6

Oh, when that rhythm starts to go
Oh, when that rhythm starts to go
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

Monday August 29, 5:45 P.M.

None of us went running down to the football field. We just stayed put. We already knew there was no way Cyrus could have survived. His body was lying facedown on an empty part of the football field, with folks starting to gather around him.

Cyrus’s daughter collapsed to her knees, pounding the concrete steps with both fists.

“Why? Lord, why did we have to be here? Why?” she cried out in a tortured voice. “I need my babies! Lord, where are my two babies?”

Her little girls, who still didn’t know what happened, ran into her arms. And their mother hugged them so tight she nearly squeezed the life out of them.

Pop came over and stood as close to me as he could. I would have given anything to have Pop hug me like that. But I knew we had too many things in the way.

“Why’d it have to happen like this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Pop answered. “It just did.”

After a while, Sergeant Scobie showed up and said how bad he felt, but that somebody had to identify Cyrus’s body, because they found no ID on him. Then I heard him tell Preacher Culver on the low, “It’s not a pretty sight to see.”

Cyrus’s daughter was too broken up to do it. Uncle Roy said he’d go, and so did Culver. I was shocked when Pop told my uncle to stay behind with Cyrus’s daughter—that he’d go with Culver instead. Pop had talked hard against getting involved with anybody else’s problems. But he’d just crossed his own line.

Sergeant Scobie gave Cyrus’s daughter a paper and pen, and she took her arms from around her kids just long enough to write out her father’s full name and birthday. Then Pop and the preacher followed after Scobie, and I fell right in behind them. Pop didn’t argue about me going along. But he turned to me and asked, “This the first dead man you’ll be seeing, son?”

“Except for TV,” I said.

“It takes some gettin’ used to,” said Pop. “Don’t be ashamed to turn your eyes away. You hear me, Miles?”

I nodded my head and could almost feel Pop’s arms around me.

And that was all the support I needed right then to keep strong.

Cyrus’s body was under a white sheet, and some soldiers were carrying it away on a stretcher. Captain Hancock waved them past a whole platoon with their machine guns out. Then Scobie gave those guards a thumbs-up for us to follow through a big metal door.

It was a giant freezer. We pushed our way through the thick plastic strips hanging down from the ceiling by the door, and it was like walking into another world. It wasn’t cold enough to see your breath, but it was probably forty degrees cooler in there, and the stink was gone, too. The air wasn’t heavy, either. It flowed in and out of your lungs smooth, and breathing was almost easy.

There were maybe fifty boxes of food stacked up in one corner, and hundreds of empty ones torn open on the floor. The soldiers lined up two of the wooden skids that those boxes had been delivered on, laying the stretcher across them.

“That’s right. Keep him off the floor,” Hancock told them. “I can’t have any rats getting at him.”

Then Hancock pulled down his white mask and said, “Who’s it gonna be?”

He had a scar across his left cheek that made him look like an evil G.I. Joe.

“I know him the longest,” Pop said, stepping forward.

“Did he look close to this?” asked Hancock, pulling back the top half of the sheet.

Cyrus’s neck was all crooked, and his shoulder blade was sticking through his black skin.

“Yeah, I still recognize him,” said Pop, straight out. “No matter how much of his dignity you try to take.”

Pop and Hancock stood there, grilling each other.

“For all those people out there, there’s no more food than this?” asked Culver, breaking the silence.

But Hancock never answered that question.

“Is that the deceased’s information?” Hancock sneered, snatching the paper from Scobie’s hand. “Escort these evacuees back to where they belong, Sergeant! ”

But before we left, Preacher Culver laid his hand on Cyrus’s leg and said a short prayer. And when he was finished, Scobie was the first to say, “Amen.”

When we got out of Hancock’s earshot, Scobie told us, “Captain’s a professional soldier who’s seen real time in wars. I don’t believe he’s too partial to civilian rescue duty.”

“How about you?” I asked, without thinking.

“Me? I’m a high-school science teacher from Irving, Texas,” he answered. “But I got family in Louisiana and Mississippi that’s got to run from this storm, too. So I want you all to be treated the same way I hope somebody’s lookin’ after them.”

“God will be there for ’em, brother,” Culver said. “You can trust in that.”

As we stepped back out into the stink and the Superdome crowd, I thought about shaking Sergeant Scobie’s black hand. But they were both glued to his rifle.

At our seats, Uncle Roy said it might be a long time till Cyrus got any kind of decent burial.

