If Wishes Were Horses. W. Kinsella P.

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       If Wishes Were Horses

      BY W. P. KINSELLA

       Copyright

      The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      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

       Title Page

      Copyright

      

      SECTION ONE: HEARTLAND

      ONE: RAY KINSELLA

       TWO: GIDEON CLARKE

      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

       SECTION ONE HEARTLAND

      They say it can’t be done,

      but sometimes it doesn’t always work.

      —Casey Stengel

       ONE

       RAY KINSELLA

      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