A horse-drawn hearse bore the coffin, but there was no corpse in it. Mourners poured out of the projects, out of the shotgun houses below Canal Street, out of barrooms and gumbo parlors, out of the Baptist church at Liberty and First and the Hoodoo church on Rampart, and with a mighty brass band leading the way (horns wailing in the modes of both Satchmo and Bird, drums re-creating the phantom energies of the Congo), with umbrellas twirling (although the day was dry), feathers flashing, joints smoldering, bottles gurgling, and fingers snapping, they strutted and stomped, rambled and hooted, all the way to the French Quarter, through the Quarter, and back to the Central City again. They went so far as to send him off with a jazz funeral. Although Bingo Pajama was from out of town, a foreigner with a funny accent, a bum who kept bees but had no hive a mysterious, clownish figure known well by none, the blacks of the city adopted him posthumously.
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