It was a new beginning, and Stan had a fresh bounce in his step. The morning’s gaffes were washed away in the wake of his soaring spirits, his confidence buoyed by the sudden turn of events. Sure, he figured, the fortuitous discovery of the box altered his original scheme, but with just some minor adjustments in the plot, he could still salvage the bulk of the story plus add in a component of intrigue—never unwelcome in a dramatic thriller. He likened it to a halftime adjustment in football, when a coach was sometimes forced to change his game plan based on unforeseen circumstances and conditions that couldn’t be predicted beforehand. The team that adapted and revised their strategies the best won, and Stan had no intention of going down to defeat.
Making a film, however, was a collaborative venture, and Stan realized the success of Letter 13 was dependent on the cooperation of his cast and crew—the engine he relied upon to propel the film to completion. As he prepared to head back up the trail to higher ground, Stan glanced back and saw Irv following a couple of yards behind, while Bryce and Keisha lagged further to the rear, as their progress was stymied by the heavy chest they balanced between them. It’s what Stan didn’t see, however, that made him stop. “Hold on a sec, everybody.”
Stan glared back down the river bank and muttered to himself, his renewed optimism in a sudden freefall. He barged past Irv as Bryce and Keisha set down the box. It was impossible not to notice the seething fury or, at the very least, a major annoyance register across Stan’s face. Either way, the unmistakable message was that someone was in trouble and that someone shared his last name.
He was in a full trot as he covered the twenty yards or so to where Dana stood, her arms folded across her chest in an obstinate pose Stan was more than familiar with. After all, over the years, she had had plenty of opportunities to observe her brother utilizing the same one. He wasn’t sure where it originated, but had the suspicion that he and his sister inherited the stubborn gene from their cantankerous grandfather. Grandpa Leroy always—or so it seemed—woke up each day in a defiant mood prepared to challenge whatever unlucky soul crossed his path. Just about every facet of his interactions with other human beings involved a negotiation. To satisfy him, he had to be convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that it was in his best interests to comply, as if, for instance, the choice between scrambled or poached eggs for breakfast might nip off or add a few more seconds to his lifespan. It was probably what drove his wife, Grandma Beatrice—Bea for short—to an early grave. She’d spent the bulk of her forty-year marriage to her pigheaded husband coaxing and cajoling him to agree to the simplest of requests.
As Stan approached Dana, he had an inkling of how Grandma Bea must have felt. But he had no patience for the time-consuming diplomacy she employed to get Grandpa Leroy to eat that wretched, leathery calf’s liver she ruined on a regular basis. Stan didn’t just work up a full head of steam to engage in arbitration: he was about to steamroll his sibling into oblivion. “WHAT?”
“I’m NOT a baby!” she pouted.
Stan softened a bit but wasn’t surprised by her obstinacy. At that very moment she reminded him of the Dana he remembered as a toddler, feisty as a cornered badger, and nobody’s pushover. Although he could never admit it in her presence, it was a trait Stan admired in her, and he could flashback to the days when she was ready to do battle with anyone she felt was trying to take advantage of her. As early as kindergarten she was ready for a dust-up with any kid, any size, who dared to pilfer one of her crayons or messed with her finger paint. Dana’s elementary school years were littered with trips to the principal’s office for various offenses, most often due to fights (which at that fledgling age consisted of hair pulling, scratching, and kicks in the shins) started by someone who invoked her wrath with some sort of slight or outright in-your-face diss. She was an easy target to pick on, a spitfire who preferred roughing it up in her dungarees with the boys to adhering to the expected dress and conduct codes of other girls her age. As far as her disposition, nothing much changed as she grew older—she was as scrappy and confrontational as ever—and that’s what worried Stan: Dana was a mule and he was the hapless cowhand tugging on the rope. “Okay, you’re not a baby, let’s go.”
He grabbed hold of Dana’s arm, but she jerked it away. “I’m not going anywhere until I get an apology,” she declared.
