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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.
    â€œHands 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.
    â€œJust 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.
    â€œCoffee 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.
    â€œLots 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 CommunityCoffee, 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œOut!” 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 customers, they had enough.
    Some of the customers, Chap knew, came as much to hear Audie’s