The Lost Expert, page 24
RABBI (V.O.)
(praying)
Baruch Attah Adonai …
WILLA (V.O.)
(singing)
… where you been, finder man …
GANG LEADER (V.O.)
(chanting)
Sacrifice! Sacrifice!
SARAH (V.O.)
(murmuring over the baby’s cries)
Hush now, baby, don’t you cry, Momma’s gonna …
RABBI (V.O.)
Where to go? There is nowhere. Why would we go? There is nowhere! Nowhere to go!
The Lost Expert is in the dugout. He stands, using a long branch as a pole. Slowly, he floats through and under the willow. The swamp closes in around him.
EXT. BROWN RIVER AS IT FLOWS INTO THE BOTTOM OF BROKEN CREEK — AFTERNOON
THE LOST EXPERT emerges from the narrow river into the wider Broken Creek. He pushes through the increasingly shallow creek until the dugout runs aground on a puzzle of cracked mud pieces. He stands in the craft as it slowly tips to one side, at which point he jumps out. A shrill cry. The Lost Expert scans the sky. Turkey vultures circle high above him, barely visible. The sun is red and small and angry like a swollen pimple. The Lost Expert struggles forward now, using the crooked branch as leverage to help wrest himself out of the enclosing bog. His boots disappear into the muck, then laboriously re-emerge with squelching reluctance.
Section 19
FLORIDA. ALL HIS CHILDHOOD, he remembered hearing other kids talking about it — Florida for the holidays; Florida for March Break. His family never went to Florida. But now, here he was. In Florida — in Reed’s version, anyway, relentlessly poling through a swamp tributary pursued by tangles of cameras and lights he was supposed to be ignoring.
“Cut, cut!”
Chris cast an irritated look behind him. Reed wasn’t happy with something — the timbre of the light, the resonance of the audio, the grain of the view through the wide-angle lens. The production ground to a halt for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning. Or maybe it was afternoon already. Film shoots were all about time, Chris was learning. Break time, overtime, setup time, blocked-out time for each step in the action of a scene. The crew assembled booms, rearranged tripods, then abruptly reached for their cracked iPhones while the seconds on their breaks ticked past and Reed cursed unions and mosquitoes.
What mosquitoes? They were inside, as hard as that might be to believe. “Eighteen thousand square feet, baby,” Reed had enthused mournfully. “Bean counters say it’s cheaper than an actual swamp, if you can believe that. Only reason I went with it was ’cause this way you can be the one in the boat. Otherwise, it’d have to be John again. Fucking John! So don’t screw it up, Holmes!”
Apparently, Chris was supposed to act as if there were all kinds of miniature winged menaces. At random intervals, he’d see the signal that meant he was supposed to fan at the clouds of nonexistent gnats dive-bombing his face or slap at the minuscule illusionary daggers probing his exposed flesh. Proboscis, Chris thought. Bite me. He wished there were actual biting bugs. Their presence might speed things up. Instead, he was stuck in a cramped, unsteady boat floating in all of two feet of water, awaiting instructions to proceed with the next scene. His first vacation to the sunshine state was not at all how he’d imagined it. Chris closed his eyes, willing himself back into it. They were in the swamp. Things happened slowly here. The Lost Expert poling sloppily through the waterway’s thin tributaries, where dense thickets of mangrove elided time and denied the set’s routine. “Feel it,” Reed had ordered him. “The quagmire’s primeval stew swirling and bubbling its foundational microorganisms, billions of years old, born and dead in a day, endlessly reincarnated!” Instead, Chris pictured the real Thomson Holmes rearing up from the depths, sinewy arms draped with swamp weeds, naked torso smeared with mud. Uneasily, he stretched his cramped legs and arched his back. The craft wobbled. Grabbing for the sides, he almost dropped the long pole, his sole navigation tool.
“Holmes!” Reed bellowed from somewhere behind. “Watch what you’re doing! No sudden moves!”
