Genuine Sweet (2 page)

“See! That's just what I mean!” I interrupted. “Why couldn't he grant his own wishes? Nothing bad, just good things.”

Gram held up a finger. “But he
did.
He broke the wish fetcher's first rule and wished himself a wife and two apple-cheeked young'uns. And they were happy, and he went on granting wishes for other people, too. But then his tub sprang a leak, and it was all too easy to fetch a wish to fix it. And when his oldest daughter started to turn fat, it was easier to grant her beauty than it was to teach her to eat right. Wishes and wishes, faster and faster they came, until his whole life was built on wishes, and he wasn't fetching any for anyone else.”

“But I wouldn't—” I blurted.

“He never thought he would, either,” Gram said. “One day, he had a fight with the mayor, and it suddenly seemed to make ever so much sense just to wish
himself
mayor. Another day, when the egg lady's chickens stopped laying due to cold, rather than wait for warmer weather along with everyone else, he wished up his own eggs, and started to sell those, too. Afore you know it, the chicken lady was out of business. Soon, the man wasn't just the mayor, he was the boss of the whole town. He sold the best of everything, because he didn't have to fashion it or grow it or even give it much more than a thought—he only had to wish it up. And people
loved him.
”

Gram crinkled her eyes. “And they
hated him.
Resented him. You know what that means?”

I nodded.

“Even his wife and kids started to resent him because they thought he should fetch them the skill to grant wishes, too. Why do you think he didn't?” Gram asked.

“So he'd be the only boss?” I replied.

“I think so.” She was quiet for a time. “In the end, he died suddenly, and the whole town was ruined because nobody remembered how to grow crops or raise chickens or hammer iron. People went hungry or had to move away to cities where they could buy things other people still knew how to make. Fenn became a ghost town. And the man, his name was cursed for all time.”

I considered Gram's story. “It doesn't have to turn out that way.”

She gave me a fierce look. “Maybe not, but you heed this, Gen Sweet.
Them what breaks that rule pays a price.
Unless you promise to never, ever fetch your own wishes—or talk other people into asking for things you want for yourself—I won't teach you diddly. You understand?”

I understood.

“But what good does it do to grant other people's wishes when we're starving?” I demanded.

“Good given away always comes back to you, Gen. Don't you know that by now?” she asked.

“So, you're saying that if I do good things, I'll get good things?”

“Yes, but that's not why you do them—”

“Gram!” I whisper-hollered. “We got to do something! Spend winter in
this
house? With hardly any food and no heat? We could
die!
”

Gram gave a little nod. “I guess we could.”

I could feel my eyes bulging. “Well, then?”

She folded her hands in her lap and seemed to be thinking hard.

“All right. Let's see if we can nudge the Lord just a little,” she agreed. “Never hurts to do a good deed, anyway.”

2

W
E PASSED PA, WHO'D FALLEN ASLEEP SITTING
up on an apple crate on the front porch. He reeked of drink, and I wondered, not for the first or the fortieth time, how he'd paid for it.

Gram waved me on into the woods, her slippers making a
hush-hush
sound as she shuffled over the ground, a bed of fallen and decaying leaves. The air smelled of night and damp and good woods—sort of musty and peaceful, if a smell can be peaceful, which I think it can.

She led me to a clearing, a spot not too far from Squirrel Tail Creek, a place where I'd sometimes come to watch the critters come and go. In the city, I hear all you've got are stray cats and dogs and pigeons, but in Sass, we have bear and deer and coyote, plus the cows and horses, if you count them, though they're not wild.

Gram took two nested plastic cups from the pocket of her robe and gave me one.

“Now, to grant a wish, you've got to draw the magic from the stars,” Gram said. “For that, you'll need a cup and a good, solid whistle.”

“Like a pennywhistle?”

She waved a hand. “Not unless it's so cold your lips don't work right. No, all's you have to do is blow, loud and clear.” She pursed her lips and let out an impressive trill.

“I didn't know you could do that.” I laughed.

“It's in the blood.” She smiled. “You try.”

Let me tell you, there are some champion whistlers at school—you mostly hear it in the grades where the girls are wearing bras—but me, I've always been more of a screamer if I wanted to get someone's attention. Still, I gave it my best try.

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 country 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.”