The wall. Stan recognized it all too well. Far too many times in the past he had banged his head smack-dab into it. As he came to learn through repeated crashes into the Great Wall of Dana, reason and logic didn’t always penetrate it. Finding a passage through was a much more fickle process, one that rejected rational approaches and depended on the current status of Dana’s mood and whims. She opened the gate when she was good and ready—Stan could never predict the exact conditions necessary for this momentous event to occur—and the speediest way to achieve this was to acquiesce to her demand. It was an unpalatable pill that left an acrid taste in Stan’s mouth, but one that he was willing to swallow in order to get his project back on track. He turned, cupped his hands over his mouth, and hollered. “Bryce, get over here!”
Bryce looked at Keisha as if he had just been summoned by a detective who’d spent ten straight hours grilling him and just thought of another question as Bryce was waltzing out the precinct door. “Now what?” he grouched, as he trudged toward them along the river bank at a rate a three-legged tortoise could keep pace with.
By the time Bryce covered the short distance, Stan’s slow burn was ready to erupt into a full-blown three alarmer. His two biggest headaches in the known universe stood next to him, one on the left, the other to his right, and somehow he had to broker a truce. No problem, he thought. All he had to do was somehow transform himself into a King Solomon or Don Corleone from The Godfather, two wise guys famous for solving disputes, albeit with slightly different methods. Stan opted to make Bryce an offer he couldn’t refuse. “Apologize.”
Bryce eyeballed Stan as though he just ordered him to recite the Declaration of Independence—backward. “For what?”
When in doubt, play dumb. Stan already knew Bryce was a master of that maneuver. During the Letter 13 pre-production meetings, he’d stonewalled Stan on a number of occasions with vague retorts when quizzed about his character. Then again, the list of transgressions and goofs he’d accrued just that morning was so extensive that it was possible that he’d forgotten this particular insult to Dana—a menial one in the grand litany of his bungles.
Besides, there were also his short-term memory issues. Bryce could retain reams of dialogue pages and spout them back out without skipping over a single word. However, as Stan found out, he often couldn’t remember a basic direction within minutes of receiving it. Just that morning, he told Bryce to pump his arms in a methodical, repetitive motion when he ran after Keisha just like the T-1000 assassin from the future tracked down Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Instead, Bryce flapped his arms like a stork who’d consumed too many Red Bulls, and when Stan questioned him afterward, admitted that he didn’t recall what he had been instructed to do a few moments earlier.
Stan decided to cut to the chase. “For calling Dana a baby.”
Bryce scoffed at the accusation and flung his arms skyward in disbelief as he gaped in the direction of Irv and Keisha. Stan interpreted the gesture as Bryce’s half-baked attempt to marshal support and buy some time—to back off, collect his thoughts and decide whether or not it was in his best personal interests to accede to the request. Stan couldn’t understand the reticence—in his opinion, the risks were minimal, at worst he’d lose face—but Bryce still stalled a while longer before he caved. “Oh, all right. Sheesh. I’m sorry.”
Stan sighed his relief: Another potential debacle averted, everything—for the moment at least—hunky-dory again. He understood that juggling the multiple and often finicky personalities that made up a cast and crew went with the territory. Without a doubt, it was a significant part of a director’s job description, a constant high-wire act with no net below that was alwa
ys on the verge of falling like some aerial acrobat trying to clutch a trapeze slathered with motor oil. He was expected to extinguish flare-ups on the set, stroke egos, and more or less prevent all-out anarchy from breaking out. Then, if there was any time left over after all the massaging and hand-holding, he would try to make a movie. “There. Okay, Dana?”
Not okay. At least that’s what Dana’s negative body language screamed back at him. “You, too, Stan.”
Dana’s dictate left Stan stunned and stumped. “Me? Why me?”
“For being mean…and dragging me into this!” She stomped her right foot for emphasis and her voice was so screechy that several birds scattered from nearby trees.
Stan’s first thought was to lash back at Dana. Give her a no-holds-barred piece of his mind. Defend himself from the allegations and bombard her with some choice zingers of his own. That’s when Clint Eastwood popped into his head. Dirty Harry himself, who also happened to be a well-respected director renowned for his even-keeled demeanor and calm sets. Nobody kept his cool under pressure like Clint. So that’s what Stan decided he would do as well: he would channel his inner Eastwood and exhibit restraint. “I didn’t drag you.”
Dana agreed with her brother—sort of. “Okay, you begged me.”
