Dead As Dutch

The metal box jutted out a few inches from the side of the hill. Even without the full length and width exposed, it appeared to be of ample proportions; what was visible was almost two feet across and a foot high. The others gathered around Bryce and gawked.

  It was Keisha who punctured the paralysis of intense curiosity that silenced them. “Wild guess, anybody?”

  Stan was caught off guard. This was a development he couldn’t have anticipated and planned for, but unlike most of the other impositions that had disrupted his rigid agenda, it was not unwelcome. In fact, he felt a surge in his pulse rate, and his mind began to race like a washing machine on the spin cycle. “Some sort of chest,” he murmured.

  Irv reached forward, ran his hand across the edge of the box, and scraped off some of the thick layers of sediment crust that covered it. “There was torrential rainfall around here in the late winter, the most since they started keeping records. A lot of flooding. Probably washed the soil away and exposed whatever this is.”

  “Wonder who it belongs to?” Dana asked, as her brother brushed by.

  “Who cares!” Stan slapped his hands together and boogied like he just won the lottery. “We’re shifting gears, gang. Get me rewrite, Babs!” He uttered the directive like he was a studio mogul from the 1930s screaming for his secretary in the outer office. The only thing missing was a Cuban stogie in his mouth.

  Bryce looked at him as though he should consider being fitted for a straightjacket. “Babs?”

  Stan leaped onto a broad tree stump and gazed down upon his cast and crew. His excitement was palpable as he raised his arms in the kind of grand gesture the pope used for a blessing at the Vatican. “People, we now have ourselves a bona fide…” He paused for dramatic effect and grinned. “Buried treasure film!”

  His announcement was met with blank stares. It wasn’t quite the reaction Stan had expected or hoped for. He had some convincing left to do. “Well?”

  “Well, what about the stuff we shot already?” Bryce posed the question like it was their third grueling month on location, and with countless—and brilliant—hours of footage in the can the capricious director had decided on a whim to start over from scratch.

  Stan jumped down. “Unusable. We reshoot.”

  “Unusable?” Bryce scrambled to his feet. He seemed affronted by the preposterous, unthinkable notion that anything that involved him could possibly be declared “unusable.” “I almost broke my ankle running through the woods!”

  “You stubbed your toe, Bryce.” Stan headed for Bryce like a bowling ball bearing down on a ten pin and didn’t stop until he almost stepped on him. “So far all I’ve got are shots of you falling and lying on the ground moaning—ergo unusable. Except for your majestic slide down the hill. That’s a keeper. Okay, pull the box out.”

  Bryce glanced around. “Me? Why me?”

  Stan frowned at him. This spaz is useless. “Never mind. Give me a hand, Irv.”

  “Oh sure, I’m supposed to do it by myself, but you get Irv’s help,” Bryce complained as he threw up his arms.

  Stan nudged him out of the way like a cop on crowd control at a crime scene. “Stand back—you might get hurt, sonny.”

  Bryce was only too happy to oblige as Stan and Irv wrapped their fingers the best they could around the exposed corners of the box and gave it a yank. It didn’t budge. A few more tugs didn’t matter, either—it was packed deep into the soil and wasn’t about to give up without a major tussle.

  “Need some girly power, boys?” Keisha spat on her palms, rubbed them together, and took hold.

  Stan was impressed by her moxie and nodded his approval. “Okay, ready? On three. One…two…THREE!”

  They gave a mighty heave, and after a few seconds of nothing, the box began to break free and slide out of the hillside.

  “Come on, we got it. A little more. Keep going!” Stan urged as he, Irv, and Keisha strained to maintain their grip.

  “AAAAARRRRRRR!!!!”

  At last it broke free from its mooring. Stan, Irv, and Keisha dove out of the way as they watched it crash onto the ground, flip over, and roll across the bank several times before it came to a rest. The fatigued trio joined Bryce and Dana as they circled around the rectangular object for a closer inspection and gaped in awe as though an alien mother ship just landed. It was about three feet long, caked with clumps of dirt and secured by a rusted metal padlock. Handles were attached to each side. No markings were visible, and it appeared to be made of iron—secure as a Brink’s armored truck without the wheels.

  “Looks kind of old, that’s for sure.” Keisha noted, as she peered at it with the others.

  Dana was more effusive about the possibilities. “Yeah, maybe pirates left it here!”

  Stan, however, wasn’t quite ready to buy into her theory. “Oh sure, Dana,” he snorted. “Right here in the middle of the Catskills. And maybe Captain Jack Sparrow will come floating down the river, too.”

  “Bite me, Stan!” Few things triggered Dana’s angry button more than when her brother dismissed her ideas with some sort of smart-aleck remark, like she was just some kid.

  “Watch your mouth, Dana. I’m warning you!” He thrust his forefinger toward the middle of her nose. If she wants a war, she can have it!

  Dana reciprocated, but went a bit further and made contact, poking Stan in

  his right nostril. “I’m warning YOU!”

  Stan slapped her hand away, and they appeared ready to engage in an all-out brawl before Bryce eased himself between Stan and Dana like a boxing referee breaking up a clinch in the middle of the ring. “Whoa, hate to interfere with playtime, children, but I say we open it.”

  Stan’s reply was abrupt and strident, the emotional residue from his tiff with Dana. “No, we wait.”

  Bryce didn’t appear surprised by the negative reaction. If he told Stan the sky was blue and snow was white, he was pretty sure Stan would disagree. “Why?”

  “We’re following the script.” It was a lie. He was winging it all the way, and Stan knew it. He hoped that nobody else did. He was wrong.

  “Script? Ha! What script?” Bryce erupted with a volley of derisive laughs. “You’re making it up as we go along, remember?”

  “Yeah, but my making it up is better than anyone else here making it up.” Not bad for a first salvo, Stan thought, but going tit-for-tat with Bryce was too often an exercise in futility. He needed a slam-dunk follow-up, something airtight to get him off his back once and for all about the lack of a script. That’s when he remembered what Professor Grimm harped on about during a recent lecture in his Advanced Film Theory course, something that was bound to bamboozle the cinema history-challenged Bryce.

  “Besides,” Stan explained, “this way will be more realistic, not knowing what’s inside. Heighten the mystery. It was a technique Hitchcock used. Didn’t you ever see any of his movies?” He was almost certain Bryce hadn’t, since all he ever gushed about were ancient musicals like Singin’ in the Rain and The King and I. As Stan expected, Bryce looked dumbfounded and ready to concede.

  Once Irv unloaded a gem from the vast trove of trivia stored in his head, Stan knew it was game, set, and match: “Hitchcock was called the Master of Suspense,” he pointed out.

  It was blatantly apparent that Bryce didn’t have a clue, but nonetheless tried to cover up his discomfiture anyway by lashing out at Irv. “Do you know everything?”

  “I’m a sound guy. I listen a lot,” Irv replied, with a nonchalant shrug.