The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (18 page)

Leroy watched as she punched her fist into the air. Then she looked right at him and said, “Go!” And despite his shaking knees, he dropped the rope, bounded behind the steering wheel, and took off. The Hummer's tires dug into the soft dirt of the marsh and made deep ruts as Leroy hit the gas. He wanted to get back to the Homestead as quickly as he could. He was done with alligator hunting.

His heart was beating against his rib cage like a rabbit on
the run. The trees all around him suddenly looked like tall bearded spirits. He'd never seen anything quite so ghostly, at least not until . . .
EEEK!

First one foot, then another, then two legs, then an entire body . . . slid down the outside of the windshield. Jaeger! Oh my stars! Jaeger! He had forgotten to wait for her to climb into the car. She must have died and had now come back to haunt him.

But wait. No. A ghost wouldn't be so . . . so . . . so
solid.
Would it?

Somehow, when Leroy took off, Jaeger Stitch had managed to leap onto the back of the trailer, jump onto the top of the Hummer, run along all thirty-five feet from back to front, and then slide down the windshield.

And for the second time in this story, someone else, namely Leroy, said, “Oops.”

The good news for Leroy was that Jaeger Stitch was not angry with him for this small transgression. Nope. She wasn't thinking at all about Leroy. The only thing on her mind was the enormous and angry alligator she had in her trailer.

As she rode the hood of the Hummer, she flexed the muscles in her neck in anticipation and cracked her knuckles. She was ready.

S
ONNY
B
OY WAS READY TOO
.
He had special-ordered two dozen gold-plated shovels to use for the groundbreaking ceremony. They were all lined up on the veranda. He had had each one personalized with the name of a different dignitary.

“Party favors,” he called them. After the ground breaking, everyone could take their engraved shovel home and have it mounted, to remind them of this monumental occasion.

But right away his glee turned to glum. Thinking about mounting made him remember the bird in the glass case. The ivory-billed woodpecker. Shot by his father, Quenton, who had ended up in the top of a tree, dead of a heart attack.

A shiver ran up Sonny Boy's right leg and into his gut. And he might have called the whole thing off right there. . . . It was early, there was still time to back out. . . . Decisions, decisions . . . Except that just then, he saw the headlights from the Hummer coming toward him, and even
though he was somewhat blinded by the blue-tinted lights, he could tell that Jaeger was sitting on the hood again, riding the car like a rodeo horse.

To further emphasize the point, he heard her yell, “Yeehaw!” She must have caught a gator, he thought. And sure enough, he heard the beast thrashing inside the trailer. And from the sounds of the thrashes, he figured it must be a large one. When he saw the trailer rock from side to side, he knew it was a
very large
one.

There was no going back now. Soon, the guests would arrive, including the mayor and her husband. An alligator would be wrestled. Fried pies would be eaten. Ground would be broken. The Brayburns would get their eviction notice. Best of all, the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park would be built and the cash would start rolling in.

Everything was going according to plan. The mounted bird in the case was no concern of his. It was fire the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

P
ARADISE
P
IES
C
AFÉ
WAS OPERATING
at full speed too. It was all Chap and his mother could do to keep up. When Coyoteman Jim stopped in after his radio shift, they gave him an apron and put him to work filling coffee cups.

Once again, the cash piled up. Chap kept taking the bills to the back porch and dropping them into the boat. Even though they still had a long way to go before it was filled, he could see that they were making progress.

Chap looked down at the ones, fives, tens, and even a handful of twos. What had once seemed hopeless, was now seeming possible. In fact, seeing all that cash made him think that maybe, just maybe, he might also be able to find the Sugar Man. Hope swam like a fish right up into his chest.

As he turned to go back to the kitchen, he heard the phone ring. He could tell by his mother's voice that someone was placing an order. In fact, he could tell by her face that it was a
big
order.

“Pies for twenty-four?” she said. Chap looked at her. That was a lot of pies. He looked at the clock. It was almost noon. After the morning rush, the pie supply was low.

“At one p.m.?” she asked.

