Dead As Dutch

Early Dutch settlers of the seventeenth century named the mountains Kaatskil (the setting Washington Irving chose for “Rip Van Winkle”), but to this day there is no consensus on why. Some say since the word translates to “cat creek,” it refers to the mountain lions—“Catamounts” as they were called—that were in the area. Others suggest it was of Native American origins, from the Iroquois game of lacrosse (“Kat” refers to a tennis racket, not unlike a lacrosse stick) or to honor a Mohican tribe chief known as Cat. Regardless, it wasn’t until about two hundred years later—long after the British took over the colony and replaced original Dutch names with English counterparts—that references to the “Catskill” Mountains became the norm, about the same time the area’s reputation as a vacation retreat began to spread.

  What is known with reasonable accuracy is that the Catskills cover an area of 5,892 miles (111 miles long by 102 miles wide) spread across six counties in New York State. The highest peak in the range, Slide Mountain, rises 4,154 feet. The mountains are located west of the Hudson River, northwest of New York City, and continue on as the Poconos across the state line in Pennsylvania. The proximity to city dwellers in New York seeking a rural escape from the summer heat led to the development of the region as a popular resort and campground destination. Countless stand-up comedians and musical acts started their show-business careers in what became known as the “Borscht Belt,” an umbrella term for the proliferation of Jewish resorts (and to a lesser degree German and Czech), like Kutsher’s and Grossinger’s that sprang up. Since its vibrant heyday of the 1960s, the popularity of the so-called “Jewish Alps” has diminished and given way to other entertainment meccas, like the glitzy casinos of Atlantic City to the south, but the ethnic heritage remained intact, a reminder of a more innocent era gone by.

  The Catskills didn’t seem much like a recreational paradise, though, for Bryce and Keisha as they chugged through the scrub and past the maple and oak trees that lined their route through the woods. Each clutched a handle of the ponderous iron box that drooped between them and reduced their speed from a full-out run to more of a klutzy lumber. Stan and Irv backpedaled in front of them to record the action, while Dana did the same five yards further back. Thanks to the bulk of the chest and the fact that it was the fifth take of the same scene ordered by the director in the last ten minutes, the strain and sweat on the actors’ faces were no act…unlike the pretend fright their characters manifested.

  “Faster!” Bryce shouted.

  Keisha glanced behind her. “They’re getting closer. I can hear them!”

  “Keep running!”

  “I can’t go on much farther,” she cried.

  Bryce turned his head toward Keisha. “Don’t stop, Zoe!”

  Her panicked eyes met his. “I won’t, Howie!”

  “CUT! CUT!” Bryce yelled, and stopped in one abrupt motion. The box crashed to the ground as he released his side and forced Keisha to do the same. She skipped out of the way as it tumbled over toward her feet.

  Bryce grimaced, shook his head, and gestured with his hands in the way referees do to signal a halt in the game due to some sort of miscue or errant play. “Huh-uh, no good, no way, forget it.”

  A vexed Stan rushed forward and found Bryce bent over, heaving hard, his breaths rapid and shallow. He leaned down. “Cut? You said cut?”

  Bryce continued to stare at the ground and gasped for air as he spoke.

  “Isn’t that the right word?”

  What a clueless ninny, Stan thought: Bryce had overstepped his bounds and besmirched a tradition as old as moviemaking itself. Stan assumed it was common knowledge that just one voice started and stopped a take and that one voice belonged to the director. No one else. Period. That’s the way it was and always had been. There were also more practical concerns, one of those “too many chefs spoil the broth” situations. If anyone in the cast or crew could blurt out a direction whenever the mood struck, a set would devolve into a sea of chaos, and confusion would soon scuttle the ship. (Imagine the muddled mess if the makeup artist or some grip pushing the camera dolly called out “action.”) No, the production of a film was not a democracy where equal rights were shared by one and all. Rather, it was an autocracy, a kind of banana republic where one generalissimo called the shots, made the decisions, and dictated his inclinations, wishes, and desires to the masses, like it or not. And on Letter 13, the top banana was not Bryce.

  “Oh, it’s the right word,” Stan confirmed, “except it came out of the wrong mouth. Only the director says ‘cut,’ and, oops, you’re not the director!”

  Bryce straightened; removed a square, sealed, foil packet from his coat pocket; and ripped it open. He pulled out a towelette premoistened with aloe, unfolded it, and dragged it across his forehead, cheeks, and neck. “Well, I am the star of this movie.”

  “EXCUSE, me?” Keisha interjected, as she took a step in Bryce’s direction.

  Bryce failed at first to grasp the innuendo of Keisha’s protest, but when her objection managed to infiltrate the part of his brain that dealt with deductive reasoning, he backed off. “Okay, well, co-star of this movie…and I hate my name!”

