The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (14 page)

And with that, the Voice faded, but before it died out, the raccoons heard, “Have a good day and a good idea,” followed by a long, deep “Arrrooooo!” All of that was ended with a
click
, and the lights flickered off again.

Bingo and J'miah sat in the silence for a good long while, the music thingie all but forgotten. The Voice had told them many things in the past, things about the weather, about fishing, about the price of corn. And even though the price of corn meant nothing to them, everything the Voice had ever said had been true, including the terrible news about the Farrow Gang. But the Voice had never told them anything about Paradise Pies. Or about kicking booty, either.

What could it all mean? they wondered.

But then Bingo thought about the Sugar Man.

Pies.

Sugar Man.

Pies.

Sugar Man.

Pies.
Made out of pure canebrake sugar.
And all at once, our Information Officer had a good idea. “J'miah,” he said, “I think we need some Paradise Pies.”

S
OMEONE ELSE WAS LISTENING TO
Coyoteman Jim in the middle of the night—Chap and Sweetums. When Chap heard that ad, he grinned from ear to ear.

“Genius,” he told the cat.

When people heard that ad, they'd be lined up all the way down Beaten Track Road. Yessirree, Chap just knew it.

“It won't be long now,” he told Sweetums. And with that, he rubbed the cat between the ears and turned off the light. “Wait,” said Sweetums, “I have something to tell you.” But of course the boy paid no heed. Heed cannot be paid if you don't know the language. Chap just rolled over and pulled up the covers.

“H
OW MUCH LONGER
? H
OW MUCH
longer? How much longer till canebrake sugar?” the fifteen Farrow hoglets chanted, over and over.

“Not long now, my bad little Farrows,” said Clydine, grinding her teeth in annoyance. Then she glared at Buzzie and asked, “Exactly
how
much longer, my dearie dear?” She tapped her cloven hoof in impatience. They had been on the go for a couple of hours, and they didn't seem any nearer to the canebrake than they had when they first woke up.

The chant from the hoglets was driving Clydine mad. She could tolerate bickering and snickering. She could manage head-butting and tusk-tangling. But she absolutely couldn't abide chanting, especially that insidious question that drives all parents mad, “How much longer?”

Buzzie knew that Clydine's skin was getting perilously thin. He tried to calm her with a diversion. “I know,” he said. “Let's wallow some more.”

He led them all to a shallow pond that normally would
have served as drinking water for a herd of cattle that had vamoosed ahead of the hogs' approach. Buzzie could see that it was the perfect place to stop.

“Yay!” squealed the little Farrows.

“You wallow,” said Clydine. “I'm going to go beat my head against a tree.” Which is exactly what she did. And while it made Clydine feel so much better, it destroyed the poor tree. By the time she was done beating her head against it, there wasn't a single leaf left on its branches, and all its bark had popped completely off.

Buzzie watched her in admiration. “That's my girl,” he said.

And while all fifteen of his piggy brood watched, he did a huge belly flop in the now-mucked-up pond.
Smack!
“Hooray!” they cried.

There were happy hogs aplenty. At least until the smallest one chanted, “How much longer? How much longer?”

B
INGO AND
J'
MIAH KNEW THEY
were running out of time. They could feel the increasing strength of the
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble
s.

But it took them a while to figure out where the Paradise Pies Café was actually located. The Voice had said “Beaten Track Road.” They had no idea what that meant. They didn't have GPS like Steve had on his lost cell phone, nor did they have a paper napkin map. But they figured it couldn't be too far away, or the Voice wouldn't have brought it up in the first place. So even while the rain continued, the two of them bounded out into the evening.

And they might not ever have found the little café, except that J'miah got tired of going around in large circles and finally stopped to ask a skunk for directions. Skunks get a bad rap for their propensity to spray others with their fowl musk, but their noses are highly regarded. And as long as they weren't scared or angry, they kept their musks to themselves. J'miah figured that a skunk would be able to
point them in the direction of the pies just by virtue of his schnoz. The first skunk he saw, he approached very cautiously. The skunk was happy to oblige. The musk alarm was left untripped.

