Scarlet Thunder

by Sigmund Brouwer

  He was talking to Tim Becker about Sandy’s most recent crash during this week’s practice runs. A crash that I had caught myself with my handheld. I felt real good about the footage; the flames and smoke would look pretty dramatic on television.

  “We weren’t that worried about her being hurt,” Tim said. “She slid off the wall and didn’t have any real impact. Besides, the drivers wear special fire-retardant suits. She was out of the car right away, and the fire crew had the flames smothered in about thirty seconds.”

  “Did Sandy say how she lost control?” Uncle Mike asked. I kept filming, moving my camera onto his face. “I mean, she’s a great driver. She can qualify in her sleep. Why would she hit the wall with no one else on the track?”

  “Loose rear wheel,” Tim said. “She says it wouldn’t quite hold the turn.”

  Tim turned to me. He smiled into the camera. “Remember, Trenton, even though you’ve got that on film, Sandy won’t let you air it on television. Can you imagine what the press would do with it? Can you imagine the headline? Crew Fails To Check Car. That wouldn’t be good for the team. Or the sponsor. And we need to keep the sponsor happy.”

  I nodded from behind my camera.

  “If you shut that off,” he said, “I’ll tell you more.”

  I lowered the camera but let it run. I angled it upward from my hip, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  “You see,” he continued, “in my business, you always have to worry about appearances. A rumor like that could really hurt the team. Besides, Sandy might have been looking for an excuse. She hit the wall pretty hard. That alone is enough to loosen any wheel.”

  “But if she’s a good driver,” I said, “wouldn’t she feel when something’s wrong? She does know what she’s talking about, right?”

  “Of course, of course,” he said quickly. Almost like he didn’t believe it. Almost like he was a public relations person whose first thought was always to say the right thing. “Sandy is one of the best. The whole team believes in her.”

  He said that too, like it was something he was automatically supposed to say. I remembered Sandy telling me and Uncle Mike how much she needed to win a race soon or she wouldn’t be driving much longer.

  I hoped my camera had kept Tim in the viewfinder frame. This was great stuff, even if he didn’t want me filming it.

  I didn’t feel guilty about trying to catch him on film either. Good directors didn’t let anything or anyone stop them from getting the very best work possible.

  The only thing that got me to set my camera down in the next few minutes was my steak, medium rare. And, of course, I had to take another short break for dessert.

  “This is George Lot’s specialty,” Tim Becker said as he came back with dessert dishes for the film crew. “He makes it every week for these barbecues. He uses at least a dozen different types of fruits and berries. Always fresh. And healthy too. Except for the sweet whipped cream he folds into them.”

  “No, thanks,” Margaret Lynn said. She was in her twenties. Uncle Mike thought she was great behind the camera; she often caught unusual angles. She’d pulled her long dark hair into a braid and wore a Save the Whales T-shirt. She was also a vegetarian and had chosen to eat a huge salad for her meal. “I don’t generally eat dairy products. And that whipped cream looks too rich.”

  Like everyone else, I dug into my bowl of fruit, enjoying the tangy flavors and sweet creaminess as the conversation continued around me.

  I listened as Brian Nelson and Al Simonsen picked up a long-running argument they had with Margaret Lynn. Brian and Al had long hair and each wore a single earring. They, however, were wearing Nuke the Whales T-shirts. Not that they wanted whales to be nuked, but they loved doing anything that raised Margaret’s blood pressure. And now they were arguing that we didn’t need farmers because everyone knew we could just get food from grocery stores.

  I laughed at Margaret’s expression as I finished my fruit and picked up my camera.

  Ken Takarura sat quietly beside me and just listened as he ate. Ken was older, with fine gray hair and a thick gray goatee. He wore tiny, round glasses and looked the part he would play in our documentary: an intelligent interviewer unafraid of the difficult questions.

  “So, Tim,” Uncle Mike said between bites of his dessert, “Sandy managed to qualify in spite of her crash. It seems like a banged-up car and blown engine could have kept her out of racing for about a month.”

