The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (5 page)

Anyone else, and he'd be dead from all that munching and crunching. But the Sugar Man was so big, and his heart was so large, that it took more than a few bites to bring him down.

But look out below! Thanks to the commotion, the alligators, which were hovering just underneath the water's surface, floated up to see what was going on. There, in the middle of the bayou, were some very succulent prey, namely canebrake rattlers.

Spicy
canebrake rattlers.

It seems there was one huge alligator who started licking his chops and also slobbering a little. But it was that alligator in particular who made a fatal mistake. Well, his stomach made a fatal mistake.

It started growling . . .
gggrrrrrggggggllllllggggllllggrrrrrrggglll.

It was enough to make the snakes stop right there. They looked again, and there wasn't just one slobbering alligator; there was a whole flotilla.

Now the Sugar Man, he was a keen observer of nature, and he observed that the canebrake rattlers were about to become alligator stew. And even though he was a little annoyed at the snakes for all their
snip-snap-zip-zapping
, he didn't think they deserved to be served up al dente. Besides, he admired the way they guarded his sugarcane, even if they were a little testy.

So, he just snatched that big slobbery alligator up in his palmetto-size hands, twirled him over his head, and flung him into the air. That gator flew all the way to Oklahoma.
Well, you can imagine that none of the other gators were interested in being tossed through the sky, so they slunk underwater and floated right on down the bayou, a raft of gators, right past that wild sugarcane.

(Have we mentioned that whenever the Sugar Man got angry, he threw things? Pirates . . . snakes . . . alligators . . .)

To the snakes, it seemed like the big guy had saved their bacon, and then they felt a little bad for all that chewing they had done. In fact, they decided to let him help himself to their sugarcane any old time . . . at least for the any old time being.

Of course, the Sugar Man knew that a snake's word wasn't necessarily good to the last drop, so after that, whenever he wanted a meal of sugarcane, he sang a canebrake lullaby, a sibilant tune that put those snakes right to sleep.

Rock-a-by, oh canebrake rattlers

Sleepy bayou, rock-a-by oh

Canebrake rattlers

Sssslleeeepp

And while the snakes snoozed away, he grabbed as much cane as he wanted without all that
snip-snap-zip-zap.
Of course, he didn't take too much, only what he could eat, and a little to stash away in case he wanted a
midnight snack. In the meantime, the snakes were still pretty darned happy about those gators that floated away. And even though rattlers are not predictable, they will for certain take the Sugar Man's side in an argument.

One big rattlesnake in particular, Gertrude, took a real fondness to him and decided to become his personal assistant. Yep, she hardly ever leaves his side. So if you want to do business with the Sugar Man, well, you have to deal with Gertrude first.

Of course, alligators are cagey. And last time we counted, there were plenty of them hiding in the Bayou Tourterelle.

T
HE INCIDENT BETWEEN THE
S
UGAR
Man and the rattlers happened years and years ago, back when it was just the Sugar Man and a host of critters in the swamp. Decades later, he had his encounter with the pirates. But that was long ago too. Three hundred years back. Then there was the failed posse with their ropes and axes and shotguns. That too was a century's passing.

In fact, it's been such a very long time since anyone's spotted him, or reported a sighting of him, that Sonny Boy Beaucoup made a big, fat claim: “I declare the Sugar Man officially extinct.”

It was a claim that suited Sonny Boy Beaucoup. To him, the deal that his ancestor Alouicious had struck with the Sugar Man was no deal if both of the parties were no longer extant. (
Extant.
What a great word that is.)

Of course, Sonny Boy Beaucoup didn't know about Audie Brayburn's encounter with the Sugar Man. The only person
Audie had ever told was his grandson, Chap. And Chap knew better than to say anything.

Honeybees. Hornets. Honeybees. Hornets.

Moreover, nobody told the Sugar Man that he wasn't extant. How could they? He stayed holed away in the deepest, darkest part of the swamp, where news was slow to arrive. To exacerbate the situation, he let it be known that he should not be disturbed except for emergencies. For those, he placed his trust in the Official Sugar Man Swamp Scouts.

