W. Kinsella - If Wishes Were Horses

‘You were out in the desert. You saw the tracks. Why didn’t the waffle iron show up when we blew up the photographs?’ I asked.

No one had any answers, and highly embarrassed managing editors don’t want to hear unpleasant questions. The newspaper had kept the exact landing site a secret until the photographs were exposed as a hoax. Then a hundred reporters drove into the desert in a long, dusty caravan to find the hill where we had seen the craft land, as dry and bald and barren as it had always been. The only life they found were a few grasshoppers snicking about in the crackly grass.

I’ll spare you any more details of my disgrace. The hoax appeared so blatantly dumb that I realized I was going to be without income possibly forever. I had a brief fantasy that one of the more scurrilous tabloids might hire me. They wouldn’t.

Fortunately, I am not suicidal. Rosslyn has remained stonily silent throughout my ordeal. I’m sure she would be happier if I moved out, but she has the grace not to dump on me while I’m down.

‘I’m glad we didn’t decide to marry,’ she did mention, somewhat more than casually. We had actually discussed marriage. Rosslyn would have kept her own name. There was no stigma attached to R. QUINN DENTAL LABORATORY. Only her closest friends knew she was living with ‘that guy who wrote the phony story about the UFO.’

‘There’s an aura of danger about you,’ Rosslyn had said once, after my investigative reporting brought down a crooked district attorney.

I wonder what my aura is like now?

SIX SIX: RAY KINSELLA SEVEN: JOE McCOY EIGHT: JOE McCOY NINE: JOE McCOY TEN: JOE McCOY SECTION TWO: AT LARGE ELEVEN: JOE McCOY TWELVE: RAY KINSELLA THIRTEEN: GIDEON CLARKE FOURTEEN: JOE McCOY FIFTEEN: JOE MCCOY SIXTEEN: JOE McCOY SEVENTEEN: JOE McCOY EIGHTEEN: JOE McCOY SECTION THREE: IF WISHES WERE HORSES NINETEEN: JOE McCOY TWENTY: GIDEON CLARKE TWENTY-ONE: JOE McCOY TWENTY-TWO: JOE McCOY TWENTY-THREE: JOE McCOY TWENTY-FOUR: JOE McCOY Also by the W.P. Kinsella About the Publisher

My inclination is to try to speed up Joe’s story. It’s like he has many coins hidden on his person, if I just picked him up by the ankles and shook him the coins would fall in a silver shower at our feet. But then, I’m beginning to feel a little sympathy for him. He is somehow being manipulated by forces beyond his control. At least he hasn’t been visited by disembodied voices.

I don’t think he realized how much story he had until he started. He looks from me to Gideon, shrugs helplessly.

‘This is going to take a lot longer than I anticipated.’

‘I want to hear it,’ I say. ‘Gideon, how about you?’

‘All right. I can see why you’ve asked us to listen. I don’t know what we can do for you …’

‘Just understand,’ says Joe. ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface. I want someone to say to me, “You’re not crazy. No matter what the rest of the world thinks.”’

‘It took me about twenty years to accomplish that,’ says Gideon.

‘Over three years for me,’ I say. ‘Look, I’ve got to get home. Joe, can you come to the farm this afternoon? Gideon, how about you?’

‘I’m not doing anything much except being a fugitive,’ says Joe, with a wry grin.

‘I can’t leave Missy alone for long,’ says Gideon.

‘Missy is your wife? Daughter?’

‘Neither. She’s the adult daughter of a close friend who passed away. Missy has Downs’ syndrome. I’m her legal guardian.’

‘Bring her along. She’ll enjoy my daughters. They have a whole menagerie of pets.’

Gideon nods.

‘Say three o’clock at my place,’ I say.

‘There’s one other thing I’d like to mention right now,’ says Joe. ‘On top of everything, there’s this feeling that I’ve been living two lives, maybe ever since I left Iowa all those years ago. I don’t know how to put this clearly, but do either of you suppose there might come a time in a person’s life when they have a choice, only they don’t know it’s a choice, at least not consciously; when they either follow the life they’re in or veer off in a completely different direction? Do you think it’s possible, that those who veer keep on living their original life in another dimension or a deep inner life?’

‘You’re experiencing that, too?’ I ask.

‘I shouldn’t have brought it up just yet. But I keep getting flashes, like an amnesia victim must when they’re starting to recover, scenes of the life I’d have lived if I’d stayed in Iowa. What I wonder is, if those who live their straight-arrow lives get little glimpses of the unknown, little fragments of eternity dropped on their heads, so they get an inkling of what would have happened if they had veered?

‘Anything can happen,’ says Gideon.

Joe laughs, causing the waitresses and the few remaining customers to stare at us. We have been speaking so quietly for so long most of them have forgotten we were there.

‘“Anything Can Happen,” that was the Seattle Mariners’ slogan the year I played for them,’ says Joe. ‘It didn’t work.’

‘What you’re saying,’ I ask, ‘is that you think you’re living or recalling bits of your life as it would have been if you’d stayed here in Johnson County? I know there was some kerfuffle about you not playing in the State Tournament. The story made it all the way to Sports Illustrated , didn’t it?’

‘I’ll get to that. I’ll get to everything if you give me time. Three o’clock, then. At Ray’s farm.’

Karin is home from school by the time Gideon arrives with Missy. Gideon drives a very old pick-up truck. I fix coffee, and thaw some of Annie’s strawberry muffins.

‘You’re not,’ Annie had said to me before anyone arrived, ‘going to get us into something crazy? I mean this Joe McCoy is wanted. Wanted . Dangerous.’

‘We’re going to listen to the rest of his story. That’s all. No involvement. Nothing.’

‘You’re not a good liar, Champ. You’ve already decided this guy’s legitimate or you wouldn’t have invited him here. Watch yourself, okay? Don’t do anything really foolish.’

But at the same time she is admonishing me, Annie is hugging me, letting me know she trusts me. Annie is sunshine, she is. And when I see how few people have someone who truly loves them, I realize for the thousandth time how lucky I am to have her.

Late in the evening, after Joe has related several more adventures, after Gideon and Missy have left in Gideon’s truck, I suggest to Joe that we have a look at my baseball field.

‘I feel privileged,’ he says.

The floodlights bathe the field in gold. A few wisps of ground fog cattail about the outfield. The players are warming up, playing catch; a grizzled coach hits fungoes. The sounds and smells of baseball envelop us, frying onions, fresh-cut grass, newly watered infield dirt. There is the low buzz of fans, as the bleachers begin to fill. Joe doesn’t seem to notice, but there is a line-up of perhaps thirty cars waiting to cross the cattle guard onto my property, park their cars and visit the field. Gypsy, my brother’s lady, dark and mysterious as her name, collects fees from the visitors, money they willingly hand over, for what they lack is peace and harmony, not ready cash.