The Essential W. P. Kinsella Read online

  Praise for W. P. Kinsella

  “Kinsella defines a world in which magic and reality combine to make us laugh and think about the perceptions we take for granted.”

  —New York Times

  “He has learned from Twain, has studied Hemingway. . . . The talent that lifts up off these pages is special.”

  —Village Voice

  “Kinsella is a brilliant writer.”

  —Edmonton Sun

  “His characters are both big and small as life, neither romanticized nor patronized. . . . Kinsella respects their integrity and humanity. . . .”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “We’re reading a writer here, a real writer.”

  —Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer

  “[Kinsella is] Canada’s answer to fabulists like Gabriel García Márquez.”

  —Globe and Mail

  “Kinsella’s style is fresh, poetic, and delightful; he gently creates a fictional world so intimate and natural we’ve been there before.”

  —Saturday Night

  “Kinsella takes ordinary people and makes them extra ordinary through a compassionate telling of their stories and their lives.”

  —Vancouver Sun

  “W. P. Kinsella is a protean writer . . . an important literary figure.”

  —Detroit News

  “Kinsella has a wild sense of humor that makes him one of the best of today’s fiction writers.”

  —The Leader Post

  The Essential W. P. Kinsella

  Copyright © 2015 by W. P. Kinsella

  This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

  Introduction copyright © 2015 by Rick Wilber

  Afterword copyright © 2015 by W. P. Kinsella

  Pages 421–422 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  Cover art copyright © 2015 by Thomas Canty

  Cover and interior design by Elizabeth Story

  Author photo copyright © 2015 Laura Sawchuk

  Tachyon Publications

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jill Roberts

  ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-187-9 ISBN 10: 1-61696-187-2

  EPUB ISBN:978-1-61696-188-6

  KINDLE ISBN: 978-1-61696-189-3

  PDF ISBN: 978-1-61696-190-9

  Printed in the United States by Worzalla

  First Edition: 2015

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The Essential

  W. P. Kinsella

  Tachyon | San Francisco

  Also By W. P. Kinsella

  Novels

  Shoeless Joe (1982)

  The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986)

  Box Socials (1991)

  The Winter Helen Dropped By (1994)

  If Wishes Were Horses (1996)

  Magic Time (1998)

  Butterfly Winter (2011)

  Short Story Collections

  Dance Me Outside (1977)

  Scars (1978)

  Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa (1980)

  Born Indian (1981)

  Moccasin Telegraph and Other Tales (1983)

  The Thrill of the Grass (1984)

  Five Stories (1985)

  The Alligator Report (1985)

  The Fencepost Chronicles (1986)

  Red Wolf, Red Wolf (1987)

  The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt (1988)

  The Miss Hobbema Pageant (1989)

  The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories (1993)

  Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour and Other Stories (1994)

  The Secret of the Northern Lights (1998)

  Japanese Baseball and Other Stories (2000)

  Nonfiction

  Two Spirits Soar: The Art of Allen Sapp,

  the Inspiration of Allan Gonor (1990)

  Ichiro Dreams: Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners (2002)

  Poetry

  The Rainbow Warehouse (1989, with Ann Knight)

  Even at This Distance (1994, with Ann Knight)

  Contents

  Introduction | Rick Wilber

  Truth

  How I Got My Nickname

  The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record

  First Names and Empty Pockets

  Searching for January

  Lieberman in Love

  The Grecian Urn

  The Fog

  Beef

  Distances

  How Manny Embarquadero Overcame and

  Began His Climb to the Major Leagues

  The Indian Nation Cultural

  Exchange Program

  K Mart

  The Firefighter

  Dr. Don

  Brother Frank's Gospel Hour

  The Alligator Report

  —with Questions for Discussion

  King of the Street

  Wavelengths

  Do Not Abandon Me

  Marco in Paradise

  Out of the Picture

  The Lightning Birds

  Punchlines

  The Last Surviving Member of the

  Japanese Victory Society

  The Job

  Risk Takers

  The Lime Tree

  Doves and Proverbs

  Waiting on Lombard Street

  Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa

  Where It Began: Shoeless Joe

  W. P. Kinsella

  About the Author

  Extended Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Rick Wilber

  It takes considerable nerve to call a collection of twenty-seven stories the “Essential” short stories of a writer as prolific as W. P. Kinsella. After all, Kinsella has published, by some accounts, more than two hundred short stories and gathered them in sixteen different collections, starting in 1977 with Dance Me Outside. That’s a lot of excellence to narrow down to a little more than two dozen stories.

  But if any collection of the prolific Kinsella’s work could safely assume to truly be offering his essential short fiction, this is it. Kinsella himself has taken part in the selection process, editor Jacob Weisman is a deep admirer of the Kinsella oeuvre (and familiar with everything Kinsella has written), and Tachyon Publications has an outstanding reputation for finding and gathering the top material for just this kind of book.

