The Talent

by Karl El-Koura

I used to be a hired gun—with two exceptions. One is I was picky, two is that I never used a gun. The first I can explain easy: the guy had to deserve the dying. The second is going to take some telling and requires what the high-brows call a digression.

The first time I used my talent, it was on my dad. I was eight-years-old, and I didn’t know I had it then or even that I had used it, but one moment I heard my bedroom door creak open and the next I heard a loud thump! as Dad fell flat on his nose. I didn’t feel angry or sad; I just felt guilty, the way kids do sometimes.

It was just me and Dad in the house; Mom had died in the hospital giving birth to me. Dad used to say she died so she wouldn’t have to raise such a bad kid.

I didn’t call 911 that night—I just bolted out of the house, with my old school bag already packed with clothes and some chips and cola ‘cause I’d been planning on running away. For two years I had planned to run away, but I always chickened out, and ended up eating the chips and drinking the cola and asking Dad to buy more. But I ran that night ‘cause I was scared, more scared than I’d ever been before. I bolted out of the house, still wearing my pajamas and clutching that old school bag that had the picture of Spider-man on the front as if it had the power to hide me from the cops. I felt like they were after me—the cops—that they had discovered I’d killed my dad and were coming after me. That night, hiding underneath a rotting wooden bench in a park a few blocks from the house Dad and I used to live in, I dreamt that they’d finally caught up with me. They threw me in a big room and shined a bright light in my eyes and asked why I’d killed Dad. Over and over, “Why’d you kill your pa, boy?” Then, “Fess up, son, we’ll go easier on ya if you cooperate.” I don’t remember dreams most of the time, but I still remember that cop’s voice. Rough and grumbling, the voice of a guy who’d smoked cigars since he was inhaling.

I couldn’t speak in my dream, couldn’t say a single word to defend myself. “All I did was pray,” I’d practice during the day, as I hid in dumpsters behind different restaurants and ate what they threw in. “I just prayed, hoped, wished that Dad wouldn’t come near me anymore. I didn’t mean for him to die.” I practiced in case the cops ever did catch me, but also so I could say it in my dream. I had the dream almost every night after I killed Dad for about a month, but I never could say anything to defend myself.

I stopped having the dream the next time I used my talent. It was mid-October and getting cold, and I was behind a small convenience store asleep in a warm spot between pillows of garbage bags. I woke to loud, angry voices. Curious, I followed the sounds. There was an elementary school like I used to go to nearby, four guys standing in its parking lot. I was hiding behind a tree, and I could see them pretty clear thanks to these two tall light posts that hung over them like evil spirits. Two of the guys distracted this other guy while the fourth circled around him and pulled out a knife as long as my arm. I saw it flash out of the guy’s pocket, and—insanely—I screamed “Look out!” before I could stop myself.

I didn’t even wait to find out if they heard me, I had that much smarts at least. I turned tail and bolted. I fell on a rock before I got too far, and cut myself pretty bad, but I lay there like a corpse anyway, perfectly still, perfectly quiet. But the guys had flashlights and were searching around and shouting back and forth to each other, and I suddenly became very scared and started to panic—and got up and started running again.

They caught me and dragged me back to the school’s parking lot, where this guy was on the pavement, bright red blood leaking away from him like water from a hose that wasn’t turned off all the way. His tongue was on the pavement a couple of inches from his head. Something solid and bitter worked into my throat; I forced myself to swallow and tried not to think about throwing up.

“That’s what happens to squealers,” one of the guys said, maybe ‘cause he saw that I was staring at the tongue. “Now we’re gonna show you what happens to peeping toms.”

I closed my eyes tight as I could and tried to take my mind away, like I used to do with Dad. But one of the guys jabbed his thumbs in my eyes, really hard. I heard the other two laughing. Dad used to say that a man that cries ain’t a man, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s stupid, but I was really ashamed that these guys—one poking my eyes with his thumbs, the others standing around and laughing—would think less of me because I was crying.

