The Conman

by Mike Murphey

  “Lethbridge? Where the fuck is Lethbridge?” A.J. asked.

  “You should have looked at the schedule,” Conor said.

  “We did,” Basil said. “But we figured we’d see you pitch here. We didn’t know we’d have to go to Lethbridge.”

  “You were a reliever when we booked our tickets,” Brad added.

  “Now I’m a starter. Next start is Saturday in Lethbridge. I can see if they’ll let you ride the bus.”

  “How long is the drive to Lethbridge?”

  “About twelve hours . . .”

  “On that thing?” A.J. protested. “No way. Basil’s got bucks. He can rent us a car. Something hot. I understand Montana highways don’t have speed limits.”

  Conor threw two fastballs by Lethbridge’s leadoff hitter, then missed with a curve. The hitter’s only choice was to gear up for another heater. He took a weak, lunging swing and tapped the bender toward third base. Conor smiled. Maybe this breaking ball thing will work out.

  The second hitter, who stood no chance against Conor’s smoke, took a half-swing at a shoulder-high fastball, falling behind 0-1. Another opportunity for a curve. The Lethbridge hitter might not have expected this gift, but he took full advantage of it. As Conor’s curve ball hung—huge, like a big, yellow, full moon rising—belt high and mid-plate, the hitter crushed it right back at Conor. The ball caught him flush on the ankle he’d injured three years earlier.

  “Take a couple of throws,” Hopp advised him as he, trainer and umpire gathered at the mound. Conor climbed gingerly onto the pitching rubber. When he landed to finish his pitch, a jolt of pain shot up his leg.

  “We’ll get you to a hospital for X-rays,” the trainer said as Conor limped beside him.

  Basil, A.J. and Brad waited as he emerged from the emergency room, wearing a foot-to-knee plaster cast.

  “Broken,” Conor told them, downcast. “Hairline fracture. I’m done for the season.”

  Team rules prevented Conor from returning to Idaho Falls with his buddies. He suffered the ordeal with an itchy cast and a throbbing foot while A.J. and Basil flew home in a rented Pontiac Firebird.

  “Come on, Conor, you’ve got to see this,” A.J. said. “You won’t believe it.”

  “My leg hurts, and I look like a dork with this cast,” Conor told him. “I don’t feel like bar-hopping tonight.”

  “Well, we sure won’t be hopping, because near as I can tell, there’s only one bar,” A.J. said.

  More than one bar existed in Idaho Falls, but baseball players hung out at the Snake River Bar. Located near the ballpark, the Snake River catered to ball players, girls who wanted to meet themselves a real-live baseball player, and cowboys or farmers’ sons making sure their girlfriends didn’t get hustled by baseball players.

  Conor, A.J. and Basil walked into semi-crowded darkness. Brad, who’d enrolled in Stanford’s summer session, remained at the motel to study. As they entered, a couple of girls recognized Conor. Noticing his cast, they hurried over to see if he needed comforting. They chatted for a moment, leaving the door open to later possibilities.

  “Okay, what did we come to see?” Conor asked. “Where’s Baze?”

  A.J. pointed across the room, where Basil sat on the tallest stool, situated directly beneath a ceiling can casting a soft circle of light.

  Although Conor and Basil spoke often enough by telephone, Conor had not seen his friend in the flesh for almost two years. And, Conor conceded, the transformation was significant. Without question, this Basil vastly improved on the high school version. Until this moment, though, with dramatic lighting—as if Basil was on some center-stage—and holding his glass of scotch, Conor had not witnessed the full effect.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Just watch,” A.J. said.

  “He’s trying to attract girls? He was always so shy he couldn’t bear speaking to girls.”

  “Oh, he still doesn’t speak much. Like I said, watch.”

  His leg throbbing, Conor found a high top nearby, climbed onto the stool and sat. When he glanced again, a girl had engaged Basil in conversation, although she seemed to be doing most of the talking. Basil’s side of the discussion consisted mostly of smiles and nods and shrugs. And not just a girl. The best-looking girl in the place. And then another one. And another. And another.

