The Stuntman

I saw a listing online, looking for guys that could fall off a horse, and I thought, I can do that. And I could.

I’m an ambitious young politician today. I’m only a city councilman, but I’ve already made a lot of powerful friends. The voters love me. I have a bright future. Secretly, I’m a real bastard. I make shady deals and act like a tyrant towards my wife. I control her life and hit her if she acts up. I think I’m cheating on her, too. Today we’re having another fight. It comes to a head at the top of the stairs in our house full of glass and light, and she pushes me, impulsively, and I fall all the way down them. Presumably, I break my neck. I'm dead, in any case. A big problem for her, but not for me. I don’t have any, anymore. Then I fall down them again because they need more coverage. I bang my elbow a bit this time but nothing too bad. Just shake it off. Then I get a check for $1200 and I ask if they’ll need me tomorrow. They say no. I go home to my empty apartment and drain a six pack.

$1200 buys me some breathing room so I just coast for a few days. I walk around and let my lungs fill up with hot, dry air. I feel the desert at the edges of my vision. The sun beats down on me, and then, later, it doesn’t. The ground is full of tremors. I go to my local spot and have a drink alone, at the end of the bar, beneath a TV playing a sports game. I spend most of it staring into my glass, but when I do look up I see one of the players lying on the ground. He’s all twisted up, clutching his shin. His face is a portrait of agony. It looks like he’s screaming, but I can’t hear him. The TV is on mute. I go home.

There's a murderer on the loose tonight, but no one knows it. He used to be just like you or me, but now he wears a hood and hangs an evil talisman around his neck. I'm going to be his third victim, or maybe his second. I'm not sure. I'm a good student; I wear glasses and I don't have a girlfriend. I'm camping with some buddies but I hear a strange noise and go into the barn. I can’t help but investigate. I know I should go back to the fire, but I go up into the hayloft instead. The murderer is there, and he stabs me with a pitchfork. The stunt coordinator calls me over and tells me I'm up. They've been putting blood on me for half an hour. I’m lifted up and thrown out of the barn. I land on an air bag but my body lands on the roof of a car. The windshield turns into an ice sheet. That’s all for the night. It’s almost dawn. I come back the next night to lie there, dead, for my sister to discover. It’s dark. She has to walk right up to me to see who I am. She screams. Then the actor replaces me for the close-ups. They’ve shredded his face. You can barely see him under all the Kryolan. Later, he shakes my hand. We don't really look that similar, but it's close enough to pass in the dark. They tell me they won't need me again. I spend most of the next day sleeping.

I moved here after I dropped out of school. Not with any ambitions, just because I needed to go somewhere with different air. I spent a few months working in a kitchen, but I hated it. I never stopped smelling like oil. Then I saw a listing online, looking for guys that could fall off a horse, and I thought, I can do that. And I could. When I got my first check, I thought about what I had done to get it, and it seemed like a better way to pay rent. It gave me more flexibility. I didn’t come home with my hair full of steam. But there was something else, too. It’s not that it was meaningful. It doesn’t mean anything to fall off a horse. But there’s always a brief moment, when you’re falling, or when you’re about to be hit, when you can’t act, and you become just a thing being acted on – and there’s something there. Something that’s crept in. something very still and quiet. In that moment, everything falls away. It feels like I could put out my hand and touch infinity. But I never do, because I might ruin the shot. Or shatter my wrist. Or worse. And then it would be harder to pay rent. But the feeling is there.

I get a call. It’s a buddy of mine. We go out for drinks sometimes, get blackout and wake up in vacant lots. We don’t have much else in common. He wants to make it. He did an infomercial once, selling hair tonic. They made him wear a wig. He’s not balding, his hair just wasn’t thick enough. He tells me he’s got a part in a real movie. Some sort of sci-fi action thing. They’re shooting it out in the dunes and they need more guys. He tells me he told them about me, and that they’ll take me if I’m interested. I say I am. After we hang up, I wonder what, exactly, he told them.

I go to the shoot. I take a bus to the nearest town and a PA picks me and a couple other guys up there. It’s in the middle of nowhere. A blank spot on the map, like someone erased it. Little bits of rubber in the sand. Down in a flat area hidden by some dunes they’ve got it made up to look like a military camp. Tents, jeeps, fences topped with razor wire. I’m one of the mercenaries today. Nobody special. Just a grunt. Who’s paying me, I don’t know. They’ve already shot his scenes, so he’s gone. They have some fatigues for me. Nondescript, baggy, no flags, no patches. The camp is going to be attacked. An all-out assault by an elite squad. We outnumber them ten to one. I’m going to get blown over a tent by a grenade and land in the sand in front of the camera.

