TATTLE TALES: Spilling the Beans on Jack [Part 1]

I, Lady Colleen Cadbury, being of reasonably sound mind and more than ample body, do declare this is my last will and testament. At the time of my demise, I bequeath my possessions to the Spittleworth Home for Village Idiots –– where my son, Jack, will most likely end up. That is, if he isn’t crushed or eaten by Big Betty, widow of the late Beanstalk Giant.

With my affairs in order, I’d like to correct the fake news spreading about my son. There’s a story being woven like a fish net –– flimsy and full of holes. It’s about a brave boy who climbs a beanstalk, kills a giant and returns with a huge fortune.

I’m the only living parent of the Beanstalk Boy, and I’m going to cut through the crap as only a mother can.

Although he is my flesh and blood, I’ll say without hesitation, I’ve never known a more addle-brained, twit in my life. His head is as empty as Cholera Cathy’s dance card. I had to draw him a diagram just to fart.

He inherited his stupidity, for his father also was a daft fool. My husband was a right handsome fellow with chiseled features and the muscles of a Greek God. A beautiful piece of china, I didn’t know was cracked. All the village lasses drooled over him except for Dimwit Dora, she drooled all the time.

When his ice blue eyes gazed upon me, I was love struck. A fair maiden from a lowly family, I didn’t have much to offer. But before I knew it, he asked for my hand, and the rest of me was stuck on his tiny, dilapidated farm.

Jack Sr. thought he’d be a potato farmer by planting old tater skins from the pub’s garbage scraps. Right then, I should have realized the hoof print on the back of his head wasn’t a birthmark, and looks aren’t everything.

I needed to save our skins from the rotted ones planted outside our one window room. So, with my meager savings from doing laundry for the constable’s wife, I urged Jack Sr. to go buy a dairy cow so we could sell milk.

I might as well have blindfolded the fool, sewn his lips shut and sent him into London to find an albino in a snowstorm. What he returned with was Cornflower, a cow with one eye, half of her tail and an udder problem. We were the lucky owners of a cyclops with one teat.  She was a complete milk dud.

Eight months with child, I scolded Jack, and called him “the worst father-to-be in all of Spittleworth.” I knew soon I’d be dealing with two infant minds.

When Cornflower wasn’t crashing into trees or tripping over fences, she tried her best to give milk. Her one teat struggled to produce milk for us to take to market and provide us with something to keep us from starving. We tried boiled milk, fried milk, baked milk and cream of milk.

When the baby was born, I was thankful I had the right number of teats. I was a better milk supply than Cornflower. The spud I delivered looked like his simpleton father, except this version had a lazy eye that spun in circles. Half the time, I was dizzy trying to look at him.

Having an infant was more of a struggle. As Jack Jr. grew I told his father he needed to become more of a breadwinner, so the wanker asked me where he could buy a bread lottery ticket.

Knowing he’d never be cream of the crop, I demanded Jack Sr. travel many days to London and make a new life for us. I never saw him again. Weeks later, The Village Voice reported that while lost in the enchanted forest, he was mowed down by a swift carriage carrying a princess named Cinderella. She was on her way to some party. How appropriate the gourd-head should be killed by a giant pumpkin.

Jack Jr. grew and took to caring for Cornflower, but one day her teat just fell off. An udder disaster. We were without means to survive.

I sent young Jack to the market to sell Cornflower so we could take the coins and move far away to London. Many opportunities were there for peasant women. I could become a milkmaid, washerwoman, seamstress or hide in the alleys and pull down my knickers. My choices were endless and so were the possible diseases.

Jack came stumbling back home with his crazy twirling eye, I said my prayers. He told me he sold Cornflower to a magical man in the woods. The payment was five magic beans. He placed some old dried lima beans covered in gold leaf into my hand like he was delivering treasure.

I smacked Jack and threw the beans out the window. Madder than a wet hen with syphilis, I shook Jack so hard his eye stopped spinning. I ordered him to bed without the dinner we wouldn’t be eating anyway.

Desperate, I went into the village and traded a quick handy for a pint of ale with the farmer in the dell. In the farmer’s defense, it was before he took a wife.

A woman driven to the edge, does crazy things. I couldn’t go home and stare at mindless Jack slobbering on his pillow. I spent the night sleeping on a bale of straw with a gopher and Creeping Curtis, a wanderer with frisky fingers.

In the morning, I awoke to a bizarre sight –– after getting Curtis off me, there was even a more bizarre sight. In the distance from our farm, a huge beanstalk sprawled into the sky.

The beans Jack bought had grown overnight. The giant beanstalk twisted and turned its way back into our humble hovel, broke through the roof, and disappeared into the clouds. Not only did we lose Cornflower, but now we had property damage. [To be continued…]

 

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