The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp

by Kathi Appelt

  And then, just before the sun gave up for the day, Audie felt a whoosh of powerful wings fly just over his head, and he knew, he knew what it was, and with utter joy he spoke the words he’d been longing to say his whole life long. “Lord God, what a bird!”

  The beautiful black wings with their trailing white feathers and the large red crest on the bird’s head left no doubt. Everything about the bird said ivory-bill.

  Audie raised his Polaroid Land Camera and snapped his shot. When he pulled the strip of film out and peeled the back off, there it was, in black and white: the broad black wings with their trailing feathers, the stripes on the sides of its neck, and the tall crest on its head. Audie opened the tube of coater and covered the surface of the shot, making sure there weren’t any streaks. Then he waved the photo in the air until it dried, and slipped it into the ammo can. All just in time, because in the very next instant the rain began to fall, and there he was, deep, deep in the heart of the Sugar Man Swamp, without any idea where he was or where he had left his DeSoto Sportsman.

  And worse, the rain was now erasing his footsteps. Audie Brayburn was thoroughly and completely lost. But he was also thoroughly and completely happy. He had his photo of the ivory-billed woodpecker. But just in case he got the chance to take another shot, he checked the camera, and because it was getting so dark, he popped one of the small flashbulbs into the socket. He’d prove to the world that the bird was not extinct—that is, if he could ever find his way back to his car.

  For a moment, he stood there, soaking wet, first from sweat and then from the big drops of rain that slid out of the sky. He had no idea which direction to go. He also noticed a dry scratch in the back of his throat.

  Not only that, but it was getting darker and darker. There is hardly any place on earth that is darker than a swamp at night, especially in a rainstorm. All Audie knew was that somewhere he had left his brand-new 1949 DeSoto Sportsman, and if he could only find his way to the car, then he could take shelter.

  He squeezed his camera shut, slung it across his shoulders, and hoped that the rain wouldn’t ruin it. He wished he could store it in the ammo can, but it was too large for that. At least, he thought, the prized photos would stay dry. He patted the can and hugged it to his chest.

  For hours he pushed his way through the swamp, tripping over tree roots and sloshing through shallow pools of muck. He was soaked through and through, covered in mud. He kept patting his ammo can, to reassure himself that the photos inside it were safe and dry. He knew that no one would take him seriously if he claimed to have seen the ivory-billed woodpecker without proof. The photograph was his proof.

  “Suitable for framing,” Audie announced. Yep. And even though he was thoroughly lost, he felt enormously lucky. And happy, too. So happy. And, he noticed, his nose was becoming increasingly stuffed up.

  He finally reached a clearing and held his head back, mouth open in the pouring rain, to try to quench his thirst. He rubbed his neck while he gulped at the drops. But despite the heavy downpour, it didn’t seem as though he could take in enough to slake his thirst. He lapped at it with his tongue and stood there for a long time, face toward the sky, eyes closed. The scratch began to burn.

  Finally, when he thought he might drown from facing into the rain, luck found him once more. He opened his eyes and looked ahead just as a bolt of lightning slashed through the rain-soaked trees. And there, he was sure of it, in that momentary flash, sat the DeSoto.

  Oh, sweet salvation!

  He stumbled toward the automobile, which had been waiting there all those long hours. Just as he approached it, another bolt of lightning cracked so close that it lifted Audie right out of his waterlogged boots.

  It lit up the whole area, so that he could clearly see the car now, with its beautiful mud-caked grille. Not only that, but the hood ornament, the bust of the conquistador, glowed in the dark. The bolt of lightning must have activated the battery, he thought. In that moment, Audie Brayburn had never loved anything so much as he loved that car.

  He stumbled into the backseat and began to shiver. His throat felt raw, as if he had swallowed pricker vines. All he wanted to do was curl up in the dryness of the DeSoto and go to sleep.

  The seats of a 1949 DeSoto are made of soft leather, with straight, solid stitches. They’re wide and roomy, too. Perfect for a weary explorer to lie down and sleep. The last thing that Audie Brayburn did before he drifted off was open up his Polaroid Land Camera so that it could dry out. He was still holding it on his stomach when at last he closed his eyes.

