The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

by Kathi Appelt

  But this blood was even worse because it reminded him of the bloody deal that sat on the family mantel. Chiding the boy about the Sugar Man had unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. What if . . . The words of his great-great-greater-greatest-grandfather’s deal seared into his sight: “risk the wrath of the Sugar Man.” Then his own words rose into his ears . . . If I see some proof of the Sugar Man, I’ll give you the whole darned swamp.

  He started to stick his fingers into his mouth, but thought better of it and pulled out his silk handkerchief. After all, he had plenty of them. He could spare this one. Once he stanched the bleeding, he let the handkerchief fall to the ground. He wouldn’t miss it. Nor would he miss this swamp, especially when it became the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park. Who would?

  “Nobody who matters,” he said out loud. With that, he made a promise to himself. As soon as he returned to the Homestead, he would burn that freaking document, and for good measure he would toss in the mounted woodpecker specimen along with it. Enough with the past. It was time to look forward.

  It was also time to look ahead. As in down the trail. Because if he had, he would have seen why the entire group of twenty-three shovelers suddenly turned around and ran up the trail, straight toward him, screaming bloody murder.

  “Snakes!”

  “Rattlesnakes!”

  “They’re everywhere!”

  “Run for your lives!”

  Sure enough, Jaeger Stitch and her groupies had come face-to-face with a buzzing, writhing, hissing hive of Crotalus horridus—in the hundreds. Make that thousands. Okay, tens of thousands! Including one CHG—Gertrude!

  Chichichichi!

  93

  AND THAT’S THE WARNING THAT the unfortunate hogs did not receive, coming as they were from the opposite direction, because only minutes later they saw that wild muscovado sugar, and hallelujah, pass the gravy, they dug in. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they had gotten the message, because snakes were no concern of theirs.

  In their sugar haze, they rooted and tooted. They snorted and squealed. They gobbled and gorged.

  “WWWHHHEEEEEEEE . . . OOOOOOHHHHHH . . . WWWWHHHHEEEEEEE . . . OOOHHHHHHH . . . WWWWWHHHEEEEE . . . OOOOHHHH.”

  Those hogs noshed until the hogs came home. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) They tore through that cane, ripping it out of the ground and tramping it and stamping it and mostly, hogging it. They paid no attention to the startled rattlesnakes, who slithered into the deepest end of the bayou, where they shivered so hard that they stirred the water up and made it look like chocolate soup.

  Even Gertrude was too rattled to rattle. She quickly wound her enormous body around the trunk of a sturdy pine tree and shivered.

  So, you can just imagine how mad the Sugar Man was when he saw those hogs rampaging through his wild sugarcane. First, he lifted Bingo and J’miah off his shoulders and set them on the branches of the same pine tree that Gertrude had embraced. They clung for dear life. Then, it’s safe to say, that Sugar Man went wild. Hog wild.

  He reached for the biggest of the batch, which just happened to be Buzzie, and with one hand the Sugar Man grabbed that hog’s back leg and swung him around and around in a huge circle. He looked like a helicopter with a big fat bristly blade.

  “Clyyyyydddiiiine!” yelled Buzzie, just before the Sugar Man let loose. Oh boy, did he let loose. That hog flew. Yep, you heard it, he flew through the hot, humid air of the swamp, way above the trees, up into the gathering clouds and straight toward the planets, like a big fat comet with a little curly tail.

  He was followed by Clydine, who was trailed by all fifteen of their airborne progeny. If you looked straight up, it would seem like a porcine meteor shower, that’s how high the Sugar Man tossed them.

  94

  IN THE PARKING LOT, THE non-groundbreakers had shoved their ways into the stretch Hummer. With Jaeger in the lead, and Sonny Boy bringing up the rear, everyone was stumbling and bumbling and swinging their shovels. It was a flat-out miracle that they didn’t whack one another, because clearly these were people who had no idea how to swing a shovel.

  The undignified dignitaries scrambled into the car. Then poor Leroy had to swing the doors shut and hurry to the driver’s seat.