  The latter chunk of his sentence was leveled at Stan, who, as screenwriter of Letter 13, devised the characters. They were his babies. He’d given birth to them. He had spent hours narrowing down the exhaustive lists of potential names on the Internet to “Zoe” and “Howie” (shortened from Howard, which he concluded was too stuffy) and took umbrage with anyone who questioned his selections. This was not some random process. There were considerations. Like making sure the names were memorable, fit the personality of each character, and, in some cases, even matched the physical characteristics of the actor in the role. It’s the reason bad-boy bikers were often called “Snake” and rail-thin cowboys with a toothpick dangling from his lips “Slim.” Besides, Bryce had been well aware of his character name for the past few weeks, and now he has a problem?

  “What’s wrong with it?” Stan queried.

  “How many aliens do you know named, Howie?” a testy Bryce replied.

  “None,” Stan countered. “How many aliens do you know period?”

  Bryce hesitated, scrunched up his face, and dug deep for an answer. It was apparent to Stan, observing him grapple for a response, that his well of ripostes was dry as the Mojave. “None,” he conceded.

  “That settles it then.” Stan grinned and patted Bryce on his shoulder.

  “You’re the very first Howie alien. Congratulations.”

  But that didn’t settle it. Not quite. Not by a long shot. Stan realized that with Bryce, one explanation was rarely enough. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while, he reminded himself. He braced for more and readied his defenses for the onslaught.

  Bryce pointed at Keisha. “So why does she get a cool name like Zoe?”

  Is that the best comeback he’s got? Stan wondered. “Keisha isn’t an alien. Besides, maybe on Mars Howie is a cool name.”

  Stan was pleased with his response. Keisha wasn’t an alien—even Bryce couldn’t dispute that—and maybe Howie is a preferred moniker for the hip Martian man-about-town. Who could prove otherwise? Not Bryce, not anyone. Still, “Howie” wasn’t convinced and fired back with a few volleys of his own.

  “No, NOT cool. It’s dorky. And lightweight. It rhymes with ‘wowie,’ for cryin’ out loud!”

  Bryce’s adamant and agitated outburst shook Stan because now the discussion took a sudden, sharp turn into emotional and—even worse—irrational territory. Stan didn’t mind going mano a mano with Bryce when his comments bore some semblance of logic. At least then Stan could conjure up an answer that had a reasonable chance of succeeding and quell Bryce’s concerns. This time, though, he was up against a harebrained opinion and feared a tit-for-tat tussle loomed ahead if he didn’t address the accusations. Besides, by challenging his judgment, Stan viewed the slurs as another incursion into his directorial domain. It was as if was he dangling out on a tree limb all by his loneso
me and Bryce was whacking away with a hatchet on the other end attempting to take him down. He needed help—fast—and that’s what he got.

  “How about Theodore? It rhymes with stevedore. They’re usually pretty heavy,” Irv deadpanned.

  Stan wasn’t sure how to react, so he froze and waited. Irv had just mocked Bryce, and Stan expected the worst—at the very least a full-blown rant. Maybe even an all-out hissy fit. His retort, however, was the most unexpected of all: Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Like a ticking time bomb that wound down to zero but petered out. Instead of lambasting the idea—as Stan was sure would have happened if he came up with the exact same suggestion as Irv—Bryce nodded and seemed for the moment to be considering the Theodore option, as if it was an actual serious alternative to Howie.

  “Hmm, interesting.” He strolled away a few steps then abruptly twirled back around toward the others. “But I was thinking of something more like…Raoul!” He rolled the r on Raoul and bowed with a flourish, like he was a swarthy Latin lothario introducing himself at an embassy ball.

  “Ra-OUL?” Stan was stupefied. He didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or punch Bryce right in the schnozz for stupidity.

  Bryce ignored Stan’s puzzled response as if it hadn’t happened. He was on a roll, animated and excited. He began to pace and gazed off in the distance as if in a dreamy trance. “Or Claudio. An alien masquerading as a jet-setting Euro-trash playboy,” he said, with a thick accent, as if imagining himself in the role.

  Keisha glanced over at Stan and caught his eye. He looked at her like he was the last man left in a dinghy that had just sprung a leak and was filling up fast and she was on board the rescue boat with a life preserver in her hands.

  “How about, Tyreece? He could be an alien brother from the ’hood,” she said and winked at Stan, who perked up a bit.

  Not even Keisha’s obvious joke, though, could deter Bryce, and had the unintentional result of spurring him on even further. “Or Elijah,” he proposed. “We’ll give it a biblical twist!”

