The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (11 page)

Seeing the bird made Chap want to compare it to the one in Grandpa Audie's sketchbook, which was still stashed away under his bed. Since there was nothing for him to do in the quiet café, he walked to the back of the house, careful not to let Sweetums through the door into the café. He plopped across his bed on his stomach and pulled the book out. Sweetums curled up next to him on the bed and started to purr.

“Person, can you not see that I'm trying to sleep?” asked Sweetums.

Chap ignored the cat and opened the book.

Sweetums tucked his head under his paws.

As Chap turned the pages, his grandpa's scent wrapped itself around him. He felt the familiar heat rise up in his throat. He swallowed it down. Page by page, he gazed at his grandpa's renditions of the fauna of the swamp. Not only were there birds, but there were minks and muskrats and lizards too, every one of which Audie had seen at least once, probably more. As the years had passed, he had added pages to the book. It was heavy and thick, filled with swamp critters. There they were, in Audie's funny style, the pencil lines distinct in their thickness. There was no subtlety in Audie's drawing. It was more like cartoons than art.

Chap flipped through the pages, looking for the GBH. Where was it? He wished that the book was alphabetical, but instead it was what Audie called “incidental.” As in, “Incidentally, I saw a Canadian goose today,” or “Incidentally, I almost stepped on a green anole,” or “Incidentally, have you seen the baby teals?” After each incident, he got out his pencil and drew the incidental subjects.

Chap turned the last page. He must have skipped over the heron—not surprising, since some of the pages tended to stick together, a result of the sugar. When you deal with sugar day in and day out, it tends to coat things, including sketchbook pages. Chap turned the pages again, this time from back to front, taking care to gently pull some of the stuck pages apart.

It was upon such a pulling that he noticed the drawing of the raccoon. Audie had featured the raccoon playing a harmonica. “Raccoons,” he said, “are multi-talented.” It was a funny picture. Chap had looked at it dozens of times. It was one of his favorites. He stared at it for a full minute; so long, in fact, that he could practically hear the notes of the harmonica slipping out of the drawing.

But then he remembered that it wasn't the raccoon he was looking for, it was the heron. He turned another page, only to realize that it too was stuck.

The page felt almost crisp from age and sugar. At last, he managed to pull it apart. There, staring at him, a drawing he had seen dozens of times before but had forgotten: the Sugar Man!

Chap slammed the book shut and sat up. Sweetums, startled, jumped off the bed and scurried underneath it. Chap's heart raced. Sonny Boy's words echoed in his ears.
If I see some proof of the Sugar Man, I'll give you the whole darned swamp.

“Proof!” said Chap, right out loud.

Without apologizing to poor Sweetums, Chap grabbed the book and ran straight for the kitchen.

“Mom,” he called. “Look what I found.”

Chap held the familiar sugarcoated page up to her. His face beamed. But what Chap failed to see, and what his
mother had to point out to him, was the date Audie had scratched at the bottom of the picture: 1949.

“Honey,” she said, “even if Grandpa really did see the Sugar Man, this was drawn more than sixty years ago. Nobody else has claimed to see him since even before then.”

Chap looked at the date. His face fell. He wanted to argue with his mother, but in his heart of hearts, he knew she was right. A drawing from 1949 wouldn't prove anything.

T
HE
1949 D
E
S
OTO SPORTED A
“rocket” body, with a beautiful waterfall grille, a grille that seemed to smile.

It also had a Simplimatic transmission, making for a smooth ride. It was so smooth that in one of their advertisements, a passenger asked the driver, “New road?” To which the driver replied, “No, new DeSoto!”

A
DVERTISEMENT
? D
ID SOMEONE SAY ADVERTISEMENT
?
Coyoteman Jim worked for hours, perfecting his radio commercial for Paradise Pies. As soon as he signed off with his customary, “This is Coyoteman Jim telling you to have a good day and a good idea,” followed by his signature howl, he slipped into the production room and made a recording.

He got it down on the first try. The only thing left to do was take it to Paradise Pies and let Chap and his mother give it their nods of approval. He slipped the copy of the recording into his jacket pocket and headed out the door.