  Hummers were originally built for warfare. That was their design, their calling. But this one had been all glammed up. And I’ll tell you, it seemed like its sense of purpose was lost in the glamming. Some things are best left alone, if you know what I mean. Hummers should be out in the desert, tracking down enemies. Not hauling around citified groundbreakers with their picayune gold-plated shovels.

  The Hummer was literally stuck in neutral. It couldn’t move at all.

  “Go!” cried Sonny Boy to Leroy. But when Leroy stepped on the gas, the wheels just spun in their deep tracks. Finally, Jaeger got out and kicked it from behind. Maybe it just needed its booty kicked? Who knows?

  Leroy finally got it into gear, and good riddance is what we say.

  95

  DID ANY OF THOSE DIGNITARIES see the hogs being launched into the heavens? Did even one of them spy the Sugar Man in all his wrathful glory? Was there a single witness in the entire gold-plated bunch?

  Friends, we are sorry to say, there was not.

  96

  BUT WHAT ABOUT CHAP?

  While everyone else, including his mother and Coyoteman Jim, ran in the other direction, Chap headed as fast as he could toward the canebrake. He started singing the lullaby as loud as his voice would carry, hoping to calm those rattlers down.

  When he got to the ruined canebrake, he came to a screeching halt. There, right on the water’s edge, stood a man with hands the size of palmetto ferns. His hair looked just like the Spanish moss that hung on the north side of the cypress groves, and the rest of his body was covered in rough black fur, like the fur of the ursus americanus luteolus, UAL, that had only recently returned to the region after a very long absence.

  Beside him, in a huge coil, Gertrude rattled her gigantic rattle. Chichichichi. Chap froze. Crotalus horridus GIGANTICUS. CHG. He watched as the Sugar Man patted her on the head, and then the Sugar Man looked directly at Chap. Something about the boy reminded him of someone. Someone he had met long ago. Someone he counted as a friend. Someone he missed.

  And then he remembered: Audie Brayburn. “Ahh,” he said to Chap. “You’re his grandson.”

  Chap nodded, and as he did, the Sugar Man looked directly at him and said these remarkable words: “Nosotros somos paisanos.”

  We are fellow countrymen. We are of the same soil.

  And just like that, the cloud of lonesome that had hovered over Chap all these days grew a little lighter.

  97

  THE SUGAR MAN. CHAP. TWO new friends. Both of whom had loved Audie. Both of whom loved the swamp. No other words were needed between them.

  After the Sugar Man watched Chap walk away, he sat down on the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle and grabbed himself a couple of fistfuls of wild cane sugar. It was just as good as he remembered. He surveyed the damage.

  The hogs had definitely wreaked some havoc, but cane grew fast. He could see that it would recover.

  “That’s some mighty good sugarcane,” he said to Gertrude. Gertrude just wrapped herself up in one big coil. A gigantic yawn came out of her mouth. And you know what happens when someone yawns? It makes everyone yawn.

  Pretty soon the Sugar Man was yawning and yawning. “I believe I’ll take a nap now,” he said to Gertrude.

  And then he looked at Bingo and J’miah, still clinging to the branches of the pine tree. He scooped them up in his palmetto-size hand and set them on the dry banks.

  “Well done, Swamp Scouts,” he said.

  Bingo and J’miah beamed. Bingo felt so proud that even his tuft sat down. J’miah didn’t squint at all. Both of them stood as tall as they could on their back paws, and with their front paws they saluted.

  “I believe the emergensssssie isss over,” said Gertrude. And together she and the S
ugar Man turned away from the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle and respectively slithered and strode back to their cozy lair. It’s dark there, and quiet. A good place for snoozing, and dreaming, and for the Sugar Man to get some rest. After all, he’s as old as the swamp itself.

  The Last Night

  98

  BINGO AND J’MIAH WAVED GOOD-BYE to Gertrude and the Sugar Man. Then they meandered back to the DeSoto. They took their own sweet time. After the rush of the past few days, it felt nice to stroll through their nighttime neighborhood, especially now that the hideous hogs were just a footnote in history.

