The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

by Kathi Appelt

  Gertrude!

  Bingo gulped. “Climb!” he yelled to J’miah. “Climb, climb, climb!”

  J’miah looked over his shoulder and heard this unmistakable sound: CHICHICHICHI! In that split second of extreme panic, J’miah tossed the fried pie into the air and scooted up that tree as fast as he could.

  Had he ever climbed a tree before? No.

  Was he afraid of heights? Yes.

  Did the whole notion make him queasy? Absolutely.

  Did that stop him? No, it did not. His dormant inner climber woke up. He didn’t miss a single beat, just pulled himself up, paw over paw, stripy leg after stripy leg, until he trembled right next to his brother.

  And while both of them sat there, looking down, they watched in horror as Gertrude swallowed down the single fried pie, the fried pie that Bingo and J’miah had stolen, the fried pie that was supposed to wake up the Sugar Man so that he could scare away the Farrow Gang and save the swamp from certain devastation.

  That fried pie.

  It was now in the belly of the beast.

  And what did the beast have to say?

  “Oopssss.”

  79

  OF COURSE, THERE WERE MORE fried pies where that one came from. They just weren’t in the possession of the Sugar Man Swamp Scouts. Rather, they were in the kitchen of Paradise Pies Café. And Chap was determined to protect them from invading raccoons.

  The Havahart trap that Grandpa Audie had used on the bobcat was just the right size for catching a raccoon. Plus, it was easy to set. The only problem was that there were two raccoons, and only one trap.

  It would have to do. Chap figured he’d catch them one at a time.

  First, he dragged it out of the boat shed, where it had been stored. Then he sprayed it off with water from the hose so as to eliminate any leftover bobcat musk.

  Finally, he sprinkled some of Sweetums’ cat food into the back of it and carefully set the trap door.

  “There,” he said.

  He stepped away and, using the hose again, sprayed the ground on either side of the trap so as to lessen his own scent.

  “That ought to do it,” he said, admiring the simple engineering of the trap. He wiped his wet hands on the back of his jeans. Then he said, “No animals will be harmed in the protecting of these pies.”

  80

  MEANWHILE, DEEP IN THE DARKEST part of the swamp, Gertrude was feeling a tiny bit of remorse for gobbling up the fried pie, but not too much, because . . .

  (1) that pie had kicked her booty! She thought it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten, but more important . . .

  (2) it seemed like the pie had kicked the fleas’ booties too, because as soon as she ate it, the fleas stopped biting and went on their merry ways.

  The swamp is full of mysteries, and here was a new one. But there was no mystery about how aggravated Bingo and J’miah were with Gertrude.

  “Now what?” shouted Bingo from their branch in the magnolia tree.

  “Ssssssorrry,” said Gertrude, even though she wasn’t too sorry. She was vastly relieved to have some respite from those fleas. It was too bad that the silly raccoons had only brought one pie. If they’d brought more, they wouldn’t be in this pickle at all, would they? She was just about to say, “Ssssayonara, Sssssscouts!” when rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

  “What wassss that?” she asked.

  “HOGS!” shouted Bingo and J’miah. Had they not told her this before? Yes! We believe they had.

  Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

  Bingo and J’miah knew that if they could feel the rumbles all the way into the deepest, darkest part of the swamp, the Farrow Gang was closer than ever. As if to prove the point . . . rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

  “We have to wake up the Sugar Man!” said Gertrude.

  Bingo and J’miah both slapped their foreheads. “How?” they asked. “We don’t have any sugarcane because somebody forgot to mention that the sugarcane is guarded by a whole brigade of vicious rattlesnakes. And now we don’t have a sugar pie because somebody gobbled it down.” They didn’t add “like a hog,” even though Bingo was tempted.

  Gertrude hiccupped. She had to admit that they were in a predicament. It really was too bad that there wasn’t any more sugar on hand, either raw or in pie form.

  But she did have one secret weapon up her sleeve: snip-snap-zip-zap.

  “Follow me,” she told the Scouts.

