The Brooklyn Nine

by Alan Gratz

  “Europe or the Pacific?”

  “Europe. He’s fighting in France.” Kat unfolded the little wrapper and took a cigar box with a bear on the cover from her bag. The box had been her father’s once. Inside, there were two cigars and a framed photo of him in his army uniform. Underneath that there was a stack of Orbit wrappers, all folded and unfolded again, one for each day he’d been gone. Kat added the new wrapper to the stack and touched all four corners of the wooden frame.

  “I’ve never missed a night,” Kat said of her little ritual. “It’s stupid, but I like to think it keeps him safe.”

  “I’m sure it does, Kat.”

  Kat took a deep breath and stared out the window. The city streets of Grand Rapids had turned into the rolling farmlands of Michigan. She wanted her father to come home safe, wanted the Allies to beat Hitler, wanted her family to stop scrimping and saving and eating nothing but potatoes and carrots from their victory garden. But out here, in the vast flatlands of the Midwest, she was already starting to forget about all that.

  And the forgetting felt good.

  A murmur of laughter came from the poker game at the back of the bus, and Kat turned in her seat. It was late and she knew she should be sleeping, but she didn’t want to miss a thing. It had been like this last night, and the night before, and Kat wondered if she would ever want to go to sleep again.

  A broad, dark shape made its way down the aisle and stopped beside them.

  “Katherine, are you awake?” It was Ms. Hunter, the chaperone.

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry, dear.” Kat could practically hear the chaperone smiling in the dark. “I’m sure you’re excited. Things have been such a whirlwind that I didn’t have time to give you your beauty kit.”

  Connie snorted. Ms. Hunter put a booklet in Kat’s lap, and in the occasional glow from the passing streetlights she could read the cover: “A Guide for All-American Girls: How to Look Better, Feel Better, Be More Popular, by Mme. Rubenstein.”

  “It’s hard to walk in high heels when you’ve got a charley horse,” Connie told Kat.

  “You don’t have to read it now,” Ms. Hunter said, “but the league wants you to read it soon, and to always be as attractive and healthy and charming as possible.”

  “And play to win,” Connie added.

  “Of course,” said Ms. Hunter. “And play to win.”

  Kat flipped through the packet, dismayed that she had homework to do.

  “There are really only a few important things to remember,” Ms. Hunter said, like she could read Kat’s mind. “Always wear a skirt and look your best. Don’t get your hair cut short, and never wear Oxfords or masculine-looking shoes. And the biggie: No fraternizing with opposing players.”

  “No what?”

  “You’re not supposed to be chummy with the girls on the other teams,” Connie translated. “They don’t want the league to look like a sorority.”

  “That’s it,” Ms. Hunter said.

  “But last night we—”

  Connie elbowed Kat, who quickly shut up.

  “I’m sure Connie or one of the other girls can steer you clear until you get into the swing of things, but if you have any questions, do come to me, all right, dear?”

  “All right, Ms. Hunter.”

  Kat flipped through her beauty manual again and saw that the last page was blank but for a headline: “Notes of a Star to Be.” She liked that. “A Star to Be.” It reminded her of Hollywood and all of Pepper Paire’s stories of California. Kat looked out the window, trying to see the stars, but she couldn’t see past her own reflection.

  “So where’d you learn to hit like that?” Connie asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, back in Brooklyn. I practically grew up at Ebbets Field, and there was always a stickball game going on around the neighborhood. I just played with the boys, learned to hit whatever they could throw. My whole family’s mad for baseball. No time for that now, though. Dad’s off in France, mom’s an engineer building battleships, and Hattie, that’s my sister, she runs the house.”

  And I ran away to play games.

  Connie caught Kat thinking. “You miss them? Your family?”

  Kat looked at her face in the window.

  “No. Is that bad?”

  Connie shrugged. “Some go one way, some go the other.”

  A car beside the bus started honking and flashing its lights. The girls craned forward to see what was going on as the bus slowed down and pulled over. There was some discussion between the bus driver and whoever it was who had flagged them down, and soon he came back with an armful of soda crates.