As it turned out, the café wasn't all that far from the DeSoto, maybe only a mile or so. Who knew?

Sure enough, before Bingo and J'miah even saw the sign, their noses started tingling. My, oh my, those pies smelled good. Bingo didn't even have to open his eyes to see that he was on the right track. His mouth watered, and he even drooled a little bit.

J'miah had to shake him out of his trance. “There it is,” he said.

Bingo opened his eyes at the same time that the rain finally came to a close. Sure enough, right in front of them, was a small building, sitting up on stilts so that if the water from the nearby Bayou Tourterelle ever came out of its banks, it would just flow right underneath it, no harm done. The building had a front porch and a back porch. There was only one light coming through the windows, and while they stood there, that light went out.

Both of their tummies growled. The sticky air was so thick with the smell of those pies that it seemed like they could practically bite it.

J'miah gave Bingo a nudge. “Don't forget our mission.”

“Mission?” asked Bingo. The pie smell had erased all memory.

“Operation Rumble-Rumble-Rumble,” J'miah reminded him.

For a second Bingo drooled a little more. Then J'miah gave him a whack on the back.

“Mission, mission, mission,” J'miah said.

At last Bingo snapped out of his pie aroma coma.

“Right,” he said. “Mission.” All at once the urgency of the task in front of him gave him a power surge. He was a Sugar Man Swamp Scout after all. Their mission was to wake up the Sugar Man so that he could deal with the advancing hogs.

Everything depended upon waking up the Sugar Man.

A pie wasn't the same as the actual canebrake sugar, but it had canebrake sugar in it, and since the canebrake sugar was guarded by a whole phalanx of
snipping-snapping-zipping-zapping
, the pie would have to do.

So, here they were, advancing on the café so that they could steal pies, and wouldn't you know it, the side window was barely cracked open. Barely, but enough. By scampering along the thick limb of a japonica bush that leaned against the house and led right to the window, all they had to do was pop off the screen, and
thump
, first Bingo was in, then
thump
, J'miah was in, then
thump, thump
, they were both on the counter.

Victory!

It took a minute to reconnoiter, but once their eyes adjusted to their surroundings, they looked around and saw . . . mountains of pies.

Paradise. That's where they were. Paradise.

In fact, they were in Paradise Pies Café.

But they weren't alone.

S
OMETIME DEEP IN THE DEEPEST
middle of his midnight nap, Sweetums heard a
thump.
What was that? He cocked his ears. Nothing.

Then he heard it again.
Thump.
There was someone in the café. Was it a rat? He could not believe that a rat would try to enter his domain. No self-respecting rat would dare cross the threshold of Paradise Pies Café, not while Sweetums was in charge of pest control.

Thump.

Big rat,
thought Sweetums. He slid off the bed, careful not to make any noise, tiptoed around the corner and over to the door. He crouched down as low as he could, making himself as thin as a shadow. The door between the back of the cabin and the café kitchen was only cracked a tiny bit, just enough for him to poke his nose through.

His whiskers twitched. There was definitely something there, but with his superior sense of smell, he could tell
that it was not a rat. It also wasn't a human. Sweetums had smelled plenty of them.

For sure it wasn't a dog. He'd smelled them, too. Disgusting creatures. Plus, dogs were so loud. Whatever was creeping around in the kitchen was being very quiet, and very stealthy.

Thump, thump.

Two. There were two somethings in the kitchen. Sweetums twitched his tail. He crouched a little lower. And then, in the light cast off by the clock radio, he saw two stripy figures walk along the edge of the kitchen counter, one behind the other. As the cat watched, one of the figures paused and sniffed the air. Then they both looked right in his direction. Their terrible black eyes glowered from behind their terrible black masks.

