by Walter Wangerin, Jr.
My wife and I stumbled upon this amazing story many years ago. We actually turned it into a skit with our foster children and performed it at our local church. I find it intriguing and hopeful and so appropriate for Easter. Enjoy!
I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing in my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for. Hush now, and I will tell it to you.
Even before the dawn one Friday morning, I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our city. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice: “Rags!”
“Rags! New rags for old! I take your old, dirty, and tired rags! Rags!”
Now this is a wonder, I thought to myself, for the man stood six-feet-four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular. His eyes flashed love and wonderment. Could he find no better job than this? To be a ragman in the inner city?
I followed him. My curiosity drove me. And I wasn’t disappointed. For what I was about to see was miraculous.
Soon the ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing, and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.
The ragman stopped his cart. Quietly, he walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and baby diapers.
“Give me your rag,” he said gently, “and I’ll give you another.”
He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.
Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the ragman did a strange thing: he put her stained handkerchief to his own face and he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done. His shoulders were shaking vigorously. Yet she was left without a tear.
This is a wonder, I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing ragman like a child who cannot turn away from a mystery.
‘Rags! Rags! New rags for old!”
In a little while, when the sky showed grey behind the rooftops and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.
Now the ragman full of compassion looked upon this child with pity, as he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.
“Give me your rag,” he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, “and I’ll give you mine.”
The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head, while placing the bonnet upon her. I gasped at what I saw: for with the bandage went the wound! Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood – his own!
“Rags! Rags! I take old rags!” cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong ragman.
The sun hurt both the sky now, and my eyes; the ragman seemed more and more in a hurry.
“Are you going to work?” he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole. The man shook his head. The ragman pressed him: “Do you have a job?”
“Are you crazy?” sneered the man. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket – flat, the cuff stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.
“So,” said the ragman. “Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.”
The one-armed man took off his jacket as did the ragman. I trembled at what I was now seeing: the ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put the ragman’s jacket on, he now had two good arms, thick as tree limbs.
“Go to work,” said the now one-armed ragman.
Stumbling upon a drunk, the ragman found lying unconscious beneath an army blanket an old man hunched in a fetal position. He took that blanket and wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.
And now I had to run to keep up with the ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably, and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, looking older, and sick, yet he moved with a steady pace. He eventually came to the city limits, and then he rushed beyond.
I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him onward.
The ragman came to a landfill; the garbage pits. I wanted to help him in what he was attempting to do but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then, he layed down and pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket and then he died.
How I cried to witness that death! I slumped over and wailed as one who has no hope. I had come to admire the ragman. I sobbed myself to sleep.
I did not know, how could I know? I slept through Friday night and Saturday night too.
But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violently supernatural bright light.
Light – pure, bright, demanding light slammed against my face. I blinked and I looked and I saw the ragman, folding his blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! There was no sign of sorrow or age and all the rags he had gathered shined, cleansed and bright.
I walked up to the ragman. I told him my name. I felt compeled to remove my clothes. I said to him with longing in my voice: “Dress me.”
He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The ragman, the ragman, the Christ!
Steve Prokopchak 