Genuine Sweet Page 5

  “No. Like, ‘I wish I may, I wish I might.’ Ping! Wish granted.”

  Faye nodded slowly. “That’s an interesting line of work you’ve chosen.”

  I would not be deterred. “So, can I? Make my announcement?”

  “Be my guest! They sure ain’t goin’ nowhere!” she told me, smiling again. “You sure you wouldn’t rather sell hand-wove potholders, though?”

  Figuring some things only suffer by explanation, I left to fetch a box from the supply room. Setting it in the center of the salon, I gave Faye a nod.

  “Y’all listen up!” Faye called from the nail station, where she was now trimming Missus Binset’s cuticles. “Genuine’s got something to say!”

  The ladies’ jawing died down. Three pink-rollered heads turned my way.

  I hopped up on my box. “Thank you for your, uh, allowing me to interrupt your, uh, fancifying regimens.”

  “Probably taking up a collection for her daddy’s bail,” I heard one of them whisper.

  I felt my cheeks turn red.

  “Go ahead, sugar.” Faye gave me an encouraging bob of the head.

  “Um,” I began. “So—I’m Genuine. Guess y’all know that. And, uh, I’m here to ask y’all to think on something in your lives that isn’t quite as fine as you’d like it to be. Maybe you’ve got more chores than you can manage. Or your bunions might be troubling you, and nothing but nothing will give you relief. Every one of us has things we need, you see. And that’s where I hope to be of, uh, service.”

  I paused to give each lady some eye-to-eye contact.

  “Not long ago, a woman needed work in Sass. Sass! you might say. There ain’t no work in Sass! And, of course, you’d be right. But I was able to help her out, and in less than three days’ time, she had her a job in town! How? you might ask.”

  No one did ask, which deflated me some, but I went on. “By sending her to the day labor office? No, ma’am! I used my own special inheritance! I’m a fourth-generation wish fetcher, you see. And I believe I might be able to fetch you the special things your hearts are longing for! Now, uh—”

  Here came the hard part. Could I really ask these women to pay me cash money for wishes? And if I did, could I really fetch the kinds of things they’d ask for? What if Jura’s ma’s job was a fluke? What if Dangerous Dale’s daughter turned out to be nothing more than a well-meaning yap-up? I almost stepped shamefacedly down off my box right then. But, all at once, I recalled Gram’s troubled expression as she studied that overdue bill. No! I determined. I would not go all feather-legged now!

  I swallowed hard and went on. “For the reasonable price of twenty dollars, I’ll give you one of these here biscuits.” I held one up for display. “And through the power of my family shine, you will—almost certainly—very probably—I’m thinking the chances are real good that your wish will come true. And if it doesn’t, I swear I’ll refund your money! Give it a couple weeks first, though. Maybe a month, to be on the safe side. Um. Actually, I’m not sure how long a wish would take, if it was a hard one—”

  I saw that I’d drifted downriver some, so I grabbed a paddle and rowed myself back. “Well. That’s all. Twenty dollars a wish, satisfaction guaranteed. Thank you kindly for your time.” I plastered on the biggest grin I could muster, curtsied, and hopped off the box.

  “I tell you what I’d wish for!” Missus Hoover said at once. “That Reggie Booker would close his blame window blinds at night! Him and his new lady friend been working all kinds of hoodoo over there!”

  “Hmmph,” grumped Penny Walton, turning her magazine pages with an angry flick. For some reason I couldn’t discern, she glared at me every now and again.

  “Twenty dollars is a cheap price for a wish come true,” Faye said sagely. My cousin may not have understood the wish-fetching trade, but that didn’t stop her from trying to drum up a little business for me. Still, she did look a mite worried as she whispered in my direction, “You really can magic stuff up with those biscuits?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I believe I can,” I replied.

  Penny Walton pulled the hair dryer from her own head and stormed over.

  “Who do you people think you are?” she snarled.

  I looked over my shoulder for all those “people” she was referring to. No one was there. “Ma’am?”

