A Bagger or a Sacker
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The teen bagger, a real spindle, says “you do you,” in response to a request, the request being for a bag, for a sack rather, of plain unbleached unbranded paper, to haul groceries and toiletries some blocks through a sudden sunshower. He doing him and I doing me, each a necessary constituent in this brief transaction, I request a bag or a sack and he bags or sacks the groceries and toiletries, a series of events perhaps in need of no further elucidation. Behind us, a little to the right, an automatic door opens at the behest of no one, automatically, with threads of rain blown crosswise onto the giftcards and firewood. I doing me—no other option available—I accept the cash and coinage tendered as change, leave onto side streets, along pastoral curb strips (azalea and rhododendron) towards a remnant rental house (a renter is as a vagrant here) while a voice, I slowly realize, pursues me, a voice muted in rainfall. A tall man, another ectomorph, hands me a limp wet single, which I had dropped, evidently, outside most likely, the bill having failed to reach my back pocket. Behind this philanthropist, in tow on a short tether, is his darling little smashfaced dog, the kind born with terminal apnea. “Why” he asks me, the man and not the dog, though neither man or dog are wet, for they both wear the branded rainwear of a major rainwear manufacturer, “Why would you drop this? Why?” The man has rancor, has taken offense. His companion does as the rain does, splutters, intermittent, intense, a rent in the cloudcap above us, light and shadow changing along the curb strip. I doing me, I explain, I couldn’t help but drop it, with these curbside bouquets exploding, azaleas and rhododendrons, them doing them, inundated, creatures superlative, no other options available.