  By the time they got back to Information Headquarters, it was late, and even though raccoons, as we said, were nocturnal, Bingo announced, “I’m going to take a nap.” J’miah was tired too, but he wasn’t quite ready to sleep. He was too full of the good energy that came from successfully completing their mission. He glanced at the art on the dashboard—there it stood, the photo of the armadillo.

  He sat back and admired it. He also admired the music thingie. Then he wondered if maybe there was some other treasure in the box under the seat. All at once, he wasn’t tired at all. He stuck his paw into the dark opening and tapped around and around with his extra sensitive fingers.

  He patted and patted and patted. It seemed like the box might be empty. He gave it another pat. Nothing. But before he gave up, he reached as far back as he could, all the way up to his armpit.

  Pat pat pat. He extended his fingers, right to the very farthest end of the box. And there, way at the back, he felt something. Something papery and thin, but stiff too. He patted some more. Wait a minute. He felt two somethings.

  “Bingo!” he said. (Don’t you love it when he does that?)

  He pulled the somethings out. In his paw he held two more square pieces of art. One by one, he held them up and squinted his eyes so that he could focus on them. Then, he couldn’t resist, he tapped his brother on the shoulder and showed them to him.

  “Look!” said J’miah, holding up the first. He leaned over the backseat and held it right in Bingo’s face.

  “What is it?” asked Bingo.

  “It’s a bird,” said J’miah, holding the paper up between them.

  “I wonder what kind of bird it is,” said Bingo. It wasn’t any sort of bird that he had ever seen here in the swamp. He watched as J’miah set it next to the armadillo on the dashboard, and then to his surprise J’miah said, “Wait, there’s another one.”

  Bingo rubbed his eyes. He stared at the picture; a furry face stared back at him. Then he smiled. “That’s the best one of all,” he said. J’miah agreed. And he propped it up next to the other two on the front dashboard.

  “Perfect,” Bingo said. The three pictures were perfect. But when J’miah looked around, the DeSoto did not look perfect. It looked dusty. Mission Clean-Up Headquarters picked up where it left off, and J’miah went into a cleaning frenzy.

  He rubbed the inside of the windows. He dusted the dashboard. He swept the seats. Finally, Bingo couldn’t take it anymore. J’miah needed an intervention.

  “J’miah,” he said, “now that you’re not afraid of heights . . .”

  J’miah leaned back. It was true, he had, in fact, climbed that magnolia tree. He had also ridden on the shoulders of the Sugar Man. And he perched on the upper branches of a pine tree while the Sugar Man dispatched the hogs. In none of those instances had he thrown up.

  “What are we waiting for?” J’miah asked, and together the two of them slipped out of the entryway and into the welcoming night. As they strode away, J’miah stopped. “I just have to do one thing,” he said. And while Bingo waited, J’miah took a large leaf, climbed onto the hood of the DeSoto, and dusted off the bust of the old conquistador. “That’s been bothering me,” he said, admiring his handiwork.

  “Come on,” said Bingo, and he pulled his brother all the way to the edge of the bayou to the longleaf pine. Together, they climbed and climbed and climbed, all the way to the very top. And of course, once they were there, Bingo said, “Look!”

  J’miah looked up. There were billions and trillions of stars. There was the whole Milky Way. And there, blinking like crazy, was a red star. He’d never seen anything like it.

  “Meet Blinkle,” said Bingo.

  “Blinkle?” asked J’miah.

  Bingo nodded. Then he said, “Make a wish.”

  “A wish?” asked J’miah.

  “Of course,” said Bingo. “That’s what stars are for.”

  And if you think that Bingo and J’miah wished for a new mission, well, you would be correct: Operation Pie Procurement.

  They scooted down that longleaf pine and headed straight for the café. It didn’t take them long, but when they arrived, the café was shuttered. That was a good thing. They needed to strike while the dark was still covering them.

  But hold on!

  “Is that what I think it is?” asked Bingo.

  “Havahart,” said J’miah.

  Sure enough the Havahart trap sat directly beneath the kitchen window. They couldn’t see that it was not set. All they could see was its menacing wires. Scouts knew all about Havahart traps. Plenty of their unwitting relatives had been trapped and relocated.