  “MacIntyres! Wish fetchers!” she caterwauled. Turning to Missuses Hoover and Kalweit, under the dryers, she added, “Don’t let her draw you into her schemes, girls! Her kind won’t bring anything but trouble!”

  Faye stepped away from her work, poised to defend me, should things take a turn.

  Penny Walton directed her dagger-eye my way. “You think I don’t recall the hopes Cristabel dredged up, then cast away? Think again!” She set a hand on her hip and poked a finger in my face. “You drop this flummery now, or I’ll put a stop to it!”

  She marched out the door before Faye could finish shouting about the rollers still in Penny’s hair.

  I sat for a time, not sure what to make of any of it.

  Libby Kalweit, sitting under her hair dryer, said to Faye, “Switch this off, would you, honey?”

  Once the dryer was off, Libby told me, “Don’t let Penny hurt your feelings none. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s the pot-stirrers who turned a sorrow into a spectacle.”

  “What are you talking about, Libby?” Faye asked before I could.

  Missus Kalweit glanced my way. “I don’t want to say too much. Make me just as bad as the muckrakers.”

  When we kept silent, waiting for more, she went on, “All right. Without saying too much, poor Penny’s heart got broke. Bad. Still, the pain might have passed in time, were it not for her so-called friends poking at the sore places. Spreading lies, getting Penny all stirred up. Nobody believed the things those girls said about your mama, of course, but poor Cristabel still went home every day for a month, cryin’.”

  “Hush now, Libby!” Missus Binset hissed. “There’s no call to go dredging up the past!”

  “You hush! You’re just feelin’ guilty for how you and Penny fabled against poor Cristabel! Trying to rile folks up so they’d turn their backs on her!” Missus Kalweit said tartly. “Far as I’m concerned, there’s no fault in the MacIntyre line. Not a one of you!” she assured me. A few seconds later, she muttered, “Though your granny never charged money for her wishes.”

  My gut twisted with a flash of anger. I wanted to say, What should I do, old woman, feed you with wishes while I starve? It took everything I had to remember that, thanks to Dilly Barker’s flour, I hadn’t had a single hunger pain in two days.

  “Times change,” was all I said.

  “That may be, but I don’t know many folks with twenty dollars to spare,” said Libby.

  Faye waved a hand, calling me to her. “I’m sure it’s not your fault, Genuine, Penny gettin’ so worked up,” she said. “She works in real estate, and the market’s bad, you know? When people get stressed, they take things out on folks who don’t deserve it. That’s probably what it was.”

  Whatever it was, when Faye closed up shop, I still had three biscuits and my wallet was empty. I was gonna have to come at this differently.

  5

  A Fine Notion

  WHEN TRAVIS TROMP TRIED TO LATCH ON TO me in the hall the next morning, I went right up to Sonny and asked if he needed help washing blackboards again.

  “You seem a little chewed up today, Genuine,” Sonny said as he pulled a piece of fruit from his locker.

  “A little.” I was, after all, a wish fetcher with nary a wish to fetch.

  He held up his orange. “Want half?”

  “I’d love it!” I said, maybe a little more dramatically than the moment called for. But I really did love it—the orange and the fact that Sonny was sharing it with me, of his own free will.

  Later, Scree gripped my sleeve and dished, “Oooh, the look on Travis’s face while you ate that orange! Dear goodness!”

  Maybe, I thought, just maybe Travis needed a
wish biscuit to help him find a girl who’d love him back. Then he’d be less angry and wouldn’t pester folk so much. I decided it was a good idea, and I told myself to remember: Biscuit for Travis. But you know how it is when life gets lively. Sometimes things slip your mind. Because, that day came a treat that brightened my spirits right up. While Mister Strickland was calling roll, Missus Forks, the school secretary, led a new student into the room.

  “Class, I’d like you to meet Jura Carver,” Missus Forks said. “Go on, Jura. There’s a desk right next to Genuine, over there.”

  I waved a hand. She saw me and let out a huge breath. Her shoulders—which she’d been holding so high they might have been earrings—relaxed.

  “I am so glad to see you!” she whispered to me.

  “Are you all right?” I whispered back, wondering where Jura’s mettle had gone.