Closing time? One p.m. was closing time. They would be completely out of pies by then. Chap knew that. Could they make pies for twenty-four by one p.m.?

To answer his question . . . “Of course we can have pies for twenty-four at one p.m.,” he heard his mother say. “Of course we can.”

He looked at the counter. There were only a few pies left, and there were still a handful of customers coming through the door.

But the next thing he heard his mother say caught him completely off guard, “Thank you, Mr. Beaucoup. We'll have them ready.”

Mr. Beaucoup? Sonny Boy?

As soon as Mom set the phone down, Chap asked, “Sonny Boy Beaucoup is coming here with twenty-three other people?”

That's when Coyoteman Jim stepped in. Rubbing his hands on the front of his apron, he said, “Didn't y'all hear the announcement about the groundbreaking ceremony?” Judging from the looks on their faces, he guessed not.

Chap let the news soak in. A ground breaking? But . . .
but . . . it was too soon. How could they fill up the boat in such a short time? The little fish of hope that Chap had just experienced swam right down the toilet.

In the same exact moment, the truth ran up and bit him: A groundbreaking ceremony meant that all their options were off the table.

Chap realized right then that Sonny Boy and Jaeger had simply been playing a cruel joke on them. All that work, all the bills he and his mom had set inside the boat? They had never even had a chance. Sonny Boy had never intended for his deal to be real. Even if they had stuffed the little pirogue to the very brim with cash, it would never have been enough. Not in the face of a sprawling extravaganza like the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park.

And for the first time ever, Chap felt something he had never felt before. Not once. Not ever. Not in his whole twelve years. He felt humiliated. How could he have let himself be duped by someone with such stupid, stupid socks?

His mother recovered first. “Pies for twenty-four,” she said. Then she handed Chap an unopened bag of Community Coffee. “We're going to need more.”

Reluctantly, he took the bag and turned toward the grinder. This was not what he wanted to do. The high pitch of the grinder grated on his nerves. He could feel his cheeks burn in the hot air of the kitchen. Even without
taking a single sip of coffee, his mouth was filled with bitterness.

All at once, he wanted to be
anywhere
but in the kitchen of Paradise Pies Café making stupid coffee that had not inspired even one stupid hair on his chest. He especially did not want to be making coffee for such a stupid person as Sonny Boy Beaucoup.

He felt trapped.

And in that split second, the sound of the coffee grinder peeled away every inch of nerve coating in his brain, and he remembered: “The trap!” In the flurry of the morning's activity, he had forgotten to check the Havahart trap.

He yanked his apron over his head and ran through the back of the cabin, past the boat, and down the steps of the back porch.
Wham!
The screen door slammed behind him.

Sure enough. The trap had worked. But not in the way he had intended. There, in full hissing and spitting glory, was one very large, very angry . . . primeval possum.

“Great balls of fire!” Chap cried. (Okay, he didn't really say that, but we can't repeat his true words in polite company.)

From behind the wires of the cage, one of the swamp's nastiest denizens glared at Chap with its tiny little black eyes and very, very sharp teeth. Chap gingerly stood behind the
Havahart cage and slowly lifted the lid, whereupon the primeval possum lumbered out.

While he watched the possum disappear into the thick underbrush, even more humiliation dripped down Chap's neck, his chest, his waist, until it settled right smack in the middle of his gut.

Could this day get any worse?

T
HE DAY WAS NOT GOING
very well for a very large alligator either.
WHOOMPH!
With one last fierce shove, Jaeger Stitch grabbed the side of the ten-foot-long reptile and flipped him onto his back.

The gator had been a worthy foe. All morning long she had teased it with her pointed stick by poking it through the bars of the trailer. It had responded with a fury of snaps and hisses.

And then, once all of the dignitaries had arrived and settled at their tables on the wide veranda, once lunch had been served, Jaeger Stitch opened the back of the trailer, and the huge beast leapt out into the open. She circled it with her pointed stick.

