The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (10 page)

At first, he couldn't feel anything. Nothing. Just the cool, smooth interior of the metal box. So he reached a little farther.

Nothing.

Farther.

Noth— Something!

Sure enough, he felt something.

A leaf? It felt like a leaf. Only not exactly a leaf. It was thicker than a leaf. Stiffer than a leaf.

He gave it a tug. Out it came, a piece of square white
paper, but it wasn't like the paper that he had found wrapped around soup cans, or the rough paper that turned into mush when it got wet. This was a different kind of paper. It was slick and shiny. J'miah lifted it to his nose and sniffed. It had an odd smell, not like the grass or the flowers or even the bayou. Rather it was something pungent and a little sticky. Then he turned the papery object over and discovered that the other side wasn't white at all. Instead, it was gray with a darker gray and black shape on it.

An armadillo! J'miah brushed his discovery off on his fur, and the image grew shiny.

“Art!” he exclaimed. The square papery thingie was art! He crept out from under the seat and held it in front of Bingo's face. “Look!”

“Hmm . . . ,” Bingo said. He looked at it closely. The image was clearly an armadillo. He had never seen an actual rendering of an armadillo before, and frankly, he had never found armadillos to be all that attractive. They were in the possum category, so far as he was concerned, and they had very squinty eyes and rather ratlike tails.

Nevertheless, there was an armadillo in two dimensions. Yes, he thought, it must be art. Then he watched J'miah gently place it right on the front dashboard so that both of them could admire it.

J'miah sat back and studied it. Every home should have
some art, that's what he had always believed, and just because he and Bingo lived in Information Headquarters did not mean that they couldn't have some art. He squinted his eyes and focused on the armadillo. It was way better than the occasional bottle cap or gum wrapper that he had found on the banks of the bayou.

He loved it even though it was just an ordinary armadillo. And the more he studied it, the more he thought that the armadillo looked a little surprised, as if the artist had caught it off guard.

While the rain poured all around them, the raccoon brothers stood side by side and admired their new decoration. It was a happy moment in Scoutville.

L
ET
'
S RECALL ANOTHER EVENING OF
driving rain, when someone else waited in the DeSoto. Yep, Audie Brayburn. Can you remember how he had just taken that photo of the Lord God bird? How he had stumbled, exhausted, into the swamp and finally found his way back to his car? How he fell, into the backseat, into a deep, deep sleep? How he felt a bump in the night?

Can you recall all that? It was way back in 1949, more than sixty years ago. Well, while he slept, there were three things that Audie Brayburn, Honorary Swamp Critter, didn't know.

A.
 There was so much rain that night that the water came out of the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle. It pushed its way across the bottomlands of the swamp and eventually poured underneath the 1949 DeSoto Sportsman and began to carry it away. The big whitewall tires let the car float,
sending it directly toward the overflowing bayou, which was rolling faster than ever.
  Audie was in a boat that was doomed to sink. The DeSoto weighed a ton and a half, and even with four large floaty tires, the weight would take it to the bottom soon enough.

B.
 Audie Brayburn wasn't only tired from lack of food and water. He was burning up with fever. He had a serious case of swamp flu. We're talking dire straits, sisters and brothers. The rocking of the car by the water did not wake him up. It only made him sleepier.

C.
 The Sugar Man Swamp Scouts were on the job. Over the previous days, Bingo and J'miah's great-great-greater-greatest-grandparents had kept an eye on the young man as he'd wandered through their forest, and they could see that he seemed to love the place as much as they did. Plus, they absolutely adored those tunes he played on his Hohner Marine Band Harmonica. They did not want him to end up at the bottom of the Bayou Tourterelle.

For now we'll leave the rest of Audie's escape from certain death to your imagination. What we know is that the DeSoto came to rest on a small knoll along a high bank
that overlooked the bayou, and after a day or two, Audie woke up and tried to turn the car on, but the engine was so soaked with water, it refused to start. So Audie, still spacey from his flu, stuffed his ammo can with its one-of-a-kind photos underneath the passenger seat, stumbled out of the car, and weakly tramped his way to the highway, where a passing motorist spied him and rushed him to the hospital in Port Arthur.

