Street Man- Shotgun Flash Fiction

If Adam looks the guy in the face and shrugs, “I don’t know his name, dude,” then no one knows him.  

Every other day, he walks into the camping store, itching his grimy scalp with long dirty nails.  He carefully maneuvers himself through the racks of clean clothes no one owns yet, fully aware that his body’s inhabitants should not move there.  His eyes and forehead relax from the concerned, self conscious face he has on the first floor, to a pleasant friendly countenance on the second floor.  His shoulders drop, his pinch gait opens to a loose stride, and he smiles.  

Here, on the second floor, he admires the three-pole tents with two doors and colorful rainflies.  He giggles to himself when he absorbs all of the colors of the rainbow amongst the hanging sleeping bags. As he moves through this camping floor, he hums to himself.  It is his own tune that matches the freedom in his step. LED lights screw into water bottles, camp stoves boil water in one minute, and climbing ropes roll out from large spools.  Adam watches this man, leaning against the counter on the outside, and waits for it.  He bets that it will happen when he reaches the backpack corner again.  Wait for it.  

After staring at a blue spork, the man in tattered clothes, worn extra thin where bones meet the streets, turns and walks behind the messenger backs, around a post raining wallets, and over to the brilliant parachute hammocks.  “Hmmmm, hmmmm, hmmm, hmm hmmmmm-hmmm-hmm...Meow.”  

Adam brings his crossed arms over his silently laughing mouth.  Every time, he does it every time.  With a grin stretched tightly over his teeth, careful not to expose them, the street man’s eyes twinkle, he nods a greeting to Adam, and skips back down the stairs to find more marvels in the rest of his day.