Genuine Sweet Read online

  It must have been all right, because Gram nodded. “Good. Now, all’s you have to do is whistle like that and hold out your cup this way.”

  Gram held her cup in both hands and lifted it up to the sky. She trilled again.

  I couldn’t help feeling she did look like an angel, just then, in her long white bathrobe, her white hair falling loose around her shoulders, every part of her—even her teeth, ’cause she smiled—glowing in the starlight.

  “Y’all come now. Come on,” she crooned, and whistled again.

  I was about to register my opinion that this was all starting to feel a little foolish, when the light of one of the brighter stars seemed to shine a little brighter still. I looked at it, really concentrating on it, and tried to make out if I was seeing things. After a time, though, there was no denying it. The beams that radiated from that star turned more liquid than light and began to pour down from the sky. Something very like quicksilver, it fell in soft rivulets that poured right into Gram’s cup, just as if she held it under the faucet of heaven.

  Gram waited for the last of the silver to dribble into her cup, then held it out for me to look. If you can imagine silver water that smells like carnations, that’s pretty much how it seemed to me.

  “Pure starlight,” Gram said reverently.

  “Do you drink it?” I asked.

  “My ma did,” she replied. “And all the words she spoke for the next day turned true. But me, I use it to water seeds.”

  Gram reached into her pocket and pulled out a bit of lint. “Just today, Roxanne Fuller was telling me she wished she had enough gas in her car to go visit her grandkids. ‘One tank’d do it, to get me there and back,’ she said. Now, just because someone wants something doesn’t mean you belt out a whistle and fetch it right up. You got to take care. But Roxie’s my best friend, and when a friend says a thing like that, all sad and desperate, what can you do but lend a hand?”

  She took the lint between her finger and thumb and rolled it into a tight ball. “One full tank of gas for Roxanne Fuller.”

  Then, with a spoon she pulled from her pocket, she dug a little hole and planted her seed. Once she’d covered it with earth, she poured the starlight over it, much in the way a person would water a plant.

  “Grow,” she told it. “Grow.”

  Gram put the cup and spoon back in her pocket, brushed off her hands, and said, “That’s all there is to it.”

  “And now Missus Fuller has a full tank of gas?” I asked.

  “I reckon she will.”

  “Nuh-uh!” I didn’t say it because I didn’t believe her, exactly. But you know, it was just such a crazy, incredible claim, and I guess a body feels obligated to protest in moments like that.

  “Yuh-huh.” She grinned. “Tomorrow morning, you go see.”

  “All right, I will.”

  “And collect yourself a wish or two,” said Gram. “People don’t have to know you’re doing it. Truth to tell, it’s probably best that they don’t. Just give an ear to folks’ hopes and needs. Then, tomorrow night, whistle you down some magic. Mm?”

  The next day, I did just as Gram had told me. I snuck out past Pa, who was still snoring on the porch, and left for Missus Fuller’s.

  I think I like Sass best in the mornings while Main Street’s still empty and the stores are all dark. This place has been around since before the Civil War—some of the buildings are just that old—and when there’s no cars or folks around, I imagine Gram’s gram walking along, doing her errands, wearing one of those fancy, old-time dresses and maybe a pair of dainty gloves with ruffles at the wrists.

  The trees are even older than the buildings, so they would have seen Gram’s gram directly, and she would have seen them, too. It comforts me somehow—even though I’ll never get to look her in the eye, precisely, I can lay my hand on the very same tree she might have taken shade under on a summer day.

  I greeted the trees with a nod, and the squirrels, too, who chittered as I passed by. I’m a little crazy like that, talking to things that can’t talk back, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Besides, truth is, maybe they do talk back and we’re just not smart enough to understand them.

  Missus Fuller’s home was just a block past Main, a big old place that used to be a popular boarding house, run by her ma and pa. My own gram had lived there for a number of years, until she moved in with Pa and me. It was mostly empty now, except for the occasional drifter who rented a room passing through on their way to someplace else.

