The Tale of Jack Part 5
Title: The Tale of Jack
Rating: NC-17 (for explicit sex, violence and themes of prostitution)
Summary: Jack and his mother are living close to the edge of poverty, but a strange encounter and a rather large surprise could lead to a change.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any actual events or people. I haven't the foggiest who actually owns the rights to Jack and the Beanstalk, but is definitely isn't me. Please do not repost or reproduce this story without permission from the author.
By the time Finn had washed and put his clothing back on, the water in the bowl was starting to cool, and Jack was only too glad to clamber out with Finn’s assistance. Finn had spread the other cloth on the table for him, and he spent a minute just lying on it, air drying, before lifting up a corner of it to rub his hair dry.
Finn moved around the room a little, then sat down next to the table again, and leaned over him looking slightly concerned.
“I just had a look out the window, and…something’s happened to that tree.”
“What?”
“I think…I’m not sure, but I think you could climb back down it.”
“Seriously?” Relief shot through him like an arrow and he grabbed up his clothes, dragging them hastily into place on his still damp body.
“I’m glad. I’d hate to think your poor mother would be without you,” Finn said sincerely, and when Jack looked up at his face, his dark eyes were sad…almost mournful.
“I…I’m sorry to leave you up here, but I’ve got to go back.”
“’Course you do, don’t say you’re-”
“I had a great time with you. Thank you.”
Finn smiled. “Yeah, me too.” He glanced over at the big cabinet and a slightly awkward look came over his face. “Listen, I know you said you were sick of making money for sex, and I get that. So…don’t be offended, but…you’re having money troubles, right?”
Jack nodded, feeling his shoulders slump. Worse than ever, now the car was gone.
“So, would you like…not payment, but…maybe a gift?”
“What do you mean?”
Finn got to his feet and opened one of the bottom drawers of the cabinet, taking out a small, flat wooden box. Returning to the table with it, he set it down and opened the lid, removing first a piece of fabric, then a layer of white paper. Jack walked over to look inside, and gasped.
“Are those...what are those?”
“Coins, I think. Old ones,” Finn replied. “I sometimes find them in the soil here, stuck in the mud when I clean my boots. I rinse them and kept them, thought they might be handy. Don’t know how they got to be here, but…there they are. I imagine they’re worth a fair amount.”
He pinched up some of the thick, golden discs, like grains of salt between his fingers, and offered them to Jack.
“I can’t…I…they’re yours!”
“What can I possibly use them for? Please, take them. It’ll help you and…maybe I just want to give you a gift.”
One of the coins slipped from Finn’s fingers and Jack caught it. It was about twice the size of a quarter and strangely heavy.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” and Finn let go of them, letting them tumble into Jack’s cupped hands, a few thumping onto the table top. “Just remember, a gift, not a payment.”
“Like I could forget,” Jack grinned, and started packing the coins into his pockets, suddenly very glad that he’d worn baggy jeans.
“Thank you, Finn.”
“Welcome, little Jack.”
Jack stood up on his tiptoes and Finn leaned down for a kiss on the cheek, and then Jack was scooped up and carried, out the door and down the path between the fields, back to the towering shape of the old tree.
Finn set him down and straight away he could see the steps leading down the trunk, back to the real world.
He turned back.
“I…if I can come back, I will. Okay?”
Finn nodded. “Just be careful.”
Jack gave him one last smile, and headed down the steps.
*
His first few steps down the staircase were unsettling in the extreme. The clouds crowded in around him and the bulky shapes of the coins in his pockets made his legs feel awkward. He felt out every step with his toes, almost blindly, clutching with his short fingernails at the bark of the tree trunk. And then, as he went…somehow his fear, his thoughts, faded. His body just kept moving, step after step, past the clouds, past the tree tops, and by the time his feet touched solid, grassy ground, it felt like barely any time had passed at all.
The sun was still bright and clear, the day still morning-cool and fresh feeling. He checked his watch and, to his astonishment, saw that it was true; barely twenty minutes had passed since he’d first started his climb.