  Soon, it felt like the car was rocking, rocking, rocking.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, he felt a bump, and when he did, he accidentally hit the button on the Polaroid, which still sat on his stomach. He woke just as the flashbulb popped. For a second he was blinded by the reflection of the flash against the car’s window.

  Instinctively, he pulled the film out of the back of the camera. He likely would not have seen the photo if another bolt of lightning hadn’t struck nearby. But it did, and there, in the brief flash, he saw a fuzzy face framed by the windows of the car. Audie blinked. He thought of all the fuzzy faces in the woods—raccoons, possums, bears. Now he had a photo of one, but in the darkness he couldn’t tell exactly what it was. On top of that, the fever coursing through his body made everything blurry. He sat up for a moment, the photo in his hand. He peeled the backing off and set it on the floorboard. Then he covered the photo with coater, blew on it, and slipped it into the ammo can with the others.

  The camera only held eight shots. Now there were only five more left on that roll, and it reminded him that sooner rather than later, he’d run out of supplies and have to leave the swamp and head home.

  But before then, he had to sleep. He was so, so, so sleepy. So very sleepy . . .

  32

  AFTER HIS NARROW ESCAPE FROM the primeval possum, Bingo slipped into the DeSoto, carrying his pawful of dewberries for his brother. But when he looked over the seat back, he noticed that J’miah was sawing logs. Hmm . . . Now he was faced with a conundrum. Should he wake J’miah up with the good news about the dewberries? He had, after all, risked being attacked by a primeval possum.

  Then again, he had risked being attacked by a primeval possum. Maybe, Bingo thought, I deserve these dewberries.

  But wasn’t one of the Scout orders “Be true to each other”?

  Would it be untrue to eat the dewberries if he had picked them for J’miah? Of course, it might also be untrue to wake J’miah. What if he was having a wonderful dream or something, and didn’t want to be disturbed? Bingo had to admit that J’miah looked very cozy.

  Decisions, decisions.

  The sweet scent of dewberries filled the air of Information Headquarters. Then there were the dewberries themselves to consider. Would it be untrue to the dewberries if he let them go uneaten? What was true and what was not?

  Alas! All of these questions made Bingo feel a little dizzy. He sniffed the dewberries. From the backseat he heard J’miah roll over. He waited one moment longer to see if his brother was going to stir. If J’miah woke up by himself, the dewberries were his.

  Wait.

  Wait.

  Waaaiiittt.

  There was nothing left to do but gobble those delicious dewberries down. Which he did. In one huge bite.

  Buuuuurp!

  Oh, dear. Bingo had not meant to do that. He covered his mouth with his paw. Maybe J’miah had not heard it.

  Too late.

  In Bingo’s ears, he heard his brother say, “Mmm . . . dewberries.”

  Thankfully, the next thing he heard was Zzzzzzzz.

  33

  MEANWHILE, IN THE DEEPEST, DARKEST part of the forest, Gertrude uncoiled her very lengthy body and rattled her tail, chichichichichi. She felt itchy. Fleas! Who knew that a snake could be bothered by fleas? Then again, Gertrude wasn’t your run-of-the-mill ordinary snake. She was the Sugar Man’s familiar. Crotalus horridus GIGANTICUS.

  CHG!<
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  Gertrude blinked until her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, and when they did, she noticed that her old companion was snoozing away, as usual. Even with all his fur, the fleas did not seem to bother him.

  She gave him a little nudge, but he barely budged, just snored a little louder. Satisfied that he was sleeping soundly, Gertrude slithered out of the dark lair and slipped into the muddy bayou. Ahh, the cool water felt good on her scaly skin.

  Once in a while a girl just needs a bath. She swam to and fro for several minutes, gobbled up a couple of tasty bullfrogs, and then slid back to her nest.

  She sighed. “That’s better.” She curled up into a huge coil and slid back into sleep.

  Chichichichichi.

