by Kathi Appelt
Chap watched the door slam. His chest rose and fell. For a full five seconds he stood paralyzed, until at last he rushed onto the porch and watched Sonny Boy and Jaeger climb into their superstretch Hummer. As they backed out, leaving a wide pair of ruts in the red dirt of the parking lot, Chap shouted, “It’s a deal!”
What he knew: He and his mom had about as much chance of filling a boat with money or finding proof of the Sugar Man as pigs had of flying.
24
IT’S TRUE THAT PIGS CAN’T fly, but we’re here to talk about hogs. In 1539 or thereabouts, the conquistador Hernando de Soto (after whom our Information Headquarters is named) sailed from Spain to the New World. In his company of seven ships and two caravels, there were 520 horses and 200 hogs.
You heard me. Two hundred hunky honkin’ hogs!
Some of those hogs died at sea. Some of them were gobbled up by the conquistadors. But some, once the boats docked, escaped and formed their own colonies. Those were the first hogs to set foot on American soil.
It turns out that Hernando de Soto was not a very nice person. He pillaged and looted and generally wreaked mayhem wherever he went. He also wore a heavy suit of metal armor, which, unlike natural fabrics, did not “breathe.” And since he didn’t bathe very often, it’s fair to say that he was rank. Seriously, swamp gas couldn’t compete. He’s buried somewhere at the bottom of the Mississippi River, and good riddance.
It also turns out that the descendants of de Soto’s hogs weren’t very nice either. They are still conquering parts of North America, which we’ll discover soon enough.
25
I’M THINKING IT’S SOON ENOUGH, young grasshoppers, because the sorry truth is, the Farrow Gang was on the march.
There are hogs, and then there are bad hogs (emphasis on “bad”).
Clarification: Wild feral hogs are not to be confused with the native peccaries, also known as javelinas. Peccaries have been here all along. Just check the fossil records.
They are smaller than the hogs, and even though they look like pigs, peccaries are really not true pigs. There are some who think that they’re related to the hippopotamus. Seriously. Now, don’t laugh. And just like the hippopotamus, you can’t round them up and turn them into pets. That’s for sure.
Of course, you can’t round up a wild hog and turn it into a pet either. A wild hog is just that: wild.
On the morning he was born, Buzzie’s mama bellowed in glee at her son’s badness. “This one is going down in boar history,” she exclaimed.
Right away she named him Buzz Saw Farrow. Buzzie for short. Buzzie lived up to his name. Before he even lost his baby tusks, no boar was better at uprooting a pasture. No hog ever did so much damage to a creek bottom. He muddied it up so much that the water came to a complete standstill.
Not since those conquistador hogs stepped off Hernando’s boats and cleverly escaped into the Floridian wilderness had there been such a wily hog. Not only that, but Buzzie was enormous, weighing in at almost four hundred pounds. He was a veritable buzz saw of a hog. Nothing could stop him. Nothing.
Except Clydine.
At the moment she was born, her daddy declared, “This is the baddest little sow I’ve ever seen.” And she was. As soon as she could stand on her stout little legs, she tore through an entire soybean field. She ruined a season’s crop of peanuts. And she plowed under a pasture where a flock full of little lambs stood cornered in the far side with nothing at all to eat. It was a sorry sight.
Clydine grew and grew and grew. Soon, she was almost as large as Buzzie. So when they met, it was a match made in hog heaven. He immediately fell in love with her soft sow’s ears. She immediately went gaga over his yellow gleaming eyes and his razor-sharp tusks. He was so crazy about her that on their first date he dug up three acres of tobacco and let her chew up every leaf.
The next time they got together, she took him to a watering hole and tramped it down until there was not one drop of water left, only muck. They wallowed in it for hours.
“Buzzie,” she gruntled. “You’re the baddest hog I’ve ever met.”
“Clydine,” he snortled. “You’re my little junkyard hog.” And with that they joined forces and tore down a grove of small magnolia saplings that were just getting their new leaves, and gobbled them all up.
Soon they had a whole litter of little boars and sows. Fifteen of them. Imagine it! Seventeen bad hogs. Bad hungry hogs. Bad ravenous hogs. On the rampage. On the move. The baddest gang of wild hogs in history: The Farrow Gang.