  From their branch in the magnolia, the raccoon brothers looked at each other. Then they looked down at Gertrude. She hiccupped again. They were having a trust issue here. But alas, did they have any recourse? We can say with certitude that they did not. Tossing their hesitations into the wet swampy air, they scooted backwards down the tree and followed Gertrude past the arbor that marked the entrance, and straight into the den of the Sugar Man, first cousin to Barmanou, second cousin to Sasquatch, third cousin to the Yeti.

  It was a death-defying moment in Swamp Scout history.

  81

  EVEN THOUGH THE NIGHT WAS waning, and the sun was on the verge of popping up, Bingo and J’miah blinked to adjust their vision to the deeper darkness of the inner lair. They looked all around. It wasn’t as cozy as their DeSoto, but it had a certain homey feel to it. J’miah scanned the walls. He didn’t see any art hanging on them, but he admired the intricate weaving of the vines and branches that created this secret den and kept its inhabitants hidden from the rest of the world.

  And of course, right in front of them was the large, sleeping form of the Sugar Man. Bingo and J’miah squeezed next to each other for support. They looked him over from head to toes. It was true. His hands were as large as palmetto ferns. His feet were like small boats. And he was furry all over, like a big bear.

  They watched as Gertrude slithered up beside him. “I can give him jussst a sssmall sssnip-sssnap-zip-zap right on hisss nossse. That will wake him up.”

  Bingo and J’miah just nodded. But then Gertrude added, “Of courssse, rattlesssnake bitesss sssometimess make him . . . Hmmm . . . What isss the word? . . . Oh, yesss. It sssometimesss makesss him . . . wrathful. I’m just sssaying.”

  Bingo shivered. “Do you think it’s a good idea?” he asked.

  “Do you have another one?” asked Gertrude. But she’d hardly finished her question when . . . from deep inside her gullet . . . BUURRRPPP!

  “My,” she said, but then it happened again . . . BURRRRPPPP!

  Suddenly the air filled up with the sweet aroma of sugar. Canebrake sugar. Muscovado. And while Bingo and J’miah stood there, the Sugar Man said, in a soft, sweet voice, “Yummmm . . . sugar . . .” And after more than sixty years of sleeping, the Sugar Man sat up, yawned, and stretched.

  He blinked several times, twisted his enormous torso to get the kinks out, wiggled his huge toes, and yawned once more. He smiled and patted Gertrude, who, we swear, started purring. “Morning,” he said. That’s when he noticed Bingo and J’miah.

  “Scouts!” he said, a tiny edge of alarm in his voice. “Is there an emergency?”

  But Bingo and J’miah didn’t even have to answer, because just then . . .

  RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!

  82

  CLYDINE STUCK HER SNOUT INTO the air. “Buzzie! Buzzie! What’s that I smell?”

  Buzzie stuck his snout into the air, “Sugar, m’lovie dovie covey.”

  At last! Every single hair in Clydine’s nose tingled. Oh, the ecstasy. Ah, the euphoria. Her smell buds were in odor exaltation. Her taste buds were dancing atop her tongue. Every cell in her porcine body was in a state of sucrose rapture.

  Oh, yes, lift your voices and say it. Say it out loud . . .

  “Sugar!” shouted the fifteen junior members of the Farrow Gang.

  Yes, it was true. The sweet aroma of the wild sugarcane that grew along the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle was now within the hogs’ smelling range.

  “I want me some of that wild sugar.” Clydine snorted.

  “Me too.” Buzzie snorted.


  “We want sugar.” The Farrows snorted.

  And with that the seventeen porkers squealed at the tops of their lungs, “WHHHEEEEEEEE—OOOOOHHHH—WWWWWWWEEEEE—OOOOHHH!”

  The Fourth Day

  83

  IN A DIFFERENT PART OF the swamp, Jaeger Stitch sat on the hood of the superstretch Hummer while Leroy motored it down to the edge of the Bayou Tourterelle. The big day had arrived for the groundbreaking ceremony, and Jaeger needed a fresh gator.

