Scarlet Thunder

  Scarlet Thunder

  Sigmund Brouwer

  Copyright © 2008 Sigmund Brouwer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording or by any information storage

  and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission

  in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-

  Scarlet Thunder / written by Sigmund Brouwer.

  (Orca sports)

  ISBN 978-1-55143-911-2

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8553.R68467S3 2008 jC813’.54 C2007-907178-3

  Summary: Trenton suspects that someone is sabotaging the documentary

  about stock-car racing that he is helping his uncle film.

  First published in the United States, 2008

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941812

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing

  programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada

  through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada

  Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts

  Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Masterfile

  Author photo by Bill Bilsley

  Orca Book Publishers Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  11 10 09 08 • 4 3 2 1

  chapter one

  I really didn’t want to climb the steps to knock on the door of the trailer.

  I stood at the bottom, holding a cup of coffee in my hand. Well, not coffee. Latte.

  Lah-tay. Only uncivilized beasts said it wrong.

  Lah-tay. As ordered, it was made from freshly ground Brazilian coffee beans. With skim milk, steamed but not too hot. With fresh whipped cream on top. Sprinkled with cinnamon and chocolate shavings. Not served in a paper cup. Not served in a mug. But delivered in a cup made of thin china. On a saucer. With a real silver spoon on the side.

  This latte was for Hunter Gunn, the famous movie star. He was waiting, probably impatiently, inside the trailer. And to make sure everyone on the set understood that the big trailer was for his use only, he had insisted that his name be painted on its door. Painted. He was only going to be here for three days. But then, it had cost ten thousand dollars to rent the trailer he had demanded. So what was a couple hundred extra to put his name on it?

  I sighed and climbed the steps. Even though my uncle was in charge here, he made me start at the bottom. That meant I was a gopher—as in “go for” whatever you’re told to fetch. That meant my job was to run around and do errands. Like this one.

  I knocked.

  No answer.

  I knocked louder.

  Still no answer.

  I knocked even louder.

  “What’s with all the pounding out there?” a voice hollered from within. It was a voice that millions of people had heard, usually when Hunter Gunn was saving the world from asteroids or terrorists armed with nuclear bombs.

  “Well, I tried knocking softly but—”

  “Don’t back-talk me! I don’t care who your uncle is. I can buy him and a dozen like him if I want to.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. My uncle, Mike Hiser, was directing this commercial shoot. I felt stupid talking to a painted name on a door that was only a few inches from my face.

  “Why are you bothering me?” the voice demanded.

  “I have your coffee, sir,” I said. I grinned, because I knew exactly what I’d hear next.

  “Lah-tay!” the voice almost screamed. “Lah-tay! Only uncivilized beasts drink coffee.”

  A person had to take what satisfaction he could from someone who could buy his uncle and a dozen like him.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, biting my grin. “Latte. I have it here.”

  “What took you so long?” the voice growled.

  Hunter Gunn had only called for his drink five minutes earlier. And it had taken three minutes to make. Two minutes for delivery wasn’t that bad.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said. I waited for him to open the door.

  He didn’t.

  I stood on the steps and looked over the fence into the San Diego Zoo. It was a high fence, screened by heavy bushes and palm trees. A big area of the parking lot had been taped off for our stuff. And to keep us safe from traffic.

  I waited some more.

  I was glad today was the last part of this shoot. We just had to finish a scene with Hunter Gunn and an elephant. That’s why we had set up at the zoo instead of a studio lot in Hollywood. Even with the cost of Hunter Gunn’s rented trailer, it was cheaper to come to the elephant than it was to bring the elephant to us.

  I kept waiting. The morning sun felt good. San Diego in the summer didn’t seem as hot and dry and smoggy as Los Angeles.

  I waited longer, thinking about where my uncle and I would go next. Tomorrow, we were headed east to begin a stock car racing documentary. A television sports channel had already agreed to air the special. Filming it was the most fun I’d have this summer. It was—

  The door suddenly opened. I stood face-to-face with Hunter Gunn, with his silk shirt and designer jeans, his handsome face, his thick blond hair, his bright blue eyes and his fifteen-million-dollar-a-movie smile.

  But he wasn’t smiling.

  And I wasn’t actually face-to-face with him. I was taller than Hunter. Most people were. But he always insisted the camera shoot him at an upward angle to make him look tall.

  Without a word, he snatched the china cup and saucer from my hand.

  He took a sip.

  “This is cold,” he said. He poured the liquid on the steps, and some of it splashed my shoes. “Get me a hot cup.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I didn’t point out that it had gotten cold while I had waited for him to come to the door. After the first hour with Hunter Gunn, I had come to expect this sort of treatment.

  I started to walk away.

  “Don’t forget to mix the cinnamon and chocolate shavings in equal portions,” he said. “Last time you used too much cinnamon.”

  “Yes, sir,” I responded.