  “Local Coca-Cola fella says he wants to donate a few cases to the team!” the driver announced. The girls hooted and hollered, and some of them leaned out the window to thank their benefactor and blow him kisses as he unloaded more from his trunk. Each girl took a bottle as they got passed back, and more cases were stacked into the front seat of the bus before it pulled back out onto the road.

  “I tell you, this is the life!” Connie said.

  Kat couldn’t agree more. She tapped the top of her bottle three times before popping it, and Connie looked at her suspiciously.

  “Keeps the fizz down?” Kat tried.

  “Uh-huh.” Connie clicked bottles with her and they drank.

  The pit stop for Cokes had riled the girls up again, and Alma Ziegler—the girl Kat had been playing for while she was hurt—crab-walked her way forward from seat to seat. At the front of the bus Alma turned her jacket inside out and put her cap on backward to the calls and whistles of the team.

  “My fellow All-Americans, let us pray,” she said.

  The girls were still buzzing, and half of them were laughing uncontrollably.

  “I said let us pray, you creeps! Now shut it!”

  There were stifled snorts throughout the bus, but everyone got quiet.

  “My friends, many games hath we strayed from the winning path.”

  “Amen, sister!” Connie cried out. There were more laughs.

  “And long have we toiled under Meyer, who God knows ain’t no Moses.”

  “Aw, shut it and let me get some sleep,” the manager called from the front of the bus. He was met with raspberries.

  “And lo, Saint Feller and Saint DiMaggio and Saint Williams and the rest have left and gone to war.”

  Connie and the other girls put their caps over their hearts, and Kat hurried to do the same.

  “In short, dear sisters, it is high time for a Sermon on the Mound.”

  The girls pelted Ziegler with their caps, and she very unpreacherly shot one of them back at a girl. In a moment she had her eyes closed and her hands raised in mock prayer again.

  “Is there a rookie in this house of worship tonight?” she asked.

  There was more whooping from the back of the bus, and Kat felt her ears begin to redden.

  “I said, is there a rookie among us tonight!? Come forth, rookie, and be saved!”

  “I thought I already had my initiation,” Kat whispered.

  “You did,” said Connie. “This is different. This is a baptism.”

  Connie nudged Kat into the aisle and the team cheered. Not knowing what to do, Kat staggered down the aisle of the still-moving bus and stood before Ziegler. The veteran put her hand on Kat’s cap and then pushed her to her knees.

  “What is thy name, rookie?”

  “Kat. Katherine Flint.”

  “Kat Katherine,” Zeigler said, getting laughs, “you come today to the church of women’s baseball from Hoboken, New Jersey.”

  “No, Brooklyn, New Y—”

  “Don’t interrupt me, sister. You come to us from Hoboken—or wherever—and offer yourself to this most holy of games. Do you give of yourself freely and clearly to baseball?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you accept the central tenets of our faith—the run, the hit, and the error?” she said, then quieter, “But not so much the error.”

  �
��I do.”

  “Are you in body, mind, and spirit—particularly body—truly in the game?”

  “I am!”

  “And when my leg gets better, are you going to play some other position so I can have my old job back?”

  Kat laughed. “Yes!”

  “Good. Now that that’s out of the way—are you going to get a hit tomorrow, sister?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you gonna play your little rookie heart out tomorrow, sister?”

  “Yes!”

  “Let me hear it!”

  “Yes, sister!”

  “Then let it be known to all here who bear witness, that from this day forth you shall be known as ‘Killer Kat’ from Brooklyn—not Hoboken—and that you are, fully and truly, a Grand Rapids Chick. I now baptize you in the name of Tinker, and of Evers, and of the holy Chance.”

  Ziegler lifted Kat’s cap, and she felt something rain down on her head. Too late she realized it was a bottle of Coca-Cola. Kat jumped up, sputtering.

  Alma Ziegler laughed. “Say hallelujah, sisters!”

  The bus rang out with hallelujahs. Kat pushed the sticky wet hair out of her face and smiled.