Meanwhile, at the café, Chap needed to do something. Anything. The disappointment of the drawing, combined with his feelings of being outmanned by Sonny Boy and Jaeger, all on top of a small power surge from the one-third cup of coffee, made him feel like an unlit bottle rocket.

His mom, sensing his short fuse, gave him a chore. “We need some fresh cane,” she said.

Yes! Chap untied his apron, hung it on a hook by the
back door, and reached for his muck boots. He turned them upside down and shook them first to be sure nothing was nesting inside them, like a brown recluse spider or a scorpion. Satisfied the boots were empty, he slid his feet into them. Then he grabbed his grandpa's old machete and headed out. The heft of the machete felt solid in his hand.

Chopping cane was not for the faint of heart, not only because the machete was sharp enough to slice off a finger or a toe, but also because of the canebrake rattlers. So the first thing to be done, of course, was the lullaby. As Chap neared the canebrake, he started to hum, and as he got closer, he lifted his voice and sang his grandpa's tune:

Rock-a-by, oh canebrake rattlers

Sleepy bayou, rock-a-by oh

Canebrake rattlers

Sssslleeeepp

Right there, underneath the boiling Texas sun, Chap stood up a little taller. Gripped the machete a little firmer. Sweated a lot more profusely. In fact, despite the fact that it was his mother who taught him how to do it, Chap realized just then that chopping cane was . . . oh, yes it was . . . wait for it . . .
manly!

In less than an hour, he chopped out a bushel of fresh
sugar. He bundled it together with a length of twine and tied it with a knot, just like Audie had shown him. The fresh, sweet odor of sugar filled the air.

“There's nothing like it,” Audie had told him. And there wasn't.

But cane wasn't the only thing that Chap knew how to chop. He had used this very same machete in his almost daily forays through the swamp with Grandpa Audie. Chap knew how to use the wide blade to clear a path through the stinging vines that covered the forest floor and crept up the trunks of the trees.

Thinking about chopping his way through the woods made Chap think of his grandpa's long search for the DeSoto.

And for possibly the millionth time in his twelve years on Earth, Chap asked, “Where is it?” For a long moment he gazed at the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle, with the stalks of cane racing to the sky, and scanned the landscape for any sign of the old car.

Nothing. It was a ghost car. Just like the ivory-billed woodpecker was a ghost bird. The cloud of lonesome bunched up above his head.

And as if the rattlesnakes sensed his keening, they started to buzz.
Chichichichi . . .

That was Chap's signal to skedaddle. He tugged on the
sugarcane and headed back to the café. As he pulled the bundle into the kitchen, for possibly the billionth time in his twelve long years, his mother greeted him with a dab of flour, this time on his cheek.

“Mom!” he said. Was that any way to treat a man?

As Chap wiped his cheek, Coyoteman Jim walked through the front door. Seeing him, Chap's pulse quickened. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, the radio man had come up with a great commercial, one that would encourage customers from far and wide to drop in and try one of their delicious fried sugar pies, even if they had a hard time finding them along the Beaten Track Road.

And then Chap had another good idea—signs! He could make some signs. As if it agreed, the morning sun shot a beam of light against the front windowpane, and the air inside the café turned golden, like a fresh fried pie.

B
INGO AND
J'
MIAH DIDN
'
T NEED
a sign to know that there was trouble brewing. All night long there had been
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumbling.
The horrible, terrible, very bad, no good Farrow Gang was closing in.

It was time to launch Operation Rumble-Rumble-Rumble into action. With the sun filtering its way through the trees' branches, with only their wits and their whiskers, Bingo and J'miah set out to find the Sugar Man. They scampered through the entryway of the DeSoto and stepped into the warm, wet air.

They were not at all used to such brightness. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. They also felt very exposed, out in the open as they were. They had to pause for a moment to adjust to this idea that they could actually be observed by any of the daytime creatures, creatures they only vaguely knew about.

J'miah pulled his invisible thinking cap around to shield his eyes. It wasn't very helpful, being invisible and all. They
may have stood there all morning, in the unfamiliar light of day, but finally Bingo took a step forward, and that seemed to break the spell.

