If Wishes Were Horses
BY W. P. KINSELLA
The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014
Copyright © W. P. Kinsella 1996
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Quotation from The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima reprinted with permission of Random House, Inc
W. P. Kinsella asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
FIRST EDITION
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007497553
Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007497560
Version: 2014-07-31
Contents
Copyright
SECTION ONE: HEARTLAND
ONE: RAY KINSELLA
THREE: RAY KINSELLA
FOUR: GIDEON CLARKE
FIVE: JOE McCOY
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
They say it can’t be done,
but sometimes it doesn’t always work.
—Casey Stengel
This morning I received a telephone call from a man on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. Annie handed me the phone as I walked in the back door of our farmhouse, my shoes covered in early morning dew. The odors of morning trailed me into the kitchen, which is warm as a comforter and exudes its own odors: coffee, toast, cinnamon, frying bacon.
‘This is Joe McCoy,’ the thin, rather nervous voice said. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Everyone with a television set knows who you are,’ I replied.
‘I’m not far away,’ McCoy said.
‘I’m not sure I want to hear this …’
‘Listen, don’t believe everything you see on television or read in the newspapers. Events don’t always happen the way they’re reported. Especially not the way they’re reported.’
‘I understand that. But what do you want from me?’
‘I’ve heard rumors about unusual goings-on at your farm, that you have a complete baseball field in your back yard, that all kinds of people from all over the world visit your farm every summer. I’ve heard that weird things happen out there at night, that there are long-dead ballplayers …’
‘Mostly true,’ I said. ‘It’s no secret from anyone who wants to know. I didn’t know you’d kept in touch with events in this part of the world.’
‘I’m calling you as a sort of last resort. I was hoping we might have something in common.’
‘If you want to know the truth,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘though I know you only by reputation, I’ve always thought you were …’ and I fumble for the exact words I want, ‘kind of irresponsible. And in light of your recent exploits I honestly can’t see any reason to change my opinion.’
‘Then you don’t know anything about my other life?’
There was a note of desperation in his voice.
‘Other life?’
‘My other life is one of the things I was hoping I could discuss with you. I know this sounds weird, but I think I may never have left this part of the world. I haven’t had a byline in the Iowa City Press Citizen recently, have I?’
I could sense his confusion. I could see him tucked into an aluminum-and-glass telephone booth at a truck stop out on I-80. He would have had to get my number from Information, for there isn’t a phone booth in America that has a phone book in it.
I laughed off his question, though I could tell it was asked seriously. I was slightly taken aback to find that Joe McCoy had, in a very few seconds, made me identify with him. Though it’s been several years, it seems