Chapter 8

Inside the house it was very quiet for maybe half a minute, until such time as the occupants decided that the giant had, in fact, left for good.

Then it got very noisy. You know of that kind of noise, particularly if you’re a man, who did exactly what a woman told him to do, and then gets raked over the coals for doing it. And this was three women, even though Coreen shouldn’t have had anything to say at all. We won’t go into the details, but you know the deal.

At any rate, there came a time when the women had to breathe and, just for a few seconds, it was quiet again. That was when they heard the sound. It was an eerie sound, like the wind makes in the trees in winter—sort of a moan, with overtones of a keening wail tossed in. When the wind sounds like that, you burrow under the covers and hope the doors are strong enough to keep out the wolves you just know are prowling around the house.

But it wasn’t winter. And nobody had seen a wolf around those parts in years.

Curiosity drew them to the shattered door. The sound seemed to be coming from the northeast side of the house. They listened as it got louder, then softer, and then changed to a gurgling snort. It could have been a wolf, sniffing around in the dark, but wolves don’t moan like that.

“That’s where I planted the bean,” whispered Jack.

“That sounds like Mortimer, the day that Dinah locked him out of the house,” whispered Harmony. “He was stupid enough to say he’d had pie better than hers.”

“There’s somebody with enough courage to lock him out of a house?!” gasped Elizabeth quietly. She gulped. “There’s a house that he could actually be locked out of at all?!”

“It sounds like someone’s crying,” whispered Coreen. “It can’t be him. He must have met a traveler and squashed the poor thing or something.”

“Who travels in the middle of the night?” asked Harmony.

“I don’t know!” complained Coreen. “But it’s making me nervous. Jack, go see what it is!”

“I’m not going anywhere!” said Jack emphatically.

“Yes you are!” said three women at once.

Jack was tiptoeing as quietly as he could toward the sound, which had turned into extended moaning, as of a man whose leg is broken and who thinks he is alone and helpless. The moans were interrupted by short sobs and hiccups. Jack’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and he was able to see both the somehow thin looking line that was the beanstalk, and the bulk of the giant at the bottom. It was the giant who was making all the noise.

“Hello?” said Jack, his voice just above a whisper.

“AAAACK!” screamed the giant. “Don’t kill me! I’m trying to go home!” He broke into a series of thunderous sobs.

It’s pretty hard to feel fear for a crying giant, especially one who just pulled himself into a huddle that approximated a fetal position, in the middle of which was a tired and bedraggled goose, honking feebly.

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Jack. “Why are you still here?”

“I can’t get up the beanpole,” moaned Mortimer. “It’s all slippery and there’s nothing to grab onto.”

“Oh,” said Jack.

“And now the soldiers will come and poke me with their horrible little spears, and I’ll bleed, and they’ll throw things at me, and stick swords in me, and I’ll die and Dinah will have to raise little Percival all aloooooone.” He ended in a long moan that turned into more sobs.

“Percival?” Jack’s jaw sagged. “She named my ... er the baby Percival?”

“Of course,” said Mortimer. “It’s a good name. What’s wrong with Percival? There have been great giants named Percival!”

Jack remembered that he wasn’t supposed to know about the baby in the first place.

“Sure,” said Jack. “No problem. OK, we don’t want ... Percival to grow up without you. I agree.”

Unbeknownst to either of them, Elizabeth had followed Jack. The maternal instinct in her was strong, and her baby boy was in danger. She couldn’t just stand by while a giant ground his bones. She had a kitchen knife in her hand, something that approximated a toothpick when compared to Mortimer’s bulk.

But ... she heard Mortimer wailing about what she thought was his baby being raised fatherless. It tugged at her heart strings. Once a mother always a mother, you know, even when giants are involved.

“We most certainly do not!” said Elizabeth from the darkness, agreeing with her son.

She was emboldened when Mortimer flinched at her voice, and she stepped forward. Mortimer relaxed when he didn’t see a lance, and recognized the woman with the cute little breasts, which were still hanging out of her torn night dress.

“So what do I do?” moaned the giant. “I can’t get up the stupid beanstalk and the soldiers will be here any minute!”

Jack didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to admit there were no soldiers. Things had been ugly up until the time Mortimer thought he was in danger. He was trying to figure out what to say when his mother spoke for him. She was still thinking like a mother, or maybe a Democrat, except that Democrats hadn’t been invented yet.

Hmmmmm ... no Democrats. Maybe the good old days really were better. Anyway, on with the tale. Elizabeth was thinking like a mother and proved it by speaking.

“Jack!” she said sharply. “Plant another bean, so he can go home and take care of his little boy.”

“You planted the beanstalk?” Mortimer’s voice held great interest as he looked at Jack.

“Um...” Jack wished his mother hadn’t given away such valuable information. “Well ... yes ... but I only had two beans,” he lied.

“Well plant the other one!” yelped Mortimer.

Jack was no longer worried that the giant would kill them all. In fact, he saw a way to put Mortimer in his debt, but it would take some maneuvering.

“It’s almost daylight,” said Jack. “If I plant it now, people will see it. I mean the soldiers might see it. They might climb up after you. That wouldn’t be good, now would it? I mean they could just go around killing every giant they see.”

“Noooo,” wailed the giant.

“We have to wait until tomorrow night, when it’s dark again. Then I can plant one and you can climb up and everything will be all right.” He figured that after hiding out for a whole day, Mortimer would be extra happy when Jack provided him with a way home.

“But the soldiers are coming!” barked Elizabeth, who didn’t know there were no soldiers. She brightened. “We’ll just hide you. Yes. We’ll just hide you until they go away and Jack can plant another beanstalk.” Now that she had a mission, she was very businesslike. “Come quickly. We must get you out of sight, so the soldiers don’t see you.”

“Where?” asked Jack and Mortimer together.

“You were in the house a while back. Can you get back in there without destroying anything else? Elizabeth still had her pragmatic side.

“I’ll try,” said Mortimer.

“Jack!” ordered his mother. “Go and wait for the soldiers. Tell them he’s gone and everything is all right again.”

“And where am I supposed to tell them he went?” asked Jack crossly. Even though he knew there were no soldiers, he hadn’t planned on things getting this complicated.

“I don’t care,” moaned Elizabeth. “Tell them he went towards London. That should get them going elsewhere.”

Jack walked off into the darkness. He thought about what to do. If he just waited a bit, he could go back to the house and say the nonexistent soldiers were gone. That worried him, though, because who knew what Mortimer would do then? He decided he’d say that some of them had left, and some had decided to stay in town, just in case the giant came back. That should keep the giant compliant.

Yes. That’s what he’d do.