(Have we mentioned that whenever the Sugar Man got angry, he threw things? Pirates . . . snakes . . . alligators . . .)
To the snakes, it seemed like the big guy had saved their bacon, and then they felt a little bad for all that chewing they had done. In fact, they decided to let him help himself to their sugarcane any old time . . . at least for the any old time being.
Of course, the Sugar Man knew that a snake’s word wasn’t necessarily good to the last drop, so after that, whenever he wanted a meal of sugarcane, he sang a canebrake lullaby, a sibilant tune that put those snakes right to sleep.
Rock-a-by, oh canebrake rattlers
Sleepy bayou, rock-a-by oh
Canebrake rattlers
Sssslleeeepp
And while the snakes snoozed away, he grabbed as much cane as he wanted without all that snip-snap-zip-zap. Of course, he didn’t take too much, only what he could eat, and a little to stash away in case he wanted a midnight snack. In the meantime, the snakes were still pretty darned happy about those gators that floated away. And even though rattlers are not predictable, they will for certain take the Sugar Man’s side in an argument.
One big rattlesnake in particular, Gertrude, took a real fondness to him and decided to become his personal assistant. Yep, she hardly ever leaves his side. So if you want to do business with the Sugar Man, well, you have to deal with Gertrude first.
Of course, alligators are cagey. And last time we counted, there were plenty of them hiding in the Bayou Tourterelle.
19
THE INCIDENT BETWEEN THE SUGAR Man and the rattlers happened years and years ago, back when it was just the Sugar Man and a host of critters in the swamp. Decades later, he had his encounter with the pirates. But that was long ago too. Three hundred years back. Then there was the failed posse with their ropes and axes and shotguns. That too was a century’s passing.
In fact, it’s been such a very long time since anyone’s spotted him, or reported a sighting of him, that Sonny Boy Beaucoup made a big, fat claim: “I declare the Sugar Man officially extinct.”
It was a claim that suited Sonny Boy Beaucoup. To him, the deal that his ancestor Alouicious had struck with the Sugar Man was no deal if both of the parties were no longer extant. (Extant. What a great word that is.)
Of course, Sonny Boy Beaucoup didn’t know about Audie Brayburn’s encounter with the Sugar Man. The only person Audie had ever told was his grandson, Chap. And Chap knew better than to say anything.
Honeybees. Hornets. Honeybees. Hornets.
Moreover, nobody told the Sugar Man that he wasn’t extant. How could they? He stayed holed away in the deepest, darkest part of the swamp, where news was slow to arrive. To exacerbate the situation, he let it be known that he should not be disturbed except for emergencies. For those, he placed his trust in the Official Sugar Man Swamp Scouts.
20
SPEAKING OF OUR SCOUTS, IN the front seat of the old DeSoto, Bingo rolled over onto his back. Even though he wasn’t fully awake, he rubbed his belly.
Empty, he thought.
The night before had been extremely eventful. There had been the farewell of Little Mama and Daddy-O. There had been the bolt of lightning and the Voice of Intelligence. There had been Mission Longleaf. There had been rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.
But there had not been any sustenance.
As if J’miah’s stomach were in agreement with Bingo’s, it let out a loud growl from the backseat bunk. Bingo, in his state of half sleep, wondered if he should make a quick dash out for some dewberries before the sun rose. J’miah simultaneously wondered the same thing.
They both cracked open their eyes, they both rubbed their bellies, they both noticed that the dark was growing thinner, they both reminded themselves that they were, in fact, nocturnal and morning was upon them.
They both went right back to sleep.
And there you have it, sports fans: two hungry raccoons, with hours to go before they ate.
The Next Morning
21
THE SUN WAS NOT QUITE ready to rise when Chap walked into the early morning kitchen. Once he had finally fallen asleep, he slept hard. Now he rubbed his eyes and yawned. His mom stood at the counter, mixing up the first batch of pie batter. Her hands were coated in flour. She greeted him by dabbing a thumbprint of flour onto his nose. It was an action she had done many times. Instead of giving hugs, his mother gave dabs, usually on his nose. She had done it so many times he didn’t even notice it.