Each time she prodded it, the gator whipped its tail toward her in an attempt to catch her and sweep her into its enormous mouth. After spending all those hours cooped up in the trailer, after all those jabs and pokes, the animal was furious.

Time after time, it leapt toward Jaeger. But she was too quick for it. The folks on the veranda watched in amazement as the two feinted and dodged.

The alligator was a creature with a million years of survival instincts going for it. A species doesn't prowl the earth for such a long time without a surplus of skills to keep its kind going.

Jaeger Stitch was a creature of wile. After several minutes of provocation, Jaeger danced her way behind the alligator. Then with a running leap, she jumped onto its back, and with her tiny hands she reached for its foot-long jaws. The alligator's tail whipped furiously back and forth. At the same time, its mouth whipped back and forth too.

Jaeger held on.

What she knew, and what a lot of folks don't, is that an alligator has very little strength in opening its jaws. Where its power lies is in closing them.

Jaeger Stitch knew exactly what to do. First, she leaned forward until her cheek was almost between the beast's eyes. She pushed her face down hard against the alligator's face so that its jaws were forced to close, and then she clamped them shut with both of her hands. Once the alligator's jaws were clamped, the gator was powerless.

The wrestlerette slowly sat up, and as she did, she pulled the animal's head toward hers in a ninety-degree angle so
that the alligator's snout was facing straight up toward the sky. She held it there for a long minute, and right before she let her hands go, she leaned forward and kissed it.

She kissed the alligator.

And as soon as she did, she leapt off its back, spun around on her toes, and bowed to the audience. They all stood up and gave her a rousing ovation. None of them had ever seen anything quite like it. Sonny Boy's smile went from ear to ear. It was obvious that they were all in the presence of the World Champion Gator Wrestler of the Northern Hemisphere. Suddenly, they all knew what Sonny Boy knew: People would come from miles around to see her. The economy of the region was about to pick up. The mayor even shook Sonny Boy's hand.

Right on cue, Leroy pulled the superstretch Hummer up the drive. “Grab your shovels, everyone,” said Sonny Boy. And the entire group, all twenty-four of them, plus Leroy, headed to Paradise Pies Café for pre-groundbreaking dessert.

As for the alligator, once it managed to roll itself back onto its legs, it headed for the azaleas, where it took a nice, long nap.

O
KAY, YOU WANT TO TALK
about naps? The Sugar Man had been napping for a very long time, and even though there was an emergency at hand, he moved rather slowly, know what I mean? Waking up was hard to do. He scooped up Bingo and J'miah in one of his palmetto-size hands and set them on his shoulder.

To Bingo it was almost like being at the top of a tree. He loved it.

To J'miah it was almost like being at the top of a tree too. Frankly, he didn't feel the love at all.

Both of them grabbed fistfuls of fur in order to hang on.

Raccoons are quite dexterous. They can swim, climb, and scamper better than most other critters. (One mode of transportation that they don't do is flight, and that can be excused for lack of wingage.) But riding atop the Sugar Man was a wholly new form of transportation. And even though J'miah had mixed emotions, it was much more expedient than trekking by foot through the dark trails of the forest.

“Let's go,” Bingo urged.

And with that, the Sugar Man began to plod his way along, toward the Bayou Tourterelle and the canebrake sugar. Bingo and J'miah looked down at Gertrude, slithering ahead of them in the water. She was, in fact, a monster of a rattlesnake. But from their vantage points she didn't look nearly so menacing.

What was menacing was the
rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble
.

“Hurry,” Bingo said.

“Hurry,” J'miah said.

To our little Scouts, looking around at the beautiful green trees, with their wispy beards of moss, seeing the silvery bayou as it slowly slid to the sea, breathing in the thick, moist air of early summer, it seemed like the whole world was depending upon them.

“Hurry up,” they said. “Hurry.”

T
HERE WAS PLENTY OF HURRY-UP
going on at Paradise Pies Café. Chap stuffed sugarcane into the juicer as fast as he could. Mom rolled out the batter. And Coyoteman Jim washed the coffee cups. The deep-fat fryer bubbled with pies.