The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

  For Dinny and Brian,

  sweet as pie, wondrous as the IBWO

  The First Night

  1

  FROM THE ROOFTOP OF INFORMATION Headquarters, Bingo and J’miah stood on their back paws and watched Little Mama and Daddy-O trundle away; their stripy gray and black silhouettes grew smaller and smaller in the deepening dusk.

  Daddy-O called out, “Make us proud, boys!”

  That was followed by Little Mama. “Be sure to follow orders!”

  For as long as raccoons had inhabited the Sugar Man Swamp, which was eons, they had been the Official Scouts, ordained by the Sugar Man himself back in the year Aught One, also known as the Beginning of Time. Of course, Bingo and J’miah would follow the orders. They knew them by heart.

  OFFICIAL SUGAR MAN SWAMP SCOUT ORDERS

  • keep your eyes open

  • keep your ears to the ground

  • keep your nose in the air

  • be true and faithful to each other

  • in short, be good

  These orders were practical, and the raccoon brothers had no problem following them. Besides, Bingo and J’miah weren’t ordinary Swamp Scouts. They were, in fact, Information Officers, a highly specialized branch of the Scout system. And because of this there were two additional orders:

  • always heed the Voice of Intelligence, and

  • in the event of an emergency, wake up the Sugar Man

  The first additional order was easy enough, as we shall soon see, but the second was a different matter. The problem? Nobody really knew exactly where the Sugar Man slept, only that it was somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of the swamp. He hadn’t been seen in many years.

  The bigger problem? Waking the Sugar Man up wasn’t all that easy. He slept like a log. Literally.

  The biggest problem? What if he woke up cranky? Every denizen in the swamp knew that the wrath of the Sugar Man was something to avoid.

  He also had a rattlesnake pet, Gertrude.

  Crotalus horridus GIGANTICUS (also known as CHG).

  Brothers and sisters, the stakes were high.

  2

  GOT TO GO WAY, WAY back into yesterday and the yesterday before that, maybe a million yesterdays, actually more than a million, a gazillion yesterdays, to hear about the Sugar Man. Got to go back to when the sea had only barely rolled its way south into the Gulf of Mexico and left behind the slow-moving Bayou Tourterelle, which meandered through the middle of a wide, open marsh.

  Sitting as it was in the deep southern side of the continent, the marsh had long days of sunshine and plenty of rain, all the right ingredients to give birth to a whole host of species of plants and animals. And like a tree rising up out of the rich red dirt, soon enough a creature born of the swamp rose up too.

  He was taller than his cousin Sasquatch. Taller than Barmanou. Way taller than the Yeti. His legs and arms were like the new cedar trees that were taking root all around, tough and sinuous. His hands were as wide and big as palmetto ferns. His hair looked just like the Spanish moss that hung on the north side of the cypress trees, and the rest of his body was covered in rough black fur, like the fur of the ursus americanus luteolus, UAL, also known as Louisiana black bear, that had taken up residence in the area.

  You could say that he was made up of bits and pieces of every living creature in the swamp, every duck, fox, lizard, and catfish, every pitcher plant, muskrat, and termite.

  Of course, Bingo and J’miah knew the history. Little Mama and Daddy-O had made sure of it.

  Over the years, however, the Sugar Man has grown older and older and sleepier and sleepier. Let’s not forget that he’s been there for too many years to count, since back before we even measured time in years. But just because the Sugar Man is old and sleepy doesn’t mean he can’t spin an alligator over his head and toss him into orbit. Nosirree, Bob. In fact, whenever he gets mad, he tends to throw things.

  All in all, it’s not a good idea to stir up the wrath of the Sugar Man.

  3

  BUT RIGHT THEN, THE SUGAR Man was not on the minds of Bingo and J’miah. Standing there, on the rooftop of Information Headquarters, they watched their parents’ shadows fade into the thick woods of the swamp. Bingo straightened up as tall as he could and saluted. But when he turned toward his brother, he could see that J’miah was on the verge of sniffles. Sniffles, especially brother-sniffles, are highly contagious. Bingo did not want to sniffle. He pinched his nose to keep the sniffles from welling up. He was not going to sniffle. No way, José. Not this big boy.

