I nodded again.
The voices around us grew louder and keener—some of them angry, even. Why hadn’t I fixed the flooding already? Didn’t I know people was losing their homes? Fairly irresponsible of me to let things get this far out of hand. Guess I took after my pa after all—born tired and raised lazy.
They crowded around me. They made faces and pointed fingers. They were, all of them, full-grown tall, and I was feeling mighty overwhelmed.
“Hey!” a voice called.
Like a school of guppies, everyone turned at once.
Travis stood on top of a crate of canned peas, waving his arms wildly. “Quit your bellyachin’ and back the blazes off!”
When they saw it was Travis, most folks turned my way again and carried on with their complaining.
Travis wasn’t deterred. “Hello! Stupid people of Sass!”
That got their attention.
“Y’all seem to think this girl owes you something!” he shouted.
“Them what has, does,” Jerry Tatum shouted in reply.
“I think you mean, them what has, gets, Jerry,” Travis called back. “As in, them what has a lick of sense gets off their butts and solves their own problems.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Do you realize you’re expecting a twelve-year-old kid to save you from an act of nature? Now, I know as well as anyone that Genuine is a magical girl.” He met my eyes and nodded. “But is it fair—or even moral—to lay your troubles at her feet? In this town, of all places?”
“Heck, yeah!” Ruby Hughes hollered unprettily. “All she has to do is snap her fingers and the storm’s gone! You think we can do that for ourselves?”
Ruby glared at me, full of hate. I couldn’t help thinking back to the day in the girls’ bathroom, when she’d gotten so mad because I wouldn’t wish up her horse tack. Any fool can wish on a stupid star, she’d said. Ruby had been spouting nonsense out of anger and spite, but . . .
Any fool can wish on a stupid star.
Huh.
Following Travis’s example, I grabbed a chair and stood on it. “Maybe you can! Have you tried?”
“We ain’t no wish fetchers!” Dirk Yardley shouted.
I was running out of patience. Did I mention? It really clumps my grits when people give up easy.
“How do you know?” I called back.
Oh, they didn’t like that at all. There was grumbling and griping, and I think someone even spit.
Sheriff Thrasher appeared at my side. He had his hands on his belt and a no-nonsense look on his face. “That’s enough, now, Genuine. It’s time to wish the flood away.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said, still on top of the chair. “I really can’t. I broke the wish fetcher’s first rule, and now my magic’s gone.”
Somebody threw a balled-up piece of paper at me. Travis was off his crate in a flash, making his way through the crowd toward me.
Meanwhile, I heard somebody say, “Arrest her, Sheriff!”
A choir of other voices agreed.
Sheriff Thrasher looked one way and then the other, like he was thinking it over. “All right, Genuine, I can see you need some time to get back to right thinking.” Turning his eye toward the rumbling posse, he added, “And these folks need some time to cool off. Let’s go.”
“You’re joking, Mike!” Ham exclaimed.
“Take your hands off her, you cull!” Travis shouted.
Suddenly, I was struck with the silliness of the situation. I laughed. “You can’t honestly mean to row me to the jail, Sheriff?”
The sheriff tugged me away from the throng to a gray door that said STAFF. Somebody had stuck a little yellow piece of notepaper to it that read Jail.
“It’s for your own good, girl. Git.” Sheriff Thrasher opened the door, nudged me into what was plainly a broom closet, and locked the door behind me.
“Hey! You can’t do this!” I banged on the door. “Let me out!”
“Shhut!” said a groggy voice from behind me.
I turned around.
Pa sat on an upturned bucket, one eye open. I guess even he couldn’t sleep through all my racket.
“You.” I narrowed my eyes.
He nodded. “Gen’wine.”
I sighed.
“You don’t say ’lo to your pap?” he slurred.
“’Lo,” I snarled back.
“Heh, heh. She’s a gen’wine Sweet after all, in jail with her pap. Like father, like daughter.” He shook his head with mock pride.
I tried to ignore him and went back to banging on the door. “Sheriff Thrasher! You open this door right now!”
“Hey, hey, m’head hurts!” Pa protested.
I spun like a flash. “Don’t you dare complain! Don’t you dare! Do you even know Gram’s dead?”
He jerked his head back and regarded me.
“Shore I do,” he replied, rubbing a hand across his eyebrows. “Took her to the hospital, didn’t I?”
“You took her to the hospital.” I didn’t believe it.
“Who else?”
“Drunk and dangerous Dale Sweet, if-he-ain’t-drinkin’-he’s-passed-out Dale Sweet? You heard Gram calling for help and took her to the hospital?”
“She didn’t call out,” he told me. “She came to my door. Knocked.”
I was all sarcasm when I said, “She was dying, but she knocked.”
He nodded. “And I opened my eyes and there she was, standing over me.”
“You lie,” I told him.
“Not so, not so.” He held up a hand, palm out. “She said to me, ‘Lights are out, Dale. ’S time to go.’ So I got up and grabbed m’keys and asked her where she wanted to go. ‘Hospital,’ she told me. And so I took her.”
I would have turned the whole story aside as a fable had he not said, “Funny, how she looked all silver in the dark.”
“Silver?”
He nodded. “I said, ‘Ain’t ever seen no angel before,’ and she laughed and said, ‘You still ain’t. Turn the key ’n’ drive, Dale.’ Tha’s what she said.” He chuckled. “M’hands was nearly froze. Feet, too. Cold night that night. Dang cold.”
I was standing there, with my hand on that big, gray door, partly turned toward Pa and partly turned away.