Free Ether by Ben Ehrenreich

bagman recalled the stillness with which the stranger had sat on the swaying bus, as if he were invisibly rooted to some anchor deep below the earth, or conversely, as if he were himself the weight of a pendulum suspended from the clouds, impervious to mere terrestrial inertia. And he recalled the thing the stranger had carried as if it had been some golden scepter or an emerald larger than his head and not a plain parcel wrapped in stained brown paper and tied with kitchen twine. It was perfect, the bagman thought, a perfect thing.
    The bagman skipped his usual morning ablutions and immediately set about sweeping clear a larger square of concrete. He folded the newspapers on which he’d slept, tossed them in the bushes, and removed his possessions piece by piece from the plastic bags that held them. He laid them side by side in a wide circle around the camp and spiraled them in toward the firepit. Among quite a few additional objects, he produced a fan belt; a pair of sunglasses; a ballpoint pen; a pencil sharpener; a volleyball; a balaclava; two bungee cords, red and white; a coconut; a plastic fork; a skull-shaped stone; three varieties of seashells; an unrolled condom, dried to the consistency of beachstrewn kelp; a fez; a pair of mittens; a yellow legal pad; a purple bandanna; a maple leaf; a plastic owl; a postcard depicting three baboons; an aluminum hose-clamp; a box of sugared cereal; a small plush monkey, missing one ear; a rusted can opener; a plastic action figure gripping a scimitar with tiny yellow hands; the cast-off exoskeleton of a locust; the Book of Mormon; a magic eightball; a creased watercolor of a sunset; a paisley necktie; the dry stone of an apricot; a pornographic magazine, the cover of which bore the words “The Beaver Twins: Wide Open”; a lumpy pearl; three pebbles of unusual color and shape; a toothbrush still wrapped in its cellophane packaging; a pair of crew socks; a coffee mug that announced itself to be the World’s #1 Granny; a Y-shaped twig; the dried foot of a seagull; an empty green bottle that had once contained aftershave lotion; a spark plug; a magnifying glass; an unopened box of bandaids, a glass shaker filled with crushed red pepper; a dog whistle that had never been used to call a dog; a pair of handcuffs, sans key; the crushed ribs and vertebrae of a garter snake preserved in a ziplock bag; a hearing aid; a hand towel; a small, faded plastic pumpkin; two unmatching sandals; a sweatshirt advertising a company that manufactures sweatshirts; two wedding rings, one bent; and a single bobby pin.
    When he had emptied all three bags, the bagman’s possessions lay helixed about beneath the overpass like a crop circle, but even this impressive arrangement gave him no pleasure. All spread out like that, the pale tawdriness of his things — and of all things, not just the pumpkin, the monkey and the twig, but the concrete they lay on, the cracks in it, the pillars that supported the highway above him, the highway itself, the reeds and trash-strewn bushes — seemed only to have multiplied. He considered rearranging it all in a pyramid, or something close to a cube, but dismissed both ideas as futile. Nothing could redeem these things. There was no magic order, no code to break or secret lock to pick. All context was equally empty, for all its possible components were empty too. They were already their own ghosts, these things, their own crinkled husks. But the bagman knew one thing that wasn’t.
    He turned and walked away. He could not remember the last time he had taken three steps without his bags. He felt almost weightless. He wanted to skip. His eyes seemed to allow more light into his brain. He remembered the name of this sensation. It was not quite freedom: it was called relief. He kicked a rock from his path and broke into a bent, lumbering sprint.
    He made it halfway across the field. The light had grown too bright inside his skull. His heart thumped.