  Conor thought of sparrows flocking to a feeder.

  Now girls were laughing, touching Basil’s shoulder or arm with painfully intimate gestures. Basil mostly smiled and sipped his scotch. As soon as ice cubes showed above the lapping brown liquid, a full glass appeared. The bartender pointed to yet another girl, this one seated farther down the bar. Basil grinned, raising his glass in her direction.

  “I told you,” said A.J., joining Conor at the high top.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  Halfway into his second scotch, Basil entered the conversation, apparently speaking actual sentences. Girls laughed, as if engaging the smoothest and most witty operator they’d ever encountered. And now gentle touches and nudges and even a little squeeze here and there accompanied Basil’s comments. He and the original girl locked lips. Conor heard dark, mumbled threats somewhere behind him along with the sound of stools being shoved and boots scraping the floor.

  Just to fill you in, Rita, my older brother Sam is still known as the toughest guy around San Carlos, and I sometimes felt the weight of his reputation. But he warned me off. On those occasions when I suggested I might confront so-and-so because of some perceived insult or matter of disrespect, Sam counseled otherwise.

  “Nah, you don’t want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the guy will kill you. Trust me, you aren’t much of a fighter. I’ll give you this, you can take a punch. But, see, fighting is kind of about not taking punches, okay?”

  Basil, though, could fight. He was slow to provocation, unlike A.J., who would take on anyone at the drop of an insult.

  Reaching from the shadows, a man wearing a cowboy hat pulled at Basil’s shoulder and A.J. was off like a shot.

  “A.J., no!” Conor called. “A.J., we can’t . . .”

  Conor clumped after A.J. as quickly as his cast allowed.

  He heard a pop. Basil stood. A cowboy hat rested upside down on the bar. The covey of girls separated enough for Conor to see a pair of cowboy boots, toes pointed up, their occupant swallowed by shadow. Other cowboy hats converged.

  “A.J., don’t . . .” Conor tried again.

  A.J. spun one of the hats by the shoulder, yanking him away from Basil, and pummeled the man with lefts and rights.

  Conor clumped onward.

  A third hat engaged Basil, faring no better than the first. Basil turned slowly, looking for another adversary, when Conor yelled, “Baze! Stop!”

  A tall man next to Conor shoved him. “You’re with these guys?” He blasted Conor on the jaw.

  “It’s not my fault.”

  They’d retreated to the parking lot, Conor massaging his face, hoping the lump he felt there would disappear by morning. He opened his mouth, gingerly wiggled his jaw, and checked a couple of molars with his tongue.

  “What do you mean, it’s not your fault?”

  “It’s not my fault. I go into a place. I sit. Girls show up. I don’t invite them. I don’t ask them to buy me drinks. They just do. It’s not my fault.”

  “Yeah? Who was the guy who started copping little feels for all the local boys to see?”

  “Oh, him,” Basil said. “That’s Touchy Teddy. Touchy Teddy shows up during my second scotch.”

  “Guys?” A soft voice wafted from the darkness.

  Conor turned and saw two women, including the original contact, approaching through a background glow of neon.

  “We wanted to make sure you guys were okay,” first girl said.

  Conor stood with a half-lean against the Firebird, his casted leg propped along the hood, his jaw puffed and throbbing. A knot had sprouted on A.J.’s forehead, against wh
ich he held a cloth napkin full of ice cubes.

  The girls headed straight to Basil.

  “Did you hurt your hand?” second girl asked.

  “Did I tell you I’m from Alaska?”

  First girl leaned forward, kissed his cheek, and whispered something.

  Basil grinned.

  The girls walked toward a pickup parked a few spaces away.

  “Um . . . guys,” Basil said, “I think I’m going to have to . . . you know . . . go?”

  “Baze!” Conor called.

  “It’s not my fault,” Basil answered over his shoulder.

  The pickup’s engine growled. Tires spun gravel as it skidded onto the street.

