Free Ether by Ben Ehrenreich Page A

His mouth was dry. He couldn’t breathe. He was a large man, and far from young, so maybe it was the effort of running fast. But maybe it was something else. Maybe he could no longer allow himself to live unburdened. A wave of nausea overtook him, and he remembered. He had made a deal. What was his was no longer his. It wasn’t even his to leave behind.
    The bagman recovered his breath and walked back with eyes downcast. He retrieved the things from the ground and stuffed them into the bags, but not with any care and not in any special order. He just stuffed them in.
He is challenged.
    The stranger sat there kneeling, the stained brown paper empty at his ankle beside him. Between his palms he held the thing. His mouth hung agape and his eyes shone with something very much like love. He stroked it as you might caress an infant, caressing not just the humble thing itself but the luminous and empyrean future that it promised to call forth, and the past it could not fail to redeem. He was lost in it. The voices, when at last he heard them, arrived as if from somewhere far away.
    â€œYou old bum!” said one voice.
    â€œFaggot!” said another.
    â€œStinking perv!” a third voice said.
    â€œDirty old bum!” the first chimed in again.
    Across the yard the stranger spied a clump of boys in windbreakers and baseball caps worn backwards. He grinned and counted them. One. Two. Three. The fourth a fat one. The stranger rose, his eyes dancing with delight. Four boys. Foul-mouthed boys, ill-bred and nasty-minded. Nothing more corrupt than children. As good a place to start as any. He lifted the thing in his fist and with a steady hand took aim first at the one farthest from him, a fat boy hanging back a bit, fumbling in the pockets of his baggy shorts. But before the stranger could execute his wishes, something hit him in the ribs. As he stepped back a second stone struck him hard in the wrist. He tripped over the log behind him and, falling, lost his grip on the thing in his hand. It fell in the grass out of his sight. He hissed a curse.
    â€œYou got him!” said the first voice.
    â€œI got him too!” said another.
    â€œHit him again!” the third boy said.
    â€œDon’t be a faggot, Tubs. Throw the fucking rock!” yelled the first boy to the fourth.
    The boys let loose another volley of stones and it was the fat one this time who hit his mark, striking the stranger on the temple with a chunk of granite as big as a fist.
    â€œHah!” the fat boy yelled, pumping his chubby fist, “Who’s the faggot now?”
    The stranger groaned and groped in the weeds. At last his fingers found what they were searching for, but by the time he stood and blinked away the blood in his eyes enough to be able to aim, the boys had scattered through the trees.
    â€œBum!” yelled one boy, his voice trailing off as he dived over a hedge.
    â€œOld bum!” yelled another, diving after him.
    â€œWho’s the faggot now?” howled the fat boy with glee as he followed his friends to safety.
Mice.
    The slenderest of the three sat shirtless over his needlepoint. He was quite tall, and heavily tattooed with lightning bolts and crosses. A panther crawled up his arm. An eagle spread its wings across his shoulders. A cartoon woodpecker winked just below his navel. He sat on a trunk, his pale collarbones jutting, red suspenders hanging at his sides. As he stitched, a flush of pride spread across his cheeks and upwards, even to the peak of his shining, hairless skull. “Almost done,” he announced in a whisper that barely contained his excitement.
    In front of him, a short and rotund but solid man, similarly inked but with his red suspenders pulled up over a sleeveless undershirt, shaved the cratered, pink scalp of a third man, tall, thick-necked, and fat. The taller man sat on a metal folding chair, which, beneath him, looked to have been burgled from a doll’s house. He was