“Deer hunting,” he thought, “you get so tired you go to sleep on your feet.” His hand in his pocket closed around a small metal object, which he absent-mindedly withdrew and pitched into a drift of leaves.
The Power to Kill
by Philip Ketchum
The voluntary acceptance of self-limiting rules applies to murder as well as to other games. Equally applicable, a ruinous spoil-sport can make inroads into the best laid plans.
When I was eight years old I decided to kill my grandfather. He was a thin, scrawny man, bony, sharp featured, and he had a cackling laugh. He used it on me with a devastating effect. He laughed at my mistakes, my awkwardness, my petty rebellions. He was amused when I was caught doing something wrong. He scoffed at my games, my imagination, my daydreaming. I hated him more than anything in the world. One night he died in his sleep and I was heartbroken. I cried and cried and cried. People thought I cried because I loved him. They were wrong. I cried because he had escaped. Now I would never enjoy the great pleasure of killing him.
I remember Miss Tadbald, my sixth grade teacher. By that time I was twelve, thin, gangling, and not a very good student. I was a Boy Scout. I did not want to be a Boy Scout but my parents thought it would be good for me. Soon I was glad I had joined. As a Boy Scout I learned a lot of things about how to handle a knife, how to build a fire, how to tie knots. This knowledge would help when I killed Miss Tadbald. She had black, piercing eyes, a sharp nose, and a tight, thin mouth. She could look at me and see what I was thinking. If I made a mistake in a problem, she saw it. If I skipped my reading, she found out. If I whispered in class, she knew it was me. Others could do wrong, but not me. Day after day after day she made me stay after school, embarrassed me, took away my playtime. I made at least a dozen plans to trap her, torture her, kill her, but one day her mother got sick and she went back home to look after her. A substitute teacher took her place. Miss Tadbald never returned to the school. I never saw her again.
Then there was Lorena Whitcomb. I loved her, and I came to hate her. She was my first true love. I was seventeen when I met her. Before then I had experienced several puppy-love affairs, had developed a flickering interest in girls, but Lorena did not fit into such a category. She burst into my life with so much sweetness, and so much bitterness, it hurts me today to remember her. I became her slave, would have died for her. She destroyed my appetite, my honesty, my sense of responsibility. She was tall, slender, beautiful, had straw-colored hair, blue eyes, wide red lips. Her voice was sultry, tempting, promising everything. Her whisper could make me tingle. I did not want to believe it when I learned she was unfaithful, that she had turned away from me. The murder I devised would have been quite dramatic, but before I could accomplish it I came down with the mumps, and was put to bed. Then, while I lay suffering, my father got word he was to be transferred east. Of course I had to go too. Somewhere between the mumps and the trip east, Lorena disappeared from my life.
The university was good for me. It helped me grow up, it challenged my thinking. I learned a great many things. Some did not come from text books or class lectures. One of my extra-curricular activities was the achievement of a better understanding of murder. There were no classes on this subject, but murder is as old as man. There is a wide experience in the field. The history of every civilization is sprinkled with murder. Some are fine examples of the art and can be studied, analyzed, understood. I might even say there is a philosophy of murder, but I am afraid the average moralist would not accept such a view.
A few principles can be defined and be made understandable. They stand above morality, have little to do with ethics. Take the matter of the power to kill. This is an amazing gift. I have it; you have it; everyone has it, even the lowest and the most ignorant. This is an inherent possession. No one has to buy it, or earn it, or steal it. It is as free as air. I can take your life. I do not care who you are, how powerful you are, how strong, how wealthy, how important. If you are a king, or a prince, a president, a general or a peon, your life is in my hands. I can snuff it out, put a period to your living. All I need is to get a gun, point it at you, and pull the trigger. There is no trick to it at all.
What an amazing power — the power to kill. Aware of it, how can anyone feel small, unimportant, a nothing? In my hands rests your destiny. I can take your life whenever I wish. I am a veritable king. Beware of me — because you live only at my pleasure.
This is true of everyone, yet everyone cannot use the power to kill. I have done considerable research on the subject. In my notebooks are pages and pages of charts, analyzing this phase of the problem, but there is no need to set up and explain the probability equations. A number of generalizations can cover the matter. While everyone has the power to kill, who are those that can make use of it? Who are those that would back away? I think we can say this — that the tender cannot kill, nor the soft, nor the weak, nor the timid. Murder requires a toughness of character, a sense of harshness, a background of strength. We can say this in another way. To be a murderer, a man must be courageous, must have imagination, must be daring. Think about it for a moment, see if we are not right. We are considering murder — planned murder; designed murder; plotted murder. I tell you this definitely. To be a murderer requires all the fine qualities of manhood.
There is another point to analyze. I would set this up as a premise — that murder is one of the highest arts. If murder is one of the highest arts, then it should be reserved to those who can qualify as being worthy of it. I am not talking about the murderer now. I am considering the victims, those to be killed, and I would add that, if murder is one of the highest arts, then the unworthy, the ignoble, and the wishy-washy weak, should be excluded from such benefits.
Do you see what we have done? It is this: We have set up a governing chart covering the subject of murder. Since all have the power to kill, each is a potential murderer. Yet to be a murderer, a man must pass certain tests. He must be strong, courageous, imaginative, decisive, daring. And his victims must not be the unworthy, people of no importance. They must not be the ignoble, less than him, below his station. They must not be the wishy-washy weak, who will come to their own ends soon enough anyhow.
If I had not made a careful analysis of murder, I might have killed a number of my associates while I was at the university. One was a girl who was unappreciative. I was actually on the point of taking her life when I realized she was unimportant, a pretty girl but a nobody. By the time she was thirty she would be fat, flaccid, the mother of a brood of chubby children. There was a young man I nearly killed. He was in several of my classes, a big, bruising individual, crude as the farm he came from. Just in time I realized he was of the ignoble, an earthy person far below my station. There was a professor I thought of murdering, a very intelligent man but one of the wishy-washy weak, a man of no courage. He cringed in the ivory towers of his profession. I could afford to ignore him.
Actually, I am a very normal person, a mathematician, a scientist. I am also a potential murderer. I am aware of my power to kill. I have courage, imagination, daring, strength of character, and it is good that I have. Tonight I will need those qualities. Tonight I must kill someone. I have weighed all considerations. I know what I must do. My victim is not unworthy, she is not ignoble, she is not one of the wishy-washy weak. She is an important person, of high station, of character. I cannot ignore the challenge she presents. I will tell you about her, why I must kill her, and how I will do it. This is very important to me. To you, it can be a demonstration.