‘Last Will’ charts athlete’s destructive path

Posted Jan 25, 2012 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Jan 25, 2012 at 08:07 PM

It was the oversized baseball card that piqued my interest. There, larger than life, Lemuel Higgins is looking toward the plate, his hands up around his chest almost in the set position, intently preparing to throw a pitch.

The card is a promotional piece for Patrick James O’Connor’s first novel, “The Last Will and Testament of Lemuel Higgins” (Blackbriar Press, $12.99 paperback, 243 pages).

The card intrigued me. But O’Connor’s writing hooked me. 

This is not really a book about baseball, although it serves as the backdrop. It’s a riveting confessional, with sharply etched characters and a plot that leads toward a gripping, yet melancholy finish. It is set in rural upstate New York, where independent dairy farmers struggle to make a living while a large competitor tries to squeeze them dry.

Once, Higgins had a promising baseball career. A pitcher with a lively fastball and sharp curve, he worked his way to the major leagues, getting a cup of coffee with the New York Yankees. But that was in the past. Now, Higgins is a broken-down man, physically and emotionally, dying of AIDS because of a contaminated transfusion he received after losing a lot of blood in a barroom brawl. His career already had been sliding downhill since a confrontation with his father led to an estrangement. Drinking ruined his career and wrecked his marriage.

There were moments, Higgins laments, “when I knew that it was all too good and that someone somewhere was just waiting to pull the rug out from under me with all my dreams piled high like some tottering, triple-dipped ice cream cone in the hands of an unsteady child.”

As it turns out, Higgins was the one pulling the rug.

Now facing his final days as the AIDS virus saps life from him, Higgins pens his will. But it’s more like a confessional and apology to his wife, Sarah, an aspiring author whose goal was to establish a writer’s colony. With nothing to hold back, Higgins laments his mistakes and seeks forgiveness, knowing all too well it was not going to happen during his lifetime.

“It’s a fool’s game to be young and in love, and the world is unforgiving, especially to the foolish,” he notes.

Sarah Higgins probably believes that foolish is too soft of a word, but does concede as the book ends that “there is nothing so beautiful in all of literature as a man at confession who is making an earnest attempt at amends.”

Following the structure of a legal document, particularly a will, is an interesting approach by O’Connor. There is one chapter that names an executor, and 15 bequests. Each chapter (or bequest) examines a different part of Higgins’ crumbling life.

Using the legal backdrop seems like a natural progression for O’Connor, who currently practices international law for a Miami-based firm. He pursued his law degree at Georgetown and worked as an aide for U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1993. He also grew up in the dairy country of upper New York state, so his descriptions of farming life are on the money.

I visited that part of New York five years ago, staying in the small town of Andes in the Catskill Mountains. While driving to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, the two-lane highways stretch like a ribbon over the hills, with large dairy farms on either side of the road. That’s the sense I get while reading this book.

Or, if you are looking for something a little bit more dark and stark, watch R.E.M.’s official video for “Bang and Blame.” It’s the same concept with the grainy camera panning down the dirt roads.

The book has two distinctive themes: Higgins’ struggles to get control of his life, and the dogged efforts of his brother-in-law, Joby, to keep his farm against long odds. One succeeds; the other must face the inevitable. Higgins knew he was following a destructive path but seemed helpless to prevent it.

“It was like I was watching myself run a red light in slow motion,” he says. “I knew that the crash was coming, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.”

O’Connor writes crisply and has a sharp eye for detail. His characters are believable with distinct personalities. And while this is not necessarily a sports book, there are many athletes who have traveled this destructive path.

The first two lines of Elvis Costello’s “Complicated Shadows” probably sums it up best:

“Well, you know your time has come,
and you’re sorry for what you’ve done …”

Readers can relate.