  The PR man shook his head. “A racing team is just that. A team. About thirty people. Engineers. Mechanics. Administration. There are two guys who just rebuild extra motors. Another two guys who can replace a motor almost as fast as some people can make a sandwich.”

  I’d gotten all of that with my camera.

  “In fact,” Tim said, “there’s not much trouble that this team can’t lick.”

  “Same with my team,” Uncle Mike said. “This crew can handle anything.”

  Except for what happened to us very, very early the next morning.

  chapter thirteen

  For me, it started with a bad dream. I was in a swamp. The water was up to my waist. My feet were stuck in mud. I watched an alligator swim through the waving grass in the water. It got closer. I couldn’t run because my feet would not move. The jaws opened wide. I screamed. The jaws closed on my stomach.

  The pain was so real that I woke up.

  I blinked for a few seconds, expecting to still be in a swamp.

  I wasn’t.

  I was in a rented motor home that I shared with Uncle Mike. We had decided to spend this week living like the pit crew and filming them in their everyday activities. So we too were parked in the infield among the dozens and dozens of other motor homes that housed the different racing crews. The rest of the film crew was in a motor home parked beside ours.

  Still blinking, I was rattled by how real the dream had seemed. So rattled that it took me a couple more seconds to realize the alligator was still clamped on my stomach. Except, of course, there was no alligator.

  I had stomach cramps. Real bad stomach cramps. So bad that I heard groaning, and it didn’t even feel like it was coming from my mouth.

  When I heard the groaning again, I realized that it came from another part of the motor home. The part where Uncle Mike slept.

  I looked at the clock beside my bed. The red glowing numbers showed 1:30 AM.

  My stomach cramps got worse. I groaned too. I almost felt like I was going to throw up.

  I heard Uncle Mike get out of his bed.

  I didn’t say anything. I was afraid that if I tried to talk, all my insides would come out of my mouth in a big explosion.

  Uncle Mike staggered through the motor home in the darkness. I heard a bang.

  “Nuts!” he said. Probably his toe. There was a step in the motor home that I had already hit twice.

  Uncle Mike hopped around.

  So did my stomach.

  It hopped and flopped. I got that feeling you get when you know you’re going to blow. The feeling that says you have exactly 2.5 seconds until the geyser hits. The feeling that says you had better use those 2.5 seconds to get someplace other than the bed where you are lying beneath the covers.

  I bolted upright. I hit my head on the low ceiling.

  In the darkness, I saw an awesome display of circles of light. But my head hurt so bad I didn’t feel like applauding. And my body was already in full motion.

  I shoulder-checked Uncle Mike, who was still hopping. He fell across the table. I didn’t stop to apologize. I was down to 1.5 seconds.

  I ripped open the bathroom door. I fell to my knees in front of the toilet.

  As I was throwing up, I became aware that not all of the horrible sounds were mine.

  Uncle Mike was using the sink to do the same thing.

  It just made me throw up harder.

  After what felt like five years of agony, there was nothing left in my stomach. About two pounds of steak and whipped cream and fresh fruit had just gone to waste.


  I didn’t feel any better though. Most times it is a relief to throw up. Not this time. I still felt dizzy and could hardly breathe.

  In the darkness of the bathroom, I pushed past Uncle Mike as he leaned over the sink.

  “Air,” I croaked. “I need air.”

  I got to the motor home door. Because it was so dark, it took what felt like five years for me to figure out how to open the lock. It was five years filled with a stomach still in the grip of an alligator, lungs that were pushing against a giant vise, and hands and arms that hardly obeyed what I told them to do.

  Finally, I snapped open the lock, flipped the door open and half fell getting outside.

  The air was hot compared to the cool air-conditioned air inside of the trailer.

  It didn’t matter. At least I had room around me.

  I sat on a lawn chair.

  What was happening to me? My body was shaking. I could still hardly breathe. And my stomach hurt so bad I wanted to cry.

  Then I heard the same sound I had heard inside our motor home.

  The sound of someone throwing up. Except this time it was someone outside. Someone nearby.