  “I told you,” A.J. said, “that you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Well, crap,” Conor said. “I’m the baseball player.”

  eleven

  “I already know what Conor looks like in a baseball uniform,” Hugh Nash told his wife. “I’m not going all the way to Idaho for that.”

  “You haven’t seen him wearing a professional uniform,” Nadine said.

  “He can send us a picture. The only reason I’d go is to see him pitch. He’s injured. Besides, I’ve got that doctor’s appointment.”

  So, Rita, they canceled their airline tickets. Which turned out just as well, because ten days into the second half of our season, the Angels sent me to Los Angeles to see the team doctor. He fitted me with a walking boot and told me to go home.

  Neither the doctor nor the organization offered rehabilitation instructions. They said get well—a medical equivalent of throw strikes. I wore the boot for six weeks, then returned to the elementary school where I threw baseballs at a brick wall. The mindless repetition was as much grief therapy as exercise for my arm. My dad’s doctor’s appointment produced devastating news. The lump was a manifestation of lung cancer. The cancer moved fast. With chemotherapy still in the experimental stage, doctors prescribed radiation. And following each treatment, a little bit more of my dad seemed to be missing.

  Ever the realist, Hugh accepted before the rest of us that he would not survive. He did not, though, become a victim of melancholy. As his body suffered devastation from radiation, he mentally and emotionally strove to remain the same man who set strict standards for his sons and himself.

  During this ordeal of our father’s failing health, Sam, now twenty-two, grew angrier each day. The biggest and smartest of the Nash boys, Sam always seemed balanced on a knife edge between brilliance and destruction. He fought more than ever and became notorious among local law enforcement. He hung on the fringe of a biker gang. He drank too much.

  At seventeen, Mike directed anger related to his grief at his oldest brother. In Mike’s eyes, Sam’s behavior only made things worse, and they initiated a feud destined to flare for years to come. Fourteen-year-old Brandan approached Dad’s situation with a stoicism that worried our mom the most. His somber silence might have been denial. No one knew for sure. Dylan, the youngest at eleven, just seemed overwhelmed.

  None of us could accept that the brusk, burly, self-assured man, who established values for us, forced us to church on Sundays, stood as an emblem of doing the right thing and demanded our competence, would be taken from us by an enemy we couldn’t see, much less bare our knuckles and fight against.

  When I called Baze, he cried and said he’d come home right away. I told him to stay where he was. I promised to keep him informed. Baze called Hugh several times a week. Brad spent hours at Hugh’s bedside. A.J. suffered the most devastation of the three, though he hid his grief the best. He seemed determined to keep things as normal as possible around Dad.

  “Howyadoin’, Mr. Nash?”

  Hugh, weak and emaciated, stretched on his recliner and regarded A.J. with a look of incredulity. “Not particularly well, A.J. I’m dying here, if you haven’t heard.”

  “I mean other than that.”

  Hugh’s laughter degenerated into a coughing spasm. “Put it that way, I guess I can’t complain.”

  “I’ve got something I need to ask you about. Get some advice, I mean.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s the carpet store,” A.J. said. “My dad told me it’s time for me to start learning the business.”

  “That business holds a good future, A.J. Your father’s built something significant. You’ll have security.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. I think security is the last thing I want, you know? I want to build something of my own.”

  “So, what are your plans?”

  “Well, I want to take some business courses at UCLA. Maybe start a restaurant.”

  “Food service is a tough business.”

  “I’m a tough guy.”

  “Yes,” Hugh said. “You are.”

  “Well, what can I do?”

  “A person has to be who he is, not who someone else wants him to be,” Hugh said.

  “Even if the someone is his father?”

  “Yes, A.J. Maybe especially if the someone is his father.”

  When things looked worst, we found a sliver of hope. Early that November, Hugh felt better. His appetite returned. He regained weight. “Maybe,” the doctor said, “the radiation is working. We’ll just have to see.” Hugh wasn’t fooled by the respite. As this brief period of optimism played itself out, he called his sons to his side, one-by-one. That’s when he gave me his one-basket speech.

