Wish and the Honky-Tonk Man

The ghost in the wheatfield saved me three times, but not the fourth. I feel like that violates some rule of storytelling Miss Beacon taught us back in fifth grade, but I’m not worried about that, for two reasons: I’m not much for rules, and this is no story. It’s true.

The first time I was maybe twelve. I got it in my damn fool head to ride my bike to Zane’s house, which sat a few miles west of Madson, plopped in the middle of wheatfields. On the way to the garage, I poked my head in the living room to tell Mom, but she was sleeping in front of Days of our Lives with an ash candle tucked between her fingers, and I wasn’t about to wake her.

The garage smelled sweet and sour, like rotting grass clippings and diesel. I rolled out my bike—just a old bmx, one speed, pedal backward for brakes—and threw it down on the driveway. Then I went back in, pushed the button, and sprinted under the door before it crushed me. Always made me feel like Indiana Jones. Only instead of a fedora, my hat was the Oakland Raiders on account of my mom being a Seahawks fan. So yeah, whenever she called me a contrary SOB, it was a fair assessment.

Going west out of town, two-lane Highway 32 scaled a massive hill out of the valley. Between that and the summer sun, I regretted my decision almost immediately. It didn’t seem that steep in a car. I kept stopping to drink water from the old plastic Sprite bottle tucked snugly in the tan vinyl sling I’d stitched together in summer camp a couple years back. It was empty before I reached the top.

I will say it felt like a great accomplishment when the road finally cut through the peak of that rocky hill and leveled out. I stopped to look down at tiny Madson, my whole world. The golf course, the grain elevators, the drive-in, downtown, all the houses. I could block out the whole thing with my fist. Snatching my cap by the bill, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and turned. Green alfalfa to my right, ready to be cut, green winter wheat to my left, waiting on harvest a month or two out. Gray asphalt ahead, shimmying in the heat.

I pedaled on.

The plan was this: somewhere not far after the top of the hill, I’d turn left onto a road that had a big tree next to it. If you’re confused why there wasn’t a road sign or something, you’ve never spent too much time in the country. Anyway, up that road a ways there’s a right turn, and just over the hill from there was Zane’s house. Go west, go south, go west, all through wheatfields sparsely sprinkled with the occasional house, grain tank, or crumbling barn. Easy. Then, run around shooting birds but mostly each other, and Zane’s little brother, with bb guns. Drink Cokes and eat Doritos and watch Zane’s VHS tape of Hulk Hogan and the Macho Man Randy Savage from last night. Maybe look at some of Zane’s dad’s magazines, if we could get his annoying little brother to leave us alone. Then I’d ride back home, or ask for a lift from Zane’s big brother if he’s around and not being an asshole, and he’d throw my bike in the back of his pickup.

It was a good plan.

I think you must see where this is going. I mean, you’re not a rocket surgeon or you wouldn’t be in here with me, but you know how stories work. I definitely ended up on the wrong road; this particular one continued roughly south, intersecting with other country roads, zigzagging its way until it eventually hit I-90 in like 30 miles. My face would have been on a milk carton for sure.

That’s when I met the ghost.

It started as a feeling to my right, a softening, like when you sit on the floor in your closet with a flashlight to read—you did that, right? Or maybe you’re not a reader—and the clothes and shoes surround you, muffling all the world. Like that, but only on the right. I wanted to lean into it. Then a flickering shadow, black sheets wafting and snapping on a clothesline. A faint spark, like a flashlight dropped in a murky lake, up and right, just outside my peripheral vision. It morphed into a fourth of July sparkler, then into a spinning, scintillating rainbow disc. It drew my eyes, but I could never quite see it.

I’m gonna butt in here to say the reason I thought it was a ghost and not an alien or just some guy who’s invisible on account of he got caught in his own invention meant to erase stains his wife couldn’t get out from his workshirts is that it spoke to me. Well, not spoke so much as sighed, with meaning. Murmured in a language I didn’t know, but felt. It’s hard to describe. But I knew it was a soul, detached and wanting.

Anyway, all this escalated over the course of a couple of minutes, and I had to stop riding. It compelled my head up and right, threatening to run me off the oiled chip seal road. It wanted me to stop. Probably the strangest thing is that I wasn’t scared. Maybe being a kid with a semi-malleable brain who loved Stephen King and ghost stories is all it took.

“Shit, what do you want?” I moaned, squeezing my eyes shut. Eyes open or shut didn’t matter, I still saw it and felt it. I opened my eyes and gazed out over the field, summer fallow, just lumpy clods of tilled dirt resting a year or two to conserve moisture. In the distance, just over the hill, there was a glint. Sun reflecting off the shallow, conical top of a grain tank. I turned my head away, but the ghost made me turn back.