Later, much later, after he recovered from the flu, even though Audie looked and looked and looked, for the rest of his life he looked, he never could find that Lord God bird or the old DeSoto again.

C
HICHICHICHICHI
.
G
ERTRUDE SHOOK HER LONG
rattly tail. Despite the cool relief of the rain, she felt itchy again. Those fleas were driving her crazy. She decided she needed to scratch. But how does a rattlesnake scratch? She doesn't have any hands or fingers or paws, after all. Nope. So she wrapped herself around and around and around a big cypress tree, and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. She rubbed so hard that she came right out of that itchy skin.

“Ahh,” she said. “That's better.”

She scanned her beautiful new golden skin, with its dazzling black diamonds. She wished her snoozy companion would wake up and help her admire it. She gave him a nudge with her nose.

Nothing.

She gave him another nudge.

Again, nothing.

She knew she could probably wake him up with a little
snip-snap-zip-zap
, but that would make him cranky. Who needed that? She could cook up a batch of cranky all by her lonesome. Nope,
snip-snap-zip-zap
wasn't the answer.

She looked at her beautiful new skin again. The diamonds were gleaming in the darkness of the lair. It seemed a waste that there was no one to show it to.

She shook her tail as loud as she could.
CHICHICHICHICHI.

All Mr. Sleeper did was reach over and give her a gentle pat on the head and roll over. Alas. Time for the last resort. Sugarcane. She knew that if he got one whiff of that canebrake sugar, he would wake right up. She looked in the knothole where she kept her supplies. There was not one single bit of sugarcane left.

Sugarcane, it turns out, is the only thing aside from a rattlesnake bite that will wake up the Sugar Man. She'd have to order some, she thought. But that was no great consolation, because she'd have to wait for a courier to take her order.

You might be surprised to learn about the Snapping Turtle Courier Service. Turtles? Couriers? Turtles? Couriers?

We know!

It just so happens that in the water, turtles are fairly zippy. They could swim up and down the Bayou Tourterelle in the blink of an eye. Moreover, snapping turtles weren't at
all concerned about Gertrude. So she used their services from time to time, especially when she needed to restock the sugarcane.

But at that moment, Gertrude realized that she had not seen a courier in a while. Turns out they were keeping their heads down. As they should.

Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

Gertrude would have to wait.

M
EANWHILE, SEVENTEEN HOGS WERE NOT
waiting. A little rain was no deterrent. They were now within a couple of nights' hog-trot to the Sugar Man Swamp. Clydine lifted her piggy snout in the air. “I want me some wild sugarcane,” she said with a snort.

“Me too.” Buzzie grunted.

The fifteen younger Farrows snorted and grunted in agreement. The sounder had been marauding through the countryside all night long, and the first rays of sunlight were peering through the clouds. Like we said, hogs are nocturnal, so it was time to take a nap.

Soon enough, they found a shallow creek bottom. Of course, Buzzie and Clydine charged at the unsuspecting deer who made the grave mistake of strolling by.

Next, the terrible twosome frightened a pair of squirrels with a whole array of snorts and squeals. And let's not forget the loud hoorahs toward a pack of surprised coyotes.
Those coyotes didn't even whine. They just tucked tail and ran.

The hogs were having a big ol' laugh at all the scaredy-cats. “Ha-ha, hoo-hoo!” As the stars lay down, however, so did the hogs. But just as they settled in for their daylong snoozefest, an immense cloud of mosquitoes landed on the hogs' bristly backs and dug in.

There are only a few critters on this whole blessed planet that aren't afraid of wild hogs. Mosquitoes are one of them.

Buuuuzzzzzz!
They whined and whined, and then they dined and dined.

Clydine squealed like a baby,
“Wheeeee . . . aaaahhhhhh
 . . .
wwwwaaahhhhh!”

Buzzie squealed too.
“Whheeeeee . . . aaaahhhhh . . . wwwwaaahhhhhh!”

The Farrow Gang squealed and squealed and squealed.

Mosquitoes couldn't care less about all that squealing. They were enjoying their ham and bacon breakfast.

