The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (9 page)

He might have stayed there for the rest of the night,
except . . .
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.
There it was. Only now, it seemed to be even closer. Bingo sat up. Thanks to his stuffed belly, he groaned a little.

“What
is
that?” he asked.

Then there was a repeat.
Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

“What—”

Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.
Bingo grabbed his stuffed belly and felt just a wee bit queasy.

Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

As if that weren't enough,
split splat splitter splatter.
The clouds that Bingo had just watched bunched up and let loose. And then . . .
Zap!
A thin, jagged line of lightning slipped from the sky.

Bingo and J'miah looked at each other knowingly. Without missing a beat, they ran back to Information Headquarters, scurried through the opening, and shook their coats.

Outside,
ZAPP!
 . . . another bolt of lightning sliced through the sky. Bingo could see sparks dance all around the perimeter of the car. He was glad he was indoors. He stared through the vine-covered windshield and could just see the light on the hood ornament through the leaves. The bust of Hernando glowed. It was a weird orange color, and from where Bingo sat, he could only see the back of the conquistador's head.

Bingo looked at the dials on the dash, and sure enough, their purplish lights began to flicker on and off, until they finally illuminated the numbers that went from one to twelve in a circle, and just like always . . .
oooooowwwweeeeeee
 . . .
blip
 . . .
blip
 . . .
weeeeooo
 . . .
ssshhhshshshshshsh
 . . . followed by the Voice of Intelligence, loud and clear.

“Howdy there, east Texas. Hope everyone is in a nice, dry spot while these storms pass through.”

Bingo cocked his ears. So did J'miah. Then
blip
 . . .
blip
 . . .
blip
 . . .
blip.
The Voice came back on, “Fishing should be good down on the bayou. . . .” That made Bingo happy. He loved fish. He'd go fishing first thing.

“Fishing,” said J'miah.

The radio kept going . . .
ooooowwwweeeee
 . . .
weeeeeoooo
 . . . and then they heard words like . . . “terrible” . . . “horrible” . . . “no good”. . . “very bad” . . .
wwweeeeoooo . . .

Bingo's tuft stood straight up.

“What?” asked Bingo.

“Who?” asked J'miah.

They both waited.

Sure enough the worst words of all, “. . . HOGS! . . . they're heading directly toward the Sugar Man Swamp. . . .”

Bingo and J'miah looked at each other. “The Farrow Gang!” they said together.

Then . . .
blip
 . . .
blip . . . oooweeeee
 . . . The purple lights
dimmed and the message faded, but right before it ended, there was a
crackle
 . . .
pop
 . . .
pop
 . . . “Arrroooo!”

Raccoon fur went
poof, poof
!

Bingo and J'miah looked like stripy puffer fishes. They had never heard the Voice howl before. But the howl was not nearly so unsettling as the news that the notorious Farrow Gang was heading their way.

Buzzie and Clydine's reputation had preceded them. Our Scouts, with their open eyes, sniffing noses, and ears to the ground, had seen first-paw the devastation wrought by the Farrows. Over the past several months, lots of critters had sought refuge in the Sugar Man Swamp to avoid being mowed down by the hogs. Bingo had seen the whitetail deer hobble in, their legs battered and bruised. He had witnessed a cattle egret with its wing torn and tattered. He remembered the small flock of cottontail rabbits, their paws sore from running too many miles in their efforts to get away from the gang.

They were the lucky ones, the ones who made it to the welcoming domain of the swamp. Until now it was believed that the swamp meant safety, but . . .
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble
 . . . Bingo swallowed hard. If the Voice of Intelligence told the truth (and it always had), the Sugar Man Swamp, and all the critters who dwelt there, would soon be under siege.

All at once, our Scouts knew what they had to do. They didn't particularly want to do it. They'd never done it before. But it had to be done.

Together, Bingo said to J'miah and J'miah said to Bingo, “We have to wake up the Sugar Man.”