Although the guy had forced my eyes open, my vision was blurred—whether from the tears or the pain, I don’t know. But I felt something sharp and cold pressed against my throat and realized—almost too late—that it was the knife they’d used to kill the other guy, and now it was my turn.

I dropped them dead, to give you the short of it, like I had done my dad. I curled up in a dark corner in my mind and said, “God, please God, take these guys away.” And He did.

 

After that, I knew I’d never need to carry a gun for the rest of my life. When I discovered my talent—when I realized what I was capable of—I went from an eight-year-old scared of just about everything to fearing nothing and no one.

I was a pretty smart kid even at eight, when most kids don’t know anything except video games and sports. So I thought I had it figured out—God was paying me back. All the nights I’d trembled in my bed, terrified of my own father, God was now apologizing for and making sure that I wasn’t ever afraid again.

I didn’t hang around that parking lot too long. I just looked the guys over, the guys I had killed, and felt like the most powerful person in the world. I was so excited I started trembling; I even kicked one of the dead guys in the stomach before I ran away, which I felt sorry about afterward.

I survived pretty well as a kid, eating scraps and sleeping whenever I got tired. I did odd jobs sometimes and made a little money, which I kept in my socks. I’d especially look for moving trucks. Wherever there’s a moving truck, there’s someone who needs an extra hand lifting boxes and is willing to pay you for it, especially if you’re a kid they think won’t make too much noise if they try to bilk you. At night, I’d walk through the neighborhoods and pick out what I wanted from their garbage.

Someone that worked for the city found me walking the streets a couple of months later. I ended up in a long string of abusive homes, landing with people that made Dad look like a saint. When they thought I wasn’t listening, the Agency people called me the cursed child, because so many of my foster parents ended up dying in their sleep.

I finally landed with a decent old lady who was richer than anyone I’d ever known before. She lived in a great big house that had a pool in the back as big as the house Dad and I used to live in. Kids from the neighborhood would come over to Miss Dimple’s house—Miss Dimple is the lady I’m talking about—on Saturday mornings and Sundays after church to swim in her pool.

I spent two years with her, from fifteen to seventeen, and I could tell you lots that she did for me. The short of it is that she made me go to high school and tutored me every night so I could catch up. She died of cancer before she could see me graduate from high school, which made me sad enough that I didn’t bother going to the ceremony.

Given my background, it’s strange how badly I dealt with Miss Dimple’s death. But I didn’t use my talent for more than three years after she died; maybe I didn’t want to make anyone else feel the way I felt. Young as I was, I knew that even the worst of us have got someone that cares. Someone who’d cry when we died, even after the funeral, and think about us from time to time.

I flunked my driver’s license test twice in the next two years. If I kept flunking it, maybe I never would have used my talent again. But the third time was a charm for me. Things were okay at first, when I was just getting the hang of driving, ‘cause I was nervous and careful, but after a few weeks with my foot on the pedal, I became easy to irritate.

If someone drove too slow in front of me, it pissed me off. If I saw someone in my rearview getting too close, it pissed me off. If someone cut me off, or even if someone in the next lane drove faster than I was driving, it pissed me off.

One day, I just erupted like a volcano and wish-killed the guy driving the van in front of me and crashed right into him. Killed the kid that was sleeping in the back.

No one blamed me. The cop who told me about the accident said the guy in the van had suffered a heart-attack and that the little kid sleeping in the back had died immediately and had probably felt no pain.

I got out of that hospital as soon as I got the chance, didn’t bother with my car or my money or anything, and got as involved with drugs and hookers as a guy possibly can be. Night after night, I stood outside an all-hours theater and robbed people as they came out until I had enough money to get my fix, drugs or girls or whatever I needed that night. But robbing innocent people made me want to jump off the roof of a building every time I did it; I knew I couldn’t keep going like that. So I went from using drugs and girls to selling them.