  Attached to the back of the Hummer was a large trailer. It resembled one of the cars that you might see on a circus train. In fact, it even had JAEGER STITCH—WORLD CHAMPION GATOR WRESTLER OF THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE stenciled on the side, along with a portrait of an enormous gator.

  From his spot behind the steering wheel, Leroy thought Jaeger resembled a giant hood ornament. If she had wings on her back, she could be a life-size replica of the Rolls-Royce angel.

  Leroy grimaced. Jaeger Stitch was no angel.

  She looked over her shoulder at him through the windshield and motioned with her hand for him to slow down. Then she called to him to turn the car around so that the back of the trailer faced the water, no easy feat, considering the Hummer’s length. Thirty-five feet, remember? Plus fifteen more for the trailer. Then she told him to turn the headlights off and get out of the car.

  Getting out of the car was not something that Leroy had planned to do. But when Jaeger reached through the window and wrapped her hand around his neck, he didn’t have a choice. He got out of the car.

  He briefly thought about falling on his knees and begging for mercy, but before he could prostrate himself, she grabbed him by the collar and handed him the end of a rope. “Here,” she said. “When I say pull, pull.” He had no other choice but to do as he was told. Then he looked out at the bayou. He could see a dozen sets of alligator eyes, just on the surface of the water. His knees started to shake. He had never been so close to an alligator before, not to mention a dozen alligators. Wild alligators.

  While he stood there, Jaeger Stitch went into action. In her hands she had a long pole with a point on the end. It wasn’t a spear, but Leroy thought it could be used as a spear if she had that inclination. He rubbed his neck where Jaeger had so recently grabbed it. As he stood holding his end of the rope, he watched Jaeger uncoil her end. That was when he noticed that there was a chicken tied to it, which she set on the banks of the bayou. (No, not a live chicken. A barbecued chicken.) Then she gave the rope a little tug and climbed atop the trailer.

  Leroy figured it out. With the rope in his hand, he was “fishing” for an alligator. Okay, then. All righty. His instinct was to head for the hills, but are there any hills in the swamp? We think you can answer that question all by yourself. Poor Leroy was stuck.

  “When I say pull, pull,” Jaeger said again. Leroy nodded.

  He looked at the quiet water. All he could see were those dozen sets of eyes. Worse, he could tell that they were getting closer and closer to the bank. Since he knew that their eyes were attached to their bodies, he also knew that the alligators were getting ready to dock.

  Sure enough, the biggest alligator in the pod swam up to the barbecue chicken. Like that, the beast opened his massive jaws. Leroy had never seen so many teeth in one place in his entire life.

  Just as those mighty jaws were about to snap up the chicken, Jaeger yelled, “Pull!” Leroy tugged the rope so hard, it caused the chicken to bounce away.

  SNAP! Leroy just about jumped out of his skin. The alligator missed the chicken, but the aroma of barbecue was strong in its nostrils. Leroy watched in astonishment as Jaeger prodded the beast with her pointed stick. The gator moved forward again. “Pull,” yelled Jaeger. SNAP! Each time the gator tried to SNAP the chicken, Jaeger yelled, “Pull.” And with each pull and SNAP, the gator got closer to the trailer. Ahh, now Leroy could see what she was doing. As soon as the gator climbed into the trailer, Jaeger would slam the gate shut, and voilà! She’d have her victim.

  SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

  The problem was, as the gator got closer to the trailer, it also got closer to Leroy. And it seemed to Leroy, although he was no alligator psychologist, that the beast was getting increasingly angry at the ever-moving chicken. Soon, he figured, he’d run out of rope and there would be only a barbecued chicken between him and the alligator.

  Just as Leroy was beginning to think that the gator might give up on the chicken and have him for dinner instead, Jaeger grabbed the chicken, threw it into the trailer, poked the gator in just the right spot so that it climbed right into the trailer, and slam, she closed the back of the trailer.

  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.

  84

  SONNY BOY 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.
/>   85

  PARADISE PIES CAFÉ 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.”