This disappearance of a drummer at Preservation Hall

Since it was only an hour out of the way, we stopped in New Orleans on one of our drives home from visiting my Texas in-laws. We wanted our sons — now all grown — to experience Dixieland music, and there’s no place on earth more authentic for Dixieland than Preservation Hall.

Our family was accustomed to catching live shows, besides signing in church every Sunday. We enjoyed lots of concerts together — musicals, singer-songwriter stuff, Scottish pipers, and some jazz in listening rooms, dive bars, sanctuaries, and theatres — and we couldn’t wait for the early set on that hot night in July on St. Peter Street.

Leroy Jones, that night’s band leader, sang and beamed an infectious smile when he wasn’t blowing his bronze-colored trumpet. He sang without a mic because the room is what they like to call ‘intimate,’ which means we and about a hundred fans were practically jammed with Leroy on that small stage.

An ancient man on tenor sax played buttery smooth riffs and smiled like a kid when the crowd clapped appreciatively after each solo. The woman on piano might have been 60 years his junior.

When the smiling Jones lifted his trumpet, he let us have it like machine gun fire. The mournful trombone stitched the songs together with a kind of slurring of notes that made us sway in time. There was a move to the groove.

I had a great view of both the stage and the front door, stage right. I watched a young, tall cop saunter in. He chatted with the two women stationed at the door.

At first, I thought his was just a drop-in visit on a beat that needed a dose of good music. If I were a police officer, I’d stop in here as often as I could. But the hosts at the door seemed to be getting antsy. The way he spun his silver handcuffs around his finger suggested something was up.

As the band soaked up the applause for “Whenever You’re Lonesome,” the woman at the door crept into the spotlight, concealed her mouth with her cupped hands, and whispered into the drummer’s ear.

He raised his eyebrows, leaned forward and whispered a few words to the bandleader, then got up for the hallway. We watched him go. We watched the cop amiably cuff his thin arms behind his back and lead his bowed shadow out to the sidewalk. Meanwhile the woman on trombone spoke quietly with the women at the door as if to say, Really?

A note was passed to Leroy Jones. Like a man who needed glasses, he read the note slowly, handed it back to the woman, then smiled to the audience.

“It seems,” he said, “we have lost our drummer.”

Everybody broke up.

“Thanks to Facebook, the police always know where we are,” Leroy said. “And it’s difficult to hide when you’re playing a gig at Preservation Hall.”

When Leroy started counting down the next song, some people on the front row enthusiastically joined in, counting in at their own pace.

Leroy held up his hand and stopped them.

“Please,” he asked. “Don’t do that. We need to do that. We’re professionals.”

His admonition was funny, but he wasn’t joking. The room grew quiet. He counted in again, and the band dove into the first of a few more songs. The band carried on fine without their arresting and arrested drummer.

After the show, our family strolled without speaking into the stilled outdoors. We wandered in the few shops still open near the Cathedral. A store sold bags of white voodoo powder.

I bought a few cheap necklaces of colored plastic beads. Rachel picked out a box of Café Du Monde beignet mix. John Mark carried our souvenirs in a black, plastic bag and twirled it clockwise and counter-clockwise around his hand like the cop did his silver cuffs.

Benjamin — 16 and growing up fast — followed a step behind, hands in his pockets, looking detached and cool.

Night brought little relief from the astonishing heat. A party bus spat out a crowd of drunken, 20-somethings; they stumbled toward Bourbon Street. Lights on the Mississippi River blinked. Pedicabs blurred past. The St. Louis Cathedral stood regal guard over Jackson Park.

We were disoriented tourists not sure what to make of the French Quarter. Our bodies swayed to music still ringing in our ears, to music only we could hear.