Bat 6

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

  My mom gave Shadean’s mom 3 quarts of mincemeat she made with the venison from the year before’s deer and also 2 quarts of crabapple pickles, but she knew such meager food is no adequate payment for such neighborliness in time of need.

  Brita Marie, Audrey, Shazam, and Ila Mae

  Brita Marie, second base

  It was the first day of school, a sunshiny, teeth-chattering September morning. I saw that girl, even before I got to the bike rack.

  The first thing I noticed was her high brown shoes with laces up them. Those were not shoes for a girl, they were shoes for a boy and they had been polished real shiny and there was her white socks sticking out over the high tops. Those shoes were awful.

  I remembered them from somewhere, and it came to me they were at the Gospel Church rummage sale and ladies were remarking how good they still were, they had lots of wear left. They were saying it was sad how they had belonged to that boy that had to move away when his father went to jail. Those shoes came from McHenrys’ Store up on Bear Creek Ridge, they were nearly brand-new.

  And it was her dress also. It was a real odd dress for a child to wear, bright red with those big flowers on it. It looked like it had started to be something else, a curtain or a tablecloth. It had buttons all completely down the front and a round ruffled collar. The dress looked like somebody worked hard making it, it was not a store-bought one.

  I had the thought in my mind to wave a magic wand and make that new girl not have to be so new. There is no magic wand, and a new girl always has to be her unfamiliar self till somebody takes her in with conversation.

  She was holding a spiral notebook and a pencil down to the side of her. She didn’t even know we had to have a 3-ring.

  I parked my bike next to Beautiful Hair’s red one and I took my new 3-ring binder out of the basket, and my brand-new ruler and pencils, and I walked over there to where she was standing, next to the blue spruce tree near the flagpole. Somebody had to take that new girl to another place to stand, because she was in the ornery 6th-grade boys’ place.

  I said, “Hi, you can come with me, what grade are you in?”

  And I will not forget how she answered me: “Shazam. That’s my name. They won’t have it on their list, they’ll have Shirley but you call me Shazam.”

  “You mean Captain Marvel’s Shazam? The magic lightning?” I said.

  “Right. Shazam.” It was not exactly how she looked new, it was more how she looked different. She was a contrast to us.

  And I told her my name, Brita Marie.

  “Brita Marie,” she said.

  “Shazam,” I said. We looked straight across into each other’s face. “I bet you’re in 6th,” I said. I didn’t have any other hunch from looking at her, only just that one.

  “You bet right,” she said.

  I noticed she had steel eyes.

  I wished I could cover up her shoes and her dress for her. She would have to go through 6 hours in that outfit. We walked away from the spruce tree, me with my new blue-and-yellow skirt and her with that clothing.

  I did what I thought was best, I took her over where some of the other girls were, between the flagpole and the blackberry tangle. Darlene, Wink, Audrey, and Beautiful Hair Hallie were there. They tried not to look at her wrong dress and they said hello very friendly. She announced her odd name and Wink asked her did she like to play ball. For 49 years before us there was the famous Bat 6 game of the 6th-grade girls in the springtime, it was a tradition, and Wink naturally had it on her mind. Wink is our exceedingly tall first baseman, her heighth is 5 foot 10 inches.

  Shazam stared up at her tallness. “Man, I sure do, ball is what I like to play. You gimme a bat, I’ll show you. You gimme a glove, I’ll show you,” she said.

  That reply of hers was more than was expected.

  Darlene had the fastest overhand in Barlow history, everybody knew that. She said to Shazam, “Want to catch some?” Everybody except Shazam knew this was a test. Beautiful Hair held out her excellent glove to Shazam and Shazam took it, and she and Darlene walked away from one another out there, Darlene went almost to the lightning tree and threw the first one.

  Shazam gets Beautiful Hair’s glove under it perfect and she heaves it back to Darlene quick and hard. That was the first time I noticed her strong arms. We none of us girls had strong arms like that. Not even Darlene.