Mothers and fathers, lock your doors. Pull the covers up to your chinny chin chins. Turn out the lights.
And here’s the really bad news. One night, a terrorized fox whom they had cornered in a peanut field told them, under extreme duress, that the best, the very best, food in the entire world was the wild sugarcane that grew along the banks of the Bayou Tourterelle, the slow-moving stream that ran through the Sugar Man Swamp.
Buzzie’s yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness. He charged at the poor fox, and sent her howling through the night. Then he turned to Clydine and said, “Anything for you, my dearie dear.”
And with that, they turned south, all seventeen of them, while visions of sugarcane danced in their heads.
26
AFTER JAEGER AND SONNY BOY drove off, Chap felt an urge to throw all of the pots and pans against the wall, and he might have if it hadn’t been for Sweetums.
The tall ginger cat wove his way around his boy’s ankles, which had a surprisingly calming effect. While Chap gathered his wits, the cat stretched his full length, then sauntered over to his food bowl in the corner and started to munch. It was some sort of crunchy mix especially designed for “adult cats with hair balls.” It wasn’t the same tasty flavor as, say, fresh catfish, but altogether it wasn’t that bad. And it did seem to assuage the hair balls, which, Sweetums had to admit, weren’t all that attractive.
Then he remembered that he needed to let Chap know that something wasn’t right with the world. Last night had brought some odd rumble-rumble-rumble-rumbles up through the floorboards, and he could tell they weren’t the usual rumblings of the thunderstorm.
“People,” he announced, “I’ve come bearing news.” He said it in his clearest Catalian, but to his chagrin, they both ignored him. He meowed again. “Heads up, people!” But instead of offering him a listening ear, Chap told him, “You know you have to go to the back during café hours.” Of course Sweetums knew that. Duh!
The back was where the family actually lived. The front was the café. There was a back porch, which was screened in. And a front porch, which wasn’t screened in.
Sometimes a customer chose to eat his or her pies on the front porch, an action that Sweetums understood because he longed, longed, longed to go out there. Alas. “You’re an indoor cat,” Chap told him. “If you got out, you’d eat all the baby birds.”
“Baby birds would be nice,” replied Sweetums, licking his chops. But alas again. It was against the rules. Who made these rules, anyways? he wondered. Were any of them written in Catalian?
He was especially not allowed into the café during business hours. Chap told him it had something to do with the county health department and cleanliness regulations, which was a puzzle because, “People! Can’t you see that I clean my fur all the time?” He was reasonably sure that he was cleaner than any number of the patrons who ate their fried pies.
Then again, there was that whole hair ball thing. Humans. They had such weak stomachs. Still, hair balls notwithstanding, he knew that something was not right in the swamp. He meowed again, to no avail. For the third time that morning: Alas!
27
JUST A FEW MILES UP the road from Paradise Pies Café, Coyoteman Jim wrapped up his overnight show on the local radio station KSUG. He stretched and yawned. The night had been long, and he was tired. The storm that had blown by had been a humdinger, and watching it on the radar had worn him out. Plus, he was worried about the Jaeger Stitch situation. He had learne
d about it the day before, when Jaeger and Sonny Boy came by the station to talk about airing some radio ads.
Coyoteman Jim wasn’t a serious bona fide “twitcher” (a nickname for a birder), but he just loved to paddle through the dark ins and outs of the Bayou Tourterelle, looking and listening for the beautiful birds that made their homes in the Sugar Man Swamp. Like his old friend Audie, he too dreamed of one day seeing an actual ivory-billed woodpecker.
“Ghost bird,” he called it. Some people named it a Lord God bird, or a good-God bird. Some called it a Lazarus bird. Others just called it IBWO, which was its official banding and spotting ID.
But to Coyoteman Jim, it was a ghost. Just like the Sugar Man himself. Something that had been there before, and still seemed to be there, even though there was no hard and fast evidence. He also knew that the bird would never, not in a million years, ever be more than a ghost if Jaeger Stitch’s plans came to pass.