Instead, he stuck his finger in the batter.
“Hands out!” his mom said.
Too late. Chap scooped out a dollop of the thick, sugary mixture and stuffed it into his mouth. No matter how many times he’d eaten the sugar pie batter, it always tasted new to him, especially first thing in the morning.
“Just for that, you’re going to have to pour me a cup of coffee,” Mom said. His mom was a prodigious coffee drinker. His grandpa had been too.
“Coffee hounds,” they called each other.
Chap reached for his mother’s special mug, the one that his father had given her before Chap was born, the one that had a big pair of ruby red lips on it, faded now so that the ruby red was more like pale pink. When he grabbed it, his hand bumped against his grandpa’s special mug, the one from the Twitcher’s Catalogue. Chap and his mom had given it to him for Christmas a few years back. The catalog had several mugs to choose from, but they had picked the one with the great blue heron, one of Audie’s favorite birds. The one on the mug spread its beautiful wide wings from the top of the rim to the base. The feathers that trailed from its head were curved in a perfect arc. “GBH,” Audie had said. Great blue heron. Audie had loved that mug.
Chap thought about the GBH in Audie’s sketchbook. Instead of wings wide open, the bird in Audie’s book stood on the banks of the bayou. It held a large fish in its beak. Underneath, Audie had written, “You should have seen the one that got away.” Chap never knew if Audie was talking about the fish or the bird. It was a mystery.
“Lots of mysteries in the swamp, old Chap,” his grandpa always said.
Chap lifted the cup by its handle. There were signs of Audie everywhere. Chap felt the cloud of lonesome brush against his hair.
The huge coffee urn was full of dark, rich Community Coffee, roasted in Baton Rouge. And even though there wasn’t a drop of coffee in the pies, Grandpa Audie always said, “The chicory in the coffee makes the pies taste better.” He followed that with, “Besides, it puts hair on your chest.”
Right then Chap pulled the neck of his T-shirt out and looked down at his chest. Not a single hair. Didn’t he need a few chest hairs to be a man? With that, he filled Audie’s mug, right up to the brim.
“You might want to put some cream and sugar in that,” his mom said.
Grandpa Audie had never used cream and sugar, had he? “Blacker ’n dirt.” That’s the way he had always drunk it. That was the way Chap would drink it too. He raised his grandpa’s mug to his lips and took a tiny sip. It was hot hot hot. It was bitter bitter bitter. All at once, he understood how the coffee would make the pies taste better.
The sweet of the pies would offset the hot and bitter.
He set the mug down on the counter and headed for the batter again, only to be waylaid by his mom’s wooden spoon. She held it between the bowl and Chap’s hand.
“Out!” she exclaimed. Then she looked at the clock and told him, “Time to open.” Even though his taste buds desperately needed a pie to erase the hot and bitter, he knew the upraised spoon was his cue. He walked out of the kitchen to the front door and flipped the CLOSED sign over to OPEN. Operating hours were only from five a.m. till one p.m.—“fishermen’s hours.”
Paradise Pies Café was known for its delicious fried sugar pies, made from canebrake sugar. Audie had run the place for more than sixty years. Back in 1949 he had signed a lease with the Beaucoup Corporation way back when Sonny Boy was just a tot.
While the Brayburns didn’t have many cust
omers, they had enough.
Some of the customers, Chap knew, came as much to hear Audie’s stories as they came for the pies and coffee. And Audie was always happy to oblige. Chap ran his tongue over his teeth. He could still taste the bitter brew. He hoped there were other ways to grow hair on his chest.
As he unlocked the front door, he saw a pair of enormous headlights swing into the parking lot. He could tell that the vehicle was definitely larger than even the duelies that some of the local fishermen drove. In fact, it looked more like a train than a car, a train with a single car, a train that ran on a road instead of tracks. He’d never seen anything like it.
But as it pulled closer, he blinked. It was a Hummer. A stretch Hummer. A superstretch Hummer. It looked like it could be in two counties at once, judging by the length of it. From Chap’s spot behind the window, he saw that it took up every single space in the parking lot and still hung out into the road.