  I remember so clear like a photograph the sight of those two throwing back and forth, Darlene in her fastness and Shazam in that tablecloth dress, not missing one single catch. Others came along, Manny and Lola and Lila. We all just stood and watched Shazam for her first time at Barlow, and I happened to look up into the school and there was Coach Rayfield standing in the window of his room, watching down too.

  I think back to that day. Thwop, thwop, thwop, the ball landing in their gloves.

  We didn’t even know yet Shazam was both left and right handed.

  And then the bell rang to go inside the school to begin sixth grade. I always love the fresh varnish smell of a new grade, and the different direction of the sun coming in the room, it’s never the same as the year before that we have all got tired of. This year we went to Mrs. Winters’s room, which has the bell rope just outside the door and we got to ring it in turns, being sixth graders and the oldest ones.

  By afternoon the temperature was warmed up and we had our first official practice. Some boys agreed to be our opposing team and Shazam fielded very good against them with a ratty old glove from the sports box. When she got up to bat she slammed the ball way out to the lightning tree twice. And she ran good.

  And wearing that awful dress. It was a mystery where she came from. Coach Rayfield went up to her after practice. “Shazam, you got a good swing. Shazam, you aiming those balls out there?”

  Shazam she looks at him off-guard, and she says, “Yeah.” Coach Rayfield looks at her mystified like the rest of us. He says he’s real glad she came to Barlow this year.

  Shazam told Coach she wanted to pitch. She just up and said it. We none of us would just say it like that, we would wait to be chose. He explained how we had Ila Mae as our pitcher already but we needed a relief pitcher too, and he said how Shazam had the gift of an outfielder.

  “We really need you out there, you’ll be real important to our team,” says Coach Rayfield in his way that always made you want to play good for him.

  Shazam looked at him with those eyes.

  Coach Rayfield said in his serious face to all of us, “We got to beat them Ridgers this time. And you the gals that are gonna do it. We got high hopes, the whole darn town gonna be counting on all a you, so you go get it.” Then he made us yell our spirit yell,

  “Go, go, go!

  Go, Barlow, go!

  They did it back then, we can do it again!

  Go, Barlow, go!”

  Barlow won many of the games in history. Including the time Beautiful Hair’s sister hit a home run in 1945, and many more games we do not remember on account of they were not in our lifetime.

  Then Coach walked off the field with Manny. He said, “You went to church and prayed for a good outfielder to come and live here, Manny?” He was kidding Manny like always.

  “No, I did not, Coach,” Manny said. “I might of. But I didn’t. I never even thought about no new outfielder coming here. So there.”

  Coach laughed. “Well, I did,” he said in a low voice that some of us heard.

  Somehow we got the idea God sent her right here to Barlow to win the Bat trophy back from the Ridge.

  Audrey, catcher

  I had been stacking cordwood to build my strength up. I stacked 4 cords at home and then me and Darlene stacked 4 more down behind the Flying Horse gas station where my great-uncle Beau works. Down there he has the big wooden board with all the Bat 6 scores on it from all the years. Actually it is a bunch of boards nailed to 2 posts, it is 16 foot high, and Uncle Beau has painted the scores on, he even did all the scores in history, back to 1899. Anybody driving up the road cou
ld see that board. He would always put Barlow wins in red and Ridge wins in green, he used a half-inch brush on the whitewashed boards. By the time our turn came, Barlow had 23 wins and the Ridge had 26. While me and Darlene stacked the cordwood, Uncle Beau kept teasing us about he would need to have the red paint can ready on May 28 so he could letter in BARLOW PIONEERS and our winning score.

  For the first 5 days of our 6th grade, Coach Rayfield had us pull slips of paper out of his old umpire’s hat he used to use during the war when the umps was all far away from home fighting for our country and he had to be one.

  These slips of paper, which Darlene and Wink wrote the words on, said “first base” or “shortstop” or “pitcher” on them, all the different positions. And then whoever got that slip of paper had to play that position for the afternoon. Lola and Lila were included, naturally. Even though it looked like Lola was out of a job with Shazam suddenly amongst us.

