The Talent

The Saturday he came to visit me, I was sleeping heavily under the roiling heat of a lazy summer afternoon. Locusts buzzed loud, the sun bright and unblinking, sneaking in past curtains.

The knock at the screen door was light at first, just enough to rouse me from my slumber, not enough to keep me from dozing again. Louder the second time, over the sound of the fan droning on and on.

I clambered to the door and opened it, that bright and unblinking orb blinding me, making me squint.

“Sorry to wake you,” the unfamiliar voice said to me.

Finally accustomed to daylight, my eyes settled upon the face before me, worn like leather, wrinkled and wise. “What can I do for you?”

The man reached into the pocket of his T-shirt and pulled out a small piece of paper. He held it out for me to take, wordless.

Reluctantly, I took the paper, and I realized it was a check in my own name. Confused, I looked up at the stranger. “What is this?”

The man spat casually off to the side. “It’s yours.”

“What?”

He squinted and looked off into the distance, bored-like. “The money.” He snorted, looked back. “Yours to do with what you please.”

“But... I’m confused.”

“Way I figure it, the longer you stand there asking me about it, the less time you got to start spending it. I said it’s yours, free and clear. Have a good day.”

The dilapidated wooden porch creaked beneath his boots when he turned. I watched, dumbfounded, as he began walking casually away from me like the thing he’d just done was a thing to be expected.

I looked back down at the check.

$20,000.

I quickly rushed back into my bedroom and rummaged through soiled clothes on the floor until I found the little black notebook. Opening it to a blank page, I sat on the side of the bed and began to make a list of all the things I could spend the money on, all the places in my life that needed a miracle, which ones needed it the most.

This house and all its repairs.

My brother and his son.

My debt to Richard.

My mother and her medical bills.

The list grew before me and took on a sense of malevolence, taunting me, laughing at me, looming so large, the check so small. In the shadow of my great burden, a miracle reduced to nothing.

I paced, treading stained carpet, patches of trail where I’d paced before. Thinking. A multitude of worries marched across the fray, considered. Now, a solution. Lying in my pocket, silent, small, ink on paper, unknowing of its own magnitude.

But... how to spend it.

I turned to the notebook again, at that mocking list, desperate.

I needed more time.

A day should do it. Twenty-four hours to determine the best way to spend the money. I’d sleep on it, sort it out.

It went quickly, that day, and the sleep never came.

A week, then. That’s what I would take. Seven days to think things through, weigh it out—hell, pray if I needed to. So many options before me, whispering, asking, “What will you choose?”

Seven days and the worry came, holding my gut in a vice. Sleep had not yet returned for her full and healing cycle; only brief moments, brought on by drink, interrupted by dread.

And finally, a name chosen from the list, the check in my pocket, shoes on to walk to the bank, to cash it, pay up.

Halfway there I realized I’d chosen the wrong thing, must have, wanted to pick something else because if it had been the right thing, it would have felt right, felt more right than it did on my way to the bank, check in hand.

I turned back on the road, sun radiating off the asphalt, the sound of something large, something fast, trying to move, a screech, a honk, the smell of something burning, a list laughing, locusts buzzing.

The knock was loud, over the sound of the fan droning on and on.

I clambered to the door and looked out upon the stranger with a weather-weary face and raven-colored hair touching his shoulders.

He kept his eyes narrowed at me and spat off to the side, thumbs hooked through belt loops. “So, what you’d spend it on?”

I looked at him, confused. “I’m sorry?”

He nodded to the pocket of my gym shorts, as if I harbored something there. “The check. What did you end up spending it on?”

The panic again, the dread, the feeling of that small slip of paper in my hands, seven days, a list that kept growing, feet that kept pacing. “I... I didn’t... nothing... I...” frantic, I searched my pockets. But it was not there.

The man’s face changed and he looked upon me, forlorn, truly saddened by my predicament, by my searching for small slips of paper, and he said, “Oh, son. It was only money. Not more time.”

“But that's what I needed! More time! To figure out what—”

“If I gave it to you—more time—how would you spend the money?”

“Well, I don't know. On whatever feels right. Maybe my mom? Yeah, probably my mom. But maybe my brother—”

The man put his hand out to stop me. And he did not say anything else, only looked at me with sorrowful eyes. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, he was gone: walking silently up the gravel drive, up through the vast fields toward mountains, disappearing into the line of light on the horizon, slipping deeply into eventide.