S
PEAKING OF OUR
S
COUTS, IN
the front seat of the old DeSoto, Bingo rolled over onto his back. Even though he wasn't fully awake, he rubbed his belly.

Empty, he thought.

The night before had been extremely eventful. There had been the farewell of Little Mama and Daddy-O. There had been the bolt of lightning and the Voice of Intelligence. There had been Mission Longleaf. There had been
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

But there had not been any sustenance.

As if J'miah's stomach were in agreement with Bingo's, it let out a loud growl from the backseat bunk. Bingo, in his state of half sleep, wondered if he should make a quick dash out for some dewberries before the sun rose. J'miah simultaneously wondered the same thing.

They both cracked open their eyes, they both rubbed their bellies, they both noticed that the dark was growing
thinner, they both reminded themselves that they were, in fact, nocturnal and morning was upon them.

They both went right back to sleep.

And there you have it, sports fans: two hungry raccoons, with hours to go before they ate.

T
HE SUN WAS NOT QUITE
ready to rise when Chap walked into the early morning kitchen. Once he had finally fallen asleep, he slept hard. Now he rubbed his eyes and yawned. His mom stood at the counter, mixing up the first batch of pie batter. Her hands were coated in flour. She greeted him by dabbing a thumbprint of flour onto his nose. It was an action she had done many times. Instead of giving hugs, his mother gave dabs, usually on his nose. She had done it so many times he didn't even notice it.

Instead, he stuck his finger in the batter.

“Hands out!” his mom said.

Too late. Chap scooped out a dollop of the thick, sugary mixture and stuffed it into his mouth. No matter how many times he'd eaten the sugar pie batter, it always tasted new to him, especially first thing in the morning.

“Just for that, you're going to have to pour me a cup of coffee,” Mom said. His mom was a prodigious coffee drinker. His grandpa had been too.

“Coffee hounds,” they called each other.

Chap reached for his mother's special mug, the one that his father had given her before Chap was born, the one that had a big pair of ruby red lips on it, faded now so that the ruby red was more like pale pink. When he grabbed it, his hand bumped against his grandpa's special mug, the one from the Twitcher's Catalogue. Chap and his mom had given it to him for Christmas a few years back. The catalog had several mugs to choose from, but they had picked the one with the great blue heron, one of Audie's favorite birds. The one on the mug spread its beautiful wide wings from the top of the rim to the base. The feathers that trailed from its head were curved in a perfect arc. “GBH,” Audie had said. Great blue heron. Audie had loved that mug.

Chap thought about the GBH in Audie's sketchbook. Instead of wings wide open, the bird in Audie's book stood on the banks of the bayou. It held a large fish in its beak. Underneath, Audie had written, “You should have seen the one that got away.” Chap never knew if Audie was talking about the fish or the bird. It was a mystery.

“Lots of mysteries in the swamp, old Chap,” his grandpa always said.

Chap lifted the cup by its handle. There were signs of Audie everywhere. Chap felt the cloud of lonesome brush against his hair.

The huge coffee urn was full of dark, rich Community
Coffee, roasted in Baton Rouge. And even though there wasn't a drop of coffee
in
the pies, Grandpa Audie always said, “The chicory in the coffee makes the pies taste better.” He followed that with, “Besides, it puts hair on your chest.”

Right then Chap pulled the neck of his T-shirt out and looked down at his chest. Not a single hair. Didn't he need a few chest hairs to be a man? With that, he filled Audie's mug, right up to the brim.

“You might want to put some cream and sugar in that,” his mom said.

Grandpa Audie had never used cream and sugar, had he? “Blacker 'n dirt.” That's the way he had always drunk it. That was the way Chap would drink it too. He raised his grandpa's mug to his lips and took a tiny sip. It was
hot hot hot
. It was
bitter bitter bitter
. All at once, he understood how the coffee would make the pies taste better.

The sweet of the pies would offset the hot and bitter.

He set the mug down on the counter and headed for the batter again, only to be waylaid by his mom's wooden spoon. She held it between the bowl and Chap's hand.