  “Ladies, let’s don’t make me separate you on Jura’s first day, hmm?” Mister Strickland frowned at us, but I could tell it was just his way of making Jura welcome. “Genuine, will you get Miss Carver a set of books?”

  I ran to the back of the room and selected the most decently clean math, history, English, and earth science books on the shelf. Even though we were almost done with Shakespeare, I grabbed a Macbeth, too, so Jura could follow the last of the discussion.

  “Um,” she said as she examined the math book.

  “Yes, Jura?” our teacher inquired.

  “I’m in algebra,” she replied.

  Mister Strickland paused. “Are you?” After a moment, he brightened. “Well, good for you. We’ll see what we can do about that. You won’t mind a little review today, though, will you?”

  “No, sir,” she answered.

  And then she didn’t say another word until lunch.

  I showed Jura to the lunchroom and motioned for her to go on in first. She looked right and left like she expected a truck to hit her. Figuring she was only a bit addled in new surroundings, I started to take the lead, but she set an arm in front of me, so I couldn’t pass.

  “Jura, what’s—”

  “Do you think—” Jura whispered, casting her gaze over our classmates. “I mean, these kids, you’ve known them for a while?”

  “Since I was knee-high to a grasshopper,” I told her.

  “And they’re . . . pretty nice?”

  “Mostly,” I replied. “You don’t want to knock Martin’s eraser off his desk the day after his pa busts him for skipping school. And Scree’s been known to talk from both sides of her mouth. But there’s no harm in ’em.” I considered Jura’s worried expression. “You’ve been looking awfully wary today. What’s got you so creepified?”

  “Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I guess.” She twisted the strap of her satchel. “I know this isn’t my old school, but I still half-expect somebody to sneak up on me and stick something sharp in my back.”

  “Like a knife?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Usually it was a comb or something, but they’d let me think it was a knife. They tormented me pretty bad.”

  People tormented smart, sweet Jura? “That’s wretched! No! There ain’t a person at this table would do such a thing! I promise!”

  She unclenched a little. After we collected our very sloppy joes from the lunch line, I led her to the seventh-grade table, and we sat.

  “Where you live, Jura?” asked Donut, his mouth full of food.

  Everyone swiveled Jura’s way. In Sass, people tended to turn their neighbors into landmarks. If you were looking for Cribbs Bee Farm, “Down by the Sweet place” was no less correct than “Beside the bridge over Squirrel Tail Creek.” (Of course, I knew full well that anytime someone gave directions that included “Down by the Sweet place,” they also served up an earful about ol’ Dangerous Dale.)

  “I’m not sure exactly. Off of . . . um . . . Briggs Road? Biggs Road?” Jura waffled.

  “She’s Trish Spencer’s kin,” I filled in. “Her ma works at Dandy Andy’s.”

  “Oh!” the whole seventh grade replied at once, satisfied.

  Turning to Jura, I whispered, “She did get the job, right?”

  Jura nodded back.

  And that was it for Jura’s welcome into our circle. She might always be a newcomer in Sass, but she’d never be a stranger again.

  “You’re too pretty, Jura,” said Scree, who graced us with her lunchtime presence because Micky was out sick that day. “You should be a model.”

  This was high praise from Scree, who was herself a pageant fiend. I should say, I don’t mean that disparagingly; she really was nutty about it.

  “What’s wrong with you, Sonny? You sick?” I heard Martin ask.

  I looked at Sonny with all the womanly concern I could muster. His cheeks flared red, almost as if he was blushing.

  “Do you have a fever?” I asked.

  “Naw. M’fine.” He turned away and waved a hand like he was swatting a fly.

  Just then, Travis tromped up. It was hard to tell, but I thought his hair might’ve been combed some. “I notice you’re done with your tray, Genuine. Can I hump it to the trash for you?”

  Scree burst out in peals of giggles. “Hump it?”

  “I mean, what I meant was—” Travis floundered.

  “No, Travis,” I cut in. “I’ve got it.”

  “You can take mine,” Jura said, real out of the blue. “If you want.” I could tell she felt sorry for him, but of course, that was only because she didn’t know him yet.

