Shoot the Dog

by Brad Smith

  “Where’s the scene being shot—inside the cabin?” he asked.

  “You stick to your horses,” Levi said.

  Virgil ignored him.

  “Yeah, in the cabin,” Kari said.

  “So Georgia props the musket on a windowsill,” Virgil said. He had another thought. “To load it, she could stand on a chair.”

  “Yes!” Georgia exclaimed.

  Kari nodded. “It would make a nice shot.” Virgil could see her slowly emerging from her funk. For all of the negative publicity following her around, she was serious about the work. “Standing on the chair, pouring the whatchamacallit . . . gunpowder down the barrel.” She glanced at Virgil. “You should be directing this thing.”

  “We don’t want it to look phony,” Levi said. “I hate those scenes in a movie.”

  “Like a woman and a little girl fighting off a hundred Indians?” Kari asked.

  “What you guys come up with here doesn’t matter anyway,” Levi said in response. “It’s the director’s call.”

  Kari smiled. “We’ll just have to convince him it was his idea.”

  “How’re you going to do that?” Levi demanded.

  “Same way everybody else does, I guess,” she replied.

  Levi fell into a pout, shrugging his thick shoulders as if to show that he didn’t care what they did at this point. Will suggested that it could work, and he offered to help Georgia in the cabin later, going over the loading.

  Kari indicated the target in the trees. “Well—we going to do some shooting or is this all just make-believe?”

  “We can fire the weapons if you want,” Will said in his deliberate manner. “They’ve got some kick. I won’t allow the little one here to try it.”

  “No, I’m good,” Georgia said.

  “Give us a demonstration,” Kari said. She was flirting with Will now. Virgil suspected she flirted with everyone. Everyone but Levi, whom she’d barely acknowledged.

  Will loaded one of the guns and walked a few steps away from the others. Pulling on some lightweight hearing protection, he glanced back at Levi, who hesitated and then took the cue. He said something into the walkie-talkie and after a moment he nodded to Will.

  “Plug your ears,” Will said.

  Standing sideways to the target in the distance, legs spread, he lifted the gun, squeezed the trigger lightly, and put a ball close to the center of the paper. He looked critically at the shot for a moment, then silently reloaded the musket and turned to Kari.

  “Give it a try?”

  She balked before turning to Virgil. “You go, cowboy.”

  Virgil gave her a look before stepping forward to take the gun from Will. It was even heavier than he’d anticipated but he pulled it up, took aim, and hit the edge of the target a couple inches from Will’s shot.

  “Good shot, Virgil!” Georgia shouted.

  “Dude,” Kari said.

  Will looked at Virgil. “You’ve fired one of these before?”

  “No,” Virgil said. “But I grew up in rural Quebec. If you couldn’t shoot a hockey puck and a rifle by the time you were five, people looked at you funny.”

  Virgil heard Levi, standing a few steps to the rear now, snort through his nose. It was evident he was feeling left out.

  Will reloaded the musket and handed it to Kari, who gamely hoisted it to her shoulder and, with the end of the barrel wavering, pulled the trigger. The recoil set her back on her heels. The target was not threatened. She passed the gun over to Will and rubbed her shoulder.

  “Holy shit,” she said.

  An instant later the clearing was filled with a roar of gunfire, coming from behind them. Virgil turned quickly. Levi had pulled a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun from inside his coat and was in the process of emptying the clip in the direction of the target, hitting it several times. Georgia clamped her hands over her ears while Will looked on unhappily.

  When he was finished, Levi smiled as he slipped the gun back into the holster inside his jacket. “And that’s the way we do it in the twenty-first century.”

  “You’re a goddamn idiot, boy,” Will told him. “Any century.”

  EIGHTEEN

  After Levi shot up the forest, Will gathered his muskets and ammunition and headed back to the barn. Kari and Georgia announced they were going to their trailers to read over the revisions to the script. It seemed that everyone was intent upon putting distance between themselves and Levi, and in this Virgil was no different. He wandered over to where they were still filming the death of the father in front of the cabin. It took them until midafternoon to shoot it from the various angles and with different lenses. Virgil estimated that Daniel Vardon hit the ground at least thirty times before he was finally considered truly dead, at least dead enough for Robb, who kept asking for more takes. By the time they called print for the final time, Vardon was visibly pissed.

  After lunch Georgia walked over from her trailer and fed Bob and Nelly the carrots she’d been hoarding. Virgil was sitting in a folding chair in the doorway to the barn alongside the muskets and the rest of the shooting paraphernalia left there by Will, who’d gone for something to eat. Georgia joined him there, pulling up another chair.

  “Are you bored?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too.”

  “I thought you and Kari were reading the script.”

  “We were,” the little girl said. “We got new sides this morning.” She sighed. “I have to shoot an Indian tomorrow.”

  “It’s just a movie.”

  She nodded, looking over at him. Virgil had the chair tilted back against the barn door, with his right leg hooked over his left. Georgia made an effort to imitate him.

  “What are sides anyway?” Virgil asked.

  “Pages of the script.”

  “Why don’t they call them pages?”

  “They just don’t.”