  He knew that he would miss Little Mama and Daddy-O. In fact, he already did. But the missing part was not as strong as the excitement part. He blew his nose as hard as he could.

  “We’re official,” he said, and he slapped his brother on the back, then did a little two-step atop the DeSoto.

  You heard me. The DeSoto.

  4

  BACK IN 1928, WALTER P. CHRYSLER introduced his newest car. The DeSoto. It was named for the Spanish conquistador, Hernando de Soto. It was la-di-da-di-da. In the first twelve months of production DeSoto set a record: 81,065 cars. More than Pontiac. More than Buick. More than Graham-Paige.

  You weren’t anybody unless you had a DeSoto.

  Nowadays, there are only a few DeSotos in existence. Some of them are parked in forgotten garages, waiting for their drivers to remember them. Some of them have been lovingly restored and their owners proudly show them off in Fourth of July parades and things like that. Most of them, sadly, have been relegated to junkyards or left to rust in overgrown pastures. All in all, they’re hard to find.

  But one of them, a 1949 Sportsman, has been sitting atop a little knoll along the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle for more than sixty years, looking out over the water.

  And in all that time, the old Sportsman has not budged, not an inch to the east, not an inch to the west. Its once-shiny green paint has turned into a veneer of dusty red rust, and its hood ornament, a bust of the old explorer Hernando de Soto, stares straight ahead. For many years the car sat there, all sealed up and empty, sinking into the damp red dirt a little bit more each year. And at the same time, the prodigious vines and ferns that thrived in the boggy swamp crept up its sides and top until it was pretty much completely hidden.

  Lots of critters walked right by it—some even walked over it—and did not even notice it. The dusty red rust with its flecks of green paint were so close to the color of the dirt and the vines that it became camouflaged. Even human-types who paddled their pirogues up the Bayou Tourterelle missed it entirely.

  If you did happen to stumble upon it and looked at it head-on, you might think that it was just a ghost of a car, and that your eyes were playing tricks on you. A car, after all, is meant to move, not hide all alone beneath the dirt and shrubs. And the sad truth is that it could have just slid right into the bayou of its own accord, that’s how lonely it was . . . and it might have . . . it came close a few times . . . except for the raccoons.

  Raccoons can make a cozy nest just about anywhere. They will set up housekeeping in underground burrows, abandoned outhouses, unused chimneys, garbage cans, tree cavities, old cisterns—the list is endless.

  You wouldn’t think that an abandoned DeSoto would be one of those places, but thanks to the wet ground beneath it, eventually a small hole in the floorboard on the passenger’s side rusted through, making an entryway.

  And soon enough, a stripy pair of raccoons discovered that open hole and made themselves right at home. It was a perfect place to settle in and raise their kits, and that’s what they did. That original pair of raccoons turned out to be the great-great-greater-greatest-grandparents of Bingo and J’miah
.

  The old car could have simply been a raccoon nursery for generations of our procyonid crew, it was cozy enough, but one night a random strike of lightning hit so close that every inch of fur on the raccoons’ bodies poofed straight out. They watched as all the numbers and dials on the dashboard lit up. The raccoons could also see that the hood ornament cast an eerie orange glow, like a faded firefly. It was a historic moment, especially because that was when they first heard the all-important Voice of Intelligence. It came from the direction of the dashboard, more specifically through the radio, and floated atop the invisible sound waves inside the car. “Prepare for rain,” it said. And sure enough, it started to rain. Ever since then the DeSoto has been Information Headquarters for the Sugar Man Swamp Scouts, most recently Bingo and J’miah—Information Officers.

  The Voice has never told a lie. Not once.

  5

  CHAP BRAYBURN, ONE OF THE few members of the local Homo sapiens, on the other hand, did tell a lie. When his mother asked him if he was okay, he said, “Yep.” But he knew that wasn’t true. Ever since his grandpa Audie Brayburn passed away just a few days ago, nothing was okay. When you are twelve, and the very best grandpa in the world, the person who taught you more than anyone else, including your mother, walks into a grove of cypress trees, curls up in the arms of their massive roots, and just flat-out dies? Without even saying good-bye? That was not okay.