A couple of months later, one of my girls came back roughed up, with bruises on her legs and arms. I found the guy who did that to her; when I left, he was begging me to kill him. But I didn’t—after the car accident, I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t have any more deaths hanging over my head.

After that, word got around that I was a pretty tough guy and I quit the pimping business to go into the intimidating business: I became a hired bully.

It was around that time that I met Gracie. I was throwing up in some dark alley, which was the way my body always reacted after finishing a job. Gracie followed the sound of my retching to ask if I was all right. When I looked up, and saw her face in the moonlight, I couldn’t believe that anything so beautiful could exist in such an ugly place. When she repeated her question, I couldn’t believe that someone could have such genuine concern for a complete stranger.

Anyway, I quit bullying after a girl who’d paid me to beat on her boss showed up at my apartment door in two garbage bags, one for her head and one for her body. I found the guy and killed him and the goons he had with him, because I wasn’t sure I could take them all in a fair fight.

It wasn’t safe to stick around after that—not that I was worried about myself, but about Gracie. Everyone knew she was my girl; everyone knew they could hurt me the worst by hurting her. The thought of Gracie getting hurt—Gracie, who’d never hurt anyone; Gracie, who always had something positive to say, no matter how bad things got; Gracie, who was my only source of light in a dark and lonely world—the thought of her getting hurt was enough to make me want to scream until my heart exploded, and more than enough to get me out of that city.

Gracie and I had some money saved up and we got a small apartment in a quiet neighborhood where no one’s in the streets after eleven. I got a job managing a small coffee and donut store, where I had to make sure that there were enough donuts on the shelves and coffee in the pots, and that the bathrooms stayed clean. Gracie got a job as a secretary for some big-time lawyer with his own firm; secretary is what she did before she got downsized and fell into hooking. A few years before she found me puking in the alley that night.

I guess we were both trying to go straight in this new place.

Life got to be pretty good…except for this feeling I couldn’t shake, that I was hiding from my destiny. The more I watched the news and the more I read the papers—the more I felt like there were people walking the planet who didn’t deserve to live. I began to jot down names.

I became a killer, which is not how I saw it at first. I saw myself as a garbage man, taking out society’s garbage day in and day out. At first, if ever I did feel bad, it was because of the thought that there was more scum on the earth who deserved to die than I could possibly get to in my life. But you’ve got to keep trying, I used to tell myself. Reach exceeding grasp, like that one poet said.

When I killed a guy, did I think that he might have a wife and kids that depended on him? Did I worry that I’d killed a guy who might have come up with the cure for cancer if I’d let him live another week, another month, another year?

I tried not to. I did my homework, made sure the best I could that my mark deserved for me to kill him. It’s one of the reasons I became a hired gun, with the two exceptions. I got my clients to do research for me. If they could convince me the guy deserved to die, I took the job.

But every time I killed someone, I wrestled with the fact that no one is all bad. The wife-beating drunk was maybe the nicest person to his mistress.

But you’ve been given a gift, I’d remind myself each time. And you have to use it. The way I figured it—someone or something had given me this talent. There was a reason for me to have it. The best I could do was my best—and hope that things not only balanced, but came out positive.

So I quit my donut store job and started doing very selective contract work. Sometimes it paid very well, sometimes not. Sometimes I loved my job. Occasionally I tried to stop. Sometimes I wished those cops with the bright lights would catch up to me and stop the whole thing once and for all. If it weren’t for Gracie, maybe I would’ve wished myself dead eventually.

My conscience aside, Gracie and I lived well. She waited for me to marry her; I just loved waking up every morning to see her face. We went to movies and out to dinner and showed our faces at boring office Christmas parties. We lived like that for three years. Then God decided to kill Gracie.

 

Miss Dimple used to say that everything happens for a reason. I don’t know if that’s true always, but it was true in this case.

Gracie and I were taking a walk in a park near our apartment, something we did almost every Friday night in those days. Lately, my work had been causing friction between us. Gracie didn’t know about my talent, of course. She thought I was beating on people, like in the old days. And she didn’t like it, to give you the short of it.