  “Hallelujah,” she whispered.

  3

  “We ain’t got forever, you know,” the catcher told Kat as she went through her hitting routine again.

  Kat grinned at her as she stepped into the batter’s box. “Hallelujah, sister,” she said, getting a strange look from the catcher. It didn’t matter. Nothing anybody else thought or did mattered. Kat was a Grand Rapids Chick, and nobody could take that away from her. She pounded the fourth pitch she saw into right center, and Connie, coaching first base again, windmilled her toward second. Without looking Kat knew the throw was coming in, that the play would be close, and she slid feet first into the bag.

  “Safe!” cried the umpire.

  Kat popped up. “Hallelujah!” she told the umpire, almost laughing.

  “Hallelujah!” Connie echoed at first, hopping up and down. The Chicks had won five straight games, and Kat had climbed higher and higher in the lineup.

  Kat was so happy she almost didn’t feel the sting, but then it came on like an electric burner heating up. Her exposed leg beneath her skirt was all scraped up from her slide, like she’d slid on concrete. It hurt like all get out, but Kat fought back the tears. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered. She was a Grand Rapids Chick.

  And the town of Grand Rapids loved Kat almost as much as she loved it. Cars honked and people waved as the girls made their way down the street. Restaurant managers gave them the best seats in the house. Strangers sent them drinks. Little girls asked for autographs. Kat couldn’t imagine a better life, and the page in her guidebook, “Notes of a Star to Be,” quickly filled with her memories and her hopes and her dreams.

  But there was one dream Kat had she did not want, a dream that came to her again and again, night after night, a dream that would not stop until she tore herself from sleep, panting and sweating. In Kat’s dream, she was tapping on the ends of bats. She knew it was a dream, because there were hundreds of thousands of bats, more than she could ever count, but she could never rest until she had touched them all.

  But tonight as Kat touched the bats her tapping grew louder and louder, until it was a knocking, a pounding . . .

  Kat woke with a start to someone knocking on the door of the hotel room she shared with Connie.

  “Wake up, girls!” Ms. Hunter called through the door. “Wake up!”

  Kat’s vision was fuzzy, but she could see she still wore the clothes she had worn out last night when Connie had taken her to meet some friends on the Racine Belles. She pulled the covers up to her chin, afraid Ms. Hunter might come inside. The knocking was more insistent, and Connie worked her pillow over her head.

  “Go away,” she moaned. “It can’t be afternoon. We just went to sleep.”

  “It’s victory in Europe!” Ms. Hunter called through the door. “It’s over! The war in Europe is over!”

  Kat shot straight up in bed. Connie did the same. The knocking stopped and they heard Ms. Hunter banging on the next door down the hall.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said the war in Europe is over,” Kat said, still dazed.

  Kat heard clapping and cheering out on the street, and Connie rushed to the window.

  “Jeepers, look at ’em!” Connie marveled.

  The street was alive with people. It was like the indoors was too small to hold their happiness, like they had to get outside before their joy blew out all the doors and windows. People were crying and singing and dancing and hugging. Down the hall, some of the other girls were tearing up toilet paper and shoving it out the window like confetti. Church bells rang across the city, and car horns joined in the hullabaloo.

  “Let’s go down!” Connie said. She grabbed Kat’s hand and pulled her out the door but stopped when she could feel Kat holding back and turned to see her tears.

  “Kat, what is it?”

  “I’m happy. I am,” Kat blubbered. Her tears spilled out like boiling water. “It’s just, I just got here and all and—”

  “Oh, Kat,” Connie said. “Are you worried about the league?” Connie pulled Kat into a hug. “You batty kid! This isn’t the end—it’s just the beginning!” Connie held her out at arm’s length. “The league is stronger than ever! We’re not going away just because Hitler’s been squashed. Why, someday your own daughter will be playing for the Chicks. I guarantee it. And think of your pop! He’s safe now. You won’t have to be collecting those gum wrappers and tapping on wood anymore.”