“Holy shit!”
How had it happened? He looked back up at the tree; perfectly real. Nothing out of place. But his legs were tired from the climb, his pockets were spilling over with worn gold coins, there was still a faint taste of apple on his tongue. And he could still feel Finn’s touch against his stomach.
Jack set off for home.
*
His Mama was taking a bath when he got in. He knew that he could get in the house and back out without disturbing her if he was careful; the bathroom door was thick. He slipped into his bedroom and pulled an old shoebox from the wardrobe. It still had a scrunched up bunch of tissue paper in it, and he pushed most of the coins in underneath. That much gold, hopefully he could stretch it out into two batches, keep a little back for an emergency. He had nineteen coins in total, so he put ten in the box and stuck it underneath his bed, then scrabbled through his dresser drawers until he found the tiny drawstring bag that he’d bought his watch in. It was a little crappy and had the logo of the discount outlet stencilled on the side, but it would look better than just carrying them around in his pocket.
Back out the house, down the road into town, then a ten minute wait for the bus into Green Meadow. A couple of people looked at him disapprovingly as he got on the bus, but the driver didn’t seemed bothered, and he took a seat right at the back. An old lady in a weird little round hat was looking suspiciously at him, like she expected him to try and infect her with something. He ignored her as best he could.
At least he knew where he was going now; there was a little jeweller’s shop in the town centre of Green Meadow, an old fashioned sort of place that doubled as an antique shop. Not long after Dad had died, Mama had gone to sell her mother’s wedding ring there, trying everything to avoid selling their little fields. The jeweller had been really nice, quiet and professional, and had given them more money for it than he could have gotten away with, especially in such a swanky place where the two of them had stuck out like sore thumbs.
The bus ride was long; as he went the other passengers disembarked and new people got on, people who didn’t know him this time, or at least ones who didn’t notice him. He wondered how many people around him were aware of what a luxury it was to simply go unnoticed.
Nearly an hour later, the bus pulled up on a side street in the town centre; there weren’t any bus stops on the main street, not enough room among the sports cars and SUVs, he guessed. Maybe he should try to do some business around here. His memory was pretty good and he found the shop easily, a charmingly faded sign hanging above a wide window filled with cases of jewellery and delicate objet d’art. A bell above the door dinged cheerfully as he entered the dimly lit store, and the owner, a serene looking elderly man, stepped through from the back room, and took his place behind the counter.
“Can I help you with anything young man?”
“Uh…yeah. Yes, ah, do you deal in coins?” Jack said awkwardly, gesturing with the bag.
“Hm. On occasion yes. I assume they’re antique coins?”
“Oh yeah, but…I’m afraid I don’t know much about them. They belonged to my Grandfather, I never really got into coin collecting.”
“Hmm, well, let’s take a gander.”
Jack nodded, hoping that fate wouldn’t strike him down for lying to the nice old man. He undid the draw string on the little bag and slid the thick gold discs out onto the counter.
The old man’s eyebrows went up.
“Those are… my goodness, they really are very old, aren’t they!” he said in astonishment.
Jack felt a little touch of panic in the space between his shoulder blades. “Uh, like I said, I don’t really know much about-”
“I think I know of several collectors who’d be interested in these. Goodness, I may even know of a museum who would want them! Let me get the catalogue.”
The old man bustled off into his back room, murmuring cheerfully to himself, excitement having overcome his salesman’s cool. Jack looked at the little pile of coins. Did they look stolen? The old man seemed okay with them, but maybe he was covering, maybe he was back there calling the police.
The door swung open and he came back out, carrying a huge phone-book-like tome in both arms. “This will only take a minute or two,” he assured Jack, and set the book on the counter, where it fell open and several slips of paper fell out. “Oh dear.”
