The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp (2 page)

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?

O
NE 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?”

That was a good question. What was up there? Bingo felt the tuft between his ears pop up. But he also felt the tingling in his paws.

“We won't know until the mission is complete,” Bingo said.

J'miah scratched his left ear. Bingo had a point. Then a shiver ran up his back. He hoped that Bingo didn't notice, because if there was one thing J'miah was not proud of, it was the fact that he hated to climb.

Okay, let's just be honest here. J'miah was terrified of heights. He knew it was deeper than the knowledge of Great-Uncle Banjo. And it scared him even more to think about his brother climbing all the way to the top of the longleaf pine, the tallest tree in the forest. It made him queasy . . . like he-might-throw-up queasy . . . that kind of queasy.

He glared at Bingo with his hardest squint. Sometimes, he knew, squinting worked in his favor. But tonight, their first night on duty without Little Mama and Daddy-O, Bingo seemed determined to climb that tree.

K
INT KINT KINT KA
POW.

If you ever did hear an ivory-billed woodpecker, that is the sound it would make.

Chichichichi.

If you hear that sound, turn around and run.

Canebrake rattlesnakes.

Chichichichi.

E
VERYONE KNOWS THAT RACCOONS ARE
fair climbers. It's not unusual to see them perched on a branch some twenty or thirty feet up or more, but higher than that, and Houston, we've got a problem. Unlike squirrels, who are compact and have flaps underneath their armpits that help them glide, raccoons are a bit on the bottom-heavy side, so if they get too high up in a tree, well, the tree tends to bend in a downward motion. So let's just say that they
usually
don't get too high up in a tree.

Most raccoons don't, at any rate.

But Bingo was not most raccoons. He could feel it in his paws. When he held them in front of his masked face, they started to itch. Itching. To. Climb. Which was what he planned to do. Straightaway.

“It's my mission,” he said.

Mission Longleaf.

J'miah could stay in the DeSoto and continue cleaning the backseat, but not Bingo. He had a tree to climb.

Go, Bingo!

“I'm leaving,” he said. J'miah did not respond. Bingo waited. It only seemed fair to give his brother a chance to come along.

J'miah pulled his invisible thinking hat down hard. He didn't say anything. Not one single thing.

“Yep,” Bingo said. “I'm really going.”

Squint.

Then Bingo eased his way toward the exit on the passenger side of the car. He looked back over his shoulder.

Squint.

“Bye.” He waved.

Squint. Squint. Squint.

J'miah squinted so hard, his eyes were just tiny slits. He and Bingo were a pair. A duet. Brothers. The order was to be true and faithful to each other. Could J'miah let Bingo go on a mission alone?

Arrrggghhhh!
he wanted to scream.

But just as Bingo slid into the exit hole, they both heard these unmistakable sounds:
split splat sploot . . .
RAIN!

And before they could even blink, here it came, pouring down. Then . . .

ZZZTTTTT!
 . . . . A bright bolt of lightning zipped out of the sky and struck so close to the old car that the electricity made their fur stand straight up.

“That was close!” said Bingo.

“Do you think it was close enough?” asked J'miah.

“If we're lucky!”

They didn't have to wait. Sure enough, the big bolt of lightning hit so close to the DeSoto that the old battery got a big, fat charge, which in turn shot through the rusted wires and switches and tubes and
zzzttt!
A pale purple light lit up the dashboard.

“Information!” the Scouts said together.

J'miah abandoned his clean-up mission, scrambled into the front seat, and sat next to Bingo. “Get ready,” he said.

Bingo grabbed the steering wheel with both paws. The numbers on the dash glowed in the darkness. And then . . .
sssssttt
 . . .
blip blip bloop
 . . .
oooowwwwweeee
 . . . a voice, a deep, loud, clear voice, the Voice of Intelligence, floated atop the airwaves. “. . . it might be raining now, but be prepared for clear skies, with a few clouds . . .” And then, as quickly as it came, it faded away, along with the purple numbers.

“Roger,” said Bingo.

“Roger,” echoed J'miah.

They both saluted. As brand-new Information Officers, they had just followed Special Order Number One: Always heed the Voice of Intelligence. The Voice hung in the air. It wasn't a scary voice. It was simply the one that occasionally slipped out of the dashboard, always after a bolt of lightning struck nearby.

Of course, in this early summertime of the year, thunderstorms in the swamp were frequent, practically nightly. And while our Scouts probably didn't know it, the metal from the DeSoto seemed to attract more than its fair share of proximal lightning strikes. After all, aside from the aluminum cans that floated down the bayou from irresponsible campers, what other metal structures were there in the Sugar Man Swamp?

It took a while for the storm to abate, but as the raindrops died down and stopped their relentless beating on the roof of the car, Bingo peered at the now-dark dashboard with its dials and buttons. He rested his paws on the old steering wheel and then scratched his right ear. There was nothing of note in the Intelligence Report that they had just received. It was pretty standard stuff, a little rain, a few clouds. It hardly seemed worth broadcasting.
Be prepared for clear skies, with a few clouds.
Easy peasy. Clear skies were easy to prepare for.

But first, Bingo had a tree to climb. And despite his invisible thinking cap, J'miah said, “I'm coming too.”

Bingo's tuft stood straight up. He grinned.

“Well,” said J'miah, wishing that someone had caught Great-Uncle Banjo. “Someone has to catch you if you fall.”

Bingo had no intentions of falling. There was something in the top of that tree that he had to see. He was certain of it. He was a Scout on a mission. Mission Longleaf.

T
HE
D
E
S
OTO ACTUALLY
WASN'T
THE
only metal structure in the swamp. Aside from the aforementioned soda and beer cans, there was a small building a mile or so north, a wooden building with a wide front porch that faced the road, a road known as the Beaten Track. The building had a screened-in back porch that faced the bayou, and a tin roof, a roof that might have attracted the occasional bolt of lightning but for the lightning rods that thwarted their strikes.

On the front side of the building was Paradise Pies Café. The backside of the building was the home of the newly deceased Audie Brayburn, proprietor of Paradise Pies Café, along with his daughter and his grandson, Chap.

As Chap sat there in his bedroom, he looked up at the ceiling fan as it slowly spun in circles over his bed, and tried to remember everything his grandfather had told him about the ivory-billed woodpecker. He knew the bird was the reason Audie had come to the swamp in the first place. It was
also the reason Audie had stayed. Why was Audie so sure that the bird might be there?

“I took a photo of it,” he had told Chap.

If only, thought Chap, I had that one-of-a-kind photo.

“It's in the DeSoto,” Audie had told him, which was no help at all. Every time they went on one of their ramblings through the swamp, which was almost every day, they kept a lookout for the old car. Sometimes they went by foot. Sometimes they took the pirogue and pushed their way back and forth along the Bayou Tourterelle.