If anyone else wanted to drive up, they’d have to park and walk. Who would drive something like that? Chap wondered. His question was answered as soon as the passengers walked through the front door. Even though there were only two of them, the pair—a man and a woman—took the largest table in the café, like they owned it or something. Right away, Chap could feel his nonexistent chest hairs rise up, along with the hair on the back of his neck. Chap knew exactly who the man was.
Unlike most of the folks who frequented the café—mostly fishermen and bird-watchers—all of whom wore overalls and T-shirts and wading boots, the man was all decked out in a fancy blue and white seersucker suit with a red bow tie. He wore white wing tip shoes, too, with the thinnest socks Chap had ever seen. The socks were so thin, Chap could see the light-colored hairs of the man’s legs through the sheer knit. How would they ever protect his ankles from the biting fleas that lived in the swamp?
Chap thought the outfit was possibly the silliest getup he’d ever seen, especially for this part of the world. And even though the man was surely a grown-up, with his pale yellow-gray hair and his freckled face, he looked more like a big kid who was trying to look like a grown-up. He tapped his well-manicured fingertips on the tabletop.
The woman was a different story. She wasn’t silly-looking at all. She was shorter than her companion by a head, which was saying something, because the man wasn’t all that tall. Chap figured the guy might be five feet five, and that was being generous, which meant that the woman wasn’t even five feet. Chap, at only twelve years, was already more than six feet tall, a trait that he had inherited from his grandpa.
“Us Brayburns are like trees,” his grandpa had told him. “Tall.”
The woman wore a red sleeveless tank top, the same red shade as the man’s bow tie. The top accentuated her impressive biceps. Chap could tell by her arms alone, not to mention the muscles in her short, thick neck, that she could throw down the dude without any effort at all. Furthermore, she looked ready to strike without notice, rather like one of the rattlers in the canebrake. For one brief shining moment, Chap wondered if she might doze off if he sang his grandfather’s lullaby.
“Pies for two,” said the man. His voice snapped Chap out of his reverie. “Y-y-yessir,” Chap stammered. Then he turned and hurried to the kitchen to give his mom the order. When he told her who was sitting in the café, he saw the corner of her mouth begin to twitch. When his mother was upset or unhappy, the right corner of her mouth twitched. Without a word, she handed him the coffeepot and a pair of mugs. He could feel the heat in his throat begin to rise. Man up, he told himself.
While Chap set the mugs on the table and filled them, he noticed that the couple had used the wide tabletop to spread out several large sheets of paper. He could tell they were plans for something. Something big. Something huge. Something that would take up at least two thousand acres.
And that’s when the man said, “You must be Audie Brayburn’s grandson. I’m Sonny Boy Beaucoup. And this lovely lady is Jaeger Stitch.”
Chap’s jaw must have dropped open six inches. As it turns out, he knew exactly who Jaeger Stitch was: the World Champion Gator Wrestler of the Northern Hemisphere. He had seen her before on television. What he didn’t know was what she was doing at Paradise Pies Café at the crack of dawn.
Was she here to help Sonny Boy collect his boatload of cash? Chap’s hand started to shake. Surely their lease wasn’t up yet, was it? Didn’t they have a little more time? He gripped the handle of the coffeepot so hard that his knuckles turned white. Hot bitter coffee sloshed inside the pot.
He knew it wouldn’t be very mannish to pour the hot liquid right in Sonny Boy’s lap, but he had a hard time resisting, especially when Sonny Boy looked directly at him and said, “Boy, you’ve got flour on your nose.”
22
EVEN THOUGH HE HAD ONLY been asleep for a few hours, Bingo opened his eyes. It was still dark, but the air had that “in between” feel to it, that it’s-not-quite-night but it’s also not-quite-day-either quality.
His stomach growled. Despite his weariness from Mission Longleaf, he was having a hard time sleeping over the ruminations of his belly. What if he had a little pre-sunrise snack? What if he just slipped out of the DeSoto and grabbed a handful of ripe dewberries? What if he went right there and hurried back, lickety-split?
He knew exactly where those dewberries grew. Right around the bend near Possum Hollow. And, if he hurried, he might be able to snatch them off the vines before the possums even knew about it.