“They can measure him for a wooden coat, but there ain’t no dry ground to dig a grave,” said Uncle Roy. “I know he was a pain to put up with, but in a way, he was one of our own. He worked at Pharaohs for as long as I can remember—washing dishes underneath you, Doc, while you walked the floor over his head.”

"His family’s gotta live with him in a freezer?” asked Fess. “That’s no way to mourn proper.”

Pop stared out at the middle of the football field where the Saints’ helmet, with that flower on the side, was painted. Then he grudgingly said, “Maybe we need to march for him—send him off right, like he deserves. ”

The three of them agreed, and Uncle Roy went over to talk to Cyrus’s daughter and Preacher Culver about it. I’d seen a jazz funeral once before, when I was visiting Pop during summer vacation and one of his musician buddies passed on. A band marched through the street behind the casket. They played music every step of the way, and by the time it was done, you couldn’t tell if the people were sad the dude had died or having a party over it.

Cyrus’s daughter wanted the march bad for her father.

“It was the music he loved at that club, not washin’ those damn dishes,” she said. “I want people to know he’s gone, and how much his family’s gonna miss him.”

She tore a cardboard beer ad down from the wall and printed on the back, in big letters with a black marker somebody lent her, CYRUS ODELL CAMPBELL, DECEMBER 24, 1934-AUGUST 29, 2005.

Pop put a serious look on his face. Then him and Roy reached down to the bottom of our duffel bag.

“Everybody’s gonna know ’bout these horns now,” Pop said.

“I hear ya, Doc,” Roy said, solemn.

Cyrus’s daughter stood in the corridor, holding the sign out in front of her, with one of her little girls on each side. Preacher Culver was just a step behind her. After that came Pop, Uncle Roy, and Fess lined up three across with their instruments. I knew it wasn’t about me, but I felt lost, like I didn’t belong anywhere.

“You gonna get that drum and play?” Pop asked me.

I grabbed it and went to stand in line behind them. Then Pop moved over a step, making a space for me right next to him.

“We start off playin’ slow and sad, Miles, like Cyrus passing was the most painful thing in the world,” Pop explained. “When that’s finished, we play with the joy of him going to a better place and never having to suffer again. The slaves who started this in these parts believed when they died their souls went back to Africa. So it’s only right that we got your drum.”

I looked around the Superdome at all the black faces and remembered Cyrus screaming out how it was another slave ship. Then I forced myself to take a deep breath and stomached the smell.

“Give me a beat, Miles,” said Pop. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four.”

My hand hit the drum and we all started forward. We headed down the corridor with Pop’s trumpet crying out a sad tune. He was playing right on top of my drumming. And after all this time, it finally felt like we were together on something. Then Uncle Roy and Fess joined in.

People all over the stands were watching. I could see in their eyes how much they’d lost, and how they were mourning, too. They were crying real tears, and some of them even started marching behind us.

The sweat was burning my eyes, but I wouldn’t stop playing to wipe it away. More and more people got up to march. And just when I felt my heart sink as low as it could go, Pop turned it around with his trumpet. He let loose a string of notes that pulled me up from the bottom. It was time to celebrate, and everything inside me started jumping. Uncle Roy and Fess were right on it, too, and my hand was pounding the drum faster and faster on its own.

“I feel we’re headed some place better, Lord!” Preacher Culver called out. “Maybe we’re not worthy, but let your music lead us anyway!”

The people behind us were dancing more than marching now. A woman with an open umbrella jumped into line, pretending the wind from the hurricane was pulling her along. In the stands, people were clapping their hands in rhythm as we passed. And when Pop started playing “When the Saints Come Marching In,” plenty of people started singing along.

We’d made one whole lap around the Superdome and were back where we started. The march was over. Cyrus’s family and Culver turned down the stairs to their seats. Only we kept on playing in front of our section, till everybody dancing behind us disappeared down the corridor.

Pop looked at me like he’d never been prouder to have me for a son. I felt closer to him, too. But deep down I didn’t know how I could trust it. All my life I’d been second-string behind Pop’s playing and grew up hating his music. If banging a drum was going to make Pop see me different, maybe it wasn’t worth it.

The second we stopped playing, I felt a streak of cold shoot down my spine. I wanted to take off running down that football field till I sprinted out of my skin and into some other family.

“Cyrus woulda appreciated what your drum had to say ’bout him,” Pop told me. “Anybody woulda.”

I wanted to scream at Pop that I wasn’t like him. That I didn’t need music to talk for me. The words were spinning through my head, only my tongue couldn’t get a good grip on them. Anyway, I didn’t want to start arguing with him. Not now. So I hit the drum one time as hard as I could, and walked off.