No sudden moves basically meant no moves. The slightest twitch set the craft teetering in its two feet of water. His legs ached, his back ached, his arms ached. His boat was a hollowed-out log, a rudimentary canoe, if you could even call it that. It was like something from an old-timey pioneer museum dedicated to the hardships of the newly arrived Europeans, boldly setting out to clear the swamp of the alligators and panthers and primitives who’d ruled before the movies and theme parks took over. Chris had no idea why the Lost Expert couldn’t have at least come across a rusted-out fishing dinghy or something. Reed kept calling it the dugout: “Now get in the dugout, Holmes, and push yourself around the corner there.” The dugout teetered and spun and seemed perpetually to be on the cusp of overturning.
THEY’D BEEN AT IT since daybreak, the fake swamp feeling more and more real to Chris as shooting proceeded. It was hot — sweat running down his face hot. The water was dark; he couldn’t see the bottom. Whatever they’d used to create the mangroves was really working. They were astonishingly imposing — a thick wall on both sides of the waterway. The more time Chris spent floating and free associating, the more aware he was of the massive movie-set-cum-swamp. Inhospitable, impossible, its meaning and true purpose hidden, it nevertheless pulled him in. He waited for his prompt, then leaned in with his pole, probing the manufactured murk for a bottom he was beginning to doubt. The dugout wobbled forward, barely pushing through the brownish-yellow sediment coating the darker green water.
Coming up, a penultimate scene. The swamp would widen to something like a shallow lake. Reed had told him to paddle resolutely through the middle until he reached the central island heap of mud and roots and guano. At which point he’d somehow exit the dugout and scrabble up the muck, thereby surveying his surroundings with Lost Expert equanimity — the inescapable certainty of absence, a shrouded dread clinging to everything. To what end, Chris wasn’t sure. The movie, like the swamp, was in its own time zone. Maybe these scenes in the swamp were the finale, but it was also possible they were in the middle, or even the beginning. Film scenes weren’t shot in script sequence. Reed had been vague. Just: “He’s sinking now, Holmes. He’s really sinking.” Chris pictured the great Thomson Holmes sucked deeper and deeper into something he did not know how to get out of. Alison, trying to assuage Chris’s obvious nerves, had assured him that the water would never be any higher than his knees. He could do that, he told himself. He could sink.
Chris poled forward. He saw the signal and channelled a cloud of gnats — orbiting his head, dispersing and regrouping, divebombing his lips and nose, kamikaze crazy. Chris shook his head as if slapping performatively. They’d even put bug spray on him, which reminded him of his days in the woods with Krunk when they were kids. The smell of deet permeating everything — skin, clothes, food. And he was hot, the heat way up, sweat pouring off him, soaking through his Lost Expert outdoor adventure outfit of stained fleece and thick hiking pants. They wanted him this way — hot, bothered, swarmed. It was like when he was a kid: bugs in his ears, bugs in his nose, biting flies crawling along his hairline and into the garden of scalp barely shaded by his short blond hair. Bite me, Chris thought again, this time angrily. He gave Reed the finger but did not dare a peek over his shoulder to see Reed and the German, both laughing flatly. Chris jammed his pole through the clinging surface sheen. Sweat dripped down his face, off his nose. The tough fabrics trapped the heat and perspiration to his skin. The longer the day went on, the more he felt uncomfortably swaddled, like a giant baby.
Doing his best to ignore his surroundings, he leaned his weight on the pole and pulled. When he next looked up, he saw he’d arrived at the widened area, the river now some ten feet across. The water here was barely moving, if at all, a thin veneer of brown hiding an oleaginous black bottom.
Chris stabbed at whatever was supposedly crawling into his ear, then plunged the pole into the expanding channel. The dugout teetered, and he froze, looking down at his mud-stained knees, waiting for the lopsided craft to settle. Krunk said nature was the only thing worth fetishizing, whatever that meant. Reed said movies were antithetical to nature, that even movies set in natural environments were at best awkward, papered-over negations, like kids’ shows about putting down the remote and going outside to play. Krunk and Reed. What had Alison said? Pigs. Pigs in shit.
Alison, who trusted him now? Who loved him? He hadn’t meant to lie to her. Or with her. Laurie sitting on Krunk’s lap, kissing his spaghetti-sauce-stained chin. Ugh.
Did you tell them?
Did you tell them yet?
Chris jabbed at the swamp, but the pole slipped in his sweaty hands, skimming ineffectually along the plastic bottom. The dug-out slid sideways into the bank.
“Holmes! What are you doing, Holmes?”
