If Wishes Were Horses

‘Would you have done the story if I’d told you the truth?’ asked Bertha.

‘I’d have still seen the spaceship. If I’d known the truth I could have been prepared to defend you. Things are going to get rough,’ I said.

I had no idea how rough.

‘UFO PHOTOS PHONY,’ trumpeted our competitors. They blew up my photo of the spaceship tracks and ran them beside the blow-up of a General Electric waffle iron. The photos were identical. Even I could see the G.E. emblem in one corner of my track photo.

The photos of the spacecraft were diagnosed as a pantyhose container stuffed with cotton batting, shot from an advantageous angle.

‘You’re fired!’ the managing editor said.

‘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

RAY KINSELLA

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.

We find a spot a few rows behind first base.

I can’t decide about Joe McCoy. Listening to his tales has been like scouting a rookie, trying to decide if he deserves a positive scouting report.

‘I don’t know when I’ve felt so relaxed,’ he says. ‘Being on the run takes a lot out of a fellow. You know some of those players look familiar. What are they, local guys in old-time uniforms? Where do the fans come from? Are they locals, too?’

What wonderful, reassuring questions. Joe McCoy sees. I feel much better about him.

‘Those are the 1919 White Sox on the third-base side.’

‘Go on!’

‘That’s Shoeless Joe Jackson down in the corner tossing balls with Happy Felsch.’

‘For whatever reason, I believe you,’ says Joe.

I offer to buy him a beer and hot dog and he accepts.

‘The opponents are often different. A couple of weeks ago it was the 1927 Yankees. Murderers’ Row. Gehrig had four hits. Ruth hit a home run down each foul line.’

‘Who’s playing tonight?’

‘I think my desires have some effect on who plays here. And you don’t have to be dead to play on the dream field. One of my favorite World Series was 1946. I always wished I could have seen Harry “The Cat” Brecheen and Howie Pollet pitch, Enos “Country” Slaughter and Whitey Kurowski hit, Marty Marion play short stop. Every once in a while I get my wish, like tonight.’

‘Is that Joe Garagiola catching?’

‘You got it.’

‘The 1946 Cardinals against the 1919 White Sox?’

‘That’s it.’

‘I heard there was magic here, but Stan Musial, Terry Moore, Dick Sisler. Wow! Thanks for trusting me enough to show me this. I know you must have had misgivings.’

‘Thanks for seeing.’

He looks at me, smiles slightly and nods. We settle back to watch the game.

SEVEN

JOE McCOY

I tried to be honest with gideon and ray, and I’ve done a pretty good job. Sort of. The things I haven’t told them frighten me. For instance, more than once, when I’ve been talking with someone, I suddenly feel what they’re thinking about, events in their lives that I couldn’t possibly know. It started with Rosslyn. We had just finished a dinner that I had cooked—stuffed green peppers, coconut-cream pie, Starbuck’s chocolate-almond coffee—I was pouring cream into my coffee, when I suddenly knew Rosslyn was brooding about an impression she had made that afternoon of the teeth of a man with a bad overbite. ‘I’m going to have to redo Mr. Waller’s impression, and I’m going to have to have a talk with his dentist about what I should do when I get the perfect impression,’ was what she was daydreaming.

‘You’re thinking about Mr. Waller’s overbite,’ I said.

Rosslyn jerked to attention, like she’d just been wakened from a nap. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I was hoping you could help me out.’

Rosslyn stared at me fearfully. I wonder what secrets she’s been keeping from me. There are thousands of my thoughts I wouldn’t want Rosslyn to know about. Thousands, millions.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. It’s the first time. I’ll try never to let it happen again.’ Rosslyn kept staring suspiciously at me, as if she’d just caught me rifling her purse.

‘There’s no way you could have known. Mr. Waller was just referred to me this morning.’ She left the table, taking her coffee with her. Rosslyn slept in the spare bedroom that night.