  So have some faith, dear reader, this is it, the must-read compilation that will show you, story by story, how W. P. Kinsella has become famous in two literary arenas, attracting a loyal readership that loves and admires his work, whether there’s baseball involved or not.

  It’s true, Kinsella is most famous for his merging of baseball and the fantastic. Other notable writers have found success here, as well, but it is Kinsella who brought the quiet little subgenre to vibrant life with his “Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa” story (reprinted in this collection), which led, over time, to the terrific novel Shoeless Joe, which led, over time, to the famous Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, which led to an entire generation of grown men weeping in theaters across North America before going home to call their fathers or their sons to tell them how much they loved them.

  But for all of its cultural impact and import, “Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa” is just one of several dozen excellent baseball-influenced stories that Kinsella has published. The best of those are reprinted here, including my personal favorite, the very charming �
�How I Got My Nickname,” which is, I happen to know, editor Jacob Weisman’s favorite as well, and the story that, for me, holds the purest magic realism you will find in a baseball story, “Searching for January,” with a tragic, ghostly Roberto Clemente trapped in his own memories.

  And there is an important other side of Kinsella’s fiction represented here, too, one that is often overlooked in the love affair so many readers have with an Iowa baseball field busy with mythic ballplayers come back to play the game. A Canadian, Kinsella is equally famous in certain (mostly Canadian) circles for his Hobbema Indian Reserve stories, which are set on a Canadian reservation and feature several recurrent characters who are wise and funny and honest and deserve your attention. It is absolutely fitting that “Truth,” one of the most famous of the Hobbema stories, leads off this collection with a witty, rollicking, important story of a reservation hockey team and a riot.

  There are other stories here that stand alone, far away from baseball and the reservation. I recommend them all to you, though the touching and honest “The Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory Society” is my personal favorite. The sharply satiric “Lieberman in Love” is a close second, with its portrayal of a man in an unusual relationship with a prostitute. The film adaptation of “Lieberman” won the “Best Short Subject” Academy Award in 1996.

  In every instance, from the baseball field to the Hobbema Reserve, from hired lovers to ghostly baseball players, from Iowa to Alberta to Hawaii and elsewhere, what you will find in this fine collection is the magic, the compassion, the humor, the power, and the sheer brilliance of storytelling that have made W. P. Kinsella one of the very best writers we have. It’s about time that the very best of his many stories are gathered into one collection. This is that collection. Enjoy.

  Rick Wilber October 2014

  Dr. Rick Wilber is a journalism and mass-media professor at the University of South Florida. He has published several novels and dozens of short stories, many of which contain elements of baseball and the fantastic. One of his baseball-themed short stories, “Something Real,” won the 2013 Sidewise Award for Best Short-Form Alternate History. He is the editor of several anthologies, including Field of Fantasies: Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural (Night Shade, 2014), which collects classic and contemporary reprints of stories by W. P. Kinsella, Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan, Karen Joy Fowler, Jack Kerouac, Rod Serling, Robert Coover, Louise Marley, and many more.

  Truth

  No matter what they say it wasn’t us that started the riot at St. Edouard Hockey Arena. The story made quite a few newspapers and even got on the Edmonton television, the camera showing how chairs been ripped out of the stands and thrown onto the ice. There was also a worried-looking RCMP saying something about public safety, and how they had to take some of the 25 arrested people all the way to St. Paul to store them in jail. Then the station manager read an editorial about violence in amateur hockey. None of them come right out and say us Indians was to blame for the riot; they just present what they think are the facts and leave people to make their own minds up. How many do you think decide the white men was at fault?

  There was also a rumor that the town of St. Edouard was going to sue the town of Hobbema for the damages to the arena. But nothing ever come of that.

  Another story have that the trouble come about because my friend Frank Fencepost own a dog named Guy Lafleur. Not true either. Frank do own a dog named Guy Lafleur, a yellow and white mostly-collie with a question mark for a tail. And Guy Lafleur the dog was sitting on a seat right behind our team players’ box. That dog he bark whenever our team, the Hobbema Wagonburners, get the puck. And every time he bark Frank would shout the same thing, “Shut up, Guy Lafleur you son of a bitch.” A lot of heads would turn every time he said it, because, as you maybe guessed, St. Edouard was a French Canadian town. But it was something else that started the riot.

  We never would of been there anyway if Frank hadn’t learned to read and write. Someday, I’m going to write a story about the time Frank go to an adult literacy class. Now, just to show off, he read everything in the Wetaskiwin Times every week, even the ads. One day he seen a notice about a small town hockey tournament that offer a $1000 first prize.

  “I think we should enter a team, Silas,” he say to me.

