Thrown-away Child

first jazz funeral was of the old school, which was to say a family affair.
    But now it was different.
    Now a grown-up Claude Bougart left City Hall, his arms and legs shaking off the nervousness he had managed to postpone. He crossed over to where he had left his squad car in Poydras Street, and found himself in the middle of what the New Orleans jazz funeral has sadly become: warped by popularity into a means of free mass entertainment—meaning, of course, titillation for tourists.
    Joe Never Smile was still the man in charge. But he had changed with the times. He still had his sable horses and his hearse, but in the name of tourism he now wore a tasseled jester’s hat and curled-up clown lips. Poydras Street was swarming with out-of-towners Egging video cameras and bitching about the heat and shelling out dollar bills for neon-colored snow cones and pointing and laughing at cute colored kids hanging off traffic signs and tree branches.
    Instead of going to his car right away, Officer Bougart walked after the funeral procession as the mourners and gawkers rounded the corner to a storefront church that reminded him of Zebediah Tilton’s early days on Jackson Avenue. Bougart walked along sort of absentmindedly, following a tourist whose Budweiser shorts were creeping down into the crack between his buttocks. He thought, So that’s why old Joe is smiling now.
    At the church, the crowd was pushy. They whispered too loudly and snapped pictures with their disposable Kodaks. A family uniformly dressed in sneakers and jogging suits hooted merrily, pointing at the wasp about to land on a fat lady’s hat. Those who had not managed to hog their way into the church waited outside at the curb and picked carnations off the floral wreaths decorating the hearse—souvenirs of their trip to New Orleans, with the bonus of witnessing a bereavement peculiar to the Crescent City. Their counterparts inside the church presumed to stand all too close to family members. None of them troubled to bow their heads as the preacher prayed.
    Way up in the front of the church, at the foot of the coffin, one of the lady mourners let her self-control slip ever so slightly. Bougart could barely see above the sea of tourist hats kept resolutely atop of tourist heads. But he clearly understood that a woman had simply given in to the emotional burden that fate had loaded on her. She moaned, then cried, again and again, “Oh, La, no—don’t leave me yet! Oh, La .. • !” A detail of amply built usher board ladies dressed in starched white uniforms and armed with feathered fans and smelling salts helped the poor dear. Meanwhile, the gawking crowd passed quizzical glances among themselves, as if such fundamental expressions of loss and sorrow were out of place.
    The service was short, if not sweet. When the church emptied and the coffin—a small coffin—was loaded back onto the hearse, Bougart stood watching as the crowd followed the boisterous musicians and the umbrella strutters back to Poydras Street and out of sight. The tourists could go home and gush for years about what they had seen that day in New Orleans. “Don’t seem at all proper, do it?”
    Bougart turned at the question. He faced a small, finely featured old man with a red-brown face, silver curls, and a clerical collar. “Hello, Officer.” The old man extended a hand. “I’m Pastor Hearn.” Bougart gave his name, and the two men shook.
    “When I was a kid, these funerals still belonged to us,” Bougart said. “You’re right, Pastor, it’s not proper the way it’s gone today. How do they find out about it anyway?”
    “Oh, the bellhops and doormen and all, they keep an ear to the ground. Good tips are paid for information about where to find a jazz funeral.”
    “Yeah, I suppose.” Bougart thought about the smallness of the coffin. “Who was it died?”
    “Just a boy nobody seemed to know. About twelve years old he was, look more like eight by the size of him. He used to entertain around here for the tourists. Played the banjo and the harmonica. Also he danced some.”
    “Well, somebody knew him. You had a lady carrying on pretty good up there, I noticed.”
    “No kin of his. She’s just one of our members shows up regular at funerals. Some people, they like the feel-good times. Others, they like the feel-bad times.”
    “Who arranged the service?”
    Pastor Hearn shrugged his narrow shoulders and started back inside the church. Bougart stopped him and