‘Adam and Francie are coming from Boston for a visit,’ Rosslyn announced one morning a few weeks after the extraterrestrial fiasco. ‘Adam says the story barely made the front pages in the east.’

That was all I needed. Adam is Rosslyn’s brother, a tall, square-jawed, pipe-smoking accountant with a pernicious ardor for detail who, like a raccoon, washes his food before he eats it. I’ve seen Adam holding a block of cheese between two forks under the kitchen tap. Adam won’t eat an ice cream cone because it has been touched by human hands. I wonder where his hands have been?

Adam’s fiancée, Francie Bly, is a pert little thing with pale, taffy-colored hair whirlwinding about her face. She is slim and fair-skinned, with a saucy nose that has about fifteen freckles scattered across it. Her eyebrows are sun-blonde, and she has a small crease in the middle of her bottom lip that enlarges when she pretends to pout, or when she looks quizzically at someone as if she is staring over the rim of eyeglasses.

I like Francie, but feel she is hiding some serious character flaw, otherwise why would she have agreed to marry Adam the raccoon? Perhaps there are women truly attracted to men like Adam Quinn. I dismiss the thought. Adam gets up at six o’clock every morning to jog. I have read that jogging plays havoc with one’s sex life. If Francie was my lady, I’d do my jogging in bed.

Cute was the word I would use to describe Francie—in spite of her eastern-girls’-school-looking-down-on-the-rest-of-the-nation-especially-California, mentality.

She didn’t appear unhappy; she openly teased Adam about his stuffiness, made fun of him in person and behind his back, a steady stream of good-natured pinpricks to try and keep Adam from taking himself so seriously. She did not succeed.

‘Since you don’t have anything to do, you can meet Adam and Francie at the airport,’ Rosslyn said. She was just stating an obvious fact. I don’t think she had any idea how cruel her words sounded.

Ever since the night of the extraterrestrials, I have been having the most detailed, clear-as-life, you-are-there, this-is-happening dreams. I have always been a daydreamer, but, though experts claim everyone dreams extensively every night, I seldom remembered my night dreams, until now.

In my dreams I am driving my red, 1956 Lincoln Continental convertible with the classic car plates: MCCOY 1. My Lincoln is the only extravagance from my baseball days. I paid $15,500 for it, and treated it with more concern than my teammates showed for their showgirl-model-trophy wives, their Ferraris, Corvettes, Mercedes, or Porsches. I was never in their league in salaries. If I had had just a little more ability, or a lot more desire, or Maureen Renn waiting after the game …

Eight weeks after the fiasco, when it appeared that my term of unemployment was going to stretch to infinity, I sold my Lincoln to a leering Armenian with gravy stains on his vest. That left me driving Rosslyn’s second car, a 1972 Ford that a transient cousin had abandoned in her carport. It left a black trail of pollution behind it; neither its air-conditioning nor its emission control would ever work again.

Last night I was back in Iowa, but in that way dreams have, I was driving my Lincoln. I was married to a woman who was very much in love with me. We had a child.

At times the woman was Francie Bly. I have no reason to believe Francie has any interest in me, she seems relatively happy with Adam, who is only slightly less interesting than lint. I rationalize that I dreamed of her because I knew she was due to visit. On other occasions the woman beside me in the convertible seemed to be Maureen Renn. Dreams, memories, wishes, interweave like the colors in variegated thread.

In one dream I was seventeen and Maureen’s arms were tight about my neck, her thighs locked about mine, her mouth hot and thrilling as we made love on a blanket spread over a stack of grain sacks behind the manger in her father’s barn. The scent of dried hay was mixed with the thick, wet odor of cattle. A cow lurched forward in her stanchion, her pink nose protruded beyond the manger wall, her dull eyes stared at us, green straws bristled on each side of her mouth.

Maureen climaxed violently, taking me with her. She slowly unlocked her arms from around my neck, our mouths parted.

