As I share with you Walter Wangerin’s “Ragman,” my favorite fictional short story, I’d like to start by telling you something fictionally violent and cruel, that is, I’d like to tell you a little bit about DC Comics superhero vigilante, Ragman (Rory Regan), to compare-and-contrast in order to highlight the healing power of redemptive suffering found in Wangerin’s “Ragman.”
Rory Regan sees his father and his friends electrocuted and killed in front of him and then appropriates their collective skills and strengths when the last emission of electricity zaps him as well. The Ragman uses these auspicious abilities to fight crime and protect people in his neighborhood. His “Suit of Souls” is magically drawn to evil people and thirsts for new souls to swallow up. Everytime he takes a soul, a new patch of cloth is added to his suit, which increases Ragman’s power. This process causes him to feel temporarily ill. There seems to be a limbo dimension to his cloak. Souls can “work out” their crimes in this version of purgatory and be released only after helping Ragman by offering their knowledge, skill, protection, and strength for long enough time. Others gain redemption and leave only after understanding the harmful effects of their actions.
I understand the allure to create superheroes–gods fashioned in our best image–who know firsthand the suffering of mankind and the power afforded them to balance the scales of justice. It tells of our timeless plights, raw deals, and hunger for fair judgment. The words to Leonard Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows” comes to mind: “Everybody knows the deal is rotten. Old Black Joe’s still picking cotton. For your ribbons and bows. And everybody knows.” But at what cost is justice served? What happens when the supervillains or Svengalis and Machiavellis–gods fashioned in our worst image–no longer stand out from the crowd for their mercenary telos of the ends-justify-the-means? Put differently, if superheroes employ the same utilitarian tactic of divorcing the moral ends from the means, we’ve come to an ethical standstill and the “hero” and “villiam” simply become whomever we want or choose them to be.
Ragman, the superhero, leaves little room for God’s vengeance. Moreover, what’s to stop him from using evil means to bring about a just consequence? Yes, a transference of power from an evil person to Ragman, causing him to suffer, seems biblical; however, Christ imputed his righteousness and healing power to those sick souls he came across. His power never augmented when he touched a sinner. If anything, his power mitigated or left him (see Mark 5:30; Luke 8:46). And by taking on all the transgressions of mankind on the cross at Calvary, he was able to save all.
I turn now to Wangerin’s “Ragman” and ask you to pay close attention to this double imputation of health and wholeness for brokenness and suffering.
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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, child. 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!” Ah, the air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.
“Rags! New rags for old! I take your 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, and his eyes flashed intelligence. 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.
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 Pampers.
“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 then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. 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 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 tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and 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. The bonnet he set on hers. And 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, intelligent Ragman.
The sun hurt both the sky, now, and my eyes; the Ragman seemed more and more to 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 other. 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.”
So much quiet authority in his voice!
The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman — and I trembled at what I saw: for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on, he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs; but the Ragman had only one.
“Go to work,” he said.
After that he found a drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. 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, old, old, and sick, yet he went with terrible speed. On spider’s legs he skittered through the alleys of the City, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits, and then he rushed beyond.
I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow. And yet I need to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him so.
The little old Ragman — he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And I waited to help him in what he did but I hung back, hiding. He climbed a hill. With tormented labor he cleared a little space on that hill. Then he sighed. He lay down. He pillowed his head on a handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket. And he died.
Oh how I cried to witness that death! I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who has no hope — because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him; but he died. I sobbed myself to sleep.
I did not know — how could I know — that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night too?
But then, on Sunday morning, I was wakened by a violence.
Light — pure, hard, demanding light — slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the first wonder of all. There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive! And, besides that, healthy! There was no sign of sorrow or age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.
Well, then I lowered my head and, trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name with shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him. Then I took off all my clothes in that place, and I said to him with dear yearning 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!