"Bag Man"

“Bag Man” treks the sidewalks of a shopping hub in our area of North Carolina. Wearing long pants and a light gray coat and hat or, at times, a skullcap, he carries a backpack with perhaps 15 or 20 translucent plastic shopping bags attached. Some bags hang from his pants and pack and float like ethereal appendages to his body as cars pass, emitting exhaust-pipe breezes.

He’s evident: a young black man, medium build, maybe late twenties or early thirties, walking along . . . at times seemingly talking to himself or to an imaginary person.

I ask about him in Harris-Teeter grocery.

“Somebody said he stays at Motel Six,” an employee says. “If you try to give him food, he won’t take it – not even packaged food. They say he has some money.”

Two major highways intersect where Bag Man trods. Several fast-food stations, three drug stores, a grocery, a bank, and other shops provide backdrop for Bag Man’s stage. Once, my wife and I turn a corner, and he stands close by, under a dogwood near a bank office, shielded from noonday sun, resting from a shopping center reconnoiter.

Who is Bag Man? I don’t know; don’t know anyone who knows. He’s somebody’s son.

I’m in Walgreen’s one day, standing at checkout. I smell strong body odor and suspect Bag Man is near. I’d detected that same smell as he passed by me in Harris-Teeter. I look around but see no one like him. I look down, to the right side of the cash register, out of the way of where feet pass on the store exit path. There, stashed for his return, lay Bag Man’s backpack, bags attached and flowing from canvas straps. I don’t know if his backpack reeked or if his body odor lingered in the air. Bag Man was probably buying water to quench thirst derived from making his rounds, traipsing the shopping area on a scorching day. I take my receipt and head out the door.

Bag Man is familiar to many people in our area. He’s a “public figure,” whose disability is paraded before those of us who clamor on a clogged and busy “life’s highway.” And Bag Man is a reminder to us all that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”