I still can’t imagine how, at sixteen, Maureen could instinctively have known so much about sex, and I could have been so unknowledgeable.

Maureen was a tall, strapping farm girl with a mop of dark-red hair. She pitched hay, did farm chores and drove tractors and combines alongside her hulking brothers. My father made his precarious living from his second-hand store in Lone Tree. The most physical duties I performed were helping my father move an oak table or bookcase from the shop to a waiting truck. Though I was athletic, I was neither large nor particularly strong. My older brother worked for an insurance company in Des Moines until my father retired and sold him the business. My sister, Agnes, a year younger than me, was as my father said, ‘Homely as a mud fence and proud of it.’

‘So how did it feel to have my virgin body, McCoy?’ Maureen asked, staring into my eyes in the dim light of the barn, half smiling in the way she always did, so I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me.

‘Well …’ I said. I was watching a tine of sunlight that pierced the roof like a golden laser and angled to the far wall. She had just had my virgin body. It had never occurred to me that it might also have been Maureen’s first time.

She seemed to know so much more than I did. She had been so calm, apparently privy to knowledge I had no access to. I won’t detail the embarrassing struggle I had with one of the contraceptives I carried in my wallet until Maureen pointed out how it should be used. When I was between her thighs, after Maureen had used her hand to guide me into the heat of her, I came almost immediately, but she imprisoned me with her strong limbs.

‘Lie still, Sugar,’ she whispered. ‘It’s gonna be so good,’ and she twitched involuntarily as the sheer heat of her revived my desire.

‘Am I better than the second baseman?’ Maureen asked, a lilt in her voice.

I was too surprised to answer. ‘Well …’ I said eventually.

‘Kiss me, Sugar. Make us so close.’ I did.

‘“Well …” What kind of an answer is that? Am I better than fucking your second baseman?’

‘Much better than my second baseman,’ I said, watching the arrow of sunlight. ‘You were wonderful. He shaves and chews snuff.’

‘All right,’ said Maureen, ‘that’s better.’

I swallowed hard. Everything about me was so incredibly awkward. I have no idea what Maureen saw in me. It was easy to be rowdy and raucous with my friends, my teammates, but put me alone with a girl and I might as well have had a garrote around my neck.

‘I wish you’d look at me, Joe. You never look at me, never make eye contact.’

She shifted out from under me, pulled herself to a sitting position. ‘When we kiss you close your eyes, otherwise you look at some spot in the distance over my left shoulder.’

‘I like to look at you,’ I said lamely.

Maureen had thrown her plaid shirt over her shoulders so she could lean against the outer wall of the barn without scratching her back. She was peeking through thick strands of plum-colored hair, almost as if peering between her fingers.

‘You don’t believe this was my first time,’ she said, fishing in her shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. The shirt hung just to the outside of each nipple. Her large, freckled breasts rose and fell rhythmically with her breathing.

‘I never thought about it,’ I said. But I had. She talked so freely and openly of sex, I’d just assumed she’d had other lovers, though I couldn’t think of who they might have been.

‘I want you to know you’re the first outside the family, McCoy.’ She glanced at me, that same wry, enigmatic smile on her face.

I couldn’t keep a surprised expression off my face.

‘Shit, that’s what you expect me to say, isn’t it? A brother has his sister in bed and says to her, “You’re better’n Ma.” And the girl answers back, “That’s what Pa says.”’

Maureen drew deeply on her cigarette, let the smoke out slowly between her teeth.

She had read my mind. The Renns were, as my father often said, a wild and woolly bunch. ‘Disreputable,’ would be the consensus of the community. Her father was a prodigious drinker. One of her brothers was in jail; the other two were terrors, roaming the countryside in souped-up cars. They drank, fought, fucked, stole anything that wasn’t nailed to the earth. Only the wildest white girls or Indian women from the reservation near Tama were ever seen with Harley or Magnus Renn.

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