  Kat gasped. “My Orbit wrapper!” She pulled an empty wrapper out of her pocket. “I forgot to put it in with the others when we got home last night!”

  “But see? It doesn’t matter!” Connie told her. “It’s victory in Europe!” Connie whooped and dragged Kat with her down the steps. On the sidewalk, a man Kat had never met before picked her up and kissed her. The lady behind him gave Kat a bear hug, and little children ran among the revelers waving American flags and flying little toy airplanes. Kat looked around for Connie, but she had already disappeared into the crowd.

  Maybe Kat was wrong. Maybe the league would go on. Maybe this life would go on, long after the war was over. Maybe forever. Maybe people had seen the way things could be and would never go back. She wiped her eyes again, and suddenly thought what a disappointment Mme. Rubenstein would find her right now—just out of bed, clothes rumpled, hair a mess, eyes red and puffy from crying. Kat started to laugh, and soon she couldn’t stop. It hurt to laugh, but it was a good kind of hurt, like pulling a splinter.

  Farther down the street there was a fountain, and anybody who wouldn’t jump in was being thrown in. Connie was dancing on the edge, and Kat jumped up and took her in with her, crashing into the cold pool, cackling all the way.

  Their game that night was canceled. Everything was canceled, and for one glorious night, all of America took the break it hadn’t taken ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor more than three years ago. But in the morning it was back to business as usual. There was still victory in the Pacific to work for, and it wasn’t going to be won playing in fountains and dancing in the street. Still, everywhere Kat went that day there was a smile on people’s faces, and when she got to the ballpark she learned it had been sold out for hours.

  Kat gave Marilyn a nickel for a pack of Orbit and the bat girl dashed off as the players began to get changed. Meyer posted the lineups, and Kat, Grand Rapids’ newest star, was batting third. Connie gave Kat a punch in the arm to congratulate her as Marilyn ran up to them.

  “That’s fast,” Kat said. “Back already? Somebody get this girl a contract!”

  But Marilyn wasn’t back with Kat’s gum. She was back with a Western Union telegram. It was from Kat’s sister, Hattie, back in Brooklyn.

  “It’s probably to tell me we won,” Kat said. “Like I wouldn’t hear.”

  Connie frowned and sat on the be
nch beside Kat to read over her shoulder. Kat tore into the envelope and read the thing through.

  “Oh my God, Kat—”

  Kat read it through again.

  And again.

  It was a short message. All it said was:

  “Father killed in action May 8. Body buried in France. Mom says stay and play.”

  Connie hugged her. “Oh, Kat. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not true,” Kat said. “May eighth. That’s V-E Day. That’s the day the war ended. How could he die on May eighth? This isn’t right.” Tears fell even as she said it. She knew it was right, knew her sister would never have played such a terrible joke, never written unless she was absolutely sure. She knew it was true because she had not put the gum wrapper in the cigar box that night. She hadn’t touched her father’s picture frame to keep him safe. She knew it was her fault her father was dead.

  “My fault,” she sobbed.

  “No, Kat. No,” Connie said, rocking her.

  Kat found her glove through her tears and stood to join the other girls on the field. Connie caught her hand.

  “Let me tell Ms. Hunter and Meyer,” Connie said. “They’ll understand you can’t play today.”

  “No. Please. I have to play today. I have to play today, because tomorrow I have to go home.”

  “What? No. Why? What good would that do?”

  “I have to be there for my mother. Help Hattie—”

  “If your mother is designing battleships, I don’t think she needs much help. And besides, look, she even told you to stay.”

  Kat sobbed. She hadn’t missed her family before, but now she did. Now she wanted to bury herself in her mother’s arms and cry like a baby.

  “There’s a time and a place for everything, Kat, and this is your time. Your place. You’re a star.”

  “V for victory, girls!” Ms. Hunter called. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Kat wiped her face with her glove, and Connie let her go. Kat walked up the steps and out onto the field to take her place in the V. She knew the sun was shining and the flags were waving and the crowd was cheering, but to her the world was a different place. To her it was still and quiet, and she was the only one moving, her weeping the only noise.