  Moreover, Grandpa Audie died just when it seemed like all heck was breaking loose. Instead of sticking around, “Audie went to meet his maker” as Brother Hadley at the Little Church on the Bayou kept saying, over and over.

  Everyone at the funeral told Chap, “You’re the man of the household now, son.” Chap wasn’t sure he was done being a boy yet. Nevertheless, when he looked at his mother, with her crestfallen face, he knew he was going to have to man up, especially now that their landlord and the official owner of the entire Sugar Man Swamp, Sonny Boy Beaucoup, had unceremoniously raised the rent on their combination home and café, their only source of lodging and income.

  It wasn’t just a small amount of cash that Sonny Boy demanded. It was a boatload.

  “We might have to leave,” said his mother when she got the notice.

  Leave? Leave the swamp, with its ancient trees, with its thick and winding Bayou Tourterelle, with its millions of insects and brilliant green peepers? Leave all of that? Thinking about it made Chap’s throat burn, as if there were a box of matches all lit up back there. He was definitely not okay. He tried swallowing to put out the fire. But it didn’t help.

  And what about the ivory-billed woodpecker? Chap knew that only a few people in the entire world still believed that the ivory-bill, or IBWO, still existed, particularly in the Sugar Man Swamp. But Grandpa Audie had assured Chap that it was still out there. “I even took a photo of it,” Audie told him, “a one-of-a-kind Polaroid.” Then he followed with, “Some time back,” which Chap understood was 1949. More than sixty years ago.

  In his hands, Chap now held his grandfather’s old birder sketchbook. After Audie had lost his Polaroid one-of-a-kind photo, he never took another photograph of anything. Instead he turned to drawing. In the sketchbook, there were rough pictures of every kind of bird that Audie had ever seen. Curiously, there was no sketch of the ivory-bill, despite Audie’s claim of catching it on the photo. Audie had declared, “I’ll draw it when I see it again.” Then he added, “As long as the swamp is here, the bird could return.” So there was an empty white page, smack in the middle of the book, waiting for that drawing. Waiting for that bird.

  Chap brushed the leather cover with his palm and pulled it toward his face. It smelled like raw sugarcane and bullfrogs and red dirt. It smelled like Grandpa Audie. The heat in Chap’s throat grew.

  Then he opened the sketchbook and flipped quickly through the pages of Audie’s drawings. None of them were perfect, not at all “museum quality” as Audie would say, and on each one he had added something funny, like the diamond ring he drew around the leg of the brown thrasher, and the little hat he put on the red-winged blackbird.

  He told Chap that the brown thrasher was so plain, “It needed some jazzin’ up.” And the red-winged blackbird was dapper, so of course, “He has to have a hat.” That was Audie. But even though Audie added his own quirky elements, he still managed to capture the nature of every bird he drew.

  No one, thought Chap, loved birds more than Grandpa Audie. He stared at the blank page, the one that was supposed to hold the ivory-billed woodpecker. IBWO.

  “We’re going to find it, old Chap!” his grandpa had said over and over. But now? Now that Audie was gone? The page was so empty, Chap had to close the book fast. His throat ached.

  To make matters worse, he heard his mother call from her room, “Nosotros somos paisanos.”

  Chap didn’t expect that. It was his grandfather’s special message, just between them, the message that his grandfather had told him every night before bed. It had to do with his name, Chaparral, another name for the greater roadrunner. Most birds have a legend attached to them, and the one for the chaparral was that he was true and faithful. A fellow countryman. A paisano.

  Audie’s sketch of the greater roadrunner included a large heart in the center of its breast, a heart that he had added on the day Chap was born. And right at the bottom of the page, Chap could see where his grandfather had erased the word “roadrunner” and written “Chaparral” over it, so that the name said “Greater Chaparral.”