  I didn’t think the day was going to get much better. Not if Hunter Gunn thought he could treat a two-ton elephant the way he treated people.

  chapter two

  “Junior Louis is a real sweetheart,” Walter Merideth, the animal trainer, said. He was a short, wide, older man with a big grin and a ragged haircut. “Hardly anything excites him.”

  Good thing, I thought.

  Junior Louis looked anything but junior. I mean, everyone knows elephants are big, but I didn’t realize how big until I got up close to one. Junior Louis put me and the trainer in shadow. Junior Louis seemed like a building covered with thick hide. He stood patiently, flicking his tail back and forth at flies. Every once in a while he flapped his ears, but other than that, he was a statue, rooted to the pavement.

  “What about mice?” I asked. “Does Junior Louis get excited about mice? You know, like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon?”

  I love Bugs Bunny. There’s this one cartoon where a big elephant goes crazy trying to get away from a mouse.

  The trainer laughed.

  “I’ve seen that cartoon too,” he said. “It’s funny, you’re the second person to ask me
that today.”

  He patted Junior Louis on the leg. “Yes, there is some truth in it. Seems silly that something this big would get nervous about something so tiny. But the fact is that some mice are small enough to get up inside an elephant’s trunk.”

  I wrinkled my nose. The trainer caught me doing it and laughed again.

  “Think about it,” he said. “In the wild, elephants feed themselves by pulling grass with their trunks and stuffing it into their mouths. In captivity, they scoop up hay the same way. And where else would mice hide but in grass or hay? Elephants tend to grab a big bunch all at once. So anytime an elephant eats, there’s a chance that it might scoop up a mouse. It’s not likely that a mouse would ever scoot up inside an elephant’s trunk, but imagine the thought of eating a salad and finding a worm or a cockroach, or having a bug crawl up your nose or into your ear while you slept...”

  I wrinkled my face more and gave a little shudder.

  “Exactly,” the trainer said. “Elephants like those thoughts about as well as you do.” He shrugged. “But it’s not like we’re going to see a lot of mice out here in a parking lot.”

  Before I could agree with him, I heard a big, wet, plopping sound. On pavement.

  I looked behind Junior Louis. Then I groaned. Elephants do everything in a big way. And as gopher, I got to do all the dirty work around the set.

  And Junior Louis had just supplied me with a lot of dirty work.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the trainer. “I think I’ll need a shovel and a wheelbarrow for this job.”

  When I finished about fifteen minutes later, Uncle Mike was just about ready to begin filming. This commercial was supposed to show the strength of a certain brand of underarm deodorant.

  The fact that Hunter Gunn had agreed to act in it told me two things. First, his career was on the way down if he was willing to do a commercial like this one. And second, the deodorant company was paying big money for the commercial. I knew that from reading the weekly trade papers. Hunter Gunn’s career wasn’t that far gone yet.

  I stayed with the trainer as he led Junior Louis into position. There were three cameramen, each behind a big camera on wheels, each wearing a headset to hear my uncle’s directions better. A fourth cameraman had a position in the crane. My uncle wanted the scene recorded from four angles. Later, he’d cut the various angles into one shot.

  There were also about a hundred extras, some makeup people and a dozen people from the zoo. We were all doing what people usually do during a shoot.

  Nothing.

  Sometimes it takes a couple of hours to film a ten-second scene. This was one of those times. In this part of the commercial, the elephant goes crazy during a hometown parade. Hunter Gunn, our hero, jumps on it and rides it like a horse, saving the people lined up to watch the parade. The point of the commercial is supposed to be that the deodorant keeps people—Hunter Gunn, in particular—from sweating, no matter how scary the situation.

  I stayed near Junior Louis, thinking that no amount of deodorant would keep me from sweating if he went crazy, even if I was in an armored tank. I was also thinking that Junior Louis could use some deodorant himself...and maybe an oversized diaper.

  Uncle Mike stepped into the center of the setup shot.

  “Listen up, folks,” he said. All conversation stopped. He was known as a very fair person, but one with little patience. Which, for a director, is a good thing. Sometimes it costs tens of thousands of dollars a day to get a scene on film; every minute counts.

  “Thank you,” he said. He was medium height and square shouldered. His nose was big, but his large forehead and solid chin balanced it. He had curly hair, mostly dark, and wore blue jeans, a gray T-shirt and a Mickey Mouse cap. Because they’re identical twins, my uncle looks just like my father. And I look a lot like them. Except at seventeen I don’t have the wrinkles around my eyes or gray hair at my temples.

  “Folks,” Uncle Mike said, “as you know, in this scene Mr. Gunn will ride the runaway elephant. But please, please, please, do not move. Not yet. We need to get a few close-up shots of Mr. Gunn on the elephant first. Later, when the elephant is off the set, we’ll get you to run around and scream with panic. Understand? Absolutely no screaming or running now. We don’t want to spook Junior Louis.”

  Even if they didn’t understand how this would all come together, I did. To television viewers, it would look like Hunter Gunn had leaped on the elephant’s shoulders as it ran through a crowd of people who were getting stomped. Then it would look like Hunter Gunn was holding the strap around the elephant’s head and battling it to a standstill.

