Free Nothing Is Negotiable by Mark Bentsen

hold and one corner of the paper had partially fallen. When he peeked inside he could barely make anything out since the windows were dirty and a large cabinet blocked most of his view. So, with pressing business at hand, he walked on. At the end of the building, he turned and went down half a block to the alley. The cool morning breeze hit him in the face and old yellowed newspapers cart wheeled toward him like tumbleweeds. Half a dozen brown dumpsters dotted the alley intermittently and weeds grew in the cracks of the pavement against the building.
    While he looked for an appropriate corner, he noticed graffiti on the back door of the vacant building. It wasn’t the common gang script as he’d seen in big cities, like Austin, but written more in the style of a sixth-grader with a can of spray paint. LNR loves CB was legible across the top and below it was a pretty good drawing of two dogs having sex, missionary style. If Luke weren’t so tired, he would have laughed.
    Then something weird caught his eye. The back door of the vacant store appeared to have been opened recently because some weeds growing next to the building were closed inside the door. This was interesting since the front door looked like it had not been opened for a year or more. For the hell of it, he tried the handle. And as expected, it was locked.
    He walked a little further and ducked behind a dumpster and unzipped his pants. While he peed, he heard a faint, muffled cry. He twisted his head around and stood motionless, and focused on the noise. After he finished he stayed still and listened. Ten silent seconds later, he heard it again. It was coming from the dumpster.
    He stepped on the side and lifted the lid. A small orange cat lay curled up on a pile of bulging black garbage bags about three feet below the lid. The cat meowed at Luke, stood up and meowed again.
    “Come on Kitty,” Luke said as he opened the lid fully.
    The cat wasted no time. He sprang and landed on the edge of the dumpster about three feet away, then jumped to the ground. It casually trotted down the alley a dozen steps then stopped and looked back, as if to thank him, and then slowly sauntered away.
    Luke started to close the lid when he noticed one of the plastic bags had a tear in it, and a patch of burnt orange caught his eye. He grabbed the bag and tore at the plastic. The single item in the bag spilled out onto the dumpster lid sending a shiver down his spine.
    It was an all-too-familiar windbreaker with The University of Texas Longhorns embroidered across the back. Bonnie’s windbreaker. The one she never left home without.
    His heart began to pound as he held it up and examined it. Near the collar, a dark red stain about four inches long stained the fabric.
    Luke dropped it onto the pavement, frantically pulled out another bag, and tore it open. Junk mail, copy paper, large brown envelopes torn in half and magazines slid out. He grabbed the next one. Soda cans, an empty box that earlier had been filled with donuts, chicken bones, and a box that said Lean Cuisine Glazed Chicken across the front. He ripped into the next one; damp paper towels and tissues spilled out and then his fingers felt something slimy. He almost gagged as he jerked his hands back. He was about to reach back for another bag when he felt something hard poked him in the leg.
    Startled, he jerked his leg away and looked down to see a man looking up at him. He was a bum with a scraggly gray beard, wearing a dirty blue trench coat and black fedora. In one hand he held a crutch, the end of it pointed up at Luke.
    “What ’cha doing up there?” the bum said, not smiling.
    “Just looking,” Luke said as he cautiously watched the bum. Then, looking back in the dumpster, he thought quickly, and added, “Just looking for something I lost.”
    The bum looked away from Luke, down the alley. Luke followed his gaze and saw two more people halfway down the block looking in other dumpsters. He shifted his focus