What would happen to the ivory-bill then? What would happen to the coots and terns and mud hens? Worse, what would happen to the Brayburns, Audie’s daughter and grandson? Where would they go? The plans for the arena would surely put them out of business, especially since they called for paving over the canebrake sugar. He knew that the pies depended upon that sugar.
He took a sip of cold coffee and then set the cup on the console. Someone from the day shift would wander in pretty soon. It was time for him to sign off, so he did. “This is Coyoteman Jim, telling all you swamp critters to have a good day and a good idea.” Then he held his head back and bayed, “Arrrrooooo!”
The Voice of the Sugar Man Swamp wouldn’t be back on the air until that night. In the meantime, he was ready for a mug of milk and a fried sugar pie.
28
SOMEONE ELSE WAS HUNGRY TOO. Operation Dewberry was in full swing. In less than five minutes, Bingo made it to Possum Hollow. In the dawn’s early light, he opened his eyes as wide as he could. He didn’t see anything or anyone. Only a big batch of gleaming berries.
Let it be said that, in general, possums are relatively benign. But the possums in the Sugar Man Swamp are from an ancient, primeval tribe of possums, and “benign” is not how we would describe them. “Scrappy” might be a better choice of words. And they’re also protective of their dewberry patch. Their delicious dewberry patch.
Bingo held his ear to the ground. All was quiet. There were no rumbles to be heard. He held his nose in the air. Possum scent was everywhere. But so was dewberry scent. He reached out and—“Ouch!” He had forgotten about the stinging pricker vines that the dewberries grew on. He tried again.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch.” He shook his paw. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe he should go right back to the DeSoto and call it a day. Maybe . . . His belly growled. The fresh scent of dewberries filled the air.
Soon, even though he had a few stings from the pricker vines, his belly was full of ripe, juicy dewberries. He rubbed it with both of his paws. What a nice, round, tight little belly.
Buuurrrppp! Oops. He certainly hadn’t meant to do that, even though he had to confess, it felt good.
So he did it again, Buuurrrppp! He rolled over onto his back in the cool morning air. He was in dewberry heaven. Then he felt decidedly bad that J’miah wasn’t here with him, enjoying the bounty. Wasn’t one of the Scout orders to be true and faithful to each other?
No problem, he thought. He would pick a pawful and take them back to the DeSoto. And just in time too, because as soon as he picked the last one—
“Step away from the dewberry patch.” The voice that delivered that statement did not sound at all friendly, nor did it smell friendly or look friendly. Indeed, possums are not friendly, and this one was not playing dead.
Bingo froze. But did he drop his dewberries? The ones he had picked for his dearly beloved brother, who was at that very moment sound asleep in the old DeSoto? No, he did not. But did he scoot out of there as fast as his little legs could carry him? He did, buckaroos, he did. Yeehaw!
29
CHAP PUSHED HIS HAIR BEHIND his ears. He needed a haircut. In fact, it seemed like he always needed a haircut. Every few days, his mother trimmed his bushy hair with the kitchen scissors. “It’s just like the vines in the swamp,” she said. “Grows just as fast.”
With the exception of chest hairs, Chap was a fast grower, period. Already his shoes were two sizes larger than his grandpa’s.
He remembered Audie telling him, “Son, big feet come in handy in the swamp. They’re like boats and will keep you from sinking in the mud.”
Boats! They needed a whole boatload of cash. Where in the world, wondered Chap, would they come up with that much money? He gritted his teeth again.
To change the subject, he reached up and turned on the small radio that sat on the sill above the café sink, just in time to hear Coyoteman Jim sign off, “. . . have a good day and a good idea.”
And as the DJ’s final Arrrooooo! filled the morning air, Chap had just that, a good idea. Hearing Coyoteman Jim’s voice made him think that at least they had one reliable customer. But what they needed to increase their coffers was more reliable customers. And what they needed to get more customers was a good commercial on the radio. Maybe, just maybe, Coyoteman Jim would help them out.