The truth was, the possums of Possum Hollow were greedy about those dewberries. And they had very sharp, pointy teeth, which they weren’t afraid to use. But who made them kings of the patch?
So, hi ho, young Scout. It’s Mission Dewberry or bust.
23
BUST? DID SOMEONE SAY BUST? Chap wiped the flour off his nose. If he’d only had an egg in his hand, he would have busted it right on Sonny Boy’s head.
Before he could bust something else, namely the coffeepot in his hand, his mother walked up. Chap stood beside her and rocked back and forth on his heels. His mom reached over and put her hand on his shoulder to make him stop. Together they stared at the plans spread out on the table before them.
There, in bold letters, they saw the words: “The Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park.”
They also saw that it would take up a significant portion of the Sugar Man Swamp. Grandpa Audie’s swamp! While Chap stared at the plans, he realized that there would be acres and acres of concrete. How many trees would have to be chopped down? A thousand? Ten thousand? More?
The familiar flame rose up in Chap’s throat. He could see his grandfather’s outstretched arms, hear his voice say, This is paradise, old Chap. But Chap knew that without the trees there wouldn’t be much paradise. He stared at the plans, at the blank white space where the concrete would be poured for a parking lot. Suddenly, the blank white space reminded Chap of the blank white page in Grandpa Audie’s sketchbook, the one left open for the ivory-billed woodpecker. If Sonny Boy’s plans became real, the page would always be just that: blank. Trees didn’t grow in concrete. Without the trees, the woodpecker could never come back. IBWO. Ghost bird.
Right then, Chap felt the ghost of his grandfather beside him. He rocked forward onto his toes, as if he might launch his body straight through the ceiling of the café.
Chap watched the right corner of his mother’s mouth twitch again. She wiped her hands on her apron. He kept his own mouth clamped tight. Sonny Boy drawled, his voice as thick as honey, “Like I said in my notice, come up with a boatload of cash, and you can stay till the gators come home.” Then he and Jaeger Stitch started laughing, like that was the most hilarious thing they’d ever heard of.
Chap gripped the handle of the coffeepot. His mother pressed down hard on his shoulder. Say something, he told himself. A man would say something, wouldn’t he? So, in as calm a manner as he could muster, he said, in his lowest voice, “But what about the woodpecker?”
That sent Sonny Boy into a paroxys
m of laughter. Chap waited, his jaw tightened. His mother kept her hand tight on his shoulder. Finally, Sonny Boy looked at them and tried to collect himself. But in between his guffaws he laid his right palm on the rolled-out paper and added, “That old bird is just like the raven—nevermore.”
Nevermore? Never more? Chap couldn’t stand it. Without thinking, he blurted out, “Okay. Then, what about the Sugar Man?” Immediately, he knew he had made a mistake. Even though his grandpa had never told him to keep the Sugar Man a secret, Chap understood that it was best not to bring him up. Regret raced across his face.
But instead of pressing Chap for further information, Sonny Boy and Jaeger thought that was the funniest thing of all.
“Look, kid,” said Sonny Boy, wiping the spit off his mouth and pausing to finish his coffee. Chap waited. Then Sonny Boy delivered his lowest blow yet. “Aren’t you getting a little old for fairy tales?”
In an instant, Chap’s regret turned back to anger. The fire in his throat grew. He sealed his lips. Otherwise he was sure flames would shoot out. Besides, he didn’t have one other thing to say. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
Sonny Boy ignored him, then smiled at Chap’s mother and told her again, “If you want to stay here, I’ll need a boatload of cash.”
Then together, Sonny Boy and Jaeger Stitch gathered up their plans, stood up, and pushed their chairs away from the table. They didn’t do the courteous thing and push them back. They didn’t even wait to eat the pies they had ordered; nor did they offer to pay for them. No, they just walked away. But before Sonny Boy went through the front door, he turned around and said, “Hey, kid. I’ll make you a deal. If I see some proof of the Sugar Man, I’ll give you the whole darned swamp.” Then he burst into laughter again. “Yep,” he said. “Nothing less.” And as a parting shot, he added, “I’ll sign it in blood.”