Dangling mangrove pushed into Chris’s face, and he found himself suddenly off-balance, trying to get his head and upper body out of the slimy, rubbery overgrowth.
“The fuck, Holmes?”
Chris shoved the pole into the bushes along the bank, trying to push off. He hit something too soft and dropped the pole with a surprised yelp. A man jumped up from the tangled foliage, cursing and flapping around as if in parody of some disturbed shore bird. Chris reared back, the dugout tipping as he flailed. Water rushed in. Chris tipped too, slow enough to see that the man — entangled with camera gear, a member of the crew — was now falling face first into the water.
“Holmes!” Reed bellowed gloriously. “Holmes!”
Under, it was quiet. He drifted, his heavy boots gyrating mud, the oscillations pulling him into the swamp’s soft underbelly. Instead of panicking, he felt himself calming at the warm water’s viscid embrace. The water was deep enough here that he could almost wade in it. It felt good, wet and warm, like a drink from a hose on a hot summer’s day.
Chris bumped against something and realized it was the camera guy. He was floating face first in the water, a stream of red unfurling from his forehead. For a moment, Chris didn’t react. He merely watched the surreal spectacle of the unconscious body sinking under the weight of interlocking straps dangling cameras and battery packs. Chris counted five bubbles escaping from the man’s lips and drifting up out of the murk. He’s drowning, he thought dispassionately. I will save him.
REED ISSUED MUTED INSTRUCTIONS and occasionally cast a glimpse back at Chris, who sat watching tea-coloured water run from his hair, down his forehead, and onto the rubber floor of the massive film set.
Chris was empty, unnerved by his unexpected actions and exhausted by the surprising difficulty of pulling the man’s dead weight out of the fake silty, clinging darkness.
Who had he been as a calm determination came over him and he surfaced, holding the camera guy’s head and shoulders above the water, waiting for help? Chris thought of a movie his alter ego had made: Holmes playing a soldier abandoned in the jungle. The big actor, shirtless, clutching a machete, waiting upriver to exact his revenge on a slow, puttering boat full of the enemies of true American manhood.
A heavy bulk settled next to him.
“How ya doing there, Holmes?”
The crew kept a respectful distance, vaping and texting and muttering imprecations in barely audible voices.
“You see the darndest things in this business.” Reed sighed. “Most of it awful. But then, every once in a while —” He grabbed Chris’s hands in his own. “He could have drowned you both, you crazy fucker.” Reed exhaled, shaking his head in rueful admiration. He let go and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a pill vial. “Here, put these under your tongue and let ’em dissolve.”
“What are they?”
“Beta-blockers. They calm everything down.”
“I don’t need them. I’m fine.”
“You sure? I’m fucking frazzled. Holmes, you saved Skinny Al. We didn’t even know he was in trouble.” Reed paused. “Here. Take ’em.”
Chris shook his head. His mouth was dry. All this water. Nothing to drink.
“Take the pills, Holmes. You’ll be fine. I should have told you we were putting Al in the mangroves. That’s my bad. That one’s on me.” Reed chortled like the whole thing was one big joke. Then, seeing the look on his star’s face, he softened his tone again.
“Take the pills. Everyone takes the pills.”
“They do?”
Reed shifted uncomfortably.
“Look, I get it,” he said. “What you’re feeling. You’re the hero! You’re the Lost Expert! He’s going to find them. He’s going to confront whatever took his mother away from him. He’s going to do all that! But look, he’s not going to flail around and slap at the bugs and look like some snotty little runaway kid. He’s going to keep calm, right, Holmes? The calmer he seems, the more the audience will know, will understand, how afraid he is. You’ve got to take all that extra energy and push it down, real deep down.”
The swamp gurgled. A small red fish jumped out of the water then disappeared back under its own ripple. Chris might have imagined that. There was a sudden buzzing from an electric box somewhere behind them. The crew shifted restlessly in place, sipping their coffees, fanning their faded ball caps at the heat and nonexistent bugs.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you take the pills?”
Reed pulled his lips in, baring his big yellow teeth.
“Course I do. Everyone takes the pills.”
Chris ducked his head between his knees. He put the pills in his mouth and poked them under his tongue as instructed. His finger tasted of the surrounding muddy alluvium. Head down, he contemplated the smeared tops of his wet hiking boots.