  Keisha shrugged at Stan and mouthed a silent “sorry” his way. She had swung and missed, too. Bryce was a runaway locomotive. Somebody had to derail him, and Stan knew it was the director who bore that responsibility. Lose control of your actors and you might as well pack up, turn off the lights, and go home. The party was over. Finito. It was the equivalent of inmates running the asylum or baboons taking over the zoo. Allow actors to run amuck on a movie set and it spelled nothing but trouble. As Professor Emeritus Miles Grimm (also the faculty advisor on Letter 13) emphasized ad infinitum throughout his lectures in Stan’s Advanced Director’s Workshop class last fall, every movie had a defined structure, but it was a house of cards, fragile and delicate, held together solely by the director’s abilities to keep it from collapsing. It required a strong, steady hand to pile up the layers one on top of the other and understand how they all connected. While the writer was the original architect of a film, the director was the engineer who took the blueprint, built it, and modified it to suit his vision. Actors were a director’s tool, not the other way around, and it was imperative that this chain of command be observed and respected. Failure to do so led down a guaranteed path of implosion for any film project. Stan realized he had but one choice remaining: shut down Bryce’s fantasy world once and forever right now…or suffer the consequences. Playtime was officially over.

  “STOP!” Stan commanded. “WE aren’t changing ANYthing. No Raoul. No Claudio. No Elijah!” He speed-walked a few yards ahead to Bryce, snatched his tie, and yanked him so close the brim on Bryce’s hat cast a shadow over Stan’s face. “You are Howie. You are staying Howie. Understood?”

  It was as if an alarm clock went off and awakened Bryce from a deep slumber. As Stan released his grip from the tie, Bryce blinked a few times and nodded, almost as though the last couple of minutes were a complete blank…like he had just returned from an out-of-body experience.

  It was the first time in his life that Stan had ever imposed himself on someone else in such a physical way. It was not a recourse he hoped to repeat anytime soon and was the necessary evil part of a director’s job he dreaded most. Stan wasn’t comfortable with confrontations of any sort, let alone the kind where he was forced to more or less attack someone just to get his point across. This wasn’t his style. He preferred to iron things out in a more civilized way and viewed anything resembling violent behavior as an absolute last resort. Besides, it wasn’t as though Bryce was his enemy. More like an obstacle in his way, but also one he needed to be one hundred per cent on board with Stan’s program. That’s why he backed off and tried on his best impression of a kindly priest consoling a troubled parishioner.

  “Okay, Bryce, I’m listening. Talk to me. What’s the problem?”

  Bryce appeared wounded, not in the way of actual harm to his body, but from the humiliation he’d just suffered from the scolding dished out by Stan in plain sight of the others. If dignity was visible, his would have a black-and- blue smudge splotched in the center of it. He gathered himself, cleared his throat, and vented with as much sarcasm in his voice as he could muster.

  “Oh, nothing much, except you’ve been driving us like a herd of cattle all day and turning everybody into the walking dead. That’s all.”

  “Told you!” Dana chimed in.

  Stan snapped his neck ninety degrees like a hound locking on a quail and glared at his sister, the kindly priest act exorcised. “Stuff it, Dana!”

  “Us.” It was a classic piece of gamesmanship and Stan recognized the gambit right away: divide and conquer. Since he couldn’t have his way with Stan alone, Bryce would isolate him by enlisting the support of the others. So he set aside his insufferable solo act and anointed himself group spokesperson. The strategy was simple: Identify a common cause they could all get behind and establish a united front. For all practical purposes, Stan would have no choice but to accede to their wishes if he was on the short end of the popular vote. Majority ruled. Dana had already jumped overboard. No shock there. He didn’t expect her to remain on his bandwagon: the prospects of putting a halt—even a temporary one—to her servitude were too appealing. His sister never passed up the opportunity to take the easy way out of anything. Irv and Keisha, though, were another matter altogether. If they turned tail and ended up in Bryce’s camp, Stan was sunk.

  He tried to read Keisha’s eyes, but they pointed downward—not a good sign. “You too, Keisha?”

  She lifted her head, looked over at Stan with a sheepish grin and seemed to fidget just a little. Stan recognized that she was as uncomfortable with the thorny situation as he was. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t complain if I could get these boots off for a while. Even my blisters are starting to blister,” she confessed.

  Stan acknowledged her comment with a single, solemn nod. Even though her message was somewhat veiled, it was clear enough: Keisha agreed with Bryce. He was grateful, however, that her words were chosen in such a round-about, good-natured way as to cause the least amount of pain, embarrassment, and feeling of rejection possible. As for Irv, his feelings were a mere formality at this point, but Stan still wanted to hear his soundman’s assessment. “Irv? What do you think?”

  Irv peered upward, scoured in every direction, and shook his head. “We’re losing light pretty fast. Might want to wrap for the day.”

