The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt

pencil on the desk in front of him, but all it had on it were some doodles and scribbles, nothing else.
    He knew how important this advertisement would be. If the Brayburns could get some more customers, and make some extra cash, they might be able to slow down the plans being hatched by Jaeger Stitch and Sonny Boy Beaucoup. It was a long shot at best. He knew that. He also knew he needed to make a humdinger of a commercial if they were going to convince customers to drive all the way down the Beaten Track to eat sugar pies.
    Coyoteman Jim rubbed his eyes. The station felt lonely, what with the rain and all. This was usually about the time when his old friend Audie would have called him, just to say hello, and maybe to tell him a story.
    Audie wasn’t his only caller. Because Coyoteman Jim worked the graveyard shift, people tended to call in after everyone else had gone to bed. It was downright surprising what folks felt like they could tell him in the wee hours of the morning. Some things were worth repeating, like when Sissy Morton won the baton twirling competition in Baton Rouge; and when the Whites had their new baby girl, Emma Kathleen; and the time that Brother Hadley at the Little Church on the Bayou got bit by a copperhead and lived to tell about it. Those things were happy news, and Coyoteman Jim was totally down with sharing them.
    But there were a lot of things that weren’t necessarily meant for the public at large, like when Billy Willy Curtis calledto tell him that his big sister Mae Rae Curtis sat under the tanning lights for so long, she turned completely orange; or when Cousin Ida called to say that her mother Aunt Erla had dropped the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor but didn’t let on, so everyone ate dirty turkey and didn’t know it; and the time when Maynard Douglas called to say his youth pastor at the Little Church on the Bayou drank so much Mountain Dew, it snorted out of his nose when he laughed.
    These were items that Coyoteman Jim kept to himself.
    Which is the reason that he ended every graveyard shift with a major howl. Instead of saying all those things that shouldn’t be said, he just cut loose with a big ol’ Aaarrroooooo!
    So there wasn’t much happening in the KSUG listening area that Coyoteman Jim wasn’t aware of, even though there were a few things he wished he didn’t know. Like the invasion of the hogs, for example. Yet another introduced species, thought Coyoteman Jim. And that included those other introduced species: Sonny Boy and Jaeger.
    As he slipped his headphones back on over his ears, the strains of the last song zipped into his head. Shake, shake, shake  . . . Wait! He turned up the volume. Shake, shake, shake  . . . Yes! There it was—the inspiration for his commercial. Shake, shake, shake  . . . It was perfect. He listened to the tune one more time, put his pencil to paper, and started writing.

40
    B INGO AND J’ MIAH WERE WORRIED. From the safety of Information Headquarters, they could feel the rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble as the invasion approached. They knew they needed to wake up the Sugar Man to tell him that the swamp was under attack. And they also knew that they didn’t have much time. These things they knew.
    What they didn’t know was how they were going to go about waking up the Sugar Man without getting snip-snap-zip-zapped by Gertrude.
    And as if all of that wasn’t enough to worry about, they weren’t even sure where to find the Sugar Man. No one had actually seen him in years, maybe decades. Not even the famous Great-Uncle Banjo had claimed to have an encounter with the Sugar Man.
    It wasn’t like there was a sign on the door somewhere: “Here Lives the Sugar Man.” It wasn’t as if there was a neon arrow pointing to his secret lair: “Sugar Man’s Hideaway.”It wasn’t as though there was a map with a big, fat circle around “Sugar Man