  In real life, though, it would work a lot differently. Uncle Mike would take a bunch of shots of the actor on the elephant. Hunter Gunn’s face would show the emotions of a man riding a wild elephant to a standstill. After that, away from all the people, a stunt man dressed like Hunter Gunn would get on the elephant and try to hang on as it galloped a short distance. These shots would get cut into the commercial, among other shots of people screaming and running away. Edited and mixed together, it would look very real.

  Here, in the parking lot, it would look very boring.

  And it should have been boring.

  Of course, as the elephant’s trainer said later, who could have guessed what was in the cooler?

  chapter three

  From the beginning of this three-day shoot, Hunter Gunn had insisted on having a cooler nearby, filled with freshly blended vegetable juices. He was terribly worried about the sun damaging his skin. Whenever he had to stand around outside, he dabbed some juice on his face, then covered it with a steamed towel.

  I thought it was dumb. But I was just a gopher. And if he thought mashing vegetables on his skin would keep him from looking older, I was in no position to disagree.

  Every twenty minutes or so, as we waited, it was my job to bring him fresh steamed towels. The towels were simple to get ready. I just soaked them in water and stuck them in a microwave. Then I brought them out on a platter, which made me feel like a silly waiter.

  Hunter Gunn had barked out the now-familiar order for steamed towels as he stood beside Junior Louis. Both Gunn and the elephant were waiting for some final camera and lighting adjustments.

  I ran for the towels, heated them and ran back.

  Hunter Gunn was still standing beside Junior Louis. Every few minutes, the elephant tried to rest his trunk on the actor’s shoulder. Hunter Gunn shooed the trunk away.

  “Find me two stools,” Gunn said to me.

  Then he glared at the trainer and demanded, “Get this stupid beast to leave me alone.”

  I didn’t hear the trainer’s answer because I was already jumping at Hunter’s command.

  I looked around at the clutter. Cables lay on the ground in all directions. People stood and sat anywhere they could perch. Parked vehicles lined the edges of our shoot.

  I spotted two stools, grabbed them and ran back to Hunter Gunn.

  “Finally,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “Now put my cooler on one and my platter of towels on the other. If you barbarians are going to insist I wait out here instead of in the quiet of my trailer, the least you can do is make me comfortable. I will not squat on the ground to apply my natural sunscreen.”

  I wanted to tell him that sunscreen in a bottle was way cheaper and way more convenient. But I wasn’t some wacky health guru charging him thousands of dollars.

  I put the cooler on one stool and the platter on the other.

  I stepped back.

  Hunter Gunn opened the cooler’s lid.

  And mice swarmed out of the cooler and up his arms.

  Mice. Lots of tiny mice, frantic to find someplace safe to hide.

  Mice scampered up Hunter’s arms before he even knew what was happening.

  Junior Louis, though, with his trunk resting close to Hunter’s shoulder, knew exactly what was happening.

  Junior Louis bellowed a high-pitched scream of terror that sent people running in all dire
ctions.

  A mouse jumped onto Hunter Gunn’s head.

  Junior Louis swatted at the mouse with his trunk.

  The actor screamed and fell to his knees.

  The elephant rose onto his back feet.

  The trainer ran to grab the chain around Junior Louis’s neck.

  People screamed.

  Mice ran every which way.

  Junior Louis bellowed. He landed on his front feet and flailed his trunk at the darting mice.

  With the trainer hanging on to his chain, Junior Louis took off. He half ran, plowing into a camera, dragging his trainer.

  Hunter lay on the ground, crying.

  Junior Louis stopped when he reached the fence at the edge of the parking lot.

  And just like that, it was over.

  There was no sign of any mice.

  The shoot had been ruined.

  Hunter Gunn lay curled up in a ball, whimpering.

  I took a double take, amazed. He was bald. Completely bald.

  I saw something near him on the pavement that looked like a dead cat. A blond dead cat. I went over and picked it up. A wig.

  I was, after all, the set gopher.

  I walked over to the cowering, sniffling actor.

  “Here you are, sir,” I said matter-of-factly, handing him his wig. This moment was worth whatever delay it would cost Uncle Mike. I tried to hide my smile as I politely asked, “Should I bring you a box of tissue?”

  chapter four

  “Not Long Pond!” Uncle Mike screamed into his cell phone. “Loudon! Loudon, in New Hampshire. Not Long Pond, in Pennsylvania!”

  He wasn’t screaming in anger. Instead, he was yelling to be heard above the roar of engines. Uncle Mike and I stood in the parking lot outside the racetrack in New Hampshire. Two weeks had passed since Junior Louis exposed Hunter Gunn’s bald head to the world. Now it was the day before the qualifying runs here, and racers on the track were in the middle of trials.

  A hot wind swept over us, bringing grit off the parking lot like ashes from a fire. The sky was totally blue, with no hint of clouds to bring relief from the heat. The pavement seemed to burn through the soles of my shoes. It was not a great place to stand and listen while Uncle Mike tried to work through the confusion with his secretary on the phone.