Frayed from Use

In a small, quaint little house near the main road leading out of the village lived the ragged man. He would never have considered himself ragged, but that's what the people in the village called him and it stuck.

The ragged man collected clothes. Hats and shirts and jackets and skirts and scarves and mittens were piled in every corner of his small home, and the small barn out back, and the shed off to the side of his home under the old oak.

They were all clothes that once belonged to someone else. Many he bought for small change as he was most interested in the oldest, most worn pieces. Others he found. A few were given to him by friends or peculiar strangers he met at the pub or walking through the village. He would never ask for a piece of clothing, however. It had to come to him only when its previously life was over, and it had moved on from whomever wore it before.

The ragged man would welcome the old clothes as old friends. To him, each and every one had a story and he loved to listen to them. A fancy shirt with a missing button and a bent collar was once worn to the opera in Paris. A pair of creased and wickedly scuffed tan boots had walked the streets of Rome where their owner protected a group of prostitutes in a brothel. A black and gold scarf had kept the neck warm of a young romantic one winter as he penned a poem for a girl he fancied.

None of the people the ragged man talked to believed the stories were true but they enjoyed them just the same. He would dress in combinations of his mismatched closes that were at times ridiculous and other times oddly refined. He would pair dinner jackets and dungarees one day, and another night a work shirt and a long skirt.

The women's clothes are what earned him the most whispers in town. More than a few thought it disgusting and an affront to themselves or society or to God. A few joked his skirts weren't that different from what the Scotts wore with their kilts. Overall they just laughed it off as another quirk of the already strange ragged man who, as was often pointed out, was clearly not right in the head to start with.

The children loved him. On the whole, children can be mean about people like the ragged man, mocking anything they see weird or strange as part of their desperate desire to fit in. The ragged man had wonderful stories and that, by unspoken consensus, exempted him from taunts and teasing.

They would ask about his outfit every day and the ragged man would settle in and paint his rags' tale for his audience, whether one child or twenty. The clothes could talk to him, he said, because he knew how to listen. The spoke to him because he took them in when they were cast aside, so now they wrapped him in their adventures. Adventures that the ragged man passed on to any who would listen.

Occasional nights would find him in the pub with his outfits and stories. If anyone would listen he would nurse a pint and tug on a pair of suspenders and while telling of the workman who wore them all his years at the shipyard. If enough people listened he would pace in a far corner of the main room for his audience while he grew increasingly excited as he divulged the history of every scrap he wore. As often as not someone had to help the ragged man, exhausted and drunk, back to his small home.

On a day in late September someone knocked on the ragged man's door. The air had just turned crisp and leaves were surrendering their green. The summer had been hotter than usual and tempers had been short. Smiles and good cheer returned with the cooler winds. The ragged man was delighted because he had so many more layers he could wear in a day, and he chose colors to match the upcoming fall.

The knock came again. The ragged man gave a small jump of surprise. He'd already forgotten the first knock as he was so wrapped up in picking clothes for the day. Nobody knocked at his house. He frowned with concentration, not wanting to forget again, and moved around the pile of scarves he had been sorting through for the door.

The man who stood outside his door was slender, with pronounced cheekbones and the tiniest of bends in his nose. He wore a sharp peacoat, with the collar pulled up against the wind. His black hair had been slicked into place recently, but had lost its battle against the same wind the peacoat fought against. His name was James.

"Hello," James said, with a nervous smile.

"Hello," the ragged man said. "That is a very nice coat."

James' smile faltered. "Thank you. May I come in?"

"Oh, sure, sure," the ragged man said, backing out of the doorway and gesturing James inside.

James stepped inside slowly, taking in the cramped room and mountains of clothes. He expected it to smell somehow, maybe of mildew or rot, but it didn't. The clothes were all clean, there were just more of them in one place than he'd ever seen. The ragged man closed the door behind James and stepped into the room. He'd glance at James then look quickly away.

"This is where you live?" James asked. "With all of... this?"

The ragged man patted a pile near him, a pile of rumpled shirts that came up nearly to the ragged man's shoulders. "These are my friends," he said. "Where else would I live?"

James shook his head. "I don't know. It took a long time to find you. I would've come sooner... I should've. I just didn't know what to say. I was ashamed. Scared. It was stupid. I was stupid."

The ragged man shrugged, glancing at James' clothes but never quite up to his face. "I don't know about that. You wear the coat of a very smart man," he said.

James snorted. "I wear the coat of a fool. But I've grown, and realized what I cared about most wasn't the business or my family."

The ragged man shifted uncomfortably. "What was it then?"

"Leo, it was you!" James said, stepping forward and reaching to take the ragged man's hand.

The ragged man stumbled back, tripping and falling back into a mountain of jackets. "No, no, there is no Leo here," he said, waving away James' attempts to help him up.

The ragged man stood and hooked his thumb into the woolen vest he wore. "I am DuVal, an actor in Paris who wanted to act Shakespeare more than anything. Learned all the plays in French and English, but he just wasn't-"

"Leo..." said James, quietly.

The ragged man pulled a scarf off a shelf and swirled it around his neck. "I am Clementine, and I never considered myself worth loving, but I worked so hard for my—"

"Stop," James said. "Just... stop." Tears welled in his eyes, and his hands trembled. The ragged man grew still.

"This was a mistake," James said, and turned for the door. He stopped there, his heart pounding painfully, his breath refusing to come.

By the door hung an old leather bomber jacket, peppered with ash marks and a hole in the left elbow. It was the only thing the whole house that stood by itself, that stood alone. James knew if he held it to his nose it would still reek faintly of stale smoke, gasoline, and beer.

He looked back once more at the ragged man then ran back out into the frosty morning.

The ragged man watched him go, then sniffed the air outside as he pulled his door closed and set the latch.

"I'll need a hat today," he said, carefully straightening up the pile of jackets he'd fallen into. "I'll need you all to help keep me warm against the cold."