  Travis gave Jura a confused look.

  “Travis Tromp,” I said, “this is Jura Carver, Trish Spencer’s kin.”

  “Pleasure,” Travis said, taking her tray. “Any friend of Genuine’s is a genuine friend of mine.”

  I rolled my eyes, but Travis was already gone.

  “You don’t have to be nice to him on my account,” I told Jura.

  She shrugged. “He seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t have many friends.”

  “That’s a fact,” I agreed.

  “Do people tease him and stuff?” she asked.

  I’d never really thought on it before. “Sometimes,” I said, and realized it was true. Before Travis had had to repeat the fourth grade, he’d been in a class with me and Donut and the rest. None of us had bothered him, but the older kids gave him a hard time. Once, Travis had written a poem and Doug Talley read it out loud in the middle of the courtyard—right before he shoved it and the rest of Travis’s papers in the slimy cafeteria trash can.

  Jura sighed, a whiff of anger on her breath. “Me and Travis have a lot in common.”

  “You do not!” I insisted.

  “Enough that I had to come here.” She looked away. “At Ardenville Central Middle, ‘Teasing Jura Carver’ was pretty much an extracurricular sport.”

  “Gosh. I’m sorry.” It was the best I could come up with. What do you say to a thing like that? “I’m glad you’re here now.”

  Jura brushed a few crumbs off the table. Then she seemed to make a decision. She sat up straighter and threw her shoulders back.

  “Me, too.” She held out her fist.

  I looked at it for a second or two. “What?”

  “Bump it!” She laughed. “You don’t do this here?”

  I tapped her fist with my fist. “What’s it mean?”

  “It means, you and me, we’re tight,” Jura replied.

  “Huh. I’ve never been tight before,” I confided. “What do we do now?”

  She thought it over. “How about I help you save the world?”

  “Ye-ah, I’ve gotta figure out how to feed myself first.” I told her about my sad attempt to raise a little cash at Faye’s. “Folks just don’t have the dollars to spare.”

  “Hmm.” For a time, Jura vanished down some dusty trail in her mind. “If money’s the problem . . .” She bit her lip. “People do grow their own food around here, right? Why couldn’t you offer to trade wishes with farmers—for vegetables and meat and stuff? You know, like bartering?”

  It d
idn’t take me half a blink to see the wisdom in that. “I might even be able to trade for house repairs!”

  “And who knows?” Jura added, getting excited now. “Maybe the president of the electric company has a dream only a wish fetcher can fulfill!”

  “Bartering!” I marveled. Heck, even my ma had done it, trading wishes for the promise of good deeds paid forward. “You got a head full of sense, girl!”

  “And then we can save the world.” She smiled.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You really think we could?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “All right, but I’m not sure how to go about it,” I said.

  “I’ll research it. You just focus on your bartering.”

  In the time it took me to walk home, a mantle of gray clouds set in. I found Gram pacing the front porch, wringing her hands. My heart sank. Had she heard about the dustup at the salon? Was she upset? I waited for the verdict.

  But all she said when I walked up was, “Hungry?”

  I said I was.

  Gram insisted she didn’t need help with dinner, so while she worked, I went ahead and told her everything that had gone on at Faye’s, particularly Penny Walton’s wish-hampering fit.

  “I don’t know why she had to take it so personal!” I was fairly riled, now that I thought on it.

  Gram smiled weakly as she turned the opener on our canned hash.

  “She’s got a bee in her bonnet, is all,” she finally spoke. “It’s nothing against you, precisely.”

  “Sure seemed like it was!” I started chopping one of the last carrots from this year’s pitiful garden.

  “Folks just don’t like to be poked.” She took the knife from me and started in on the carrots. “Maybe you ought not to do something like that again.”

  “Poked?” I gaped. “Gram! I didn’t go there to poke anyone! I was trying to scrounge up some money for bills!”

  Gram dropped her head. “Sit down for a minute, Gen. I want to say something to you.”

  I huffed, but I sat.

  She joined me at the table and set her hand on my hand. “Worry never filled a belly.”

  “But—”