The coordinator goes over everything with me. Where the charges are gonna be, where the springboard is, where I’m supposed to land. There’s another guy on an ATV who’s gonna drive past me afterwards, and he goes over everything with him, too. Then we clear out. The explosives guy comes on, sets it up, I get in my spot. The charge goes off and I launch. I see the sky sliding into black above me. They waited until dusk so the smoke would show better. Then I land heavy on the sand, a bit off my mark. It should look good on camera, though, so I don’t get up. I’m lying face down. Dead, presumably. I can’t see anything. Another explosion goes off. I hear the ATV coming. He’s going to follow his line around the corner and drive past me. That’s it, unless they want to reshoot. That’s what I think. But I’m further off my mark than I think, and when the ATV comes by, he drives right over my head.

I see, or I don’t really see, but I think I see, I believe, somewhere inside myself, that I’m the athlete I saw on the TV at the bar, and that I’m screaming, and that the medics are rushing over, and that they’re bending over me, and the stadium is huge around me, and the crowd is all holding its breath as one great mass, and is silent, and the sky is dark velvet, with no moon and no stars, and the lights are so cold and so bright and they’re beating down on me, and it hurts my eyes, and I’m being carried away on a stretcher, and I try to raise my hand to block out the light, and the crowd erupts in cheers, and I realize they think I’m waving. I realize they think everything is okay.

Then it’s much later. I’m not sure how much. Maybe the next morning. I’m in the hospital. Nothing is pretend but everything seems unreal. I see the IV in my arm and can’t believe it’s really going into me. It feels strange, cold, even as it fills me with morphine, or something like it, something that makes me feel like I’m wrapped in soft clouds. The doctor comes in. He seems glad i’m awake, and a little surprised. He tells me one of my eyes is damaged. Something got torn, inside. They can’t repair it. He tells me I should start wearing an eyepatch. It can still tell a light from a shadow, but that’s about all. He tells me he thinks I’m okay, otherwise, that they’ve stitched me up and I should heal alright, but I can’t leave yet. They need to be sure my brain won’t start hemorrhaging, so I lie there for a week. I don’t mind. A rep from the production company comes to visit and tells me they’ll cover my hospital bills, voluntarily, if I agree not to sue them. She gives me a document and tells me to sign it. I sign it. I don’t see a point in making a big deal over it. These things happen. I was off my mark. Later, the guy driving the ATV shows up, too. He tells me it was an honest mistake. He tells me he’s so sorry. He tells me he thought he killed me. He tells me that, God, I look awful, but not as bad as I did before. I tell him thanks. I tell him not to worry about it. That it wasn’t his fault. I was off my mark, I say.

I don’t get any other visitors.

I go back to work. I look fucked up but it turns out not to be a problem. I make a good mercenary now, or a bodyguard. Often they want me to keep the eyepatch on. I look like I’ve been through it, and I guess I have, and real scar tissue means less makeup, which is always a plus for them. There are some things I can’t do now, without depth perception, but I manage. I go out to the bar less and I sell a few things. I don’t see my buddy anymore. I get back on my feet.

A year later I’m in front of my TV, scrolling through a streaming app, and I see a new release that makes me stop. I check the production credits and I realize it’s what I think it is. I put it on, of course. How could I not. It doesn’t seem very good, although I don’t like movies much to begin with. I start scrubbing through it. About a half hour from the end I find the beginning of the scene. I recognize the dunes, and the razor wire. I watch a guy fall out of a guard tower. Two guys getting shot. One of the heroes slitting a guy’s throat, then pulling out a grenade launcher. Then, suddenly, there I am. I see myself fly through the air. I see myself land. I see the ATV come around the corner. They kept it in. I see myself spasm and go limp. Really limp, not movie-limp. I didn’t know you could tell the difference, but you can. They added a sound effect when the tire goes over my head. I’m pretty sure it’s actually a ripe cantaloupe being split open, but they’ve pitched down to sound more like flesh and bone. The shot ends, the scene keeps going. I rewind and watch it again, and then again. Then there’s nothing left to do. I let the rest of the movie play out. I discover the villain has an eyepatch. None of the heroes do. He dies at the end, completely engulfed in fire.