  I strained my eyes. There was just enough light for me to see Brian Nelson, our cameraman, and Ken Takarura, the interviewer. They were both outside the rented motor home they shared with Al Simonsen. Brian and Ken were bent over and heaving in a horrible way.

  Uncle Mike staggered outside to join me. He stood in front of me, leaning on his knees and gasping for breath.

  All he could do was groan.

  Brian and Ken kept throwing up.

  They were so loud that lights began to come on in trailers nearby.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “Keep it down out there!”

  That warning didn’t mean a thing. Brian and Ken retched even louder.

  “Look, you guys, if you don’t stop that noise, I’m going to come out there!” the voice shouted.

  “Knock off the shouting!” another person shouted. “We need sleep here.”

  More lights flipped on. More shouting echoed through the infield.

  It might have been funny. But I couldn’t focus on anything except my stomach. It began to flip again.

  “Uncle Mike,” I said, hardly above a whisper. My heart was racing hard. “I think I’m going to...”

  I had thought my stomach was totally empty. I was wrong. Very wrong. I knew because of how much covered Uncle Mike’s legs before he moved out of my way.

  When I finished, I fell over.

  I lay there with my heart pounding, gasping until an emergency crew finally arrived. Strong hands lifted me onto a stretcher and put me into an ambulance, with Uncle Mike beside me.

  As my vision got darker and blurrier, the ambulance took us away into the night.

  chapter fourteen

  “Dizziness, headache, vomiting.” The white-coated doctor in front of us made notes on his clipboard as he spoke. His name tag said Dr. Ellroy. “Stomach cramps, breathing difficulties.”

  “Yes,” Uncle Mike groaned. “I wish I didn’t have to agree, but yes.”

  The two of us shared a hospital room. Down the hall, Brian Nelson, Ken Takarura and Al Simonsen shared another room, waiting for their turn to see the same doctor. Al was the reason the other two had been throwing up outside. Al had been in the motor home’s bathroom.

  “Gastroenteritis and tachycardia,” Dr. Ellroy said, more to himself than to us.

  “Huh?” I groaned.

  The doctor looked up from his clipboard. Although he was young, his square face sagged from exhaustion. I didn’t blame him. The clock on the hospital wall behind him showed almost three o’clock. He was an internal specialist and had been paged from his home.

  “Gastroenteritis is an inflammation of the stomach and bowels. It causes stomach cramping and diarrhea. Have either of you had diarrhea yet?”

  “Yet?” I said.

  Uncle Mike’s white face got even whiter. “Doc,” he said, “why did you have to put that into my mind?”

  “I’m not trying to put anything into your mind. It’s just that—”

  “The bathroom, Doc,” Uncle Mike groaned. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Dr. Ellroy pointed at the door. “Down the hallway to your left.”

  Uncle Mike got off the edge of the bed where he’d been sitting. He hobbled out the door.

  I swallowed. It hurt. My throat was raw.

  “That other word,” I said. “Tacky... tacky...”

  “Tachycardia. A faster than normal heartbeat.”

  The doctor looked down at his clipboard again. “Dizziness. Headache. Vomiting. Stomach cramps. Breathing difficulties. Gastroenteritis. Tachycardia.”

  Dr. Ellroy’s eyes came back up at me again. “Anything else?”

  “I was shaking. Bad.”

  He made another note on his clipboard.

  He tapped his front teeth with his pencil. “I’m guessing the three in the other room had the same symptoms.”

  “Probably,” I said. I had been too busy throwing up to take notes on anyone else.

  “Then it’s definitely some type of poisoning,” he said.

  “Poisoning?!”

  Dr. Ellroy smiled. “Not like in a movie kind of poisoning where a bad guy was trying to kill you. More like food poisoning. Still, this is pretty serious. We need to track it down. So let me ask you the obvious question. Were all of you in a place where you ate the same food?”

  I nodded as I thought about the barbecue. What was weird was that no one from the pit crew had joined us. Almost as if only Uncle Mike’s crew had been poisoned.

