Jumping Off a Cliff (a short story)

So, I wrote this story after reading an article about Hemingway. One of the individuals interviewed in the article, a contemporary of Hemingway's who'd known him in Spain, claimed that Hemingway was obsessed with death, that it was his obsession that drew him to bullfighting. As I read the article, I was drawn into a confrontation with my own obsession with death. It is so inevitable and such a mystery at the same time, that I find it hard not to dwell on it. I'm particularly fascinated by people who choose to give their own life for something. In this story, I've chosen to imagine what it must be like to make that decision in a situation, that like death itself, is particularly inscrutable to me.

"Jumping Off a Cliff"

by Michael Hunter

A long time ago he saw a man do something crazy: jump headfirst off a cliff. He'd been playing near the cliffs with his brother when a sudden motion - something arcing away from the cliffs in a free fall that was both beautiful and chilling - caught their attention. As it fell below the horizon, his brother shouted, "it's a man!" "No, it's not!" he shouted back as they both raced to the edge of the cliffs to see what such a fall would do to a thing.

But it was, it was a man. Standing at the top, they could see him down below, laughing and splashing in a small pool hidden at the base of the cliffs. When he caught sight of them looking down at him, he whooped and shouted something in a foreign language.

"It's an infidel" his brother had cried out and they'd both run home, hearts pounding.

His brother. The thought brought him back to the present. He felt the restless boredom of the crowd around him: the bus was late. What had happened to his brother? he wondered, fingering the device in his pocket.

When he was older, the infidels had come into the village where he lived. One of them had spoken, his language broken and accented, "American G.I.s, are you knowing where they are? Soldiers, American soldiers? Are you knowing?" His words sounded funny, but his eyes were deadly serious. The people in the village - his aunts and uncles, his sisters and cousins, his rivals and enemies - none of them had spoken, their fear was like a gag.

"Islam is greater than you all!" his brother had shouted suddenly into the silence, then he'd broken into a run. One of the infidels raised a rifle, but the one who'd been talking pushed it down again. Others chased his brother down the street and brought him back.

"Are you knowing?" The man had asked his brother while the others held him down before the silent crowd. "Are you knowing?" Now his brother, too, was silent. What was there to know? His brother had said what the village felt, but no one knew where the Americans were. When his brother offered nothing to fill the emptiness of their waiting, the infidels had consulted with each other, their language a strange and evil incantation, inscrutable in its power. At the end of it, his brother had disappeared, taken by them and never returned.

The woman beside him spoke, snapping him from his reverie. The bus was coming. The crowd began to shuffle together, jostling for place. He saw their faces now, each one beautiful and tragic, they were more than just the sum of their parts, this mass of bodies waiting for a bus. His pulse quickened.

He watched the bus approach, its wake a ghostly plume of dust, dancing briefly in the air before falling back to earth. It came to a halt, brakes squealing their quotidian complaint. The crowd began to board, bearing him forward to the threshold. Was this what the man had felt, standing at the top of the cliff? Fear and doubt fusing with an intensity of hope, a desire to know and feel what comes next?

The door was before him. He hesitated, a man about to jump off a cliff, his finger poised on the trigger hidden in his jacket. Though the morning air was cool, he was sweating, but didn't feel it. He hoped it would be like that man - one crazy motion, a leap into space, and, then, a joyful celebration in his own personal paradise. He took a last breath and boarded the bus.