  34

  SOMEONE ELSE WAS FEELING ITCHY: Jaeger Stitch. In fact, she was itching for a fight. She flexed the muscles in her biceps and clenched her fists. Raw power surged through her compact body. With Sunny Boy Beaucoup sitting on the backseat of the Hummer beside her, her first impulse was to put him in a headlock and make him beg for mercy.

  But she fought down the urge to do that. After all, he was her primary source of funding for the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park.

  Her fingers twitched. She needed a fresh alligator. With the early morning sun beginning to peek through the branches of the cypress trees, she could see the swamp from the passenger window.

  A few miles down the road from Paradise Pies Café—after their driver, a college student named Leroy who was trying to pick up a few bucks during summer break, had set the Hummer on cruise control—she demanded, “Leroy! Stop the car!”

  Leroy hit the brakes, which made the heavy vehicle slide down the gravel road. It dug deep trenches with all four of its enormous steel-belted radials. A cloud of red dust surrounded them. Before Sonny Boy could even say, “What the . . .” Jaeger jumped out the door and disappeared into the trees, leaving Sonny Boy in the backseat of the Hummer.

  Sonny Boy straightened his red bow tie and admired his thin, elegant socks. For all of two seconds he considered following her. But that would mean ruining yet another pair of socks. He decided to wait in the car. If Jaeger wanted to tramp around in the swamp and wrestle an alligator, far be it from him to stop her. He had no real affection for the lady wrestler. She was a business partner, nothing else. He and the driver . . . What was his name? Larry? Lonny? James? Whatever. He and the driver would wait.

  He knew that Jaeger would find an alligator toot sweet, and from there it would just be a matter of minutes before she had it belly up and snoring. (Fact: When alligators are flipped onto their backs, they fall asleep. Jaeger was a pro at flipping them.)

  In the meantime, Sonny Boy could use the quiet time without Jaeger to dream about the boatloads of cash that the Gator World Wrestling Arena and Theme Park were going to deliver to him. If he thought at all about “the wrath of the Sugar Man,” those words that were written in his great-great-greater-greatest-grandfather’s own blood, it was only fleetingly. In fact, he was so absorbed by his visions of all that moolah, he didn’t notice the rumble-rumble-rumble-rumbles that came up through the floorboards and shook the big car.

  He didn’t notice. But Leroy did. They made him chew on his fingernails.

  35

  BACK IN THE CANEBRAKE, THE rattlesnakes were abuzz. They had also noticed the rumble-rumble-rumble-rumbles, and it made them edgy.

  Snip-snap-zip-zap. Snip-snap-zip-zap. Snip-snap-zip-zap.

  36

  WHILE SONNY BOY SAT IN the backseat of the Hummer, and Leroy chewed on his fingernails, Jaeger Stitch stepped quietly onto the soft wet floor of the swamp. The sun rose through the tree branches just enough to light the path in front of her. She was only feet away from an unusually deep bend in the Bayou Tourterelle when she smelled the gators.

  At this early hour they’d be calm, thanks to the cool air that still lingered from the night. Nevertheless, her senses were heightened. A calm alligator is still an alligator, and she knew that.

  Sure enough, there, right along the bank, was her prey, a six-footer. Not the biggest gator she had ever wrestled, but not the smallest, either. It was just right for a fight.

  Before the gator could even flip on its go switch, Jaeger Stitch landed on its back. Ooomph! She pulled its jaw up into a ninety-degree angle and kissed the tip of its nose. As if that weren’t humiliating enough to the poor gator, she grabbed its toothy snout and pulled it over onto its back and started rubbing its belly. In fewer than five minutes, the alligator was in dream city.

  And Jaeger Stitch was back in the superstretch Hummer. She ran her fingers through Sonny Boy’s yellow-gray hair. He covered his nose with his silk hanky to circumvent her reptilian smell. She took a deep breath. Nothing like the odor of alligator at sunrise, she thought. Then she closed her eyes, leaned against the seat back of the enormous car, and hummed to herself as they rolled through the morning mist.

  The Next Night

  37

  TEXAS IS HOME TO THOUSANDS of alligators. It’s impossible to put a definite figure on their population. Let’s just say that every waterway between the Sabine River to the east and the Pecos to the west has its share of the toothy beasts. And once in a while one is found in a lake or stream west of that.