  Virgil laced his fingers behind his neck and looked up at the sky. “We could sure use some rain.”

  Georgia again copied his move. “We sure could.”

  They sat there like that for a while, side by side, the little girl glancing over from time to time to see if Virgil had changed position.

  “How come we could use some rain?” she asked.

  “My hay needs it for one thing. And my corn too.”

  “You have a farm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You never told me that,” Georgia said.

  “Did you think I kept Bob and Nelly in an apartment in the city?”

  “No!” She shook her head. “I think they would hate that.”

  “Me too,” Virgil said.

  “Can you imagine them on the elevator?”

  Virgil laughed. One of the production vans pulled onto the property then and parked near the trailers. Tommy Alamosa got out and when he spotted them by the barn, he started over.

  “I would like to see your farm someday,” Georgia said.

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe once filming is done?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good,” the little girl said. She watched Tommy as he approached. “What did you think of Levi shooting his gun off?”

  “Not much,” Virgil admitted.

  “What’s his problem?”

  “I think maybe his nose was out of joint because nobody was taking him seriously,” Virgil said. Tommy was twenty feet away now. “That’s my theory.”

  “I think he’s an imbecile,” Georgia said. “That’s my theory.”

  “You might have something there,” Virgil said. “Hello, Tommy.”

  “You guys watching the day go by?” Tommy said.

  “Yup,” Virgil replied.

  “Yup,” Georgia echoed.

  “We’re done for the day,” Tommy said. “The Indian raid is next and the Indians won’t be here until morning.” He looked at the little girl. “Will’s going to take you and Kari in the cabin and go over the weapons stuff again real quick and then the van’s heading back to
the hotel.”

  “Okay,” Georgia said. She got to her feet and stuck her hand out to Virgil. “See you later, Virgil. I hope we get some rain. We sure could use it.”

  Tommy watched her march away toward the cabin, then he turned to Virgil. “That kid might be the smartest one on the whole damn production.”

  Virgil smiled and nodded his head.

  “Tell me something, Virgil—can those horses of yours run?”

  “Most animals can run. Why?”

  “Oh, these new scenes. It’s been decided that after the womenfolk fight off the savages they make a mad dash in the buckboard for the fort.”

  “What fort?”

  “There’s always a fort, Virgil,” Tommy said. “You know that.”

  “I guess there is. Where’s this one?”

  Tommy waved vaguely off to the west. “About thirty miles back in the hills. Called Fort Howard. It was a tourist attraction for a while but I guess it went tits-up a few years ago and it’s been sitting there empty ever since. Sam and Levi made a deal with the owners for us to shoot there. Apparently it’s set back in the trees, though, and I don’t know if there’s a dirt road or open field or whatever to run the horses and buckboard across. If not, we’d have to film the fort and then shoot the horses running somewhere else and edit it together.”

  “I expect I can get them to run,” Virgil said, glancing at the two workhorses grazing in the meadow. “They run around my pasture field when they feel like it.”

  “I’m heading over there now for a look,” Tommy said. “Want to come along?”

  “Sure.”

  They took one of the production company’s rental trucks. Tommy entered the rural route address for Fort Howard into the GPS unit and they started out. Before long they were on a two-lane blacktop that wound up into evergreen forest so thick it blocked out most of the sunlight. It was like driving at dusk.

  “According to the owners, it was a real fort at one time,” Tommy said. “Built during the War of 1812. The Iroquois burned it but it was rebuilt later on.”

  They drove for a half hour or so and came upon a faded sign announcing that the fort was five miles away. Tommy steered the truck down a narrow gravel road and a few minutes later they arrived at the remains of Fort Howard, tucked away in an overgrown clearing with forest on three sides.

  The fort itself was smaller than Virgil had expected, maybe a hundred yards long and half that wide. The place resembled the frontier garrisons Virgil had seen in the movies, with pointed log walls and two huge gates in the front. Whether that was the original design or a later concept based on what a tourist attraction should look like was impossible to say.

  They parked in front of the gates and both men got out. The grass around the base of the fort had grown long and matted, choked with dandelions and stinkweed. Some of the logs forming the walls were rotted partway through, sagging in place. In front of the fort was a large expanse of open field, with sparse patches of gravel in evidence here and there.

  “Must have been the parking lot for the tourist trade,” Tommy said. He pointed off across the lot. “There’s a lane leading into the brush.”

  Virgil glanced over. The lane was little more than a path, with overhanging limbs and tall grass growing in its center. But it could be cleared without much effort.

  Tommy regarded the grounds critically. “We could run the buckboard and team out of the woods and across the lot here,” he said. “And right through the front gates. The Indians in hot pursuit, pouring out of the woods, with the gates closing just in time. Cut and print. Bob’s your uncle.”

  “What about the gravel?”

  “We’ll paint it brown and it’ll look like dirt,” Tommy said. “Nothing that can’t be done, Virgil.” He started for the building. “Let’s have a look inside, see if there’s room enough to stop the team once they come through the gates. This place is pretty small.”

  The big gates in front were secured from inside but there was a door around back that had presumably been an employees’ entrance back when the place was a commercial venture. The door was unlocked.