Reed patted him on the shoulder, his hand lingering.
Chris thought of his mother. Ever since the divorce, she’d been taking them too. Her mood pills. When he’d told her that he was dropping out of university, she’d only smiled vaguely. “Oh, well, you can always go back, dear.” She’d patted him on the hand and offered him another cookie.
Script 18
EXT. MANGROVE SWAMP, THE BROWN RIVER AFTER IT HAS RE-FORMED AT THE TOP OF THE CREEK — LATE AFTERNOON
The river, a gash of chocolate mud, pulls at THE LOST EXPERT’s calves as if yearning to suck him down. The banks on both sides are consumed by mangroves with mottled black-grey branches and dark green leaves. The Lost Expert struggles forward, and the river gradually deepens. The water is almost to his waist, purling around him. Half walking, half swimming, he suddenly disappears with a muffled shout. In his place, a tornado of thrashing water and churning mud. An eternity. A minute. The Lost Expert struggles to his feet, gasping. He holds something long and limp in his arms. It is a young alligator, its short legs slowly clawing and pawing the open air, protesting The Lost Expert’s tight grip. The alligator piteously tosses its diamond reptilian head side to side. In its closed mouth is a white purse, once bordered by rhinestones, now stained by green algae and torn almost in half. Abruptly, the alligator hinges open its long snout. The purse falls into the water and disappears. The alligator shows rows of teeth like sharp, dirty rocks. Twisting out The Lost Expert’s arms, the reptile launches at his neck. The Lost Expert and the alligator tussle, again disappearing underwater. We see a smoky haze rolling over the water, the sun streaking the air red and orange and purple. A granular murk, a thickness settling, the heat gone corporeal. The Lost Expert re-emerges, the gator in his arms bucking spasmodically, the creature’s neck unnaturally twisted. The alligator goes still. The Lost Expert gently places its body into the river. Its remains bob, then settle. The dead alligator floats just under the waterline. A vulture screeches in the sky. The Lost Expert looks up; several of the birds are circling a plume of smoke in the distance. Blood from a deep bite on his shoulder drips into the water.
EXT. FOLLOWING THE RIVER — SUNSET
THE LOST EXPERT wades slowly through ankle-deep water. Visibly exhausted, he occasionally trips and staggers before regaining himself. The river has narrowed again, mangroves branching and twining into one another and forming an arch over the strangled waterway. The setting sun casts shadows, deepening pockmarks on the surface of the swamp. The smoke in the air is more obvious now, drifting in opaque clouds through the occasional angled beam of dappled sunlight, then disappearing into the extending gloom. The Lost Expert coughs into a swollen fist. Small black crabs creep out of the water and onto the trunks and protruding branches of the mangroves.
EXT. PARKLAND — EVENING (FLASHBACK — 1903)
BOY LOST EXPERT stands, dirty and wet, in the middle of a trail, eyes wide, countenance confused. A PARK RANGER kneels in front of him.
RANGER
Are you lost, son?
Boy Lost Expert looks down at his battered, muddy sneakers.
RANGER
Where are your folks, son?
EXT. DENSE FOREST BEYOND THE BROWN — TWILIGHT (1928)
THE LOST EXPERT trudges through a thick forest of small conifers punctuated by the occasional stand of palms. The forest has been burning, and parts of it continue to smoke and smoulder. The smoulder intensifies the deeper in he goes. He passes pines, small and grey, their needles burnt off. Then on through a grove of palms billowing thick, blinding smoke. The burnt and burning trees occasionally open to small pools, their surfaces crusted with skittering black water bugs cutting panicked paths through wet grey ash. The smoke thickens until it is a dense but ghostly fog floating two feet above the surface. The Lost Expert coughs. Tears pour from his eyes. He stumbles into a puddle, falls. He proceeds on hands and knees, heading for a small hillock supporting an unscathed, full-grown royal palm. Coughing and retching, he crawls to the top of the hill. Laboriously, he pulls himself to his feet. He is just high enough to rise above the smoke blanketing the woods. Holding the tree for support, he coughs until he can breathe again. The moon appears, eerily bright for a moment. An owl, sharp talons dangling, wide eyes aggrieved, floats past. Then the cloud and soot close in, and the sky disappears.
