Bat 6

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

  And Mr. Porter said, too, “When we play our game well, it makes Barlow play well. It makes things better for everybody, that’s sportsmanship.”

  And that was odd, on account of I thought we were supposed to play good so they would play bad.

  I would keep my mind all on my own business but except what my cousin over at the Consolidated High did with his buddies and us girls thought it was so funny and the grownups did not. Four boys including my cousin went and painted a bright green stripe down the middle of the highway right through town, green and white being the Bear Creek Ridge Mountaineer colors on account of the forest trees and the mountain snow. The boys did it way back on Halloween but they were still doing their Community Service on into the winter. Their Community Service was the job of filling in all the pavement holes from one end of town to the other, and they had to remove the green stripe besides. It was the Community Council made them do it. They try to make fair play out of things that started out unfair.

  Those boys had to work on Saturdays and all the cars had to steer around them. Many people hollered out the car windows at them how they shouldn’t of done what they did.

  Vernell, manager and general sub

  Aki helped me with reading, her desk was behind mine. Mrs. Porter said it was all right, I would just turn around and point to the word and Aki would tell me.

  And also I thought I was lucky Aki came to live here, I would of had to play if she didn’t live here. I didn’t really want to play in the Bat game and not catch the ball good in front of everybody. It was bad enough at practices with just the girls. I thought it would be worst in front of many people. I spent the winter hoping they would not need any subbing, I wanted to be manager but not have to play.

  Mr. Porter just said Oh come on Vernell we all want to have a good team and a good time. I was too shy to tell him I wished they would do it without me, I just wanted to do manager duties. I could easy keep the bats in a line and make sure the water can didn’t spill. I watched how they did it the year before, it looked like fun. Much funner than missing the ball on the ball field and having people say Oh look how Vernell missed the ball.

  In fact from 5th grade I prayed not to have to play in the game in our year. And then Aki came, the answer to my prayer.

  Staying home with chicken pox was not so bad but I missed the girls. Daisy always shared her lunch with everybody and I wondered what the school lunch was each day too. I did not miss the indoor drills we had to do, it was hard to remember what each drill was, there were too many.

  Having the chicken pox down in the swale where we live it was lonely with only just trees and swamp. But the heron that lives close by was fun to watch out the window, and my mom got me a Captain Marvel comic and a Wonder Woman too.

  And old Louella which lives near us was over and my mom was giving her a home perm on her old thin hair. My mom put the towel around her shoulders where she was setting in the chair, front of the sink, and old Louella said, “Now, Vernell, you gals got a real important privilege to play the Bat this year.”

  I just stood there. I would not want to tell old Louella I did not really want to play the game.

  “Good sportsmanship, that is life, don’t you forget it, gal.”

  I just stood there again.

  “You hear me, gal? Vernell, you hear me? What’d I say?”

  I told her, “You said Good sportsmanship that is life don’t you forget it.”

  My mom looked at me and made with her eyes like it was OK for me to go read my Wonder Woman now.

  Darlene, Shazam, Beautiful Hair Hallie, and Alva

  Darlene, third base

  In the first big snow we had a project to help the little kids of 2nd grade make their snowmen and the next day their eyes and buttons was gone and there was raccoon tracks in the snow. The cats’ water froze on the porch and we had a whole box of pears nibbled into by possums, you could see their eyes in the night. My dad being the snowplow driver one morning real early he seen 3 deer come down out of the woods to eat. Over at Ila Mae’s they had deer in their yard even.

  Some days there wasn’t any sunset, the daylight just slid away gray.

  But then there was sunny days too at times and Coach would send us out running to condition our bodies and get endurance. He did not run with us on account of he is getting along in years. One sunny day he said we had to run up past the goat lady’s house, but Ila Mae didn’t want to. We all thought it was because it’s haunted. We told her she was just being superstitious, people been going past it for years with no damage done. The haunt was all inside the house, it couldn’t get ahold of you just running along, not if you ran fast.

  The goat lady was so old she was almost not real anymore she was so paper-thin, and all she did was yell at you, “You all get outa my garden!” It wasn’t even any kind of garden anymore but some cabbages and old weeds laying in the mud and snow. It really was not a dangerous place.

  But we found out it was a different reason why Ila Mae did not want to go anywhere near it. When we ran past, six boys from the high school was there, hammering and measuring and putting new boards in the goat lady’s porch which was all broke down. Ila Mae’s oldest brother was there amongst them and Ila Mae didn’t want us to know about it.

  The truth made her embarrassed so bad. On Halloween night them boys had lifted up an outhouse from somebody’s orchard and hoisted it up on a Ford pickup of one of their dads. In the middle of the night they hauled it all the way up the highway to the Consolidated High School and they unloaded it right smack onto the principal’s parking place exactly in front of the flagpole.