It was true. Stan did beg his sister to give up her weekend to help out with Letter 13. He even got down on his knees (not of his own volition, but at Dana’s insistence) to plead for her assistance. He had no choice. Truth is, there were extenuating circumstances beyond his control. Booking a crew on a college campus limited his possibilities. It’s not like I didn’t try, Stan thought. There were the dozens of notices on online bulletin boards and laser-printed flyers distributed to the film department classrooms. Plus, he texted and tweeted all known students (including wet-behind-the-ears freshmen, whom Stan considered a last resort) with reasonable—even basic—camera skills, to no avail. He even reached out to the loathsome, snobby fraternity crowd (Stan wasn’t asked to pledge any of the array of Greek organizations and never forgot the snub by the frat rats) without success. By the final week before the start of the shoot he was desperate. He began to scour The Ike, an off-campus pub with a pool table, dart boards, and mini-lakes of misaimed piddles beneath the urinals. Stan had never before set foot in the low-rent tavern—his ale of choice was of the fizzy, ginger variety—during his four years at Eisenhower College, but even with bribes of pitchers of Coors Light, couldn’t convince any of the film majors who got blitzed there to join the Letter 13 team as his second camera operator. The only thing Stan walked away with was a hefty bar tab and a hole yet to plug on his crew.
It felt as if Dana had slipped a noose around his neck with the “begging” disclosure, and the more he squirmed, the tighter it got. “Yeah, well, I had a personnel emergency,” Stan admitted.
“Because nobody else wanted to work with you!” she proclaimed.
Stan stiffened. His own flesh and blood had pulled the lever, opened up the trap door, and left Stan to dangle and twist in the wind. Tact was not one of Dana’s strong suits, and now, thanks to this revelation, Bryce, Keisha, and Irv had confirmation of the campus gossip about him. Stan was fully cognizant that a reputation as a misfit wasn’t the ideal calling card for a director to possess, because people skills were a crucial means to the end in filmmaking. Directing was a manipulation game, the subtle art of persuasion. It was the slick ability to smooth-talk a vain actress worried about a zit on her nose or convince an exhausted crew to work another hour of overtime. Not the best fit for a shy introvert like Stan, so in order to cover up his ineptitude he faked it. But he also miscalculated. Overcompensated. And it backfired. From the very first day in his Elements of Film 101 class at Eisenhower College, he came on too strong, questioning the instructor’s interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s symbolism in The Seventh Seal and offering a “corrected” analysis of the chess match between the medieval knight and Death. His ebullience was misinterpreted—at least in Stan’s estimation—as too high-strung, too gung-ho. He was perceived by classmates and faculty members alike as arrogant and full of himself, a know-it-all with delusions of grandeur. By the time he realized the error of his ways, it was too late. The damage was done, and word leaked that you worked with “Scram” Heberling at your own risk. Enlisting crew members from the small pool available on campus became a popularity contest with other student directors that Stan couldn’t win. That’s when he turned to his absolute final option, a headstrong, high school sophomore whose entire camera operating experience consisted of aiming her point-and-shoot digital at herself lip-syncing a Lady Gaga song into the mirror and posting the video on her Facebook page for nine-hundred and twenty-three “friends” to view. And this was who Stan needed to reclaim the battlefield from, without any further delay, with the one sure-fire weapon left in his arsenal.
“You know what? You know what I’m going to do, Dana?”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll yell it at me,” she said, with a conviction that he indeed would.
This time, though, Stan had another strategy up his sleeve that didn’t include raising his voice at an ear-piercing volume, his usual modus operandi when he and his sister tried to settle a difference of opinion. Instead, he simply smiled, in such a smug way that it drew a curious, unsettled look from Dana. Stan savored her unease. He knew his sister had no defense for the firepower he was about to unleash on her. It was his nuclear option, and he would detonate it without pity.
Stan lifted his camera and aimed it at Dana. “I’m going to film you and show MOM proof of your bratty behavior!”
