Read The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp for Free Online Page B

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-lookingat 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.
    â€œUs 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.
    â€œPies 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 pairof 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