Chapter Thirty-Nine

Despite the suffocating summer heat, Remy dressed in a lightweight pale gray suit and knotted a blue tie the same shade as a Regal Restorations shirt around his neck. Most of the Broussards attending NuNu’s funeral would be far more casually dressed, but he intended to show his respect for the family if not the person lying in the casket. Not likely they’d attack him at Moity’s low-end funeral home selected for the burial rather than ponying up for classy Duchamp’s, even if Blackie Tauzin’s brother-in-law who owned the place offered them a good discount.

Julia walked him to the door of the Black Box. “I’d be willing to go with you.” She wore a necklace of dark stitches around her throat.

“No, it’s a family matter.”

“Okay.” She backed off. Both were learning their boundaries. “I realize I’m not a family member—yet.” That and a farewell kiss filled him with optimism and hope for their future.

The coroner found the trowel embedded in NuNu’s chest and enough drugs in his system to explain the reason for his rage. Easy to ascertain the cause of death as a severed artery. After a week, Malcolm Moity drove his circa 1960s hearse to the morgue and picked up the body for embalming. The sheriff interviewed all the witnesses, declared the incident self-defense, and declined to press any charges. A few said the Broussards could get away with murder—most that NuNu had been in trouble since the day he came into the world and went out the same way. The talk would die down eventually, and be raked up from time to time as the occasion demanded.

The truck barely cooled off by the time he parked in Moity’s gravel lot by the railroad track. Remy stopped in the restroom before entering the parlor assigned to Nolan Broussard. Not wanting his family to think it was flop sweat, he wiped the perspiration from his face and made sure his hands were dry before walking on the worn runner toward NuNu’s coffin. Chilly as the grave inside the mortuary.

Dozens of dark, nearly black Broussard eyes turned his way when he entered and tracked him to the front of the room. Not a chair stood empty, but not a tear in any of those eyes. Flower arrangements sat on either end of the casket, nowhere else in the room. He stood behind two of NuNu’s pals. One dropped a roach of marijuana, still in its clip, by the pale hands crossed at the waist. The other placed a six-pack of beer at the shiny shoes of the corpse who, judging by the way it hung on the thin body, wore a suit that probably belonged to someone else. The cosmetologist had washed away the dye job and returned the hair to dirty blond. The two druggies slinked past the family in the first row and left the hall.

When Remy’s turn came, he bowed his head and committed NuNu to hell in his mind, but crossed himself as he’d been taught since childhood. He guessed he’d have to confess that someday, being unable to forgive. He turned to face Old Broussard sitting in his chair brought from the Barn and the long row of people beside him consisting of Slick, a few of his brothers, and a couple of his older sons—the pallbearer brigade. All of them wore their black Barn attire while the old man had donned his Sunday best.

Nonc took his offered hand without uttering a word and jerked his head toward Slick sitting beside him. The old man held up an arm that brought Mal Moity running on his stubby legs, his pot-belly shaking like newly unmolded aspic beneath his white shirt and black suit. “Get dat crap out da coffin. It’s disrespectful.” Mal reached into the casket and removed the beer and roach, carrying off the offerings.

Shoulders back, jaw firm, Remy stood before Slick. “I regret I had to kill your son. He tried to murder Julia.” To say he was truly sorry would have been a lie, though he would rather have sent NuNu to prison than the grave. Remy held out his hand to NuNu’s father. They shook. The tension leaked from the frigid, floral-scented air of the funeral home.

“Come talk wit’ me.” Slick rose and led the way outside, offered Remy a cigarette, got a refusal, and lit one for himself. “Not so sure he was my son. His mama was one of our whores. Leila she called herself. We caught her shooting up and were ready to toss her out when she claimed to be carrying my child. I was sixteen. Scared the crap out of me. No telling who the father really was, but yeah, it could have been mine. I never could resist a big-haired, bosomy blonde. So we kept her on. Had to detox both of them when the kid was born. He didn’t look nuttin’ like me. Put the baby in day care and in the hands of my mama at night. I guess Leila thought the family would set her up somewhere nice. When that didn’t happen, she took off with one of her johns, left the baby behind.”

“You never did a blood test?”

Slick took a deep drag on his cigarette. “No point after she abandoned the kid. Ma had a heavy hand with children, and he cried all the time. Never was right in the head. After a while, the day cares wouldn’t take him neither. Too much trouble. He got passed around the family, didn’t last too long in any home. Good thing we have a lot of relatives. Anyhow, we tried to raise him, and he ends up in jail before he finishes high school. The old man and me thought working at the Barn after he got out might settle him. It didn’t. So, he’ll be buried under a headstone calling him Nolan Broussard and his dates. That’s all. Beloved by nobody and regretted by none.”

What a terrible epitaph for anyone. Remy felt a twinge of pity for the child. He might have been nicer to the kid if he hadn’t been a typical self-involved teen. As for the man NuNu became, no sympathy there. He could have stayed clean, followed orders, and remained safely under the dark wings of the Broussard family for the rest of his life, but wasn’t capable of that.

“Just wanted you to know the whole story, Remy. No one is coming after you about this. Hell, you’re one of our success stories. NuNu was a screw-up.”

Remy had said those same words to the dead man’s face. Awful the rest of the family felt the same. He found himself offering the manly hug favored by his family, as he had no words of consolation. “If you ever want to retire to Black Diamonds, say the word.”

Slick shook his head. “Broussards don’t retire. Someone got to run the Barn and all the other stuff. I’m next in line, and my daddy’s ticker ain’t so good. I imagine I’ll be taking over sooner rather than later. I appreciate you came, and we settled this.”

“Me too.”

Slick ground out his cigarette in an urn filled with wilted impatiens and returned to the viewing. Remy decided against going to the hour-long funeral Mass, the cemetery, the reception at Slick’s house afterwards. He got in his truck and returned to the Black Box to change his clothes. Julia, of course, had gone to work.