May Column Winner

Old Friends

By Brian Blansett, The Lincoln County News

It was the second week of second grade at Fitzhugh when an undersized brown-haired boy with a white  spot in his hair showed up.

Mrs. Duffer introduced him to us as Nelson McSwain, who would be joining our class.

This was an exciting development. Until then, the only boys in our small class were me and Jesse Don Green. 

Nelson and I become good friends quickly and, less than two years later, my parents bought the house across the road from the McSwains.

From then on, Nelson and I were inseparable. We fished and hunted and played games and sports of all kinds, especially baseball. 

Neither of us put any requirements on our friendship. We were pals and buddies and that was enough.

In the fifth grade, our peewee basketball team of fifth- and sixth-graders found ourselves playing a team from one of the Ada grade schools in a tournament at Homer. They were ahead by one point with one second left, when one of their players fouled Nelson.

It was a one-and-one. If he missed the first one, we’d probably lose. Make the first one, we were tied. Make both and we’d win by one point.

I still recall Nelson standing at the free throw line is his too-big uniform, bouncing the ball and... making both shots.

We were the winners. That was the first time that I recall realizing that we - Nelson and I - usually could find a way to win, no matter what the predicament or situation.

In high school, we used to play a card game called Widow Pitch. Nelson and I beat all comers, including our fathers. My dad thought it was kind of funny, but Nelson’s dad didn’t. Not at all.

We played baseball at Latta and made it to the state semifinals as juniors and the state finals as seniors.

We weren’t the most talented team in the state, but we usually found a way to overcome almost any circumstance.

I was there the night a kid pushed Nelson into a wall during a basketball game and broke both his wrists. I was there when he cut his wrist on a broken pop bottle and I was there when a calf broke loose at the livestock show and ran into a gate. Hit him in the mouth and knocked out all his front teeth.

He always bounced back sooner than expected and was ready for the next sport, when the time for it came around.

We worked together baling hay in the summers and duck hunted and caught fish and just generally enjoyed our lives.

I didn’t realize it then, but, looking back, it was a comfort to know that he was always there,  a constant friend, no matter what might happen.

After high school graduation, we didn’t see each other much for about five years. I went into the military and saw some of the world. Nelson went to college, then got married and became a coach and  a father.

I came back to Ada for college and to start my newspaper career and Nelson and I hung out again, just like we used to.

He was my best man when Dianna and I got married and I was a pallbearer at his grandparents’ funerals. In between, we played a lot of golf, caught stringers of fish and had a memorable deer hunting trip in a rainstorm when the windshield wipers in our friend’s pickup quit working.

Then, when we were in our 30s, I moved to Texas and we didn’t see each other very often at all.

In my mind, I was always making a phone call to set up a fishing trip or play some dominoes or just hang out and talk about stuff. But I always got side-tracked and never made the call.

About a week ago, I got a message from his sister, Susan: “Hey — just letting you know that Nelson is in very bad shape in the Tulsa hospital.”

The message was clear and direct, but I had to read it several times to let it sink in gradually.

When I called him, he gave me the news: lung cancer. But he seemed upbeat and talked about his appointment with the doctors to consider possible treatments.

We talked about old times. About playing base-ball and catching fish and how much we enjoyed our friendship.

We made plans to go crappie fishing when he felt up to it. Lung cancer would be a formidable opponent, but we’d figure out a way to get past it. That’s what  we always did, whether it was baseball, card games or anything else.

I hoped Kindra would go with me to see him and get confirmation that all those stories I’ve told her really were true.

Sunday night, I got a message from his youngest sister, Gena, saying that Nelson was back in ICU with internal bleeding. The doctors couldn’t find a cause or, seemingly, a way to make it stop.

I figured I’d give him a couple of days to rest before I called him.

But Monday morning, Gena messaged again.

Nelson would be entering hospice. He was too weak to endure radiation or chemotherapy.

The  message echoed like a steel door slamming shut.

Nelson was dying, and a part of me was dying, too. 

I was at work when I got the message, so I went to the deck behind our building, looked up into the rain and cried.