Jack waited agitatedly while the shopkeeper leafed through the thin pages of his catalogue, occasionally making little notes on a pad next to him, picking up a coin every now and then and studying it, before shaking his head and returning it to the pile. Finally;
“Ah! I knew it would be in here! Here we are, take a look.”
Jack leaned over as the old man turned the book, and looked carefully at the article he was pointing at. It took a moment for his eyes to make sense of the tiny, faded text, clustered in among several sketchy diagrams of what were obviously his coins. But when the words started to sink in, a few leapt out at him.
Like ‘doubloons’.
‘Pirates.’
‘Seized by the navy’.
‘Thought lost’.
These damn coins had been on more adventures than Indiana Jones.
“Are…are you sure it’s the same coins?” he asked warily.
“Oh yes, yes absolutely. You see, there are several from the same source in the Museum of Antiquity in the city. I’ve a friend who works as a sub-curator for coins there, and I’ve seen them several times. Are you sure you want to sell them? You could make a small fortune exhibiting them.”
“I don’t really know how to do that,” Jack admitted sheepishly. “We just really…need the money.” He felt his cheeks colour a touch.
The shopkeeper nodded sympathetically. “Let me go and make a phone call,” he said, and went back through the doorway. Jack heard him speaking on the phone; it sounded like he was getting passed between different people, trying to get hold of whoever it was he wanted. After a few minutes, he greeted somebody enthusiastically and started telling them rapidly about the coins.
Jack had been idly looking at the display of silver pillboxes in the cabinet underneath the counter, when the man came back into the shop with a cordless phone pressed to his ear.
“I’m utterly certain, Audrey, they look exactly like your sketches in the catalogue…of course!...No, no he said they were his Grandfather’s. He doesn’t know where they originally came from, but they’ve been in the family for some time.”
He glanced to Jack for confirmation on this, and Jack nodded. A part of him wanted to come clean at that point, but as pleasant as the man was, he didn’t think he’d buy ‘they were scraped off the boot of a giant man who lives at the top of a magic tree’.
Still talking to his friend, the shopkeeper took a ruler from under the counter and measured the diameter and thickness of each coin, dutifully reciting the numbers down the phone. Then out came a little brass scale and some weights, and he weighed each one carefully, then weighed them all against each other to make sure they were all the same. Finally, his friend had him pick each up individually and study them for lettering or symbols on their worn surfaces.
Eventually, he gave the lady a cheery goodbye and turned his attention back to Jack.
“Well young man, it’s good news; they’re real. Or as far as the country’s best coin expert can tell!” He was beaming broadly, and Jack hoped desperately that a phone discussion was enough to convince this expert that they were real; he’d been looking at the article again while the coins were being inspected, and he spotted the selling price of the ones in the museum; they were worth far more than their weight in gold.
“My friend has asked me to buy them from you on her behalf, with a view to adding them to her exhibit. Now these are in a rather more worn state than those she has already acquired, so I won’t be able to offer you quite as much money per coin, but I’m sure we can make a good deal.”
And there came the part where Jack got had, didn’t it. This nice old man was going to smile and tell him they weren’t really worth that much, and he’d get screwed over yet again, and probably never know how much money he really could have-
“Would you be willing to accept two fifty? Per coin that is.”
Jack swallowed hard.
“Uh…”
“I realise it seems low, after the price quoted in the catalogue, but I’m afraid with their condition, and the level of interest that coins get in the antiquities field nowadays, I-”
“No! No that…that seems very fair,” Jack replied hastily. Two hundred and fifty times nine was…two thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars! More money than he and Mama had had at one time since she’d had to give up work! He could keep some back, for emergencies, maybe even start a saving account for it. Perhaps he could even give himself a break from work, go job hunting again…
The shopkeeper had brought a cash box through from the back room and was busily counting out notes. Jack flinched when he saw them, and the old man looked up.
“Um, I know it sounds weird but…do you have anything other than hundreds? I kinda feel they’re…unlucky.”
And because he was a genuinely nice man, he didn’t even complain that it took every fifty and twenty dollar bill in the store to pay Jack for the coins.