  Stan also inspected the late afternoon sky and couldn’t disagree. Banks of clouds were drifting in from the west, and the sun that had blazed so brightly and intensely throughout most of the day was disappearing. He surveyed his team, and each one of them was fading, too, with a weary, deflated look that cried out for relief. It was etched in their sullen faces and the way their bodies sagged, like the backyard clothesline for a family of eight. Whatever energy they’d brought with them that morning had dissipated over the hours and as reluctant as he was to admit it, Stan realized there was no point in trying to continue on with the shoot. Fatigue was something he might be able to overcome with a rousing pep talk or a he
art-wrenching, stirring appeal. But this wasn’t an endurance contest. There was no upside to burning them out even further and placing the entire shoot in jeopardy. When people were tired, they made mistakes. Accidents were more prone to happen. The overall quality of the work suffered. It was obvious to Stan that his cast and crew had no pep left in their step, which meant there was nothing left to do but come back to take another stab again tomorrow. Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. The top directors always knew when. For them, it was instinctual. And now, Stan concluded, it was time to throw down his cards, too.

  Dana interrupted his pondering. “What about me?”

  “What about you?” Stan had skipped over her earlier. On purpose.

  “I recommend that we wrap for the day, too.”

  It wasn’t so much what she said, but how she phrased her sentence that bugged Stan most. It was a bit too bold and self-assured for his liking, as if Dana had just given herself a battlefield promotion and was now his trusted confidante and advisor. This was irritating enough in and of itself, but the fact was, she also stole Stan’s thunder just as he was ready to call it a “wrap” himself. It was one of those privileged words, like “cut” and “action” that a director reserved for his own exclusive use, not intended for a crew member to kick around like a Hacky Sack. Stan didn’t mind that Irv suggested a shutdown, but his clueless sister on her first film shoot was a whole other enchilada altogether. Which is why he charged up to her and stuck his face in her lens with his eyes bulging like some cartoon character ready to blow a gasket.

  “Recommend? Recommend? RECOMMEND?” he said, as his voice peaked to a crescendo. Dana remained motionless as Stan glared at her for several seconds before turning away. He couldn’t be bothered to berate her any further. She wasn’t worth expending the energy over, not when there was a bigger predicament to consider and fret over: he would have just one day to finish Letter 13 in its entirety, a herculean task for even the most seasoned director. It was true that his film was a short, and the required ten minute running time wasn’t exactly of Titanic proportions, which logged in at one hundred and ninety-four minutes. Of course, that film cost two hundred million dollars—the most expensive ever at the time when it came out in 1997—and three years of production to make. Still, even though the scope and scale of Stan’s movie, compared to Titanic, was like the difference between a rowboat and an aircraft carrier, the compressed work day magnified the difficulty of generating those ten teensy minutes a thousand fold.

  “Fine. Call time is dawn,” Stan announced. “When the sun rises, so do we. Anybody got a problem with that?” He glared at Bryce, then over to Dana. Their responses consisted of no’s mumbled just above the level of a loud whisper.

  Stan stepped back and surveyed his entire team. “There’s a campground nearby. We’ll spend the night there,” he decreed.

  Bryce had the look of a guy who was just served a plate of fried roaches. “Uh, you mean sleep…on the ground?”

  “Sorry, Bryce. The presidential suite was booked.” Stan smiled. Payback’s a bummer, eh, Bryce?

  “If you’re worried about snakes, Bryce, don’t be,” Irv assured him. “Only two venomous types in the Catskills. Copperheads and timber rattlers. And copperhead bites are rarely fatal,” he pointed out with such nonchalance as to give the impression that to stumble across one of these reptiles was on par with crossing the path of a humble earthworm.

  Bryce squirmed. He hadn’t even liked Slinky toys when he was a kid, let alone real creatures that slithered. “Only two? I feel so much better.”

  Keisha reached across and draped her arm around Bryce’s shoulder with all the sincerity of a three-card monte dealer. “It’ll be okay, Howie. Zoe will protect you.”

  Unlike everyone else, Bryce was not amused. Being on the butt of end of a joke was a position he too often found himself in during his years at the Kipling Academy, where picking on him was as regular a part of the day for his classmates as sneaking their iPhones past the security guard. (Cell phones were banned at Kipling and collected at the entrance door in the morning, returned after school let out in the afternoon.)

  While Bryce stewed like a seven-year-old at his birthday party when the hired clown didn’t show up, Stan clapped his hands. “All right, let’s hoof it, people!”

  As Irv and Dana fell in behind Stan, Keisha and Bryce hoisted the chest. She blew him a kiss, a peace offering. “Come on, Bryce, lighten up. Please? For me?”

  Bryce didn’t respond. His eyes were locked straight ahead. He wasn’t in any mood to lighten up, for her or anyone else. Here he was in the middle of nowhere, his arms aching from toting around some strange box that might or might not contain something valuable, and he had no idea where he was headed. Worse than all that, the anxiety that bubbled in the bowels of his stomach was a disconcerting signal that no one else did, either.

  Chapter 7