  Hugh finished the meeting with one more assignment.

  “Dylan will need some help. You and the other boys have been around me long enough that you understand me, and why I’ve raised you the way I—”

  I interrupted him. “Dad, you’re getting better.”

  Hugh offered a rueful smile. “No, Conor, I’m not. And as I was saying, I’m not sure Dylan has known me long enough. Sam will take this the hardest. He’ll be lost for a while. Meantime, I need you to be someone Dylan can see as an example. I need you to kick his ass when it needs kicking, show him the right way.”

  At that moment, I accepted that my father would die.

  “A.J. put me on hold again.” Hugh offered the telephone receiver to Conor. “Tell him he shouldn’t put me on hold. I don’t want to die on hold.”

  Conor took the phone and waited.

  “Okay, I’m back.”

  “A.J., it’s me. Dad’s pissed cause you put him on hold. You shouldn’t—”

  “Connie, good. Tell your dad I’m sorry, but I’ve got a deal going here.”

  “A deal?”

  “Yeah. Land. Phoenix. You need to give me five thousand dollars. You’ll be an investor.”

  “I’m not going to give you five thousand dollars. I promised my dad I’d be more careful with my bonus money. And what do you know about land?”

  “We’ll get to that. Right now, let me talk to your dad.”

  He died two days later. December 17, 1976. Basil flew home for the funeral. We put Hugh Nash to rest December 22nd, one day before my twenty-first birthday.

  I look back on my dad and the difficult standards he set for us, and I often wonder how he would have raised a girl child. Whether a daughter might have softened him around the edges? Most certainly, he would have expected his five sons to be her protector. God save the hapless teenage boy who brought her home late from a date or bragged about his conquest of the Nash sister. We four younger boys could only hope Sam didn’t get to him first, because there wouldn’t be much left for the rest of us.

  I wonder if our father would have been less strident and more indulgent of a daughter, or if his protective instincts would have doomed her to the life of a cloistered nun? Of course, she’d be a Nash. In the latter case, her rebellion might have been spectacular.

  I can only guess, though.

  Our sister Valarie—Hugh and Nadine’s first-born child—died of leukemia at the age of eight months. Although none of us boys ever met her, we all know her. Our parents saw to that. We always noted her birthday. We knew about her happy spirit, despite the pain of her b
rief life. We know our parents mourned her death to the day they each left this earth.

  And I know one other thing, Rita. She would have loved baseball.

  Although Nadine Nash stood five feet and one inch tall, her sons never underestimated her. Conor and his brothers didn’t remember a single occasion when she said, “Wait until your father gets home.” She handled the discipline herself. She broke up their fights with a whiffle ball bat or a broom handle.

  She felt fulfilled as wife and mother. She’d never held a job outside her home or driven a car. The day after she buried her husband, though, she found a job as a secretarial assistant, and passed her driving test.

  That evening, she gathered her sons around the kitchen table.

  “Facing your father’s death may be the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” she told them, “but we can do it. It’s what he’d expect of us. And no matter what else comes along, whatever you face, you’ll know you’ve already handled the most difficult thing you can imagine.”

  Mike mumbled something under his breath.

  “What was that?” Nadine asked.

  “Why did God take him away? Why did he make us go to church to worship a God who doesn’t care about—”

  “Don’t you think that,” Nadine said sharply. “Not for one minute. You were able to know your dad, to understand what he wanted for you. Remember, there’s another member of this family. Now, it’s Valerie’s turn to have her father.”

  Sunset washed the entire western horizon. Freeways crawled with commuters heading home, each car a dot of light along an undulating chain.

  Mom was right. Nothing anyone threw at me compared to facing life without my dad. Dealing with his death, though, let me find a toughness I didn’t know I possessed. Toughness I’d need to face everyone who would doubt me. Mental toughness to rise above disappointment. Physical toughness to push me through injuries.