Tally ho, young Scouts.

And forward they went. Without any solid directions, they simply started walking. Whenever the trail reached a fork, they turned toward whichever lane seemed darkest. They walked and walked and walked, and sure enough, the forest grew thicker. It began to close in on them, blocking out the light above.

Hours passed, and the shadows grew longer and longer. As the trees and bushes became ever more dense, the forest grew quieter. Bingo strained his ears to hear crickets. Not a single chirp. J'miah listened hard for cicadas. Nary a buzz.

Dark.

Quiet.

Dark.

Quiet.

Bingo was extremely glad that he had J'miah with him. J'miah was over-the-moon happy that he was with Bingo. Suddenly in the dark and quiet, they heard,
chichichichi.

Bingo looked at J'miah. J'miah looked at Bingo, and together they said, “Gertrude!”

And Gertrude said, “Sssscccouts! Just who I need.”

R
ACCOONS ARE ONE OF THE
largest members of the Procyonidae family, a family that includes ringtails, kinkajous, olingos, coatis, and cacomistles. (Don't you just love those names?) They are such a handsome group, with their thick fur and their stripy tails; but despite their relatively long claws, and their sharp teeth, their primary form of defense is to go into emergency poof mode, which makes them look five or six times larger than they actually are. The second that Bingo and J'miah came nose to nose with the world's most itchy rattlesnake, their fur went
POOF
and
POOF
, respectively.

While they stood next to each other, trembling and poofing, Gertrude circled them with her long, sleek body and said this unexpected thing: “I've been waiting for ssssssomeone to drop by. And what do you know? Here you are.”

Of course Bingo and J'miah immediately thought she had been waiting to have them for dinner, and not to
share
dinner either.

Bingo blurted out, “I don't think we'd t-t-taste very good.”

But to their surprise, Gertrude started laughing. “Sssssilly Sssscout, I don't eat anything with fur. It getsss ssstuck in my throat.”

That, it goes without saying, was a relief . . . but not a whole lot. Okay, some. A little. There was still a lot of poofing, not to mention shivering, still occurring between the daring duo.

Then J'miah said, “What did you need us for, then?” Bingo could feel his tuft standing straight up.

“I need ssssomeone to admire my new sssskin,” Gertrude said. And with that, she pulled the brothers together even more tightly inside the circle of her body. That way they could get a very up-close-and-personal look at all of her black diamonds. The raccoon brothers were effusive in their praise.

“My, those diamonds are definitely impressive.”

“I've never seen scales like these.”

“You could win the Swamp Critters Beauty Pageant.”

“There is no one more lovely in these whole deep, dark woods.”

They went on and on.

Finally, satisfied that the raccoons had adequately admired her new skin, she asked, “Just out of curiossssity, Ssssscouts, what bringssss you to the deepesssst, darkesssst part of the sssswamp?”

J'miah blurted out, “Rumbles!”

“Lots of rumbles,” added Bingo.

Then they told her that the Sugar Man Swamp was about to be besieged by . . .

“Horrible,” said Bingo.

“Terrible,” said J'miah.

“The Farrow Gang!” they said together.

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

“It's our Scout duty,” said Bingo.

“He's the only one who can stop them,” they chorused.

“Of coursssse,” she agreed. “I could give him a little
snip-snap-zip-zap
.” She paused. “However, that might make him out of sssssorts.”

Bingo and J'miah both recalled their parents' warnings about the
wrath of the Sugar Man.

Bingo gulped. “Isn't there another way?” he asked.

“Oh, yesssss,” said Gertrude. “The besssst way to wake him up issss with the ssssweet aroma of fresh ssssugarcane. Only one itsssy-bitsssy problem. I regret to tell you that we're completely, totally, utterly out of sssstock.”

It only took about five split seconds for Bingo and J'miah to come to the conclusion that Operation Rumble-Rumble-Rumble now had a new step in the mission: procure some fresh sugarcane to wave underneath the nose of the Sugar Man so that he would wake up without any wrath. And that
meant a trip to the edge of the Bayou Tourterelle, where the canebrake grew, which was closer to the DeSoto than to the Sugar Man's hideout.