  “We were at a barbecue,” I said. “We—”

  I stopped as a scary thought hit me.

  “Yes?” The doctor prompted.

  “Margaret Lynn!” I said. “She was with us too! She’s staying at a motel! What if she’s real sick and no one knows it?”

  Without any hesitation, Dr. Ellroy pulled a small cell phone from his coat pocket. He snapped it open.

  “What motel?” he asked.

  “The...the...” I struggled to remember. We had dropped her off after the barbecue because she wanted some privacy. She didn’t want to share the motor home the rest of the film crew used. I tried to picture the neon sign against the night sky: Riverside Motel.

  He punched a few numbers and waited. “Yes,” he said. “I need the number for the Riverside Motel.”

  After a few more seconds of waiting, he punched in more numbers. And waited briefly again.

  “Yes,” he said. “I would like to speak to a guest registered at the motel.”

  He gave me a questioning look.

  “Margaret Lynn,” I said.

  “Margaret Lynn,” he repeated into the cell phone.

  For the next few seconds, I again felt stuck in mud with an alligator swimming closer. What if she had passed out? This was some kind of poisoning. What if she had...

  “Hello,” Doctor Ellroy said into the phone. “This is Doctor John Ellroy. I’m an internal specialist and I—”

  He closed his eyes. Even I could hear how loud Margaret Lynn was yelling into the telephone.

  “No,” Dr. Ellroy said. “This is not Al or Brian. This is not a practical joke. I am calling because we were afraid that you might be ill. However, you sound very healthy and strong. I am sorry to have bothered you.”

  He snapped the phone shut. He smiled. “It didn’t seem the time for a long conversation.”

  He began tapping his teeth again with his pencil. “This could help,” he said. “It could help a lot. Was there anything you all ate that she did not?”

  “She’s a vegetarian,” I said. “Does that help?”

  “Perhaps.”

  I snapped my fingers. “No,” I said. “Dessert. We all had a fruit dessert with whipped cream. She didn’t. But Tim Becker, another guy who sat with us, did.”

  Doctor Ellroy made a couple more phone calls and finally reached Tim Becker. Doctor Ellroy spoke se
riously with him for a few minutes, then hung up.

  “As you could tell from our conversation,” Dr. Ellroy said, “he’s sick too, though he

  doesn’t sound as bad off as you are. I’d say it’s a safe bet you’re all reacting to the dessert.”

  Doctor Ellroy frowned. “The strange thing here is that the symptoms sound like something that commonly happens to children who pick and eat raw elderberries.”

  “Elderberries?” I echoed.

  “Yes,” he said. “Cooked elderberries are fine. But uncooked, they’ll cause exactly what you’ve experienced. The symptoms won’t kill you, but they will slow you down. Raw elderberries contain a poison called cyanogenic glycoside.”

  I didn’t care much about the name of the poison. I cared much more about a bigger question. One that Dr. Ellroy asked out loud for both of us. Especially after I explained that only Uncle Mike’s crew had been poisoned.

  “But why,” he said, “would someone put raw elderberries in selective desserts?”

  Before either of us could try to answer, a new kind of rumbling hit my insides. Not the throwing-up kind of rumbling. But the kind of rumbling that had sent Uncle Mike out the door in a big hurry.

  “Um, Doctor Ellroy?” I said.

  “Yes?”

  I was already running out the door as I answered.

  “Got to go,” I said.

  And I meant it in the truest way. I sprinted down the hall, looking for a bathroom.

  Stupid elderberries.

  chapter fifteen

  Those stupid elderberries cost us nearly a full day of production, setting us even further behind Uncle Mike’s million-dollar deadline.

  Since it was the day between Friday’s qualifying and Sunday’s race, the original plan had been to interview Sandy in the morning and film the pit crew in the afternoon.

  We’d canceled the pit crew film segments because we needed several cameras for those. Brian Nelson was still too sick to work. Margaret Lynn, though, was fine. So even though we couldn’t shoot using the two-angle method, Uncle Mike decided to go ahead with Ken Takarura’s interview with Sandy Peterson.