One time a boy who was squirrel hunting came across a dead crow with something stuck in its beak. “That’s funny,” said the boy, and when he pried the thing loose he saw it was a grain of corn the size of a shelled hickory nut and bright green to boot. “There ain’t but one thing to do with a seed like that,” said the boy, so he scratched out a hole at the foot of a big bluff and put the seed in. Then he scooped some water out of an old hollow stump into his boot and gave the seed a good soaking. “I reckon we’ll see what happens now,” said the boy.
In a week’s time, he came back to the bluff, and that grain of corn had sprouted into a cornstalk bigger around than an oak tree but smooth and green like a regular stalk with leaves over twenty feet long hanging down, all broke-back the way corn leaves droop. Jack couldn’t see the top of the stalk because it went clean up past the rimrock all the way into the clouds. He couldn’t see any ears on it either. Jack ran home and told his folks about the cornstalk, but they just hoo-hawed at him, and his ma said, “You’re out of your berry-pickin’ mind if you think we’re gonna believe a tale such as that.”
Jack said, “I swear it’s true. Come on, I’ll show you!”
And his pa said, “That’s enough jokin’, boy. You’re about to get a leather strap across your hindquarters. You know what Scripture says about honorin’ your mother and father and that means not tryin’ to make fools of them.”
That made Jack pretty sore, and he says to them, “I’m goin’ to climb that stalk if it’s the last thing I ever do on this earth.”
So, back to the bluff and the cornstalk he went where he studied the situation with his hands on his hips and his face looking up to the sky. Finally, he spat on his palms, hitched his britches, and started up. He climbed and climbed until he was higher than the bluff, and then kept on climbing until he looked down on the tops of the tallest pines on the hill, but he didn’t stop: He climbed until the whole country below looked like a quilt of fields and forests spread out on the floor, and still he kept climbing. After a while there wasn’t nothing around but clouds, and all at once he popped out of the clouds and into a big meadow. The grass up there was higher than a man on horseback, but Jack did the best he could, walking and shoving the grass aside, until he saw a flock of sheep grazing, only every one of those sheep was bigger than a boxcar. The old bellwether had a brass bell hung round his neck that was big as a hog-scalding cauldron, and every time he moved his head that bell went bong, bong, like the Judgment Day was at hand.
“My folks surely won’t believe a word of this,” the boy says, “unless I fetch something back to prove it.” So he got out his hunting knife and went to work on the strap that held the bell. That belt was thick as a dozen girth straps stitched together, and Jack sawed and sawed until he finally cut it through. The bell was too heavy to carry, so Jack got behind it and rolled it, and it went bonging across the meadow loud enough to raise the dead.
Well, sir, that bell raised something, all right. Just as he got to the edge, here comes the giant that owned the sheep, bellowing like a bull in a thunderstorm. That giant was taller than a chinkapin, and he was swinging a whole hickory tree, root ball and all, for a club.
The boy gave the bell one last shove over the edge, and then he wrapped his arms and legs around the cornstalk and slid down it like a raccoon down a grapevine, shucking leaves as he went. The giant flung his hickory tree at Jack and missed, so he climbed onto the stalk and came sliding down after the boy. The whole stalk started swaying and cracking. The boy lit on the ground just about the time that cornstalk gave way and toppled over like a pine tree before a stout wind. Down came the giant—KA-THUMPH—on the bluff, and the ground quivered like there was an earthquake. That giant split open like a watermelon dropped off a trestle, and that was the end of him.
Well, the boy’s folks heard the crash, felt the tremor, and came a-running, hollering for the neighbors as they did, and when they got to the bluff, they gaped at the broken cornstalk and the dead giant. Then Jack’s mother wailed, “Oh, Pa! Our boy wasn’t lying, not even a little bit, and now look what’s happened. He’s prob’ly dead under that giant, and it’s all our fault!”
A voice said, “Don’t worry, Ma!” It was Jack! “I’m okay! I crawled back under the bluff and watched the giant bust when he hit the ground. And look what I brought with me.” And with that Jack put his shoulder to the bell and rolled it into the clearing. He stood proud as a tin soldier by the brass bell and said, “Now who’s foolin’ who?”
Jack’s Ma and Pa hugged him tight and told him what a good, honest boy he is and how wrong they were to ever doubt him. Then Jack says, “Yes, it’s true: I am an upstanding lad. But we better bury that giant where nobody’ll find him. We don’t want people making up scandalous stories about all this.” So, the folks got their shovels and picks and started digging a huge hole, and by nightfall, that giant was covered up for good. That winter every family up and down the creek was sleeping under new quilts and riding on new saddle blankets, all made out of the queerest woolly cloth you ever saw: They never looked so warm and comfortable before. The old people said all that strange cloth was cut from the giant’s britches, but the young folks just laughed at them.
But back to our story. Jack said, “I reckon we better hide the bell, too. You know how folks exaggerate things around here.” So they rolled the big bell into a blackberry thicket and made a solemn vow never to speak of it again.
But wouldn’t you know it: Some boys out hunting ginseng found the big sheep bell anyway, and they rolled it all the way out of the woods and into town. The mayor wanted to mount the bell beside the church, but the preacher wouldn’t hear of it. He said no mortal man ever made a monstrous brass bell like that, not in these parts, anyhow, and it was most likely the Devil’s doings. “You go to ringing that thing on a Sunday morning,” he says, “and there’s no telling who or what might show up. Take it back!” So the boys rolled it all the way back into the deep woods, and folks say it’s still a-laying out there in the brush to this day.