You probably know the story, too. Jack and his mom are broke. All they have is a cow. Mom tells Jack to take it to market and sell it and get at least five gold coins for it （no pellets in this story）。 On the way to town, Jack meets a fast-talking peddler who persuades him to trade the cow for five magic beans. His mother is furious and throws the beans out the window. Overnight, they sprout a magic beanstalk that goes high into the clouds. Up there is a huge castle （how it floats on clouds is something none of the versions go into） where the giant lives with his wife.
Jack basically steals golden stuff—coins, a goose that lays golden eggs, the golden harp that warns the giant. But it’s not stealing in the usual sense, because the giant has stolen all the golden stuff for himself. I found out that the giant’s famous chant—Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman—was cribbed from King Lear, where a character named Edgar says, Child Roland to the dark tower came, His word was still Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man. And something else I don’t remember from any animated cartoon or Little Golden Book: the giant’s sleeping chamber is littered with the bones of children. The giant’s name gave me a chill, deep and premonitory.
Gogmagog.
4
I turned off the standing lamp at eleven and dozed until my phone’s alarm woke me at quarter to twelve. I hadn’t bothered to put the Oxy pills in the safe yet; they were on the bureau where I’d stashed my few clothes. I took two of them downstairs. Radar growled at me in the dark and sat up.
“Hush, girl,” Mr. Bowditch said, and she did. I turned on the lamp. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “Here you are, right on the dot. Good. I really didn’t want to ring that bell.”
“Have you slept?”
“Some. After I get these damn things down my gullet, I might be able to get under again. Maybe until dawn.”
I gave him the pills. He got up on one elbow to swallow them, then handed me the glass and lay back down. “Better already. That’s the psychological effect, I suppose.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No. Go back to bed. Growing boys need their rest.”
“I think I’ve done most of my growing.” At least I hoped so. I was six-four and weighed two-twenty. If I grew any more, I’d be a—
“Gogmagog.” I said it without thinking.
I expected a laugh but didn’t even get a smile. “Been studying up on your fairy tales?”
I shrugged. “Carrying the gold to Stantonville made me think of the magic beans and the beanstalk.”
“So now you know Jack.”
“I guess I do.”
“In the Bible, Gog and Magog are the warring nations of the world. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Book of Revelations. Put them together and you’d have a real monster. One best to stay clear of. Turn out the light, Charlie. We both need some sleep. You’ll get yours, I may get mine. A little vacation from the pain would be nice.”
I gave Radar a pat, then turned off the light. I headed for the stairs, then turned back. “Mr. Bowditch?”
“Howard,” he said. “You need to practice that. You’re not the fucking butler.”
I thought I sort of was but didn’t want to argue the point so late at night. “Howard, right. What did you do for a living before you retired?”
He chuckled. It was a rusty sound, but not unpleasant. “I was a part-time surveyor and a part-time logger. A simple woodcutter, in other words. The fairy tales are full of them. Go to bed, Charlie.”
I went to bed and slept until six, when it was time for more pills—not just the painkillers this time but the whole works. Once more I found him awake and looking up at the ceiling. I asked him if he had slept. He said yes. I’m not sure I believed him.
5
We had eggs for breakfast, scrambled by moi. Mr. Bowditch sat on the edge of the roll-out couch to eat, with his fixator-encased leg on the hassock that went with his easy chair. He asked me again to leave while he used the urinal. When I came back, he was actually up and on his crutches, looking out the front window.
“You should have waited for me to help you,” I said.
He made a tcha sound. “You straightened that picket fence.”
“Radar helped.”
“I bet she did. It looks better. Help me back to bed, Charlie. You’ll have to hold my leg like you did before.”
I got him into bed. I took Radar for a walk along Pine Street, and the newer, fresher meds seemed to be helping, because she walked quite a distance, marking telephone poles and a hydrant or two along the way: Radar of Bowditch. Later on I took Mr. Bowditch’s check to the bank. At home—Dad long gone by then—I grabbed some more clothes and my laptop. Lunch was more s-and-s for Mr. Bowditch and hotdogs for me. A frozen dinner would have gone down well （I like the Stouffer’s）， but Mr. Bowditch didn’t have a microwave. I put some of the meat from Tiller and Sons out to thaw. I could see YouTube cooking videos in my future, if we weren’t going to be living on canned soup and sardines. I gave Mr. Bowditch his noon pills. I called Melissa Wilcox to check in, as she’d asked me to do. I was supposed to tell her how many times Mr. Bowditch had been up, what he was eating, and if he’d had a bowel movement. That last was a big no, and she wasn’t surprised. She said OxyContin was a hell of a constipator. After lunch, I took an envelope out to his mailbox and raised the flag. It contained his personal check made out to Arcadia Hospital. I could have taken it myself, but Mr. Bowditch wanted to be sure Heinrich’s check cleared first.