  I found Missus Fuller sitting on her porch, a mug in hand, watching the steam rise from her coffee. I thought she looked a little lonesome.

  “Morning, Missus Fuller,” I called from her gate.

  “Gen-u-wine Sweet!” She waved a beckoning hand. “Come in! Come in!”

  Missus Fuller felt beside her chair for her cane and gingerly pushed herself upright. Not much older than Gram, she colored her hair a soft pinkish-red color, which I always thought gave her a bright appearance.

  “You’re just in time!” She opened her front door, stepped in, and said over her shoulder, “Fresh blueberry muffins cooling on the stove!”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, ma’am,” I called, but secretly I was delighted at the thought of something other than mush for breakfast.

  “Trouble!” She laughed as I stepped into her kitchen. I don’t think there was a single spoon, plate, or butter dish without a picture of a chicken on it. “A muffin’s for eating. There’s no trouble in that. Sit.”

  Missus Fuller beamed as I devoured two muffins and a tall glass of orange juice. The berries were so fat and juicy, the blue-tinged cake so sweet, I nearly forgot why I’d come.

  Eventually, though, it did come back to me, and as I set my empty glass on the table, I said, “I was wondering, Missus Fuller, if you could do something for me.”

  She blinked placidly at me. “Sure, honey.”

  “I don’t know how to say this, exactly, but my gram and I were talking last night and your situation came up—about how you wished for a tank of gas so you could visit your grandkids.”

  Missus Fuller nodded.

  “And, well, we thought there might be something we could do about that, and so we . . . wished on a star, I guess, that you might have your tank of gas, seeing as how it would make you so happy to see your kin.”

  Missus Fuller got a funny look then—well, two funny looks. The first one was the kind of face a person might make when someone asks them to donate money and they don’t want to. But the second look was something else, as if she was secretly not an old lady at all, but a little girl in an old body. The second look won out.

  Her eyes shone and she gave a mischievous sort of grin. “Let’s look.”

  The two of us got up from the table, the legs of our chairs scraping the floor loudly. We hustled out to her garage, where her long white Cadillac, older than me, sat quietly.

  Missus Fuller opened the car door and handed me her cane. “The best way’s to start it up, so we can see for real how much gas is in it.”

  She eased herself into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition. The car grumbled before it roared, and—just a quick tick later—that little girl inside Missus Fuller was hooting and clapping her hands and bouncing around.

  “Hooo!” was all she could say for a time, but eventually she did manage the words, “Full tank! Full tank! Baby girls, here I come!”

  What do you do with something like this, I ask you? What do you do when you wake up one day and realize pigs just might fly, for real? As for me, I did the strangest thing. I broke down and cried.

  I guess it was because I remembered right then that my ma was dead, my daddy was a drunk, and this morning’s blueberry muffins were the first time I’d felt full up in a season. Why hadn’t someone fetched a wish for me? For my ma? It hurt my heart to think about how easy it had been to wish up that tank of gas, especially when I considered everything that went into drilling oil and refining it, shipping it ’cross the cou
ntry in trucks—all the people and all the effort: so gigantic! Somehow, the magic in the stars had swept aside all those details in some special way to fill up Missus Fuller’s car. Couldn’t somebody get out their broom on my behalf?

  “Genuine, are you all right?” Missus Fuller asked. “Honey, what is it?”

  Her eyes were so bright and her happiness was so real, I just couldn’t ruin it with my complaining.

  “I’m glad for you, is all,” I said.

  She gave me a big hug and laughed from her belly. “Sometimes life surprises you, don’t it?” She set her hands on the steering wheel as if she was ready to drive off. “I guess I should pack a few things. Can you wait a minute? I’ll give you a ride home. It’s on my way.”

  I squinched my nose. “Naw, thanks. I like to walk. Plus, I’ve got some other errands.”

  “If you’re sure,” Missus Fuller said. “You thank your granny for me, all right, Genuine? That was a mighty nice thing, considering—well, seeing as how—I just know that was a difficult thing for her to do, after all this time.”