I
N A SMALL BUILDING THAT
sat directly underneath Bingo's blinking red star, Coyoteman Jim watched the rain pouring outside his studio window. Of course, like most radio stations, it was soundproof, but he could still see the flashes of lightning in the distance. He looked at the clock on his desk. Midnight. He pushed away from the microphone, took the headphones off, stood up, and stretched.

He had just finished the weather report and the unsettling news about hogs, and had lined up a long set of his favorite songs. He only halfway listened to them as they spun from one to another in the automatic player.

He was looking for some inspiration. The previous morning, when he had stopped in for his fried sugar pie and mug of milk, Chap Brayburn had asked him to make a commercial for Paradise Pies. But right now he was stumped. There was a blank pad of paper and a pencil on the desk in front of him, but all it had on it were some doodles and scribbles, nothing else.

He knew how important this advertisement would be. If the Brayburns could get some more customers, and make some extra cash, they might be able to slow down the plans being hatched by Jaeger Stitch and Sonny Boy Beaucoup. It was a long shot at best. He knew that. He also knew he needed to make a humdinger of a commercial if they were going to convince customers to drive all the way down the Beaten Track to eat sugar pies.

Coyoteman Jim rubbed his eyes. The station felt lonely, what with the rain and all. This was usually about the time when his old friend Audie would have called him, just to say hello, and maybe to tell him a story.

Audie wasn't his only caller. Because Coyoteman Jim worked the graveyard shift, people tended to call in after everyone else had gone to bed. It was downright surprising what folks felt like they could tell him in the wee hours of the morning. Some things were worth repeating, like when Sissy Morton won the baton twirling competition in Baton Rouge; and when the Whites had their new baby girl, Emma Kathleen; and the time that Brother Hadley at the Little Church on the Bayou got bit by a copperhead and lived to tell about it. Those things were happy news, and Coyoteman Jim was totally down with sharing them.

But there were a lot of things that weren't necessarily meant for the public at large, like when Billy Willy Curtis called
to tell him that his big sister Mae Rae Curtis sat under the tanning lights for so long, she turned completely orange; or when Cousin Ida called to say that her mother Aunt Erla had dropped the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor but didn't let on, so everyone ate dirty turkey and didn't know it; and the time when Maynard Douglas called to say his youth pastor at the Little Church on the Bayou drank so much Mountain Dew, it snorted out of his nose when he laughed.

These were items that Coyoteman Jim kept to himself.

Which is the reason that he ended every graveyard shift with a major howl. Instead of saying all those things that shouldn't be said, he just cut loose with a big ol'
Aaarrroooooo!

So there wasn't much happening in the KSUG listening area that Coyoteman Jim wasn't aware of, even though there were a few things he wished he didn't know. Like the invasion of the hogs, for example.
Yet another introduced species,
thought Coyoteman Jim. And that included those other introduced species: Sonny Boy and Jaeger.

As he slipped his headphones back on over his ears, the strains of the last song zipped into his head.
Shake, shake, shake
 . . . Wait! He turned up the volume.
Shake, shake, shake
 . . . Yes! There it was—the inspiration for his commercial.
Shake, shake, shake
 . . . It was perfect. He listened to the tune one more time, put his pencil to paper, and started writing.

B
INGO AND
J'
MIAH WERE WORRIED.
From the safety of Information Headquarters, they could feel the
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble
as the invasion approached. They knew they needed to wake up the Sugar Man to tell him that the swamp was under attack. And they also knew that they didn't have much time. These things they knew.

What they didn't know was how they were going to go about waking up the Sugar Man without getting
snip-snap-zip-zapped
by Gertrude.

And as if all of that wasn't enough to worry about, they weren't even sure where to find the Sugar Man. No one had actually seen him in years, maybe decades. Not even the famous Great-Uncle Banjo had claimed to have an encounter with the Sugar Man.

It wasn't like there was a sign on the door somewhere: “Here Lives the Sugar Man.” It wasn't as if there was a neon arrow pointing to his secret lair: “Sugar Man's Hideaway.”
It wasn't as though there was a map with a big, fat circle around “Sugar Man Villa.” Nope.