“You want me to go there?” I said. “That’s like a quarter mile. I can’t even ride in the field.”

It didn’t care. It wanted me to go there. I’ll spare you the suspense. I did what the ghost wanted. I always did what the ghost wanted. I guess that’s why I’m here with you now, in this cell.

The farmer I met that day, plopped on a stool, tucked in the shade between the eighty-five foot aluminum grain elevator and a classic red barn he used as a shop, doing maintenance on a tine weeder rig, was Arthur Stellengard. He and his magnificent mustache gave me my first job moving irrigation handlines, morning before school and night after track practice, and other jobs later. He taught me to drive stick. He and his wife Elizabeth, she of the crackling wit, invited me over for Thanksgiving one of the times my mom was in rehab. At every opportunity over the years, he retold the criminally-embellished story of how he’d first seen me, cresting the hill, deliriously hauling a bicycle for miles through a field in one hundred plus degree heat. He might have sold me the farm someday, if things had worked out like that for me.

The second time the ghost saved me was in the winter after I turned sixteen. I’d picked up Zane in the shitty old Corolla that Arthur had sold me cheap when he upgraded to a Thunderbird, and we were headed on the back roads to Jagger Lake to see a movie. Honestly, we were probably up to no good, too. We’d tagged along with Zane’s big brother Elmore too many times over the years and met some unsavory folks, learned how easy it was to make a little money, have a little seedy fun. We spun each other up, me and Zane. I don’t remember what the post-movie plans were for that day, since they didn’t happen, but there’s a good chance it would’ve gotten me in here even sooner.

Anyway, it was snowing. One thing you may not know is that in the country, with no city lights or other cars around, it’s actually easier to see the road in a snowstorm with your headlights off. The smooth white of the snow on the road contrasts with the lower, uneven snow in the fields. And without the falling snow glaring in the headlights, like being inside a firework, your vision isn’t limited to five feet.

It also feels badass. Dangerous. And we were into that.

So we were cruising along, up and down the hills, listening to one of Zane’s mixtapes (this one was labeled “New Cunt-rey”, cause he was hilarious like that), when the ghost decided to make a visit. Like before, it crept up on me in such a way that I could convince myself it wasn’t really happening. Like the first glow on the horizon, well before sunrise, when I was out doing early morning handlines. First the soft presence and shifting shadows, then the swelling light show drawing me up and to the right. I even heard the breathy, yearning susurration despite Brooks and Dunn blasting from the speakers; it was coming from inside my head. I suppose if I had any conception of mortality I would have found a place to pull over until it passed, but I guess you and I both know that wasn’t happening.

What happened instead was this, all within three seconds: As we approached the crown of a hill, Zane passed me a fresh Schlitz, foaming at the mouth. I reached for it, squinting against the ghost’s intense efforts. The road at the top of the hill glowed like a lemon snowcone. Zane’s eyes blasted wide as a snowplow crested the hill, blade down. The ghost wrenched my head to the right, and my arms came along. With my right, I punched the proffered beer into the backseat. With my left, I yanked the steering wheel. We slid off the road. The snowplow didn’t stop; I’m not sure if it even saw us with our headlights off.

The ghost was gone. Brooks and Dunn continued their tale of the Boot Scootin’ Boogie. Zane and I stared at each other.

“Holy shit!” we both said, and laughed.

The car was tilted a bit, halfway down the slope to the field. Leaving it running, we got out to inspect the damage. I walked around the perimeter, shining the flashlight from the jockeybox, the one I’d etched my name on with the engraver my dad left behind along with the rest of his shit. Zane lit up a cigarette and leaned over to make a snowball. Everything looked good. We’d gotten away with it, unscathed. I waved my arms at Zane, kind of a Kermit the Frog flailing, pure silliness, and at that moment my feet slid from underneath me and I thwacked my forehead on the passenger side rear fender, denting the Corolla. And this scar.

Zane watched, laughing his ass off, while I dragged myself to my feet. When I saw the dent in the car I felt an explosive rage and pounded my fist on the trunk. As if triggered by this, from inside the car Dwight Yoakum sang, “Well I’m a honky-tonk man!”

Well, my rage dissipated into laughter, and after a singalong and a snowball fight, Zane and I managed to push the car up onto the road. By then we knew we’d miss the movie, so we decided to head back to Madson and just watch music videos in my basement. Enough excitement for one night.

Ever since that night, I’ve thought of the ghost in the wheatfield as the Honky-Tonk Man.

I can tell from your eyes I’m being a bit long-winded. Fair, but, in this place, where else do you have to be? I’ll get to my point.

