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

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.

“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.”