“We don’t need the money,” she would say.

“I don’t do it for the money,” I would say.

“You might get hurt,” she would say.

“I won’t,” I would say.

Just like that, on and on. That Friday night, as we walked, she started in on me again.

“I don’t like it, okay?” she said. “I don’t like the thought of you going around hurting people for a few bucks.”

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t do it for the money.”

“Then why do you do it?”

How many times had I asked myself that question? And what would she think of me if I told her the truth? What would she think of me if I told her, “Because killing is who I am”?

“Because some people deserve to get hurt,” I said instead.

“Why do you get to decide who deserves to get hurt?” she asked, but I couldn’t answer that.

“It’s like this,” she said. “There’s so much ugliness in this world, so much evil, and so many people causing hurt and pain. Contributing to it is like throwing a glass of water into the ocean. You might make a few ripples, but that’s about it, and no one remembers that you threw in the glass after a while. You might as well not have thrown it in at all, because you really haven’t made a difference. Whereas, if you do good, even if it’s just a little bit, you’ve made a big difference, because your drop of water is being added to such a small amount. You’re making a difference, see?”

Gracie sometimes talked like that, with metaphors and similes and sometimes I couldn’t understand her but this time I did.

She asked me to promise that I wouldn’t take on another job. I did, but I didn’t intend to stop killing people—I was pretty sure I didn’t have it in me to stop, whether I wanted to or not—only that I wouldn’t do it for money anymore.

The next morning, I was in the shower when I thought I heard her moving around.

“You’re welcome to join me,” I called out, but she didn’t answer.

I turned off the water, wrapped a towel around my waist, and went back to the bedroom.

She was dead. I’d had enough experience to know a lifeless body when I saw one. The first thought that came into my mind was that God was punishing me for taking away all those people’s lives.

I didn’t call for an ambulance—all they’d be able to do was tell me why and when and how she had died, all of which I didn’t want to know just then.

I knelt down on the bed beside her, and begged God to give her back to me. I prayed, “God, please God, Gracie’s all I got in this world and life ain’t worth the living without her.” For a brief, desperate moment, I thought that maybe my talent worked both ways—if I could kill someone just by wishing it, couldn’t I bring them back by wishing harder than I’d ever wished for anything before?

I begged and prayed and cried for maybe three hours, but Gracie didn’t twitch an eyebrow. I was exhausted after all that, and I fell asleep, right on her chest.

 

It’s hard to swim in the ocean, I thought. All these waves.

I tried to keep my head above water, but another bobbing wave came along and threatened to pull me under. I fought my way back up, broke through the surface of the water, and gasped for air.

But what was I swimming toward? I looked around, circling in the water, but couldn’t see anything. Then a sound—like the beating of soft drums—made me look in a direction and I saw it—land!

I swam with a purpose, toward the green and brown of the coconut trees. The swelling waves tried their best to pull me under, but they only managed to slow me down. My gaze was fixed on the trees standing tall and distinct against the cloudless blue sky. I swam toward that island, encouraged by the steady sound of native drums. Even the trees seemed to be cheering me on, as they waved in the wind.

I woke up only slowly, to the up-down bobbing of Gracie’s breathing and the soft sound of her beating heart.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, looking down at me and playing with my hair. “You looked so peaceful.”

I felt peaceful.

And I became peaceful, too. Not that I stopped using my talent—it was a gift, and I had to use it the best way I knew how. I still killed after that, but I didn’t kill people anymore.

I killed the cancer of a patient in the hopeless section of the hospital, I killed the pain in the back of an eighty-year old man, I killed the HIV in a kid whose mother almost made me want to break my rule about killing people.

In all, I’ve only got one complaint, which is saying a lot about a life, and it’s that there’s more people in the world who deserve to be healed than I can possibly get to in the time I’ve got on this earth. But while I’m here, I’ve got to keep trying, reach exceeding grasp; dribbling a little good into the world, one drop at a time.