  “What do we know about hockey?” I say back. Neither me nor Frank skate. I played a little shinny when I was a kid, but I don’t much like ice and snow up my nose, or for that matter, hockey sticks.

  “Let’s go see Jasper Deer,” say Frank, “there’s a $200 entry fee to be raised.”

  Jasper is employed by Sports Canada. All the strings on Sports Canada are pulled from Ottawa. Jasper he have an office with a gray desk big as a whale, in the Consolidated School building. About fifteen years ago Jasper was a good hockey player. I’m not sure what Sports Canada is, but I know they figure if they give all us Indians enough hockey sticks, basketballs and volleyballs, we forget our land claims, quit drinking too much, get good jobs so we can have the weekends off to play games.

  Jasper is glad to have anybody come to see him. He was Chief Tom’s friend, was how he come to get this cushy job, though he would rather be trapping, or cutting brush than sit in an office. He is already bleary-eyed at ten o’clock in the morning.

  “You want to enter a team in a tournament, eh?” he say to us, pushing his desk drawer shut with his knee, the bottles rattling.

  Hobbema has a team in the Western Canada Junior Hockey League, so once guys turn 21 and don’t get signed by any NHL team, they got no place to play.

  “It’ll be easy to get some good players together,” Frank say, “and playing hockey keep us young people sober, honest and religious.”

  By the time we leave Jasper is anxious to put his head down have a little sleep on his desk, but he agree to pay for uniforms, loan us equipment, and rent us a school bus to travel in. I write down all those promises and get him to sign them.

  Trouble is, even though a thousand dollars sound like a lot of money to me and Frank, the guys we approach to play for us point out it don’t even come to $100 each for a decent sized team. So the players we end up with is the guys who sit in the Alice Hotel bar bragging how they turned down NHL contracts ten years ago, plus a few of our friends who can stand up on skates, and a goalie who just got new glasses last week.

  The uniforms are white as bathroom tile, with a bright red burning wagon on the front, with HOBBEMA in red letters on the back. Some people complain the team name is bad for our Indian image, but they just ain’t got no sense of humor.

  Frank is team manager. I am his assistant. Mad Etta, our 400 lb. medicine lady, is doctor and trainer, and Guy Lafleur is our mascot.

  St. Edouard is way up in northeast Alberta, a place most of us never been before. Gorman Carry-the-kettle drive the bus for us. We have a pretty rowdy trip once we get Etta all attended to. She squeeze sideways down the aisle and sit on the whole back seat.

  “I’m surprised the bus didn’t tip up with its front wheels about three feet off the ground,” say Gorman.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll balance things out,” we tell Gorman. He is about 280 lbs. himself, wear a red cap with a yellow unicorn horn growing out of the crown.

  We stop for lunch in a town called Elk Point, actually we stop at the bar, and since most of the team is serious drinkers, it is 3:00 P.M. before we get on the road again. I have to drive because Gorman is a little worse for wear. When we get to St. Edouard, a town that have only about ten houses and a little frame hotel gathered around a wine-colored elevator as if they was bowing down to it, we find we already an hour late for our first game. They was just about to forfeit us.

  The game played in a hoop-roofed building what is a combination curling rink and hockey arena. It sit like a huge haystack out in a field half a mile from town. Being February it is already dark. All I can see in any direction is snow drifts, a little stubble, and lines of scratchy-looking trees wherever there’s a road allo
wance. The countryside is not too different from Hobbema.

  Soon as our team start to warm up, everybody, except maybe Frank, can see we is outclassed. We playing the St. Edouard Bashers. Their players all look as if they drove down on their combines. And they each look like they could lift a combine out of a ditch if it was to get stuck. Most of our players are hung over. And though most of them used to be hockey players, it easy to tell they ain’t been on skates for years.

  The St. Edouard Bashers is young, fast and tough. Someone mention that they ain’t lost a tournament game in two years. There must be 4,000 people in the arena, and they all go “Booooo,” when our team show itself.

  “I wonder where they all come from,” says Frank. “There can’t be more than fifty people in the town; sure must be some big families on these here farms.”

  They sing the national anthem in French, and after they done with that they sing the French national anthem. Then about a half a dozen priests, and what must be a bishop; he got a white robe and an embroidered quilt over his shoulder, come to center ice where they bless a box of pucks. The priests shake holy water in each goal crease. The players all cross themselves.

  “We should of brought a thunder dancer with us,” says Frank. “Make a note of that, Silas. We do it next time.”

  I don’t bother to write it down. I’m already guessing there won’t be a next time.

  Right after the puck is dropped St. Edouard take hold of it, carry it right in on our goal. They shoot. Our goalie don’t have any idea where the puck is; by pure luck it hit him on the chest and fall to the ice. The goalie, Ferd Tailfeathers, lose his balance fall forward on the puck.