Run Home, John Doe  Part I - The Boy

    There is a boy who follows me around.  I do not know his name, even though he has told me it at least a hundred times.  Perhaps I need to clarify - he has told me a name at least a hundred times, as it changes with every meeting that we have.  I surmise him to be around seven or eight years of age, but the eyes he has are not his own.  His blond hair is well trimmed, with hints of amber underneath.  He is well clothed and, so it seems, well taken care of.  Normally he is alone, and so it was when we first met.

    After having quite a day, I was relaxing in my favorite armchair, with a well-worn copy of The Little White Bird to keep me company.  In the middle of a sentence I heard what sounded like a tree branch being blown against my front door by the wind.  As there are no longer any trees in the vicinity of the door (and no wind that day), I decided to investigate.  Opening the door I found the aforementioned boy staring at me.  After a moment of silence, he said “hello,” wiped the soles of his shoes on the mat, and proceeded to enter my home.  Dumbfounded, I simply watched as he went directly to my favorite armchair, picked up my company, and proceeded to finish the sentence I had been on.

    He looked at me, put the book down, and said, “What do you want to do?”
Regaining myself, I uttered, “What do I want to do?  Perhaps first of all I’d like to know your name.”
“I-van,” he said, greatly emphasizing the first syllable of the name (and so it would be his name for the rest of the day.  With all of the names he would use thereafter, I noticed that he always emphasized the first syllable, and never repeated the same name on a different day.)

    I continued, “Well, it is very nice to meet you Ivan, I am Mr…”
    “What’s that?!?”  He was pointing into the shadows. 
    “Oh, in the corner there?  That is my cat, his name is Ashworth.  Why don’t you two meet?”  I proceeded to roust the gray feline from his slumber, and present him to my new acquaintance. 
    “He’s so fat!  I shall call him ‘gray-ee’!” (As it is with most children, he did not understand the cat’s given name, and thus substituted his own.  While it may have been simple, it made sense out of nonsense for him.)

    Normally, Ashworth does not take to strangers, but the boy and him got on rather well together.  I watched as they played in silence, “gray-ee” nuzzling the boy’s legs and such. 
    The boy then announced, “I must go, I will see you later!”

    And so it was that he took his leave.  Closing the door, I picked up Ashworth, him taking up residence on my lap as I resumed my earlier position in order to continue on with my reading.

    A few days passed uneventfully pleasant, and it was then that I decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood.  For once one gets away from the bustle of the streets, there are very agreeable paths nearby.  I took to one of these with only my thoughts in tow.

    Having just finished my supper, I thought there would be nothing better for me than the open air.  It was a serene evening, the kind of sort that is able to transport you to events long passed as if they had just occurred.  I looked at the slowly darkening sky and smiled. 

    I passed many homes in my walk, but never once did another soul cross my path.  Turning the corner near what appeared to be a mockup of an English garden of old, I heard a voice - “Hey mister!  How’s it going?”  It was the boy again.  He was sitting along the path I toed, apparently searching for something, and so I inquired, “Have you found it?”
    “What’s that?” He replied, dumbfounded.
    “You know, whatever it is that you are looking for, have you found it?”
    Smiling up at me, he said, “Why should I want anything?  I have all I shall ever need.”

    “Silly child,” I thought.

    He then invited me into a game of marbles, something I had not partaken in for quite some time.
    “You shall perhaps have to remind me of the rules, Ivan, for I have not played since I was your size.”
He stared at me perplexedly. 
    “My name is Mi-chael.” he said. 
    “Oh, I do apologize,” I replied, tipping my hat to him. (I figure now that his names were all part of some game he was playing, for he did love his games so.)

    “Michael” began instructing me in the way of the game.  Amazed  by how much I had actually remembered, I found myself getting rather excited to play.
Very proudly he stated, “Okay, now is the best part - it is time to choose our marbles.”
As I watched his hand emerge from his coat pocket, I was more than a bit confused to see bottle caps, toy soldiers, rubber balls, and the various things that a boy will pick up along his trials, emerge.  With his pockets emptied, nary a marble was in sight.

    He placed them all in front of me, “You get to pick first.”
    Quite unsure of how to conduct myself at this point, I took what appeared to be a piece of pyrite - fool’s gold.  He then chose a thimble, and we continued on until the mountain of the pieces were evenly divided.  All of the rules which he had previously explained, (that is, the actual rules for playing marbles), were immediately thrown out the window as he began making it up as he went.  Finally getting a hold on this practice, I followed his lead, and so with each successive turn we wrote the rulebook.  The end result was great fun, but the resemblance to marbles was non-existent. 

As I ran out of creative counter moves long before he would, Michael declared victory, and was extremely proud of himself.  With this defeat, we took our leave from each other - I continuing on my walk, with him falling back into the deep gardens.