Rating: NC-17 (for explicit sex, violence and themes of prostitution)
Summary: Jack and his mother are living close to the edge of poverty, but a strange encounter and a rather large surprise could lead to a change.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to any actual events or people. I haven't the foggiest who actually owns the rights to Jack and the Beanstalk, but is definitely isn't me. Please do not repost or reproduce this story without permission from the author.
By the time Finn had washed and put his clothing back on, the water in the bowl was starting to cool, and Jack was only too glad to clamber out with Finn’s assistance. Finn had spread the other cloth on the table for him, and he spent a minute just lying on it, air drying, before lifting up a corner of it to rub his hair dry.
Finn moved around the room a little, then sat down next to the table again, and leaned over him looking slightly concerned.
“I just had a look out the window, and…something’s happened to that tree.”
“What?”
“I think…I’m not sure, but I think you could climb back down it.”
“Seriously?” Relief shot through him like an arrow and he grabbed up his clothes, dragging them hastily into place on his still damp body.
“I’m glad. I’d hate to think your poor mother would be without you,” Finn said sincerely, and when Jack looked up at his face, his dark eyes were sad…almost mournful.
“I…I’m sorry to leave you up here, but I’ve got to go back.”
“’Course you do, don’t say you’re-”
“I had a great time with you. Thank you.”
Finn smiled. “Yeah, me too.” He glanced over at the big cabinet and a slightly awkward look came over his face. “Listen, I know you said you were sick of making money for sex, and I get that. So…don’t be offended, but…you’re having money troubles, right?”
Jack nodded, feeling his shoulders slump. Worse than ever, now the car was gone.
“So, would you like…not payment, but…maybe a gift?”
“What do you mean?”
Finn got to his feet and opened one of the bottom drawers of the cabinet, taking out a small, flat wooden box. Returning to the table with it, he set it down and opened the lid, removing first a piece of fabric, then a layer of white paper. Jack walked over to look inside, and gasped.
“Are those...what are those?”
“Coins, I think. Old ones,” Finn replied. “I sometimes find them in the soil here, stuck in the mud when I clean my boots. I rinse them and kept them, thought they might be handy. Don’t know how they got to be here, but…there they are. I imagine they’re worth a fair amount.”
He pinched up some of the thick, golden discs, like grains of salt between his fingers, and offered them to Jack.
“I can’t…I…they’re yours!”
“What can I possibly use them for? Please, take them. It’ll help you and…maybe I just want to give you a gift.”
One of the coins slipped from Finn’s fingers and Jack caught it. It was about twice the size of a quarter and strangely heavy.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” and Finn let go of them, letting them tumble into Jack’s cupped hands, a few thumping onto the table top. “Just remember, a gift, not a payment.”
“Like I could forget,” Jack grinned, and started packing the coins into his pockets, suddenly very glad that he’d worn baggy jeans.
“Thank you, Finn.”
“Welcome, little Jack.”
Jack stood up on his tiptoes and Finn leaned down for a kiss on the cheek, and then Jack was scooped up and carried, out the door and down the path between the fields, back to the towering shape of the old tree.
Finn set him down and straight away he could see the steps leading down the trunk, back to the real world.
He turned back.
“I…if I can come back, I will. Okay?”
Finn nodded. “Just be careful.”
Jack gave him one last smile, and headed down the steps.
*
His first few steps down the staircase were unsettling in the extreme. The clouds crowded in around him and the bulky shapes of the coins in his pockets made his legs feel awkward. He felt out every step with his toes, almost blindly, clutching with his short fingernails at the bark of the tree trunk. And then, as he went…somehow his fear, his thoughts, faded. His body just kept moving, step after step, past the clouds, past the tree tops, and by the time his feet touched solid, grassy ground, it felt like barely any time had passed at all.
The sun was still bright and clear, the day still morning-cool and fresh feeling. He checked his watch and, to his astonishment, saw that it was true; barely twenty minutes had passed since he’d first started his climb.
