If Wishes Were Horses

‘Besides you?’

My tone eludes him. I’ve always known that politicians, clergymen, academics and accountants had no senses of humor. Perhaps I will have to add criminals and retired baseball players to the list.

‘Will you meet me?’ His voice rises in agitation.

‘All right. Pearson’s in an hour, then.’

I turn to Missy.

‘I have to go into Iowa City. Is there anything you want?’

Missy asks me to rent a video. She likes the movies about a little red-haired girl named Pippi Longstocking.

It will be interesting to meet Ray Kinsella. In the final days of my quest I considered contacting him. In my frustration at not being able to repeat my journey to the past I’ve considered visiting his farm. I’ve heard his baseball field has healing properties.

THREE (#u6a28ed83-e680-5f83-87bd-9a2c11b5458c)

RAY KINSELLA (#u6a28ed83-e680-5f83-87bd-9a2c11b5458c)

I’m glad Joe Mccoy has chosen Pearson’s as a meeting place. It is my favorite indoor spot in Iowa City. I discovered it soon after I arrived as a student, more years ago than I care to remember. Pearson’s is a drug store; but at the back, dark and heavily air-conditioned, is a soda fountain, smelling deliciously of chocolate and lime, of cherry Cokes and malt.

From one of the dozen stools at the soda fountain one can watch a devilled-egg sandwich being prepared or see a chocolate malt—there are none better anywhere—being created by a waitress, one of whom, Doreen, has been working at the soda fountain for all the years I’ve been going there.

I have a habit of being early for every appointment: I arrive half an hour early to watch batting practice of a summer evening or to have a tooth filled on a depressing January afternoon. I order only coffee, but my resolve disappears quickly enough. Even though it is barely 9:30 in the morning, I order a half-sized chocolate malt, which at Pearson’s is called a pony malt, a term I’ve encountered nowhere else.

I eat my malt slowly, dipping the straw in and licking the stiff, cement-like mixture off the end. That’s the way I taught Karin, and later the twins Shannon and Crystal to love chocolate malts. When each was just old enough to accept that kind of food I would hold her in the crook of my arm and, dipping the straw in the malt, push the laden end of the straw into her mouth. Each baby would smack her lips and make wonderful gurgling noises that sounded vaguely Japanese.

The next person to arrive is Gideon Clarke. I have been watching everyone who came in, knowing I would recognize Joe McCoy, wondering who the mysterious third party could be. Gideon Clarke is a white-blond scarecrow of a fellow, tall and stoop-shouldered, who lives in Onamata, a dying town on the Iowa River a few miles south of Iowa City.

We’ve never spoken, but both of us patronize Pearson’s regularly, and he was a denizen of the University of Iowa library all the while I was studying there. I know vaguely that he was involved in some dispute with the Department of History over a thesis his father had written in the 1940s. There was some talk he was going to sue the university because they wouldn’t accept as fact what his father had written.

He must have been right all along, for a few years ago something happened, and since then he’s been regarded as a baseball historian. He’s given lectures at the university, though I’ve never attended, and I saw his picture, his long, bone-white hair combed tidily for the photograph, on the cover of Sports Illustrated a year or two ago.

There are three stools at the far left of the counter. I’ve occupied the middle one. Clarke swings a long leg over a stool near the center of the soda fountain. A group of coffee drinkers occupies the far end.

‘Where’s Missy today?’ Doreen, the waitress, says to him. She is wearing a black uniform with a white collar.

Missy? Perhaps he has daughters, as I do, though I’ve never thought of him as being married. Or Missy could be a wife.

‘She’s at home this morning. Actually I’m here on business …’

‘I thought it was a little early in the day. What can I get you?’

‘A green river float,’ says Gideon Clarke.

‘Sure,’ says Doreen. ‘This is usually coffee time,’ she says to anyone who cares to listen. ‘Takes a real drinker to down a green river this early.’

A green river is something else unique to Pearson’s, or at least to the Midwest, a sweet-tart lime drink that goes down best as a float with a baseball-sized scoop of French vanilla ice cream bobbing in the middle of it.

As she turns to work at the soda fountain I catch Gideon Clarke’s eye and say, ‘Did you happen to get a mysterious phone call this morning?’

‘Are you Ray?’ he replies. ‘Joe …’

‘I’m the third party, Ray Kinsella. Did he tell you there was going to be a third party?’

‘He did. I’ve seen you here lots of times, and around town, I just never connected the name and the face,’ says Gideon.

‘He didn’t supply the third party with a name. I was just guessing. Though I know who you are, and I guessed that since all three of us have rather strong connections with baseball …’

Gideon moves over four or five stools until he is on the first stool around the corner. I move against the wall leaving an empty stool between us. The scene reminds me of the unwritten rule of washrooms: unless there is a crowd men leave one empty urinal between them. We shake hands. His hands are too large for his body, his skin as white as his hair.

Doreen appears with the green river float, long-handled silver spoon and straw. Doreen is about fifty with shoulder-length black hair, a long face and prominent teeth; it is a face made friendly by laugh lines acquired through years of bantering with her customers. Doreen and Lila, the other woman who works here regularly, are bossy and jovial in a motherly way; they each have several children. Doreen has a new grandson, and I, as a regular here, know of each new tooth and inoculation, while Doreen sees my Karin’s report cards and monitors Shannon and Crystal’s progress as three-year-old ballet dancers.

She plops the green river float and accoutrements on the counter in front of Gideon.

Norman Rockwell could have invented Pearson’s, could have drawn its waitresses. ‘Pearson’s is Iowa City,’ I tell Karin, almost every time I bring her here. The city expands, food and muffler franchises multiply, demolition crews chip away at history. Rows of elegant old houses are replaced by pink brick warrens that house stereo sets and university students; but Pearson’s survives, a little piece of the past intact, cool, dark and chocolatey-smelling.

‘Hey,’ says Doreen, bustling back from delivering a sandwich to the other end of the counter, ‘want to hear a riddle?’

‘What choice do I have?’ There is no choice. Doreen’s riddle will be clean and simple, probably something to do with elephants.

‘What’s the one thing you can never do during your lifetime?’

I lick the end of my straw contemplatively. I have no idea, but I usually like to make a weak guess or two before giving up.

‘Attend your own funeral?’ I say finally.

Doreen snorts. ‘Tom Sawyer attended his own funeral. Lots of people have faked their deaths and attended their funerals.’

‘You’re right,’ I say, pretending to be chagrined.

‘See the back of your neck,’ says Gideon, stirring his green river.

‘Can’t you do better than that? Anyone can set up enough mirrors to see the back of their neck.’

‘We give up,’ I say.

Doreen waits a long minute before divulging the answer, savoring her triumph. ‘Don’t care who you are, you never get to read your own autopsy report,’ Doreen chortles. ‘You can fake your funeral, but once you’ve been dissected like a biology-class frog, that’s all she wrote. Ha!’

‘I read mine,’ says a high-timbred voice behind us.

Gideon and I both swivel on our stools. Doreen raises her eyebrows, waiting for further explanation. There he is. He must have entered at the front, crossed the store and come down the far wall so he could sneak in behind us. He is a slight young man, with sandy hair. Too small to have been a major-league pitcher. His hands are slim and white. He doesn’t look dangerous.

Doreen moves down the counter to where someone is signalling for a refill, while the three of us shake hands.

FOUR (#ulink_d3ee7fbe-d663-5eea-ba35-1c2d18f7dc24)

GIDEON CLARKE (#ulink_d3ee7fbe-d663-5eea-ba35-1c2d18f7dc24)