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  It hardly seemed possible! One of my own relatives fetched a wish for a U.S. president? My mind boggled at the very notion!

  “If that don’t take the whole biscuit!” I whispered.

  “MacIntyre was your grandma’s maiden name, wasn’t it?” JoBeth asked.

  I told her it was.

  “You really should keep this, then.” She tapped the magazine. “A nice reminder of her, maybe.”

  I said it was, and thanked her sincerely.

  As I was leaving, JoBeth said to me, “You sure do have an extraordinary family, Genuine Sweet!”

  An extraordinary family, I repeated to myself.

  I nodded. “I reckon I do.”

  With the magazine tucked snug under my arm, I went back home. Pa was passed out on the sofa. Even in my room with the door shut, I could hear his snoring.

  It was a pretty, snowy Christmas holiday, and I spent it warm, thanks to a new program Penny Walton helped Jura and me get started at the electric company. The Empowerment Partnership, it was called. The “partners” were Rumpp County Power, SUBA, and everyone Penny could pester into joining. Once a month we all got together to find ways to make sure everyone’s electric bill got paid, whether they had the money or not. Sometimes we arranged work-for-power trades, other times we found donors. It wasn’t always easy, but it was a real comfort to know that nobody in Sass would ever go cold again.

  Christmas-wise, I received more than my share of invitations to parties and dinners. And never in all my born days had I gotten so many presents! Even after I’d failed to make all the weather go away, I guess a number of people still looked on me kindly.

  But gifts and invitations—and even good friends like Jura and Travis—didn’t make up for the fact that, when I came home at night, the place was usually empty. Even when Pa was there—well, you know—he wasn’t much in the way of company. In short, I was lonely for kin.

  That Christmas Eve, Miz Tromp and I sat together on the bench swing in front of her place. Travis and Tom and Kip were inside watching a football game—the RNN’s first official broadcast.

  “Ready for more marshmallows in that cocoa, Gen?” Miz Tromp asked me.

  I liked how she’d taken to calling me Gen. It reminded me of Gram.

  “Naw,” I said, fiddling with my ma’s old star necklace. I’d been wearing it a lot lately. “One more and it won’t be cocoa anymore, it’ll be marshmallow stew.”

  “Oooh! Now there’s an idea,” she said, ever the chef.

  On the eaves overhead, the Tromps’ Christmas lights blinked red-green-white in turn. I watched them for a time, thinking on how I’d never had any Christmas decorations at my house at all, until Gram had moved in and brought hers with her. I hadn’t bothered to unpack them this year, though.

  “Miz Tromp?” I said softly.

  She sipped her cocoa. “Mm?”

  “I was wondering, would you fetch me a wish?”

  Her eyes got wide and she sat up very straight. “Course I would! Happy to! What for?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I guess I’m tired of going home to a vacant house. It’s nice of you and the Carvers to have me over all the time, but I miss my gram, and even though I never met her, I miss my ma.” I laughed. “In a way, I even miss my pa, because part of me can imagine what it might be like if he were, well, you know, really like a pa.” I shook my head. “Maybe you can help with the phrasing of it, but I think my wish is for something like a family.”

  She set her cocoa on the porch rail and stood up. “All right.”

  “All right?” I asked.

  “I just happen to have a wish cupcake tucked away for emergencies like this one.”

  “It’s not really an emergency—” I started to say.

  “Sure it is. Now come inside and don’t argue.”

  What was I to do but follow?

  I went inside, ate my cupcake—Oh, Lordy, that melt-in-the-mouth cupcake!—and after we talked for a while longer, I went home.

  26

  Hoes and Rows

  SO THERE YOU HAVE IT. GENUINE SWEET, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD wish fetcher, retired. Or, retired-ish, anyway.

  It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, how a gift comes to a body? Ping! You’re a wish fetcher! Here’s your heavy yoke and more than a few sleepless nights! Maybe that’s why, that night on the hill, only a very few people cared to learn to fetch wishes for themselves. They sensed that, in some ways, being a wish fetcher is harder than it is easy. Though I think there were probably other reasons, too.

  Love does not triumph easily or without pain. A lady writer said that, and I think it’s true. Wish fetching, when it’s done right, has a lot to do with love. Not just loving people, but also loving life in all its sorrows and celebrations. When we see someone suffering and our gut urge is to reach out a hand rather than tearing off in the other direction, that’s when we’re ready, I think, to really start fetching wishes.

  You might be wondering why I’m saying this to you. Well, I heard that Dilly Barker taught her schoolteacher cousin, Shevonne, to fetch wishes. Not long after, Miss Shevonne gave the gift to thirteen sixth-graders!

  And, as you might imagine, I can’t help worrying a little. Even if each of them kids only taught one person, and those fetchers taught one, and those fetchers . . . It could be the second coming of the fall of the great city of Fenn.

  But I do like to think better of people. Take you and me, for instance. Here we are, me talking till I hardly have any words left, and you listening for all you’re worth. Thank you kindly for that, by the by.

  Now you know my story. The ups, the downs, the shiny, and the grimy.

  So if the gift comes your way—and there’s a good chance it might—I know you’ll remember. You’ll think on star song and Cornucopio and all the weather. You’ll recall the way the right wish can raise a smile, and how there are some troubles wishing can’t fix. But most of all, I hope you’ll remember what Gram said about finding your own way. Even if I never fetch another wish, even if no fetcher teacher ever appears in your town, there’s nothing in the whole world—except our own selves—that can keep us from our good.

  That’s what I’ve learned, at least.

  That, and how to mill some downright magical flour.

  About the Author

  FAITH HARKEY travels the back roads of America in search of Story. From Mississippi to Montana, Colorado to Kansas, she is drawn to places where the pace of life is unhurried and the milk comes fresh from the cow. Her adopted hometowns include Tiger, Georgia (population 406); Grangeville, Idaho (population, 3,151); and Istachatta, Florida (population 116). Faith is a graduate of the Writer’s Workshop at Eckerd College, and thinks better with her shoes off.

  www.GenuineSweet.com