“Mud!” Buzzie squealed. “We need mud.” And with that, they tore into that creek bottom. They splashed and rolled and smashed and crashed until there was no water at all, just muck, muck, muck. Whatever small drops were left turned around and ran uphill. “Losers,” called the hogs. Then they wallowed and wallowed and wallowed.
Ooohhheeee
, that muck felt great. The seventeen Farrows snortled and gruntled in glee. In glee, I tell you. Finally, they were coated in so much mud, the mosquitoes could not bite through it. You could say that it soothed the savage beasts.

For the time being, that is.

A
T
P
ARADISE
P
IES
C
AFÉ, THE
first round of customers had already come and gone; a couple of regular fishermen and a young guy named Steve, who showed up because he made a wrong turn. Even though Steve only stopped by to ask for directions, Chap talked him into ordering a sugar pie. As soon as Steve tried it, he ordered another one.

“Dang,” Steve said. “These are delicious.” He smacked his lips. It made Chap feel good. Not at all the way he felt after Sonny Boy and Jaeger's visit the morning before.

Then Steve said, “Too bad you're so far off the beaten track.” Considering he had lived on Beaten Track Road his whole life, Chap was used to the old joke.

“No, really,” Steve said. “Y'all are hard to find.” He added, “I'm not sure I can even figure out how to get out of here, much less come back. Even my GPS is flaky out here.” To prove it Steve held up his shiny phone with the blank screen.

So Chap drew him a map on one of the paper napkins, and told him that the state highway wasn't that far away. It just seemed like it because the road was so narrow. Steve
thanked him. Then he ordered one more pie to take with him, and waved good-bye.

After Steve left, the café was completely empty, and it was barely six a.m. They'd only been open an hour. Chap hoped against hope that Steve wouldn't be their last customer for the day. He went to clean off Steve's table, when he saw it: the cell phone. Oh no! Chap grabbed it and rushed out the door, but it was too late. Steve was gone.

“Oh well,” said Chap. He carried the phone into the café and set it on the windowsill next to the radio. That was the official spot for lost and found. Usually the items that were lost were things like baseball caps or maybe a cigarette lighter. Things that weren't valuable. A cell phone was valuable. At least this one was.

“He'll be back,” said his mom, pulling out a chair and sitting down. In her hand was her bottomless cup of coffee.

Not for the first time, Chap noticed that her lips were almost the same color as the pale pink lips on the side of her mug; the mug had been a gift from his father before he died in a motorcycle accident. Chap had never known his dad. The accident was before he was born. After it happened, his mom moved back in with Audie, and they had been there ever since. Ever since Chap's whole life. Once in a while someone would ask him if he missed his father, but how could he miss someone he had never even met?

Nevertheless, even though she never said so, Chap knew his mother missed him, especially when she said, “You look so much like your father.” Then she would pat him on the cheek, or worse, dab his face with flour. He rubbed his face to make sure there wasn't a dab on there that he was unaware of. His mom could be tricky like that.

In front of her was a stack of dollar bills and a few coins. He watched as she re-counted them. Then she folded the bills in half and stuck them into her apron pocket.

“It's not a boatload,” she told him, “but it's a start.” To Chap, the small stack looked measly. And the café looked way too empty. They needed a yacht full of customers, he thought. As if it agreed, the coffee urn gurgled. Hearing it made him think about being a man again.

Coffee.

Chest hairs.

Coffee.

Chest hairs.

Yesterday Chap had managed to drink roughly one quarter of the cup. He decided to try again. He reached for Grandpa Audie's Twitcher's Catalog mug and filled it to the top. Once again it was
hot hot hot. Bitter bitter bitter.
To Chap, it tasted like acid going down his gullet. There had to be a less painful way to become a man, especially now when everyone told him that's what he was supposed to be.

But for the moment, staring at the empty café, he felt completely helpless.
Man up,
he told himself. He took a big gulp of Community Coffee. That was a mistake. It burned on the way down. He decided from then on he would only take sips. Tiny sips. He looked in the cup. There was still two-thirds of the blacker 'n dirt liquid left, but he couldn't bear to drink any more. Nevertheless, progress had been made. Yesterday, he drank a quarter of a cup. Today, he drank a third. Maybe tomorrow, he'd drink a half. He carried his grandpa's cup to the kitchen and set it on the counter. The GBH seemed to stare out at him, its wide wings spread as it flew in a circle around the cup.