  I was in a sort of daze when I left Missus Fuller, so I wandered for a time, until I came to a tree whose branches dipped down like the streams of a fountain. I sat butt to dirt and leaned my head back against the trunk. The tree felt sturdy and alive, and I liked thinking of the idea that it breathed my air while I breathed its. Before long, I felt mostly better. After all, it had been a mighty right thing, to be able to make Missus Fuller smile that way. Even if my life didn’t change, if I really could help folks, wasn’t that better than nobody’s life changing, nobody smiling new smiles? If I couldn’t smile for me, I’d smile for them. That was that.

  And for a time, that was that. But I’m no angel. It’s easy to be glad for others’ happiness sometimes. But all the time? Even on your worst days, your hurting days? That’s the hard part. You’ll see what I mean when I come to the part of the story where—well, you’ll see.

  I got up, dusted myself off, and tried to think of someplace somebody might be wishing something. Three things came to me: the ball field, the old folks’ home, and the hospital. I decided against the ball field, because anyone wishing for a home run couldn’t wait until nighttime for me to whistle down the magic. As for the nursing home, my ma had been the cleaning girl there, and since no one ever quits a job in Sass, there’s plenty of people on staff who remember her real well and always find it necessary to say so. Maybe I’d go there on a day when my tears weren’t quite so close to hand.

  Instead, I drifted down Main Street, passing a dozen or so faces I knew almost as well as my own. My feet carried me past Ham’s Diner, the drugstore, and our few empty storefronts, beyond the city hall, then finally toward the hospital.

  Now, you, coming from the city, might not think too much of our tiny town. Our stores, by and large, open at nine and close at six. The barber, playing the banjo on the bench outside his shop, may seem downright provincial to your eye. But small-town life can be a mighty fine thing when you’re hurt and needing comfort.

  For instance, consider Nurse Cussler, who was tacking a flyer to the town bulletin board. Two years back, when I broke my arm, she was there. When the doc was about to set my bone, Nurse Cussler got me talking about the gorge. So there we were, saying how fall was coming and how the leaves would change and the whole gorge would turn into a vision of apricot and gold and—sitch!—that’s when the doc set my arm. Of course it hurt, but I know it didn’t hurt as bad as it could have, and I can’t help thinking that all that talk of sunlight shining through autumn leaves somehow gave me the heart to heal up fast and well, which I did.

  I glanced over to read the flyer Nurse Cussler had posted. A charity benefit for Mister Apfel, who needed important medical treatment and couldn’t pay for it.

  Hmm.

  Probably, there wasn’t a soul in Sass who didn’t have some kind of wish. Only yesterday, Nurse Cussler had told me that Greg Mittler was in the hospital with his whole face swole up. (Anaphylactic shock, she had whispered confidentially.) Surely Greg wished that whole catastroke would just disappear! And I knew for a fact that Ham had been longing for a new freezer for a couple years now. These were important, real things my neighbors needed. And here I was, maybe, with the gift of fetching ’em for them. How could I pick?

  Hands in my pockets, I stood on the street corner, thinking it over.

  Just down the way, Edie Walton flipped the OPEN sign on the community college’s outreach office door, where she was both a worker and a scholar. Jeb Turner’s truck pulled between two rows of rental storage units, passing a sign that pointed to a highway that would take a person into the distant, summer-green mountains.

  A few paces off, out front of Marvin’s Hunt Shop and Prom Gear, a girl about my own age held a cell phone up to the sky. If she was looking for a connection, she wouldn’t find it there. The only spot cell phones worked in Sass was from atop the roof of Ham’s Diner. Since the girl plainly didn’t know that—and since I knew neither her name nor her face—she was plainly a stranger. Which in Sass was quite a rarity.

  Looking lost and far away from home?

  “Maybe she’s needing a wish,” I reasoned, and started across the street.

  The girl was truly beautiful, with brown skin the color of chestnuts, long eyelashes, and a quality I guess the beauty-pageant people might call grace—even though she was only standing there contemplating her phone. In fact, everything about her was pageant-pretty. And here was me, plain little Genuine. I was embarrassed just to be walking toward her. Maybe I’d go see if poor, swollen Greg over at the hospital could mumble a wish.