Wait a minute. Black masks? Now Sweetums knew exactly what he was seeing: robbers!

Paradise Pies was being robbed!

“Thieves!” Sweetums' ginger coat suddenly doubled in size. (Even though cats are not in the same family as raccoons, they are equally poofable.) As soon as Sweetums' paws gathered some traction on the wood floor, he darted beneath Chap's bed. There he bunched himself up and let out a low furious growl. In addition, he managed to hiss several times.

“People! Where are you?” he finally cried, in his loudest meow. Weren't the humanoids supposed to protect him from this sort of thing? Shouldn't they take some sort of defensive action? Why would they not wake up?

As it turns out, the people were so tired from cooking pies all day that they were pooped, kaput, sacked out. Some might say “dead to the world.” In other words, completely, thoroughly, utterly, sound asleep, with “sound” being the primary descriptor.

M
EANWHILE, BACK IN THE KITCHEN
, Bingo and J'miah knew they had been discovered. They grabbed as many pies as they could. They shoveled pawsful of them out the crack in the kitchen window.

Finally, Bingo whispered to J'miah, “That's good. Let's go!” They had all that they could safely carry, and
thump
,
thump
, out they slid, and away they went as fast as their stripy little legs could carry them.

Pip pip, young pie thieves!

I
T TOOK FOREVER FOR
S
WEETUMS
'
nerves to settle. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see those sinister black masks. His normally sleek ginger fur stayed poofed out for hours.

First the
rumble-rumble-rumble-
rumble
s. Now a home invasion. What next?

He also realized that he needed to use his box, but that was two rooms over, next to the washing machine. He curled into a ball. He could wait.

No way was he getting out from under this bed, not until the sun came up. No way. Nuh-uh. Not going to happen.

I
T WAS A LONG NIGHT
for Coyoteman Jim, too. As soon as he ran the commercial for Paradise Pies, he started getting one call after another. Folks rang in with all sorts of questions:

• Which direction should I take to get there?

That depends on where you're coming from.

• Where do I turn?

Follow the signs.

• How much does a pie cost?

One pie for two dollars. Three pies for five dollars.

• Do they use real muscovado sugar?

Right out of the canebrake.

• Is the sugar fresh-squeezed?

Right there in the kitchen.

• Do they have French roast coffee?

Nope. Community Coffee, roasted in Baton Rouge.

• How many pies can one person eat?

As many as one person wants.

• Do they have takeout?

Only if you can get out the door without eating them.

Coyoteman Jim just finished answering one phone call, when it rang again. He could barely even squeeze out time for the weather report amidst all those questions. Sometime after midnight the calls finally slowed down and he was able to catch his breath. He smiled from ear to ear. If that night had been any indication, there was going to be a very large crowd at Paradise Pies Café in the morning. He just hoped there would be a pie left for him!

And then the phone rang again.

Sonny Boy Beaucoup. Coyoteman Jim felt a chill run through the air. But Sonny Boy wasn't calling about pies. Nope. He was calling to let Coyoteman Jim know about the groundbreaking ceremony that he and Jaeger Stitch were planning to hold for the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park.

“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “Be sure to let your listeners know.”

Coyoteman Jim crossed his fingers behind his back and said, “Sure thing, Mr. Beaucoup. Sure thing.” Then he
wrote down all the information, including the guest list. When he got to the mayor's name, his pen mysteriously ran out of ink.

Like we said before, there is some news that is meant to be repeated, and there is some that is not. The news about the groundbreaking ceremony fell into the latter category.

Of course, Coyoteman Jim knew that eventually, word would get out despite his efforts. But in the meantime he'd keep it under his hat as long as he could.

R
ACCOONS ARE FAIRLY DEXTEROUS.
T
HEY
can walk on either four legs or two legs. When they're in a hurry, four legs is best. But right then their front paws were full of fried sugar pies, which meant that their only alternative was to run as fast as they could on their back legs.