“Out!” she exclaimed. Then she looked at the clock and told him, “Time to open.” Even though his taste buds desperately needed a pie to erase the hot and bitter, he knew the upraised spoon was his cue. He walked out of the kitchen to the front door and flipped the
CLOSED
sign over to
OPEN
.
Operating hours were only from five a.m. till one p.m.—“fishermen's hours.”

Paradise Pies Café was known for its delicious fried sugar pies, made from canebrake sugar. Audie had run the place for more than sixty years. Back in 1949 he had signed a lease with the Beaucoup Corporation way back when Sonny Boy was just a tot.

While the Brayburns didn't have many customers, they had enough.

Some of the customers, Chap knew, came as much to hear Audie's stories as they came for the pies and coffee. And Audie was always happy to oblige. Chap ran his tongue over his teeth. He could still taste the bitter brew. He hoped there were other ways to grow hair on his chest.

As he unlocked the front door, he saw a pair of enormous headlights swing into the parking lot. He could tell that the vehicle was definitely larger than even the duelies that some of the local fishermen drove. In fact, it looked more like a train than a car, a train with a single car, a train that ran on a road instead of tracks. He'd never seen anything like it.

But as it pulled closer, he blinked. It was a Hummer. A
stretch
Hummer. A
superstretch
Hummer. It looked like it could be in two counties at once, judging by the length of it. From Chap's spot behind the window, he saw that it took up every single space in the parking lot and still hung out into the road.

If anyone else wanted to drive up, they'd have to park and walk. Who would drive something like that? Chap wondered. His question was answered as soon as the passengers walked through the front door. Even though there were only two of them, the pair—a man and a woman—took the largest table in the café, like they owned it or something. Right away, Chap could feel his nonexistent chest hairs rise up, along with the hair on the back of his neck. Chap knew exactly who the man was.

Unlike most of the folks who frequented the café—mostly fishermen and bird-watchers—all of whom wore overalls and T-shirts and wading boots, the man was all decked out in a fancy blue and white seersucker suit with a red bow tie. He wore white wing tip shoes, too, with the thinnest socks Chap had ever seen. The socks were so thin, Chap could see the light-colored hairs of the man's legs through the sheer knit. How would they ever protect his ankles from the biting fleas that lived in the swamp?

Chap thought the outfit was possibly the silliest getup he'd ever seen, especially for this part of the world. And even though the man was surely a grown-up, with his pale yellow-gray hair and his freckled face, he looked more like a big kid who was trying to look like a grown-up. He tapped his well-manicured fingertips on the tabletop.

The woman was a different story. She wasn't silly-looking
at all. She was shorter than her companion by a head, which was saying something, because the man wasn't all that tall. Chap figured the guy might be five feet five, and that was being generous, which meant that the woman wasn't even five feet. Chap, at only twelve years, was already more than six feet tall, a trait that he had inherited from his grandpa.

“Us Brayburns are like trees,” his grandpa had told him. “Tall.”

The woman wore a red sleeveless tank top, the same red shade as the man's bow tie. The top accentuated her impressive biceps. Chap could tell by her arms alone, not to mention the muscles in her short, thick neck, that she could throw down the dude without any effort at all. Furthermore, she looked ready to strike without notice, rather like one of the rattlers in the canebrake. For one brief shining moment, Chap wondered if she might doze off if he sang his grandfather's lullaby.

“Pies for two,” said the man. His voice snapped Chap out of his reverie. “Y-y-yessir,” Chap stammered. Then he turned and hurried to the kitchen to give his mom the order. When he told her who was sitting in the café, he saw the corner of her mouth begin to twitch. When his mother was upset or unhappy, the right corner of her mouth twitched. Without a word, she handed him the coffeepot and a pair
of mugs. He could feel the heat in his throat begin to rise.
Man up,
he told himself.

While Chap set the mugs on the table and filled them, he noticed that the couple had used the wide tabletop to spread out several large sheets of paper. He could tell they were plans for something. Something big. Something huge. Something that would take up at least two thousand acres.