  “Hi! Excuse me!” the stranger called out, just as I was turning away. “Could you tell me how to get to the library?”

  Determined not to let my uneasiness affect my manners, I smiled. “Sure!”

  “I’ve been trying all over the place, but I can’t get a signal,” she said, holding up her phone. “Would they have Internet at the library?”

  I walked on over. “You’re not from around here!”

  You may have heard this greeting and wondered at it. We really do mean it to be friendly.

  She stood stock-still for a time, and I thought I might have offended her. Then she bit her lip on one side and stuck her tongue out the other. “How could you tell?”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that.

  She held out one manicured hand and said, “Jura Carver. Ardenville refugee.”

  Ardenville, if you’re not familiar with it, is the closest big city. It’s known mainly for its eight-lane highways and its many aluminum-chair manufactories.

  I took her hand and gave it a shake. “Genuine Sweet.” Feeling pressed to add my own little something of interest, I tacked on, “Wish fetcher.”

  Jura jerked her chin back. “Wish fetcher? What’s that?”

  I found myself wondering just then if it was a good idea, telling folks about my wishing. Missus Fuller’s expression had been downright peculiar when I’d told her what Gram and me had been up to. But all of the sudden, I really needed to talk about that full tank of gas and the rest of my wish-fetching puzzlement. And it seemed a lot easier to tell it to a stranger, someone I’d never, ever see again, than to talk to someone who already knew me as Dangerous Dale Sweet’s daughter.

  And so, on a whim some might consider foolish, I set the whole ball of wax before her. Fourth-generation, no selfish wishes, starlight pouring from the sky. Everything. And I was real glad to get it off my chest.

  Until Jura gave me her own peculiar expression—part stare, part lime-pucker.

  “Hmm,” was all she said.

  Seconds ticked by.

  I could feel the red rising to my cheeks. I’d cut the fool, and that was all there was to it.

  “But you wanted the library, ha-ha!” I nearly shouted. Jura took a shocked half-step backward. “Which is right across the street from my second cousin’s beauty shop. Her name’s Faye, so’s you know. She’s real, real good at hair. An
d she’s got a library card. Pretty much everyone does. Which is why it’s so easy to find!” I giggled, giddy with embarrassment. “All in one building! City hall, the police department, the library, the extension office. Even the historical society, should you have the need.”

  “A need for a historical society?” Jura asked.

  “You never know.” I grinned tightly.

  Jura looked where I was pointing, then turned her gaze my way.

  “A wish fetcher?” she asked.

  “. . . Yep.”

  “And this liquid light you’re talking about, it’s really from the stars? Sort of a . . . quantum fruit punch?”

  I didn’t understand that, precisely, but my gut told me we were on the same page. “Sure!”

  She thought about that. “Sounds sort of like a water witch. You know, the way the talent runs in families?”

  “A water witch?” I tried to remember what that was. “Like a dowser?”

  She nodded. “My great-grandma was one. Only, I don’t think I can do it. I tried once, right over one of the city water mains, and my stick didn’t so much as twitch,” Jura admitted. “But still, I believe people can do it.”

  “Oh, surely, so do I. The McCleans, up on Stotes Hill, are known for it,” I said. “You should try your dowsing here. Amy McClean says the ley lines are real strong in Sass.”

  “Ley lines are places where power collects,” Jura mused. She gave me a long, careful look and said, “Wishes, huh?”

  I nodded.

  She broke into a smile—a beautiful one, of course. “That’s cool, Genuine.” Even though she was from the city, she pronounced it right: Gen-u-wine.

  “So, what are you going to do with it?” she asked, heading for the library.

  “I was just studying on that. I don’t rightly know,” I said, walking alongside her.

  “Think of all the good you could do!” Her eyes got bright and wide. “I mean, you could stop war! House the homeless!”

  My stomach rumbled. “Feed the hungry.”