All they knew was that they would have to head toward the deepest, darkest part of the swamp, where the trees blocked out all the light, where the underbrush was so thick that even noises couldn't penetrate the thick vines and leaves.

“Brrr . . .” Bingo shivered just thinking about it. He looked out at the driving rain. J'miah shivered too.

And even though it goes against the grain for raccoons to move about in daylight, they decided to wait for the morning, when hopefully the rain would stop and they could use the sun's rays to help them find the Sugar Man's deep, dark lair.

To keep himself busy, J'miah decided to resume Mission Clean-Up Headquarters. Raccoons in general are similar to pack rats. They collect all kinds of odd items, and over the years, the backseat had become something of a pit. It bothered J'miah. He liked for things to be tidy and neat. Especially when he was nervous. Like now.

All at once, Mission Clean-Up Headquarters turned into a disinfecting frenzy. First, J'miah wiped down the insides of all the windows with some fresh leaves. He rubbed and rubbed until each window was sparkly. Of course, he couldn't see through them because the outside
was pretty much covered with vines, but at least he could see the vines better.

Next, he used a small branch as a broom to sweep off the old leather seats. It was surprising how much clutter had accumulated back there over the years.

Bingo did his best to stay out of his brother's way. He decided to do some chin-ups from the rearview mirror so as not to get swept up with the debris. J'miah ignored him and kept sweeping. Soon he had a whole collection of rubbish piled up on the floorboard behind the passenger's side. It was like a small landfill between the seats.

Bingo clung to the rearview mirror. He decided then to reverse himself and hang upside down. It gave him a different perspective on the inside of the DeSoto, not to mention a unique view of his brother. Watching J'miah in all of his industriousness made Bingo wonder if he shouldn't feel just a tad bit guilty for hanging out and not joining J'miah in the cleanup? Then again . . . nah . . . That wonder fleeted.

J'miah continued to sweep, pausing every now and then to adjust his invisible thinking cap. It was during one of these cap adjustment breaks that he decided that he simply couldn't live with that landfill of rubbish. So he made a declaration. “We're going to shove this stuff through the entryway.”

“Huh?” said Bingo, still hanging upside down.

“Yep,” replied J'miah. The plan was to cram the garbage underneath the seat so that it could then be shoved through the door. The instructions were perfectly clear.

So he set his broom down and began to shove . . . and shove . . . and shove. But the landfill did not move.

Bingo continued to do his bat impersonation.

J'miah shoved some more. The pile of rubbish shifted, but it did not move.

“There must be a blockage,” said J'miah. And seeing that Bingo was no help, J'miah climbed over the seat and crawled down to the floorboard and peered underneath. Sure enough, there was something large and square. He reached for it with his nimble paws. It was cool and smooth to the touch. He grabbed it by the corner and tugged, but it wouldn't move. Whatever the large square thing was, it was wedged tight.

J'miah pulled on it again, but there was no getting it to move. He shoved his head under the seat to get a closer look. First he examined the front of it. He noticed that there was a handle. He grabbed hold of it, but no matter how hard he pulled, the blockage stayed put. Then he moved to the right side of it. Nothing.

By now Bingo was feeling the effects of being upside down, so he let go and dropped to the floorboard and peeked
underneath the seat. Sure enough, he saw the blockage too. “Why haven't we ever noticed this before?” he asked.

J'miah said, “Because we never swept out the garbage before!” Did we detect a note of testiness coming out of J'miah? Why yes, we believe we did. But Bingo decided to ignore it.

Still, the blockage was a mystery. He was just about to crawl under there too when he heard a distinct
pop!
Bingo's tuft stood straight up. “What was that?” he asked.

J'miah had discovered a wire spring on the side of the box, and when he pulled it forward, for the first time in more than sixty years, it popped open with a rush of sixty-plus-year-old air. But because the hinges were a little rusted, our raccoon could only get the lid to open a tiny crack, only wide enough to stick his curious little paw deep inside it.