  The volunteer boys formed a batting lineup and we fielded. They sometimes hit very hard and especially Toby could hurt you when he slid into your base. Coach Rayfield told the boys they couldn’t play if they were not going to be serious gentlemen in their playing. Of course they made “serious gentlemen” faces behind his back, but they played by the rules.

  We fielded grounders and Coach Rayfield told us, “Descend slow, with the ball as it comes to you. You seen those airplanes in the movies. Do it the way them planes do. Slow, slow, slow. Don’t just drop down when the ball gets there.”

  Beautiful Hair Hallie could even field grounders backhand very smooth, she was beginning to teach Manny and Lola and me the year before, but we none of us could do it like her. It was partly having her own glove and partly her God-given talent. And Coach Rayfield he says, “That’s a good backhand there, but remember, Hallie, you might delay 2 seconds using backhand, you could give the runner 6 or 8 feet to the base.” Some of the boys hit very hard grounders and they got real smarty when you let it get past you, so we was all trying very hard to field them good.

  And we had to catch flies in the outfield. “Point your nose to that ball up there,” Coach hollers. “Feet wider than shoulder width! Wider! And keep your eye on the ball. We got to get us some sun practice so you can learn to put that glove up there to hide the sun from your eyes.”

  And he did. He got us out from social studies on sunny days, and we practiced stepping over to the side and putting up our glove when the sun was in the outfield.

  Well, Shazam hardly didn’t need him to say those reminders even once. Not more than once anyway. She knew how to field like she knew how to hit.

  Coach Rayfield yells to us, “Memorize your base. You can’t take your eyes off the ball to find your bag. Your foot’s gotta know where that bag is.”

  The day Shazam drew the slip of paper with “pitcher” on it, she struck out Jimmy with the birthmark once and she also put 2 boys out at home by throwing to Beautiful Hair who was catcher that day. Kayo Riley and Jimmy with the birthmark on his next time up were those boys. They was both a little what you might call mad, but it was plain as the nose on their face they was out fair and square.

  Then the boys switched onto the field and we got to be the batters. Beautiful Hair and Wink were our best hitters. Well, Ila Mae too. Darlene and me were our best long-ball hitters till Shazam come to Barlow. Shazam got one between center and right, and the boys couldn’t agree on who would get it, so she went all the way to second base. Next time up, she got one right over the head of the shortstop. She said she knew he wouldn’t be able to catch it. She got to third on that one because the boys in the outfield was talking and not paying attention.

  At first the boys all wanted to be our volunteer opposing team, but they dwindled. They were mixed in their feelings about playing against girls. And, well, you could tell if you looked at them halfway straight they did not like a girl being so good like Shazam was.

  There was a odd thing about Shazam’s eyes. When it was people she was looking at, they shifted around. But when it was a ball, she kept her eyes on it with full concentration.

  The whole first week of school we didn’t hardly know much more about her than the first day, but then we started to know some, on account of Ila Mae asked and got a answer of very small information from her mom.

  Shazam, center field

  The fire dream come nobody can get out all fire all around.

  Ila Mae, pitcher

  I got home from the first day of 6th grade and changed into old clothes to do the chickenhouse chores and throw a ball at the fence. While I was changing into my slacks I told my mom about the odd new girl. Where’s she live, my mom wants to know. I say she lives with her grandmother out by the gravel pit.

  “No kidding?” my mom says. “I’m suprised that child is here. She’s 11 years old already? Time flies, that’s for sure.”

  But she didn’t really explain me this girl.

  “That would by Floy’s girl. Poor little thing, Floy never did have good luck.”

  I ask her what she means.

  She tells me it is not for my ears.

  This made me want to know all the more.

  I said to the other girls to go ask their moms, but nobody’s mom told anything clear. They just said like my mom, That must by Floy’s girl, poor little thing, she’s 11 already? Like that. Brita Marie’s mom said Shazam’s mother needed to get on her feet and she must of sent Shazam here to live. She would not say no more about it.

  Mrs. Winters, which was our teacher, was the only one wouldn’t call her Shazam. She said, “I will call you Shirley and you will answer to your proper name. Shirley is a very pretty name.”