“Holy shit!”
How had it happened? He looked back up at the tree; perfectly real. Nothing out of place. But his legs were tired from the climb, his pockets were spilling over with worn gold coins, there was still a faint taste of apple on his tongue. And he could still feel Finn’s touch against his stomach.
Jack set off for home.
*
His Mama was taking a bath when he got in. He knew that he could get in the house and back out without disturbing her if he was careful; the bathroom door was thick. He slipped into his bedroom and pulled an old shoebox from the wardrobe. It still had a scrunched up bunch of tissue paper in it, and he pushed most of the coins in underneath. That much gold, hopefully he could stretch it out into two batches, keep a little back for an emergency. He had nineteen coins in total, so he put ten in the box and stuck it underneath his bed, then scrabbled through his dresser drawers until he found the tiny drawstring bag that he’d bought his watch in. It was a little crappy and had the logo of the discount outlet stencilled on the side, but it would look better than just carrying them around in his pocket.
Back out the house, down the road into town, then a ten minute wait for the bus into Green Meadow. A couple of people looked at him disapprovingly as he got on the bus, but the driver didn’t seemed bothered, and he took a seat right at the back. An old lady in a weird little round hat was looking suspiciously at him, like she expected him to try and infect her with something. He ignored her as best he could.
At least he knew where he was going now; there was a little jeweller’s shop in the town centre of Green Meadow, an old fashioned sort of place that doubled as an antique shop. Not long after Dad had died, Mama had gone to sell her mother’s wedding ring there, trying everything to avoid selling their little fields. The jeweller had been really nice, quiet and professional, and had given them more money for it than he could have gotten away with, especially in such a swanky place where the two of them had stuck out like sore thumbs.
The bus ride was long; as he went the other passengers disembarked and new people got on, people who didn’t know him this time, or at least ones who didn’t notice him. He wondered how many people around him were aware of what a luxury it was to simply go unnoticed.
Nearly an hour later, the bus pulled up on a side street in the town centre; there weren’t any bus stops on the main street, not enough room among the sports cars and SUVs, he guessed. Maybe he should try to do some business around here. His memory was pretty good and he found the shop easily, a charmingly faded sign hanging above a wide window filled with cases of jewellery and delicate objet d’art. A bell above the door dinged cheerfully as he entered the dimly lit store, and the owner, a serene looking elderly man, stepped through from the back room, and took his place behind the counter.
“Can I help you with anything young man?”
“Uh…yeah. Yes, ah, do you deal in coins?” Jack said awkwardly, gesturing with the bag.
“Hm. On occasion yes. I assume they’re antique coins?”
“Oh yeah, but…I’m afraid I don’t know much about them. They belonged to my Grandfather, I never really got into coin collecting.”
“Hmm, well, let’s take a gander.”
Jack nodded, hoping that fate wouldn’t strike him down for lying to the nice old man. He undid the draw string on the little bag and slid the thick gold discs out onto the counter.
The old man’s eyebrows went up.
“Those are… my goodness, they really are very old, aren’t they!” he said in astonishment.
Jack felt a little touch of panic in the space between his shoulder blades. “Uh, like I said, I don’t really know much about-”
“I think I know of several collectors who’d be interested in these. Goodness, I may even know of a museum who would want them! Let me get the catalogue.”
The old man bustled off into his back room, murmuring cheerfully to himself, excitement having overcome his salesman’s cool. Jack looked at the little pile of coins. Did they look stolen? The old man seemed okay with them, but maybe he was covering, maybe he was back there calling the police.
The door swung open and he came back out, carrying a huge phone-book-like tome in both arms. “This will only take a minute or two,” he assured Jack, and set the book on the counter, where it fell open and several slips of paper fell out. “Oh dear.”
Jack waited agitatedly while the shopkeeper leafed through the thin pages of his catalogue, occasionally making little notes on a pad next to him, picking up a coin every now and then and studying it, before shaking his head and returning it to the pile. Finally;
“Ah! I knew it would be in here! Here we are, take a look.”
