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!”