  The same could basically be said about the porkers, although their range is definitely bigger and wider than that of the gators. Biologists estimate that the number of feral hogs in the USA range from between two and four million animals in thirty-nine states. More than a million of them can be found in Texas alone, giving Texas a big, fat porcine problem.

  Hogs like to hide out along creek beds, where they lay low in the underbrush so that no one can see their sneaky selves. Like our raccoons, they’re also nocturnal, using the cover of darkness to mask their dastardly deeds.

  They usually travel in family groups called sounders. Isn’t that a great word? “Sounders”? We just love that.

  But do we love Buzzie and Clydine and the Farrow Gang?

  Friends, there is nothing to love there.

  Nothing.

  38

  BINGO WAS DONE WITH SLEEPING. All day he had tossed and turned. Between the wonder of discovering Blinkle, the worry of the mysterious rumbles, his close encounter with the primeval possum, and his wee bit of guilt over not sharing the dewberries with J’miah, it had been a long day. Staying asleep had been a struggle. So, he was glad to see the dark of evening begin to rise.

  Then, like an alarm clock, his belly growled and he realized he was hungry again. He gave himself a big shake and stretched. He knew that he and J’miah had a mission to accomplish, Operation Rumble-Rumble-Rumble. They had to figure out what was making all that racket. But even a mission can’t stand between a raccoon and a meal.

  In the backseat J’miah stretched too. “I’m starving.”

  Considering his own new state of starvation, Bingo blithely erased his guilty feelings about the dewberries . . . sort of. Then he announced, “Crawdad Lane.” Crawdads would be just the thing. A power breakfast to get them through Operation Rumble-Rumble-Rumble.

  “Bingo!” said J’miah. (Bingo hated it when J’miah did that, but we think it’s kind of funny.)

  Crawdad Lane wasn’t very far away, right along the edge of a narrow bend near the bayou.

  “Let’s go,” said Bingo.

  “Crawdads over easy,” added J’miah.

  They scooted out the entryway. At the opening, they both opened their eyes, put their noses in the air, and put their ears to the ground. No rumbles. None.

  In no time at all, our Scouts were busy digging up crawdads. It wasn’t long till the two of them were lying on their backs in the cool mud along the water’s edge, their bellies stuffed like water balloons.

  From his spot in the mud, Bingo looked up through the tree branches. He could see the clouds gathering. He took a deep breath. Rain. Rain was surely on the way. But as he watched the clouds tumble by, he could see an occasional star twinkle above the trees.
Each one looked as though it might be hanging in the boughs, a little like a sparkly firefly. He craned his neck to see if he could spot the red one. Just the memory of it made him happy.

  Alas, he thought, too many clouds.

  He might have stayed there for the rest of the night, except . . . rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble. There it was. Only now, it seemed to be even closer. Bingo sat up. Thanks to his stuffed belly, he groaned a little.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Then there was a repeat. Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

  “What—”

  Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble. Bingo grabbed his stuffed belly and felt just a wee bit queasy.

  Rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble.

  As if that weren’t enough, split splat splitter splatter. The clouds that Bingo had just watched bunched up and let loose. And then . . . Zap! A thin, jagged line of lightning slipped from the sky.

  Bingo and J’miah looked at each other knowingly. Without missing a beat, they ran back to Information Headquarters, scurried through the opening, and shook their coats.

  Outside, ZAPP! . . . another bolt of lightning sliced through the sky. Bingo could see sparks dance all around the perimeter of the car. He was glad he was indoors. He stared through the vine-covered windshield and could just see the light on the hood ornament through the leaves. The bust of Hernando glowed. It was a weird orange color, and from where Bingo sat, he could only see the back of the conquistador’s head.

  Bingo looked at the dials on the dash, and sure enough, their purplish lights began to flicker on and off, until they finally illuminated the numbers that went from one to twelve in a circle, and just like always . . . oooooowwwweeeeeee . . . blip . . . blip . . . weeeeooo . . . ssshhhshshshshshsh . . . followed by the Voice of Intelligence, loud and clear.