Jack leaned over as the old man turned the book, and looked carefully at the article he was pointing at. It took a moment for his eyes to make sense of the tiny, faded text, clustered in among several sketchy diagrams of what were obviously his coins. But when the words started to sink in, a few leapt out at him.
Like ‘doubloons’.
‘Pirates.’
‘Seized by the navy’.
‘Thought lost’.
These damn coins had been on more adventures than Indiana Jones.
“Are…are you sure it’s the same coins?” he asked warily.
“Oh yes, yes absolutely. You see, there are several from the same source in the Museum of Antiquity in the city. I’ve a friend who works as a sub-curator for coins there, and I’ve seen them several times. Are you sure you want to sell them? You could make a small fortune exhibiting them.”
“I don’t really know how to do that,” Jack admitted sheepishly. “We just really…need the money.” He felt his cheeks colour a touch.
The shopkeeper nodded sympathetically. “Let me go and make a phone call,” he said, and went back through the doorway. Jack heard him speaking on the phone; it sounded like he was getting passed between different people, trying to get hold of whoever it was he wanted. After a few minutes, he greeted somebody enthusiastically and started telling them rapidly about the coins.
Jack had been idly looking at the display of silver pillboxes in the cabinet underneath the counter, when the man came back into the shop with a cordless phone pressed to his ear.
“I’m utterly certain, Audrey, they look exactly like your sketches in the catalogue…of course!...No, no he said they were his Grandfather’s. He doesn’t know where they originally came from, but they’ve been in the family for some time.”
He glanced to Jack for confirmation on this, and Jack nodded. A part of him wanted to come clean at that point, but as pleasant as the man was, he didn’t think he’d buy ‘they were scraped off the boot of a giant man who lives at the top of a magic tree’.
Still talking to his friend, the shopkeeper took a ruler from under the counter and measured the diameter and thickness of each coin, dutifully reciting the numbers down the phone. Then out came a little brass scale and some weights, and he weighed each one carefully, then weighed them all against each other to make sure they were all the same. Finally, his friend had him pick each up individually and study them for lettering or symbols on their worn surfaces.
Eventually, he gave the lady a cheery goodbye and turned his attention back to Jack.
“Well young man, it’s good news; they’re real. Or as far as the country’s best coin expert can tell!” He was beaming broadly, and Jack hoped desperately that a phone discussion was enough to convince this expert that they were real; he’d been looking at the article again while the coins were being inspected, and he spotted the selling price of the ones in the museum; they were worth far more than their weight in gold.
“My friend has asked me to buy them from you on her behalf, with a view to adding them to her exhibit. Now these are in a rather more worn state than those she has already acquired, so I won’t be able to offer you quite as much money per coin, but I’m sure we can make a good deal.”
And there came the part where Jack got had, didn’t it. This nice old man was going to smile and tell him they weren’t really worth that much, and he’d get screwed over yet again, and probably never know how much money he really could have-
“Would you be willing to accept two fifty? Per coin that is.”
Jack swallowed hard.
“Uh…”
“I realise it seems low, after the price quoted in the catalogue, but I’m afraid with their condition, and the level of interest that coins get in the antiquities field nowadays, I-”
“No! No that…that seems very fair,” Jack replied hastily. Two hundred and fifty times nine was…two thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars! More money than he and Mama had had at one time since she’d had to give up work! He could keep some back, for emergencies, maybe even start a saving account for it. Perhaps he could even give himself a break from work, go job hunting again…
The shopkeeper had brought a cash box through from the back room and was busily counting out notes. Jack flinched when he saw them, and the old man looked up.
“Um, I know it sounds weird but…do you have anything other than hundreds? I kinda feel they’re…unlucky.”
And because he was a genuinely nice man, he didn’t even complain that it took every fifty and twenty dollar bill in the store to pay Jack for the coins.