And for the first time since Grandpa Audie had gone to meet his Maker, Chaparral Brayburn cracked a smile. If he could come up with one good idea, maybe, just maybe, he could come up with some others. He took another tiny sip of the now cold, bitter coffee. He peeked under this shirt. Chest hairs had to be growing.
30
CLYDINE AND BUZZIE WERE SMILING too. Just thinking about that wild sugarcane made them downright delirious. Buzzie’s yellow tusks glowed. Clydine’s yellow eyes gleamed.
“Sugar,” whispered Buzzie to Clydine.
“Sugar,” she said to her beloved boar.
“Sugar,” they said to each other.
Every wild hog in the continental USA came from stock that was imported from Europe, beginning with de Soto’s Spanish sailing hogs. Most hog specialists think that they were likely Russian boars.
Spanish. Russian. Who cares?
What they were now was wild.
Wilder than oats. Wilder than march hares. Wilder than the west wind.
And ravenous. Did we say ravenous? Those hogs were ravenous.
31
BACK IN 1949, THERE WERE no feral hogs in the Sugar Man Swamp. Not one. But Audie Brayburn hadn’t gone to the swamp to look for hogs.
From the time he was fifteen until he turned twenty, he worked for a bakery in southeast Houston. For those five years he worked as many hours as he could, until by 1949 he saved enough money to buy a brand-new DeSoto Sportsman.
It had always been his dream to find the ivory-billed woodpecker, ever since he was a small boy and his father gave him his first birder’s journal. In fact, his nickname was Audubon, for the famous avian artist, John James Audubon. It was quickly shortened to Audie. So, once he had that DeSoto, and a little pocket change left over, he headed east, to the first place he thought he might find the elusive woodpecker—the Sugar Man Swamp.
All he took with him were his old binoculars, his sketchbook, a Hohner Marine Band harmonica and his Polaroid Land Camera, given to him by his parents as a parting gift. He also took a .30-caliber steel ammo can, which he bought at the Army/Navy Surplus. It was airtight and watertight, perfect for keeping his matches dry, and also for storing any photos that he took on his camera. One-of-a-kind photos.
After hours of driving, he finally found his way to the Sugar Man Swamp. He had never seen so many old trees, including dead trees that were still standing, perfect trees for woodpecker nests. He parked the DeSoto, set up his camp, and settled in.
At first, the critters of the forest dodged out of his way and stayed hidden from his sight. After all, most of the humans who entered their domain brought arrows and guns and traps with them. But as the days passed, the animals began to notice that Audie wasn’t t
oting anything except for a pair of binoculars, a camera, an ammo can, and a book that he was always scratching in. And they loved the tunes he played on his harmonica. Just loved them.
Pretty soon Audie Brayburn was considered an Honorary Swamp Critter.
One day he got out his Polaroid Land Camera, pointed it toward an armadillo, and took his shot. As soon as he pulled the back of the film from the photo, he smiled. There, printed on the slick paper, was a perfect, instant picture of a nine-banded armadillo, a surprised-looking armadillo, at that. Audie rolled a tube of gooey “coater” over the photo and waved it in the air until it was dry.
Just as he tucked the photo of the armadillo into his ammo can, he heard the unmistakable sound he had been waiting for. A sharp kint kint followed by kaPOW kaPOW.
Only one creature on the entire planet made that sound, only one. He grabbed his binoculars and his camera and followed it. His heart raced in the same rhythm—kaPow kaPow kaPow. He hurried, stepping as lightly as he could. He paused here and there to cock his ears. Hours passed, and the sound pulled him deeper and deeper into the woods.
As he walked, he was so intent upon keeping the beautiful bird within earshot that he failed to notice that the air had grown increasingly still. Not a single leaf fluttered. Not a single animal stirred.
Nothing except the kint kint of the woodpecker, and the echoing kaPOW of his own beating heart.
Audie Brayburn should have paid attention to all that quiet, all that stillness. If he had, he would have realized that the only time the forest became that still was right before a major storm.
Instead, he kept following the certain sound of the ivory-billed woodpecker. The air was unbearably hot, sweat soaked his clothes, the water from the swampy floor oozed into his boots, making them feel like lead weights on his feet. He was hungry and thirsty, but more than that, he was determined.
