Those Who Live in Grass Houses

Jimmy and the Bean

Jimmy and the Bean

Jimmy Waites walking down the street, nothing in particular on his mind, hands in pockets, nowhere to go, nothing to do. A leaf floats by and lands just off the path. Jimmy walks by.

‘Must be autumn,’ he thinks.

One leaf does not an autumn make. Jimmy stops to consider the thought. How many leaves does an autumn require? More than one, at the very least. And this was a green leaf. Had no business falling off a tree at all in spring.

Is it spring? Jimmy looks around. Yes, it’s spring. So why was a green leaf falling off a tree in spring?

Jimmy turns around and walks back to the leaf. He remembers where it fell and goes straight to it. It is still there, lying among the grass stems and trembling slightly when the breeze brushes against it. It is green, that light green with a hint of yellow that new leaves have when they sprout from a tree in spring. A green that is no excuse for losing your grip on the branch and falling to earth at this time of year.

When Jimmy picks it up and examines it closely, he finds no reason for such a hasty departure of leaf from tree. No sign of cutting or biting, just a slight swelling where the stem joined the branch, as though it had somehow twisted itself from its socket.

Do leaves have sockets into which they fit? Jimmy doesn’t think so. But it looks as if this one did. Jimmy is about to put the leaf back where he found it when he notices that there is something that was hidden beneath it. A bean lies in the shallow depression that held the leaf between the shoots of grass.

Jimmy picks up the bean before replacing the leaf. He inspects the bean. It is a bean, there’s no doubt of that. It is kidney-shaped, a deep brown in colour, and shiny. There seems to be tiny writing upon it. Jimmy looks even closer.

It is indeed writing. In very small but neat lettering, it spells out This is the property of Jack. Jimmy turns the bean over but that’s it. There is no writing on its other side, just that smooth shiny surface that makes the bean a bit slippery to hold. He wonders if that is how the bean escaped from Jack’s grasp, sliding unnoticed from between fingers that held many more similar beans. Whatever the truth, it seems that Jimmy is now the owner of the bean, partly because Jack left no forwarding address, but also because of the ancient law of finders keepers, losers weepers.

Jimmy evinces no interest in continuing his walk in an unstated direction, for he rises, places the bean carefully in a pocket, turns and walks back the way he had come. There is now purpose in his stride and a goal in the direction taken. He is clearly a boy on a mission.

Predictably, Jimmy soon arrives back home, proceeds immediately into the back yard and heads for the shed. He emerges very quickly with a trowel and a small flower pot in his hands. With a quick scoop of the trowel he borrows some earth from the neighbour’s flower bed and pours it into the pot. Then he goes into the house, only to emerge almost immediately with a soda bottle filled with water. He marches around the house until directly underneath his bedroom window, then pushes the pot into the earth to ensure that it remains upright, and digs a little hole in the soil with his finger.

He retrieves the bean and drops it into the hole, covering it with soil that he pushes back over it. Jimmy dribbles a little water into the soil from the bottle.

Then he sits back a little and just watches the pot.

It seems Jimmy has deduced that there’s a chance that the Jack referred to on the bean is actually the one of giant killer fame. If that is so, then there’s no reason why the bean should not sprout and become a giant beanstalk, just as Jack’s other beans did.

Jimmy watches for a long time but eventually gets up and wanders off, having obviously concluded that the bean will grow overnight, just as Jack’s did. It’s the morning that will bring news regarding the magic or otherwise of the bean.

And now it’s up to you. I can confirm that, the next morning, when Jimmy went to check on the bean, he was confronted with a beanstalk that reached up to the sky. And I can tell you that he climbed up that beanstalk until he disappeared with it into the blue of its immense height. And I also have to report that he was never seen again.

But this is all hearsay. It’s up to you whether you believe it or not. And that, of course, is entirely a matter of choice.


House Martell

Word count: 829
For "Game of Thrones"  The North Remembers, Stolen Artifacts Task # 31
Prompt: Your character picks up a fallen leaf and can’t believe what they discover underneath it.