The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Jack's carved wooden face was a face we all recognized: It was as if Rupert had deliberately modeled the puppet's head from a photograph of Robin, the Inglebys' dead son. The likeness was uncanny.

Like a wind in the cold November woods, a wave of uneasy whispers swept through the hall.

"Shhh!" someone said at last. I think it was the vicar.

I wondered how he must feel at being confronted with the face of a child he had buried in the churchyard.

"Jack was a very lazy boy," Mother Goose went on. "And because he refused to work, it was not long before his mother's small savings were completely gone. There was nothing to eat in the house, and not so much as a farthing left for food."

Now the poor widow appeared, coming round the side of the cottage with a rope in her hand, and at the other end of the rope, a cow. Both of them were little more than skin and bones, but the cow had the advantage of a gorgeous pair of huge brown eyes.

"We shall have to sell the cow to the butcher," the widow said.

At this, the cow's enormous eyes turned sadly towards the widow, then towards Jack, and finally towards the audience. "Help me!" they seemed to say.

"Ahhhh," everyone said at once, on a rising note of sympathy.

The widow turned her back on the poor creature and walked away, leaving Jack to do the dirty work. No sooner was she gone than a peddler appeared at the gate.

"Marnin', Squire," he said to Jack. "You looks like a sharpish lad--the kind o' lad what might be needin' some beans."

"I might," said Jack.

"Jack thought of himself as a shrewd trader," Mother Goose said, "and before you could say 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch'--which is the name of a place in Wales--he had traded the cow for a handful of beans."

The cow went all stiff-legged and dug in its heels as the peddler dragged it off, and Jack was left standing, looking at the little pile of beans in his palm.

Then suddenly his mother was back.

"Where's the cow?" she demanded. Jack pointed to the road, and held out his hand.

"You dunderhead!" the widow shrieked. "You stupid dunderhead!"

And she kicked him in the pants.

At this, a great laugh went up from the children in the audience, and I have to admit I chuckled a little myself. I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

At the kick, Jack actually flew right up into the air, scattering beans everywhere.

Now, the whole audience was rocking with laughter.

"You shall sleep in the chicken coop," the widow said. "If you're hungry, you can peck for corn."

And with that, she was gone.

"Poor old I," Jack said, and stretched himself out on the bench at the cottage door.

The sunlight faded rather quickly, and suddenly it was night. A full moon shone above the folded hills. The lights in the cottage were on, their warm orange light spilling out into the yard. Jack twitched in his sleep--shifted position--and began to snore.

"But look!" said Mother Goose. "Something is stirring in the garden!"

Now the music had become mystical--the sound of a flute in an oriental bazaar.

Something was stirring in the garden! As if by magic, a thing that looked at first like a green string, and then like a green rope, began to snake up from the soil, twisting and twining like a cobra in a fakir's basket, until the top was out of sight.

As it rose into the sky, and night changed quickly to day, the stalk grew thicker and thicker, until at last it stood like a tree of emerald green, dwarfing the cottage.

Again, the music was "Morning."

Jack stretched and yawned and rolled clumsily off the bench. With hands on hips, he bent back impossibly far at the waist, trying to loosen his stiff joints. And then he spotted the beanstalk.

He reeled back as if he had been punched, fighting to keep his balance, his feet stumbling, his arms going like windmills.

"Mother!" he shouted. "Mother! Mother! Mother! Mother!"

The old lady appeared directly, broom in hand, and Jack danced crazily round her in circles, pointing.

"The beans, you see," said Mother Goose, "were magic beans, and in the night they had grown into a beanstalk that reached higher than the clouds."

Well, everyone knows the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, so there's no need for me to repeat it here. For the next hour, the tale unrolled as it has done for hundreds of years: Jack's climb, the castle in the clouds, the giant's wife and how she hid Jack in the oven, the magic harp, the bags of silver and gold--all of it was there, brought to brilliant life by Rupert's genius.

He held us captive in the palm of his hand from beginning to end, as if he were the giant, and all of us were Jack. He made us laugh and he made us cry, and sometimes both at the same time. I had never seen anything like it.