Johnny Hangtime (10 page)

“Don't stand up in the canoe,” Dad instructed Ricky as he stepped off the helicopter. “It will rock too much. Wait for the helicopter to come low enough for you to grab on, okay?”

“Okay,” Ricky replied.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks, man,” Ricky said, shaking Dad's hand.

Roland was in position on the observation deck overlooking the Horseshoe Falls, so he could be as close as possible to the edge. He
had walkie-talkie communications with all the cameramen.

“Sure you want to do this, Ricky?” Roland asked through the helicopter's walkie-talkie.

“I'm sure.”

“Then we're ready when you are. Roll cameras!”

Ricky put a foot in the canoe and pushed off. I gave the canoe a shove for good measure. There was no turning back now. I scampered back aboard the helicopter and we lifted off. The helicopter would shadow Ricky and rescue him at the edge of the falls.

The current was moving swiftly, much more swiftly than an ordinary river. Once Ricky paddled out to the middle, he didn't need to paddle at all. The current just pulled him along. The chopper pilot kept pace with Ricky, about ten feet in front of him and thirty feet above the water. He told me we were moving at thirty-six miles per hour. So far, so good.

From where I was above the river, I could see the Horseshoe Falls a mile and a half ahead. I knew Ricky couldn't see it, and that was probably for the better. It was frightening enough being in the river without having to see the point where the river suddenly drops away.

The water started getting choppier about a mile from the Horseshoe. I could see the canoe bobbing up and down. I didn't know how much canoeing experience Ricky had. You could probably never have enough experience to prepare yourself for
this
.

“Be ready to pick him up early in case he capsizes or chickens out,” Dad yelled to the pilot.

“Camera number one,” Roland barked, “are you on him?”

“Affirmative,” the pilot replied.

“Camera number two. Can you see him yet?”

“Affirmative.”

“Camera number three—”

“Not yet, Roland.” A voice crackled over the radio. “Wait, I see him now!”

The helicopter was one hundred yards from the falls. The pilot accelerated, rushing ahead of Ricky's canoe to get into position for the rescue. Between the sound of the 'copter and the sound of the falls, it was so loud my ears were ringing.

We were hovering at the edge of the Horseshoe, and the view was incredible. When I looked out one side of the chopper, I could see Ricky's canoe coming toward us. Out the other side, there was nothing. Just a long way down.

“This is awesome!” the cameraman hollered.

“Stop sightseeing!” Dad barked. “Bring it
down
!”

The pilot lowered the chopper until I could feel the spray of water in my face.

“Lower!” Dad shouted. “Lower!”

“I'm only five feet over the top!” the pilot shouted back. “Any lower and we'll hit it.”

“Get ready to make the scoop!” Roland hollered over the walkie-talkie.

I could see Ricky's face now, the fear in his eyes. The canoe was bouncing and bumping through the whitewater like a Ping-Pong ball. It was heading a little to the left of us. The pilot moved over so the canoe would slide right below us.

“Grab it!” Dad screamed to Ricky when he was close enough to hear. “Grab hold!”

Ricky reached up for the skid on the bottom of the helicopter. He missed it at first, then stood up so he could reach. He wrapped his fingers around the skid, the way you do when you do a chin-up.

“Wrap your
arm
around it!” Dad yelled down to him. A chin-up
hold, I knew, wouldn't be strong enough.

“If you've got him, go!” Roland yelled. “Go!”

Ricky was hanging on to the skid with both hands, trying to pull himself up so he could wrap an arm around it. I could see in his face that he was struggling. He didn't have the arm strength. He probably never played on monkey bars in his life. The pilot lifted up the helicopter and moved away from the edge of the Horseshoe.

That's when Ricky's fingertips slipped off the skid.

I
saw the look of terror on Ricky's face as his fingertips slipped off the skid. I saw his mouth open to scream, but the noise of the water and rotors drowned it out. And then I watched Ricky fall.

