“What?” I asked. “It’s true. I’m nothing but Dangerous Dale Sweet’s shine-less, free-lunch daughter.”
She poked me on the shoulder. “Quit that! I mean it! You may be wishless, but you are not shine-less! I can’t even count the number of people in this town you’ve helped—”
I cut in, “With wishes.”
Jura set her hands firm on her hips. “When biscuit numbers were running thin, did you tell people in need, Good luck with that, Genuine’s off the clock? No! You figured out the whole Sass barter thing—neighbors helping neighbors. That’s what you do! You help! You care! There is nothing useless about that!”
I was about to deny it. But just then, ever so faintly, in one lone corner of my mind, a few shimmering notes rang out. I could have sworn silver light flashed in the glass of a nearby windshield.
“Hey, uh . . . Jura?”
“Stop arguing with me! I’m—”
“I ain’t arguing,” I told her.
“You ain’t?” She paused. “You’re not?”
“No. Hold up.” I waited to see if the notes would sound again.
They did.
I know it might have only been a wish that I’d heard it, or a memory of a song I’d known before. But I let it speak to me. And finally, I thought I was starting to understand. All shall be well.
I reached out and squeezed my friend’s hand. “You’re right kind, Jura, and I thank you. But hush, now. I’ve got an idea. We’ve got to get back to work. Wish to End Hunger might not have to close up shop after all.”
We called it the Sass Unstoppable Barter Alliance, and it was a way for poor and hungry folks to do for themselves when no one else could—or would—help them.
“Like Cornucopio,” Jura said, making herself comfortable in the library chair. “But more . . . Genuine.”
Jura set us up a website where people could volunteer as scouts, as we called ’em. The scouts would go into their towns and start making lists—just like Jura and I had done in Sass. Who had what, who needed what. Then, the volunteers would post their lists at the SUBA site. On our end, Jura and I would watch for “needs” that couldn’t be met locally and start pairing them up with far-off “haves”—farmers with surplus food crops, for instance. The “haves” would have “needs,” too, so everyone got something, and no one felt less-than. It would be tricky, we figured, sometimes rassling the lists of three and four communities to make sure everyone’s haves and needs got met, but with Jura’s computer smarts, we’d soon have a fancy math formula that would do most of the work for us. Much easier that baking biscuits till four in the morning!
“The main thing is, how do we get a bunch of corn from Pitney, Georgia, all the way to, say, Sydney, Australia?” I asked. “Shipping things that won’t fit in the mail. That’s gonna be the hard part.”
“Don’t forget, Genuine, you’re a newsmaker!” Jura walked past the dispatch desk and snatched up a New York Times. She flipped a few pages, then handed it to me.
There it was, right next to an article about unseasonable heavy rains in the South. GEORGIA GIRL GRANTS WISHES. It was a tiny speck of a thing, but maybe it would be enough.
Jura put on her best Sass accent. “We got to capitalize on all this media ruckus, little missy! Call up that-there Kathleen Kroeger and tell her to make herself useful!”
“That was terrible!” I laughed.
“Turrible accent,” she agreed, “but a mighty fine notion.” Switching back to citified Jura, she added, sifting through her satchel, “When we get your message out, people will be lining up to help. Here. I think I’ve got Kroeger’s number written in my—Yes, here. Call her.”
I gritted my teeth at the thought of another meeting with Kathleen Kroeger, but in the end, it turned out not to be so bad. We held the interview in front of the school, so I was dressed in regular clothes and ol’ Drunken Dale was nowhere in sight. Miz Kroeger was eager to help us promote anything that might bring her the “international audience” she was “born to reach.” Plus, the newswoman was so enchanted by Scree Hopkins—who’d been lured by all the cameras—that she hired Scree on the spot as her rural correspondent and intern.
21
A Genuine Sweet
JURA AND I WERE PUZZLING OUT THE WHATS AND wherefores of SUBA till nearly nine. We knew we were onto something good, and might have even kept on till ten, had the weather not started to turn sour.
It began with a howling wind—and I mean that. If you’ve never heard a wind howl, you may think it’s a figure of speech, but it ain’t. It didn’t take more than a few noisy gusts to convince us we had to head home.
By the time we were halfway along Main Street, the rain was pelting down. It was a sudden, heavy storm, with sharp drops that felt like little needles on the skin.
“We can’t walk home in this!” Jura shouted over the din.
“Maybe Ham will give us a ride. He’s just closing.” I began splashing my way across the street. The sock in my sole-broken shoe turned instantly soggy.
Ham’s door was locked, but our frantic knocking brought him out of the kitchen. He squinted at us through the door, saw who we were, and let us in.
“Creation! Get in here!”
We hurried inside.
“Can you give us a ride home, Ham?” I asked, dripping all over his freshly mopped floor.
He nodded. “Gimme two shakes. I was just locking up. Y’all grab yourselves an apple fritter.”
A few minutes later, Jura and I squeezed into the cab of Ham’s truck.
“I don’t know if your daddy’s apt to be home, Genuine,” Ham said as we drove. That was his nice way of saying, Your daddy could be dead drunk, anywhere. “I don’t like the thought of you alone in all this weather. Think your ma would mind if Genuine spent the night, Jura?”