t played such an event since he’d lived in New Orleans, and didn’t even know where the guys in the band were, if they were in town, or if they even made it through the storm in one piece. Or, if they were alive and well, would be able to take time from rebuilding their lives to play a funeral.