I may not have liked Ricky Corvette, but you don't want to wish something like
this
on your worst enemy. There was nothing I could do to help him. Dad spat out a four-letter word that you've probably heard but won't see here.

“We missed him!” the cameraman screamed.

“Good Lord in heaven!” Roland yelled over the walkie-talkie.

The parachute popped out of Ricky's life jacket. Because the helicopter had moved away from the falls before Ricky fell, the chute had just enough room to open. I watched it drop.

“Get him out of there as soon as he hits the water!” Roland ordered. “Get an ambulance ready!”

Sirens were screaming when our helicopter landed in the parking
lot. Everyone there was running in all directions. Police cars had arrived.

By the time Ricky hit the bottom, I was told, four rescue boats were already chugging toward the churning water. They got as close to the falls as they could without capsizing. For a few anxious seconds, there was no sign of Ricky's body.

Finally, one of the rescue divers spotted Ricky, bobbing up and down lifelessly in the whitewater. Ten divers dove in and pulled him out.

In seconds, they had Ricky in the boat and the boat sped back to the dock. An ambulance was waiting there. A paramedic crew carried Ricky into the ambulance and slammed the back doors shut. It screeched off. Three cop cars, sirens blasting and lights flashing, provided an escort to the hospital.

There was no way of knowing if Ricky was dead or alive. It depended on chapter 19 how he hit the rocks at the bottom of the falls.

 

All we could do was wait. Filming was suspended for the day, of course. The crew was walking around in a daze. The helicopter pilot looked worse than anyone. Everyone told him it wasn't his fault, but I'm sure he was wondering what would happen to him if Ricky died.

When I found Roland, he was just sitting on a chair under a tree. He looked like he was in shock.

“Nobody has
ever
been seriously hurt on a Roland Rivers film,” he said, staring off into space. “
Ever
.”

In a few minutes, somebody from the hospital called the set. Everybody gathered around the phone.

Ricky was alive, we were informed. He was busted up pretty badly, though. Both arms and legs were broken. There were some
internal injuries. His face was messed up, and he would be undergoing surgery to reconstruct it. The doctors were going to have to build him a new nose, taking cartilage from his ears and skin from his neck. Ricky was conscious, but just barely.

“He was lucky,” somebody said.

Lucky? If falling over Niagara Falls from a helicopter is good luck, I wondered what bad luck might be. If anybody was lucky, it was
me
.

A few minutes after the phone call from the hospital came in, my father came over to the bench where I was sitting.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting down next to me.

“Yeah.”

“This Corvette fellow,” Dad asked, “is he a friend of yours?”

“He's just a movie star,” I replied. “He barely knows my name.”

“That's the way it is with movie stars. I'm just glad it wasn't you.”

We sat there for a few minutes without talking. The crew had begun packing up their lights and other gear and loading it onto trucks. It was uncomfortable. I didn't know if I would ever see my dad again, or if I
wanted
to. It was still kind of shocking to realize he was alive.

I finally broke the ice. “I guess maybe I should have listened to you.”

“About what?”

“Doing the gag,” I said. “It was too dangerous. I could have been killed.”

“We all make mistakes,” Dad replied. “You just have to get on with your life.”

I looked at Dad. He had made a mistake too, in abandoning me. I realized that he was trying to get on with
his
life, and contacting me
again was part of that. I stuck out my hand and he shook it.

“I'm sorry about what I did, son.”

 

As Mom and I silently packed up our clothes to go back to California that night, I knew what she was thinking. It could have been
me
. I could have been the one in the canoe.
I
could have missed the grab.
I
could have been the one barely conscious in the hospital.

I could have been less lucky than Ricky. I could have been killed.

There was a knock on the hotel-room door and Mom opened it. It was Roland, with the Paramount lawyers. They came in and made some small talk, making sure to express their concern for Ricky. Then the Paramount guys got to the point.

“As you know, the studio has spent a small fortune on
Two Birds, One Stone
,” one of them said. “We were counting on it to be our biggest blockbuster this year.”

