From fern leaves drips water onto cold, wet grass. On a walkway nearby scurry tiny lizards, looking for washed-away friends and celebrating their survival after a summer storm. Down this milkweed-lined path is a rotten-wood dock to which a boat is tied.
It is on this boat, lapping at the side of this brown-water canal, that a secret is kept. It is on this boat that there waits a tiny man inside a box no bigger than a brick.
On this afternoon there plays a mischievous child in a neighbor’s yard. Twice he’s climbed the fence that separates the homes, curious about the never-used boat. The first time he made it to the dock before his young mother swooped him away. On the second, he jumped inside the boat, but stayed only a few seconds before his mother pulled him out. “It’s dangerous,” she said. “Stay in our yard where you’re safe, you understand? Who knows how many more storms that rickety thing can take before it sinks.”
Today he’ll climb the fence again, this time quietly, more methodical.
His mother is inside his house when he sneaks away. He’ll have more of a chance to explore the boat. He mimics the after-storm lizards, high in stealth and at maximum speed. Across the lawn, over the milkweed, down the walkway, and across the dock he runs.
He jumps into the boat and falls to the floor to drop out of sight.
He hears his mother calling for him, and he knows it will be only moments before he’s found and taken away.
And here he sees it: a glass box in which there sits a man on a tiny rocking chair. In this box there is an Oriental rug, a dining room table, a bed, and a sofa. The man looks like normal men would--proportional and clothed with hair on his head and tiny glasses on his face. The man is calm. He looks at the boy and smiles.
The boy, so full of imagination, is more intrigued than shocked. He wants to know everything about this tiny man.
His curiosity has drowned out his mother’s calls, but he’s startled when they stop. He peeks over the edge of the boat and toward the house on its lot. It’s a small cabin-like place unsuited for a house in a warm climate, but there is otherwise nothing to be seen, not his mother, not the home’s unknown owner. The boy thinks nothing of this and lays down again to face the glass box. The tiny man still rocks in his chair. He is the size of the antique figurines that belong to the boy’s grandmother, heirlooms with which he plays. He’s punished when he’s caught clinking them together. He’s chipped many and broken a few.
“Hello?” says the boy.
“Hello, Jonathan,” says the tiny man.
“How do you know my name? What are you?”
“I am a secret.”
“What does that mean? You are a tiny man!”
“Maybe you are big.”
Jonathan is confused. “I don’t understand.”
“I know you, Jonathan,” the man says ominously.
Jonathan backs away. “What did you say?”
There is something unsettling about this man. Jonathan jumps to his feet. He sees that around the boat there is nothing. There is no lawn, no grass, no lizards. There is only endless brown water under cloudy gray skies. He’s in the middle of a still sea, bothered only with the ripples from the boat.
“MOMMY!” screams Jonathan. His voice echoes, but there is no response. Jonathan starts to cry. He squats down to the man in the glass box. Snot runs down his nose.
“I want to go home.”
“I am your secret, Jonathan. I am the secret between your ears. I am the thing that is most precious about you. I give you dreams and I inspire your play. I provide you thoughts and show you things only you can see.”
“Please, I want to go home.”
“I live in everyone’s head, Jonathan, but I am most dangerous, I am most potent, inside the minds of children. I am your imagination. I am unique, unfettered, brilliant.”
“I don’t understand.” Jonathan sobs.
“With me you can do anything. You can make wonderful things with what I give to you, or you can can make trouble. You can make worry and frustration for people around you.”
“I’m sorry. Please let me go home.”
“You can play with your grandmother’s glass boys and girls, her priceless heirlooms, and you’ll break her heart when you break them. And you can make worry for you mother when you disappear.”
“I’ll stop! I promise!”
“You ignore warnings about playing with things that aren’t yours, Jonathan. Things as big as a boat.”
“I’m SORRY. Please, please, please let me go home!”
“And your apologies and promises are made too often and are dishonest, like mischievous boys oftentimes are.”
Jonathan curls up into a ball and puts his head between his knees.
“Boys who treat their imaginations so foolishly, whose parents won’t discipline, must be dealt with. They must be taken away from the world, as not to poison it. You, Jonathan, are mischievous and poisonous. For this, here you will spend forever with me, your unruly imagination, ruined now by fear, and forced into patience.”
JUSTIN JONES, a native of Hope Mills, North Carolina, currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts and is a columnist for Lavender Magazine. His column, "Through These Eyes" for Lavender is about "portraits and observations." You can check out more of Justin's writing by liking his official Facebook page.