A Cow Is Worth So Much These Days
by Rue DeDay
Once upon a time, there was a boy. His name was Jack. This
might come as a surprise to you, but his name was "Jack". He lived on the
family farm with his mother. Her name was Humprilla. When you're stuck with
a name like "Humprilla" you are really motivated to give your kids names
like "Jack" and "Don" and "Bill". Humprilla liked to be called Betty, so
that's what we'll call her for the rest of the story. That or "Jack's mom".
Jack's dad was dead. At least that's the official story. Really he got fed
up with Jack and Betty and the farm, and hit the bricks. He's really a riverboat
gambler now. But Betty tells everyone that he died. Plowing.
The family farm wasn't going so well. Actually it wasn't
going at all. No crops, no tractor, no chickens, nothing. As a farm is was
pretty much a wash. They had a cow though. Her name was Princess Penelope.
She was Betty and Jack's last asset. To buy food, Betty sent Jack into town
to sell the cow and get supplies. What they were supposed to do next week
I don't know. They'd probably have to sell the farm and move into the city.
Betty would probably have to become a prostitute and Jack might make a go
at pocket picking. Jack would soon get caught and then be hanged at the city
gates. Betty would contract several venereal diseases and die alone in a
gutter, insane. They weren't thinking ahead.
So, Betty sent Jack to town to sell Princess Penelope and
buy some food. Jack sold Princess Penelope for food, but not as much as Betty
had hoped. A handful of beans.
"Oh, and I guess these are magic beans?" asked Betty,
really sarcastically.
"That's what the man said," said Jack. Jack was what was
known in grifting circles as "an easy mark". Which is a slightly nicer way
to say "idiot".
"And I guess if I were to throw the beans out the window...
like this... they would grow into a giant bean... SON OF A BITCH! Will you
look at that beanstalk! Jack, go climb it and steal whatever isn't nailed
down and bring it back to your poor Mama."
"How do you know there's stuff up there to steal?" asked
Jack. Why climb a giant beanstalk if there ain't loot at the top? That was
Jack's motto.
"It's a magic beanstalk. There's always treasure at the
tops of magic beanstalks. Don't you know anything?"
"OK, here I go."
And Jack climbed the beanstalk. He climbed and he climbed
and he climbed and he climbed. Then he climbed some more. This was one big
beanstalk. Finally, after a lot of climbing, and once when he lost his grip
the threat of a lot of falling, Jack got to the top. There he saw a castle
in the clouds. Not like the clouds were sorta in the shape of a castle, if
you turned your head just right and squinted. It was a castle. And it was
built on the clouds. At least it looked like a castle to Jack. Jack did not
have too much experience with castles. This was bigger than the parish church
and it was on top of a cloud. Jack just assumed it was a castle. Actually
it was a hovel. A giant's hovel, but a hovel none-the-less. There's not alot
of opportunity for great wealth in the clouds. So the giant who lived there
had to settle for a hovel. Jack thought it was a castle though.
He walked up to the hovel, that he thought was a castle,
and squeezed in through a crack in the door. He was sneaking around, looking
for loot, when the giant's wife rolled over in bed and saw movement. Giant's
like to sleep late. That's why they were still in bed while Jack had time
to climb the giant beanstalk.
"Eeeeek!" cried the giant's wife. "A mouse!"
She didn't look too closely. She just assumed it was a
mouse, not some teeny tiny person who climbed up a beanstalk to break into
her hovel and steal her stuff. Just goes to show you how wrong you can be.
Not that it made all that much difference to the giant. He just wanted his
wife to shut up so he could sleep more. So he threw his shoe at the "mouse".
He was really fast for a man his size. Even a small giant is big. That's
how you get to be a giant. You're big. He also had a Major League arm. Jack
died as a smear of goo on a giant's wall in the clouds. I guess this is better
than being hanged by the city gates as a pickpocket.
The next day, the giant saw the beanstalk. "Damned weeds..."
he grumbled. Actually it was more like "...grumble, grumble, damned, grumble,
weeds, grumble...". And he pulled the beanstalk out of the ground and dropped
it back down through the clouds.
So there's poor Betty. No son, a piss poor farm, and her
house completely surrounded by a giant beanstalk. She did the only thing
she could do. She took the giant beans and made up huge batches of vegetarian
chili. She sold these in town and got rich. So she didn't died in a gutter
insane. She died in a gutter with a dirk through her ribs when she stopped
to think "Your money or your life!" over too long.
Posted 8/13/01