  Bingo stood back from the house and took a long view. “Oh well,” he said. Then he smiled. “I could use a crawdad!”

  J’miah grinned. “Me too.”

  But instead of turning around and loping down to Crawdad Lane, they both kept looking at the café. It was hard to give up that wish. The problem was, they waited just one moment too long, because while they were sitting there, someone inside the house flipped on a switch and flooded the yard with light.

  Bingo and J’miah froze. Their cover was blown. They should run. They should turn around and skedaddle. Which they did. They skedaddled right for Crawdad Lane.

  The Last Day

  99

  AS FOR CHAPARRAL BRAYBURN, HE was wide awake. He’d been wide awake all night. He now knew for certain that the Sugar Man was still extant. (There’s that word again.) But he was the only one who had seen him. And did he have a camera with him at the time?

  Of course not.

  After the Hummer had screamed out of the parking lot, leaving huge ruts in its wake, Chap and his mom, with the help of Coyoteman Jim, had spent the rest of the afternoon picking every last bill out of the pricker vines. So far, he had not told his mom about the meeting with the Sugar Man. He didn’t quite know how to share it yet. And besides, he still had no proof, did he?

  Chap knew that after the debacle with the ground breaking, it was highly unlikely that Sonny Boy would try to build the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park. Once word got out about the plethora of rattlesnakes, no one would want to venture into the area again, even if it was paved with acres and acres of concrete.

  But he also knew that as long as Sonny Boy was in charge of the swamp, he’d come up with something else just as worrisome, maybe something worse, if that was even possible.

  There was only one recourse: Chap would have to try to follow the Sugar Man’s tracks to his lair and take his picture. Of course, this was a plan that might work if he only had a camera. Grandpa Audie had never found or replaced the Polaroid. And even if he had the prized Land Camera, there was no film for it.

  Think, Chap, think.

  Think think think.

  He looked around the room, even though he knew there was no camera. He checked beneath his bed. Nothing. He opened his closet door. Sweetums. Then he walked to his desk. There it sat. His grandfather’s old sketchbook. He carried it from his desk and set it on his bed. Then he pulled it toward his face. There was his grandpa’s smell—sugar and bullfrogs and red dirt.

  The book fell open in his lap, right to the blank white page, the one where the woodpecker should rightfully be. A familiar heat scratched the back of his throat. So long as Sonny Boy and his ilk were around, the woodpecker would never have a chance. Chap knew this. He swallowed. His throat burned.


  He flipped the pages, and there was the drawing of the Sugar Man his grandpa had made. Chap was surprised at how well his grandfather had captured him. For a brief moment, he thought that maybe he could draw his own picture of the furry guy.

  But in an even briefer moment, he thought, No. That wouldn’t prove anything.

  He closed the book and set it beside him on the bed. The numbers on his clock glared at him. Three o’clock in the morning. And not a wink of sleep. And on top of that, his mother would be rising in another hour to get ready for another day of pies. He should be dead-tired, but instead he felt wired for sound, as his mom would say.

  He needed to figure out how to prove that the Sugar Man existed. But how?

  He looked all around. Nothing.

  Nothing nothing nothing.

  He was completely bereft of good ideas.

  Then . . . he remembered . . . Steve! Steve’s cell phone. Unless Steve had popped in during one of the pie rushes, the cell phone should still be on the windowsill beside the radio.

  Chap stepped down the hall and into the kitchen.

  “Please-be-there-please-be-there-please-be-there,” he chanted.

  Yes! There it was. Chap pressed the button at the bottom of the screen. The screen lit right up. Then he pushed the icon for the camera, and it snapped open. Without one ounce of hesitation, Chap slipped the phone into his pocket and headed toward the door, pulling on his muck boots as he went. But before he opened the door, he stepped back into the kitchen and stuffed a couple of pies into his other pocket. They were left over and destined for the catfish anyways, but he didn’t mind.

  Might need some breakfast, he thought.

  Next he reached for his flashlight, and finally he grabbed his machete. After all, there were pricker vines to consider.