  Shazam give that look of hers to Mrs. Winters but she could not hold it. Her eyes shifted in a moment and you could feel her giving in. Mrs. Winters always called her her proper name and she answered to it. The whole time.

  But to Coach Rayfield and the rest of us she was Shazam like she said she was. I think we thought calling her Shazam was okay if she would help us win that game of our lifes.

  Shazam fastened onto Brita Marie, and Mrs. Winters told Brita Marie she should be Shirley’s special friend for a while, till she could learn to mingle. Brita Marie went along with it, but it was too big of a job for 1 person.

  Shazam needed study help, for she did not have school skills. There was a rule we had to be good enough of students to even set our foot on the ball field in the Bat. Without Shazam we would of had enough girls for a team, but the truth is, Lola would of been our 9th girl and she was not near the athletic sports talent of Shazam. Lola had been counting on getting to play a position, but she and her twin, Lila, had to accept their reality of being managers and general subs when Shazam come here.

  Audrey was our good arithmetic star, she made Shazam learn the time tables, for the teachers in Shazam’s childhood had not did so. Well, part of the time tables. Audrey got Shazam up to the 5’s before giving up on the 6’s and 7’s Shazam got real snarly when the problems got too hard and Audrey said no softball game in the universe was that important, she did not like getting blamed for arithmetic being hard to do. Wink took over and they got through the 9’s, but they had to skip the 6’s and 7’s completely.

  Shazam did not get snarly with Mrs. Winters. She just stopped doing her work partway down the page and sat in her desk staring. She would stare at the bulletin board where we had the map and papers of good schoolwork up there. Brita Marie and Jimmy with the birthmark always had something of theirs on the bulletin board, they were the smartest in 6th grade.

  Shazam she didn’t get it about normal things like not staring at Jimmy with the birthmark. She kept doing it till she got bored of it. Jimmy was so used to strangers being rude and staring, he pretended he didn’t even notice. Brita Marie distracted Shazam when she did odd things like that. See what I mean about it was a lot of work to be Shazam’s friend?

  When the new geography books come in a truck, Shazam was the first to say she wanted to carry the boxes of them. Mrs. Winters let
her do it and she praised her very nice for her strong arms and hard work. Shazam didn’t hardly learn her geography, though.

  She would of got all bad grades if it wasn’t for the girls helping her study for the quizzes, like what all the 48 state capitals are. And I don’t think she ever did get her long-division problems to come out right.

  But she was such a natural-born athlete she was going to win that trophy bat back for us. The trophy was the bat that had the name of the winners and the Most Valuable Player carved in it for 5 years back. There was many trophy bats, some of them up on the Ridge, some of them here at Barlow, but the one up on the Ridge for 2 years was the one we wanted. Just over my shoulder all the time I heard Coach Rayfield saying, “Keep your arm good, Ila Mae. Pitching wins games.”

  The truth is I was working on my pitching for 2 years already. I never had took my mind from it. Even when everybody had snow shaking off their boots in the coatroom all winter long and they didn’t have no thought to ball season I was thinking about pitching. Me and my brother A.J., we practiced out back. He taught me my windup and we practiced striking each other out. We would practice till my mom come out on the porch, stepping very careful so she wouldn’t slip on the ice where the porch was tilty. One time the year before she yelled, “Ain’t you doing anything else your whole lifes?” Steam puffed out her mouth.

  You should see my brother A.J. laugh when she said that. He said back to her, “No. Me and Ila Mae is Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants. He pitched 373 winning games, ya know. He’s in the Hall of Fame, ya know.”

  Then my oldest brother he said, “New York Giants, my foot. You ain’t gone no more further than Portland.”

  My mom she said like always, “Don’t you dare hit the cooler box,” she meant the window box where we keep the milk and eggs in winter. And she went inside to continue being proud.

  It was a credit to my brother A.J. I could pitch left and right both. He made me do it and I was so glad. He soaked his hands in pickle brine to keep them tough, so I did it also. I did not do it as often as him.