“The movie was almost finished when Ricky had his unfortunate accident,” the other lawyer said. “We can't afford to abandon it.”

“So you want to reshoot the canoe gag with me in Ricky's place?” I asked.

“No!” Mom announced. “I won't let Johnny do that scene!”

“That won't be necessary, Mrs. Thyme,” the first lawyer said. “Roland believes he can rewrite the ending and use the footage he already shot.”

“So why are you guys here?” I asked.

“Johnny,” Roland said, “remember those seven lines of dialogue Ricky was supposed to say? We still have to shoot them. They want
you
to take Ricky's place in the acting scenes.”

Acting
scenes? I couldn't
act
! I hadn't acted since I was in my third-grade play. Even then, I only had to play a tree. Roland had to be joking.

“Johnny,” one of the lawyers said, “Ricky Corvette's career is over. I saw his face at the hospital, and believe me, he will never play a leading man again. Frankly, his career may have been over even
before
the accident. He was getting older and his voice had changed. As much as we all hate to admit it, Ricky's looks and that cute voice were all he had.”

I looked at Mom. She shrugged.

“You've already appeared in all the other scenes of the movie,” the other lawyer said, more excitedly. “
You're
the real star, Johnny. We want
Two Birds, One Stone
to be a Johnny Hangtime movie. Naturally, you will be compensated appropriately—say, one million dollars—and receive star billing.”

A
million dollars?
My allowance was ten dollars a week. I couldn't even imagine what a million dollars
looked
like.

“You only have to say seven lines of dialogue, Johnny,” Roland assured me.

Seven lines of dialogue. I would have to
speak
seven lines. In front of a camera. Shooting close-ups of my face. And a crew. And millions of people would see it.

I wondered if somebody had turned up the heat in the room. Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead. I could feel it under my arms too.

This was silly, I thought to myself. In the last four years I had been run over by trucks, hit by machine-gun fire, thrown through plate glass windows, and drowned in quicksand. But none of those things frightened me as much as the thought of saying seven lines of dialogue.

Seven lines. A million dollars. I began to feel lightheaded, woozy. And that was the last thing I remembered.

W
hen I came to, I looked around and saw I was in a hospital room. Oh, come on, Mom! I thought. You didn't have to put me in the hospital just because I
fainted
!

I looked to my right and saw I had a roommate. The poor guy was bandaged up from head to toe, like a mummy. He couldn't even turn his head.

“Hi,” I said softly, not sure if the guy was awake.

“Hi,” he replied.

“What happened to
you
?”

“I fell.”

“Must have been a pretty bad fall,” I said.

“Yeah, over Niagara Falls.”

“Ricky!” I exclaimed. “It's me, Johnny Hangtime!”

“What happened to
you
?”

“I must have passed out,” I explained. “The last thing I remember, Roland was asking me to take your place for the acting scenes.”

Ricky laughed, even though I could tell it was painful for him. “Roland told me he was going to ask you,” he said, still giggling. “That cracks me up. You're not afraid to jump off the Empire State Building. You're not afraid to go over Niagara Falls. But you're afraid to say a few lines.”

“It's scary.”

“What
you
do is scary,” Ricky said. “Until yesterday, I never appreciated how tough it is to do what you do. Any jerk can read lines. Doing stunts is another thing.”

“A lot of guys wouldn't have had the guts to try that gag,” I told him. “You've got guts.”

Ricky's mouth curved up in a little smile. “Hey, stunt kid,” he said. “I got you a little present. Open the drawer next to you.”

I opened the drawer of the night table between the two beds. There was a box in there, about the size of a shoe box. It was wrapped, and had a bow around it. I peeled off the paper and opened the box.

Inside was a can of Mountain Dew. The note with it read: “To Johnny Hangtime: Thanks for making me a movie star. Now it's your turn.”

I cracked open the can and chugged half of it. Then I held it up to Ricky's mouth so he could have some too.

“Break a leg,” Ricky said. “But not like I did.”