  Nosotros somos paisanos. We are fellow countrymen. We come from the same soil. That’s what it meant. Grandpa Audie had said it to him every single night of his life. Chap knew that his mother meant well by saying it, but instead of comforting him it just made a big cloud of lonesome hover above his head. He closed his eyes, and if it hadn’t been for his cat, Sweetums, who at that very moment jumped onto his bed and startled him, he knew that he might’ve burst into tears. How manly would that be?

  6

  ONE OF THE JOBS OF the Sugar Man Swamp Scouts is to go on missions. Now that his parents had both been gone for at least an hour, Bingo was bored. It was way past time for a mission. From his perch on the front seat of the DeSoto, he looked into the rearview mirror above the dash, brushed his fur back, took a good long look at his handsome black-and-white mask and his pointy little ears, and said, “J’miah?”

  He only barely heard his brother’s reply, “Mmmm?”

  J’miah was digging out some old junk that had gotten stuck in the crack between the backseat and the seat’s back, tossing it onto the floorboard behind the passenger’s seat.

  Bingo just said two words: “Mission Longleaf.” He waited. There was silence. He waited another minute.

  More silence.

  Finally, Bingo saw J’miah’s head pop up. His black eyes glowed in the darkness. His black mask was a carbon copy of Bingo’s own black mask. In fact, to an onlooker they appeared almost exactly alike, except that Bingo had a little tuft of fur that sat straight up between his ears. It was a source of some consternation for Bingo. He was constantly slicking it back. Alas, there was no taming it.

  But back to the mission . . . While J’miah’s eyes glowed, Bingo announced, “I’m going to climb the longleaf pine.”

  That got J’miah’s attention. “Why?” he asked.

  Bingo sat up straight. “Because Scouts need a mission!” He looked back at J’miah. He could practically see J’miah’s invisible thinking cap. Bingo also knew that underneath that cap J’miah was thinking about Great-Uncle Banjo.

  Everyone in the swamp knew the sad fate of Great-Uncle Banjo. The old Scout was legendary for his ability to climb to the very tops of the highest trees. He’d climb so high that you couldn’t even see him from the forest floor. The only way that the rest of the critters knew he was up there was from the birds’ reports. They flew by, and he waved to them. Then they flittered down to the ground and told everyone how high up he was.

  “At least a hundred feet,” a robin declared.


  “More like a hundred and twenty,” the red-tailed hawk said.

  “Wow,” responded the critters below.

  Problem was, Great-Uncle Banjo was a dead legend. Not a living legend. One day he climbed into the top of the old loblolly, only to be caught in a wind shear from a humongous thunderstorm. Before he could shimmy down, the top of the tree cracked off and came tumbling to the ground, Great-Uncle and all.

  It was a sorry end to a fabulous story.

  Little Mama had recounted this tragic tale to the brothers numerous times. Now Bingo looked over the seat at J’miah. Yep, sure enough, J’miah’s invisible cap was pressing down on his eyebrows, making him squint. And that, all by itself, served to heighten Bingo’s resolve.

  J’miah said, “I don’t think that’s practical.”

  Bingo knew J’miah was going to say that. He just knew it. J’miah was always being practical, just like Little Mama. But Bingo was done with practical. He was much more like Daddy-O, who had always been good for some sort of falderal. And in Bingo’s heart of hearts he also knew he had inherited Great-Uncle Banjo’s special trait, which when analyzed meant: Born. To. Climb.

  Besides, without a mission, how could they call themselves bona fide Sugar Man Swamp Scouts?

  As if J’miah could read Bingo’s thoughts, he added, “I’m on a mission already. It’s called Mission Clean-Up Headquarters.”

  Bingo slapped his forehead with his paws. “That’s not a mission. That’s a chore.”

  “But there’s all kinds of stuff back—” J’miah started to say. Bingo interrupted him.

  “J’miah,” he said. “I just know there’s something at the top of that pine tree that I’m supposed to see.” His paws were calling to him: Climb! Climb!

  “What?” J’miah asked. “What could be at the top of the longleaf pine tree except for long leaves?”