The third time the ghost saved me was maybe a year and a half later, when I was driving combine for Arthur. The days were long and I had a habit of going out after. So to stay focused through the boring days I’d transitioned from Zane’s cousin’s Adderall onto speed. Worked great, as you know, but I’m pretty sure the rest of the team was tired of me yapping on the CB all the time.

Anyway, we were opening a new field of irrigated soft white wheat, its stalks nearly four feet tall. I was lead, cutting right through the middle of the field, with Sabrina following on my right flank, using my cut as a guide. Cutting that first row straight was a challenge, and an honor I’d earned. I was good at it. I had “on-board radar”, as Arthur used to say.

Nice thing about tall irrigated wheat is you can cut it high and fast. Unlike dryland wheat, which is short, sometimes only two feet tall, so you have to cut low. And with the header that close to the ground you have to take it slow to avoid bumping.

So that day I was confident and buzzed and probably showing off for Sabrina. I dialed up the throttle. Too fast. You know where this is going so I’ll cut to the chase. Out of nowhere, the Honky-Tonk Man did his thing and I ended up jerking the wheel and turning abruptly, right in front of Sabrina. She throttled down in time, no harm done.

“What the shit, Wish!” she yelled over the CB. I could hear the AC blasting in the background. “You have a stroke or something?”

“No, sorry! Shit!”

Arthur, supervising from his pickup on the road, piped up. “Everything okay, Aloysius?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I steered the old International Harvester back into my path, still a little stunned, and instantly spotted something.

“Now what?” Sabrina said.

There, hidden by the dense, tall wheat, was a massive sinkhole. It sometimes happens, especially in irrigated fields. I pictured going nose down into that thing, at speed. I might have gone through the glass, into the reel, maybe even onto the cutter bar, slicing at more than a thousand cuts per minute.

“Thanks, Honky-Tonk Man,” I breathed.

And now the moment you’ve been waiting for: the time the ghost didn’t save me. Like I mentioned before, I was getting mixed up in nefarious activities. Nothing too bad, mostly just serving my ancestral addictions. Didn’t hurt anyone. Not directly anyway. I remember we’d just graduated, and me and Zane and a few others got collared for spray painting our names on a train trestle a few miles outside town, and had to clean it up and do community service.

Here’s a tip: don’t autograph your crime scenes.

Also, let me tell you, “Aloysius Longmire” takes a hell of a lot longer to clean up than “Zane Dodge”.

Anyway, part of the community service was picking up trash along Highway 32. We had to meet a few weekends at one of the maintenance shops outside Danberg, which was the county seat. Pick up our high-vis vests and grabbers, whatever, load up in the back of the pickup, and they’d take us out.

Joke’s on them, I kinda liked it. Crisp summer mornings, before the heat. Only thing was they didn’t let us talk. That was the true punishment.

After spending the morning not learning our lesson, we were at Gale’s, or maybe JP’s, cracking some beers. JP told us to shut the fuck up because he had our next deal. Dude didn’t even know what his own initials stood for, but he always had some deal going down. Said he saw a bunch of scrap copper at that county shop, and that his cousin knew someone who’d buy it.

I’ll spare you the details of the heist, except to say we were making our big getaway, me in the back of one of the pickups along with chaotic, twisted mounds of copper wiring, when the Honky-Tonk Man made his triumphant return. I set down my flashlight to hold on while I closed my eyes and let my head do its thing. What was it telling me this time? That we had to take a right at the next intersection? That I had to jump out?

Next thing I knew, Gale was whipping the pickup around, yeehawin’ out the window, spinning brodies in the gravel lot. The tailgate clanged open, and I guess it was then that my flashlight slid out of the bed.

Remember how I said not to autograph your crime scenes? Well, the next morning I opened the front door to a county mountie holding out the butt end of that flashlight, the one with my name etched in it.

They ended up getting all of us. I didn’t talk or nothing, and security cameras weren’t everywhere like they are today. But they knew we were all doing community service together; it was not a complex trail to follow.

I got lucky. I was young in my class, not yet eighteen. So that’s how I ended up here, in juvie.

And how I met the most important person in my life: Millie Fariner. She didn’t put up with my shit. And she didn’t give up on me. She didn’t care much for rules, either, like the one insisting kids like me then—like you now—are too far gone.

She made damn sure I got out. I got clean. I went to college. On the grace of my sealed juvenile records, I got into law school. That didn’t exactly work out, but it helped me find my way back here, in a different capacity. Life’s a radiowave, but you control the station.

So maybe the Honky-Tonk Man did save me that fourth time after all. It still breaks the rules of storytelling, but you know how Millie and I feel about that.

Fuck the rules.

Now let’s get to work.