  The place was laid out inside like a small village, with a smithy and stable, general store, and barracks for the troops. Ramparts on all four walls served as the roofs for the various buildings. There were hitching posts and water troughs for the horses, as well as a plank sidewalk that was in decent repair.

  “What are you shooting here?” Virgil asked.

  “Fucked if I know,” Tommy said. “They’re still writing it. None of this was in the original script, or the book. I can tell you one thing—we’re going to need some soldiers. You can’t have a fort without soldiers. Be like shooting a beach movie without Gidget.” He looked up at the shaky ramparts above them. “The carpenters are going to be busy, making all this safe. I’m pretty sure Robb is planning a big fucking battle scene, the soldiers against the Indians. Well, he’s about to find out you can’t shoot Braveheart on a buck and a quarter.”

  Virgil wandered into the stables. There were a dozen stalls there, along two rows, with a mow above that actually had a quantity of musty hay stowed in it. The floor was mud, caked hard and cracked. A wooden grain bin ran along the front wall. Virgil lifted the lid and scared off a skinny rat, which disappeared into a hole in the floor.

  When he went back outside Tommy was sitting on the wooden steps in front of the general store, rolling a joint. He lit it and took a pull, squinting up at Virgil as he approached.

  “Where’s Sam going to get the money for soldiers and all the work we’re going to have to do around here?” he asked after he’d exhaled.

  Virgil leaned his elbows on a hitching rail and looked at the heavy wooden gates across the yard. “Ronnie Red Hawk?”

  “Maybe,” Tommy said. “I think that’s a pretty deep well. And I know he’s paying in cash, which means he’s laundering. But they’re tiptoeing around the guy. If you think they weren’t scared of him before, they’re fucking terrified now, with the dead chick turning up at his hotel.”

  “Is that why Levi’s carrying a gun?”

  “He is?”

  “He pulled it and shot holes in the forest, trying to impress the black-powder guy.”

  Tommy had another toke and then pinched the joint off. “I heard the racket. Maybe he’s worried about Red Hawk. And maybe he should be. The theory is that Red Hawk got involved in this so he could get close to Kari Karson. And now Kari’s gone back to the Hampton to stay. Can’t blame her, after what happened to her friend. But Red Hawk has got to be pissed off about that turn of events. And if he was killing people before, when he presumably was a happy camper, who knows what he might do now that he’s pissed?” Tommy laughed. “Robb might have a real-life Indian attack on his hands. Be careful what you wish for. Right?”

  “All I wish for is rain.”

  “I envy you that,” Tommy said. He leaned back, his elbows propped on the top step. “Man, I hate getting old, Virgil. Especially when I get stuck on a production like this. This thing had potential, you know. The script was really good before they started fucking with it. We got an idiot director and a gun-toting producer and stupid fucking—” He seemed to run out of things to list, and he provided the rest with a flip of his hand in the air.

  “You’re saying it won’t be any good?”

  “It might look good,” Tommy said. “Adam is a good cinematographer and he’s getting some great stuff. But I don’t see any emotion in any of it.” He paused. “We might have to shoot the dog.”

  Virgil turned toward him. “I haven’t seen any dog.”

  Tommy smiled. “It’s an expression. Supposedly Peckinpah said it, shooting some TV thing back in the fifties. They had a bad guy menacing a family, Cape Fear–style, but the guy wasn’t coming off as all that bad. And if your audience doesn’t hate your bad guy, what have you got? So Peckinpah said, have him shoot the family dog. That did it.”

  “Everybody likes a dog,” Virgil said.

  • • •


  Levi stood in the trailer, watching out the window across the lot, where Nikki, the girl from craft services, was talking to the cop with the attitude, Claire Marchand. Sam was at the table behind him, sending e-mails on her laptop and downing shots of Ronnie Red Hawk’s tequila.

  Marchand had arrived a half hour earlier. Sam said that at first she’d asked to speak to Tommy Alamosa but he was off looking at the fort they’d acquired for the shoot. Then she said she wanted to talk to Nikki, who had driven to a local farmers market to pick up something or other for craft services. Marchand had then waited in her car for Nikki to return.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Levi asked.

  “Where?”

  “That bitch has been quizzing Nikki for ten minutes. Nikki’s a fucking bimbo, she doesn’t know anything. So what are they talking about?”

  “Maybe they’re swapping recipes,” Sam said. “You think twenty soldiers is enough?” She paused. “No way—we’re going to need more than twenty. Twice that, you think? How many Indians do we have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sam poured a shot of tequila, knocked it back, and reached for a wedge of lime in a bowl on the table. “Am I bothering you with these questions about the movie we’re making?” she asked.

  “I don’t like cops hanging around,” Levi said.

  “That’s what happens when dead bodies keep showing up,” Sam said. “So how many soldiers do we need?”

  “Ask Robb,” Levi said, finally turning to her. “This is his wet dream, isn’t it? Where we going to get the money to shoot a fucking battle? It’ll take a week, at the very least.”

  “We’re going to have to cut something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Levi, looking out the window again, thought about it. “What about the big harvest scene, where they have the dance at night, with the fiddlers and all that? There’s got to be a few days scheduled for that, right?”