As he was confident they would, the letters m-o-m smacked into Dana like a freight train into a tricycle. She shrank back in disbelief that her brother had gone there and dropped such a dirty bomb. It was as if he stepped outside all the bounds of decency and fair play, violated all known rules of a sibling feud by invoking the m word, for their mother—Geraldine Heberling, aka Gerry: the one person in the entire family whom Dana listened to, sought advice from, and, as Stan had counted on, feared. In their household, mom ruled, and crossing her was done at one’s own peril. Their father, Milton, was mostly an absentee dad, a medical equipment salesman on the road four days a week (he peddled catheters to urologists across a six-state region) and a competitive birdwatcher every weekend, which left Gerry the bulk of the child-rearing duties. Like the thorough dental hygienist she once was, she examined every nook and cranny in her children’s lives and ran a tight ship any admiral would be proud to command. While she allowed Dana plenty of leeway with her outward appearance and encouraged her to express herself, nothing escaped her attention under the stringent Heberling roof. There was a strict schedule to be adhered to (Stan readily acknowledged his mother’s influence as the explanation for his own anal compulsion for punctuality) and consequences to be faced if it wasn’t met. Dana learned at an early age that resistance was futile and insurrection in any form wasn’t tolerated. Tantrums didn’t work. Neither did mopes. In fact, those two acts of petulance earned Dana so many timeouts that the trips to the corner of her bedroom to face the wall became known as “Danatention.” The fracas at school doubled her chores and grounded Dana for weeks on end (although the frequency of the scrapes did prompt an exasperated Gerry to sign her up for Taekwondo classes). With the onset of puberty and her precious freedom becoming a life-or-death matter (Stan enjoyed mocking her urgent meet-ups with gal pals, often asking Dana as she breezed out the door questions like whether they would be debating Quantum Theory interpretations or nineteenth-century Germany philosophy that day, as if, he mused, any of them could even spell Nietzsche), she figured out that no longer was there any upside trying to circumvent her mother’s expectations. Almost overnight, Dana began to toe the line—Stan recalled the conversion as a Heberling Christmas miracle of sorts—and to behave like the civil and respectful daughter she was raised to be. He had reason to suspect, however, that the wondrous metamorphosis was a sham: once outside her mom’s radar range, Dana reverted
back to her natural tendencies, and if he squealed, so be it—it was his word against hers, at worst a draw. Stan knew, though, that she hadn’t considered the possibility of actual evidence being presented to their mom, indisputable verification of her insubordination that could land her in hot water, with the potential disaster of privileges being revoked.
What Dana did fully comprehend, however, was that this dire predicament required a response as low and underhanded as her slimy brother’s…a solution to counterbalance Stan’s preemptive strike with a retaliatory barrage of her own. “And I’m going to film YOU and show mom proof of YOUR…ogre-y behavior!” she threatened.
“Ogre-y isn’t even a word,” Stan scoffed.
Dana pointed her camera at her brother. “OGRE-Y!” she squawked.
A standoff. Their camera lenses were positioned directly at each other, a duel in the sun, Sony’s at twenty inches. Stan wanted to kick himself. He’d committed the cardinal sin of even the most novice of chess player—left his king wide open for an attack by a pawn. Outsmarted and outflanked because he overlooked an obvious counter move. Dana’s copycat play staggered him like a right cross to a palooka with a glass chin on the undercard of amateur night at the local armory. It was cunning and diabolical. Stan was warned by their mother that any mistreatment of his sister would not be tolerated and result in severe repercussions—a fact Dana was keenly aware of. Her blatant rip-off turned the tables on him, and now it was a game of chicken. Who would blink first? Stan could recommit himself to attempting another unconventional route and hope the element of surprise would seize the high ground for him. Or better, he could turn to a page out of his tried and true big brother playbook that had never failed him in the past: he would pull rank. Stan lowered the camera to his side and spat out his words like each was a lethal dart.
“Dana, I’m only going to say this once. A director never apologizes to a member of his crew. It’s a sign of weakness. It undermines his authority on the set.” Stan stepped forward, his nose almost touching the glass on the front of her lens, and growled like a drill sergeant adjusting a new recruit’s bad attitude. “So get your little butt and purple lips in gear. Now. HUBBA! HUBBA!”
Stan stood his ground for a few seconds, then backed away. He motioned to Bryce, and they walked off together to join up with Irv and Keisha. Left behind, Dana ripped the camera away from her face and glared.
“Hubba, hubba to you, too!” She stomped off in the direction of the others and yelled. “And for your information, my lips are not purple. They’re PLUM!”
Chapter 6