  So the Community Council made them do part of their Community Service work putting new boards in the sagging porch of the goat lady’s shack, and the rest of their hours they had to weed and rake and prune in the Valley View Cemetery. That cemetery was there since 1901.

  When it got explained to us, we told Ila Mae it was not her fault her brother done that prank, the shame was his, not hers. And besides, you could look at it as a good thing them boys done, so the cemetery could get some self-respect back. There was dead loved ones laying there amongst overgrown vines and trees till those boys did that scandal with the privy. For years that cemetery was not kept up neat and it was a disgrace, everybody knew that.

  Those boys were not allowed to go into the Barlow Store or McHenrys’ Store either one, not till they got the cemetery looking proud. They were also not allowed in church, either the Barlow Gospel or the church up on the Ridge, wherever their families belonged. They couldn’t get their privileges back till they got their hours done.

  We explained and explained Ila Mae didn’t need to feel shame for her whole family. We went running on up the hill, and Alva pointed out how good it was the poor old goat lady wouldn’t be falling through them rotten boards on her way to feed her goats.

  I wish I’d of seen the principal’s face when he drove his car to school and saw the privy in the middle of his parking place. I bet he had a fit.

  And Wink was sick with chicken pox and she couldn’t do the endurance running that day.

  The next person with the chicken pox was Manny who got her red bumps on the bus before school and had to go right back home again when the driver took the bus back.

  Many of the 3rd grade had chicken pox, and part of all other grades too.

  I got to thinking. Before this new Shazam come here, we was all mostly regular. We was different heighths, Wink being such a tall giant and the rest of us very average. And there was no real fat ones, unless you counted me, which is on the beefy side.

  Audrey was one of the 2 arithmetic champions. The other one was a boy, Toby. And there was Kayo Riley, he was average in most things except niceness, he was above average in niceness. He would often hit fungoes to we girls when the other boys merely wanted to play war in their fort behind the blackberry tangle.

  Beautiful Hair Hallie of course had the most beautiful hair. Anybody could tell you that. And she was a base stealer
. She was also our best hitter till Shazam came, and her sister was MVP in 1945.

  Brita Marie was the smartest one in everything but arithmetic, with Jimmy with the birthmark tying with her for best grades. Brita Marie’s folks have the Barlow General Store. But she is not spoilt, she does not have candy and Popsicles no more often than us. Her mom gives our class a new supply of crayons from the store every single year.

  And then there was Lola and Lila that got sulky sometimes, thinking one of them was getting treated unfair. But they was both nice girls, their dad fixed the frozen plumbing at the school in the wintertime when we was in 4th grade and he never charged the school one red cent for his pains.

  And there was Ila Mae with her hoodlum brother and her nice one.

  And then there was me, I do not have no bedroom of my own, I would hear the girls griping of cleaning their rooms but I do not have one to clean. I would clean it very good. If it wasn’t just the corner of the living room on the foldout. My mom said we could build on someday but not yet.

  My mom cleans house for the Doc up on the Ridge which has a daughter Susannah my age, her mother is the nurse. We played together a few times when I had to go with my mom or when they brought my mom home. Susannah has her own room and a pond out back besides. Susannah and me caught six frogs there one time the summer after 4th grade. They have a piano and also they have Popsicles in their freezer compartment of their fridge. I confess I envied that.

  Maybe I was the poorest one. But Audrey lived in a poor house too, with her back porch held up by stacks of bricks and their dishes for supper all chipped with no milk glasses matching each other.

  But I had a specialness. Coach Rayfield himself told me I had the best overhand in Barlow history. I would not brag on it, but it was a fact. It was because of my overhand Coach told me in 5th grade to shape up my studies, he had talked to the teacher and they was looking over the grades of the girls for his 1949 Pioneer team, and they was worried about me. I told him I would study hard and it was the truth. Because there was times that a girl did not get to play due to her bad grades, there was one in 1947, she did not get to be on the team on account of she didn’t pay attention to her schoolwork and make her social-studies reports.

  After Coach talked to me, I paid attention very hard and I got all the capital letters very straight on the line, and I got my time tables pretty good. Mrs. Winters said how she was happy I was listening so good, I got both the North and South Dakota capitals before anybody in one of our State Quiz Games on a day when Brita Marie was home with chicken pox.

  In despite of our differences, we girls was all regular. That’s the point.

  Well, we was different religions, most of us going to the Gospel Church, with the real name of Assembly of Disciples’ Gospel Church. But the twins of Lola and Lila belonged to the Mormons and Latter-Day Saints down to River Bend, along with Kayo Riley and some Ridge kids. They said they were not saints, it is just a church name. And Jimmy with the birthmark was a Catholic, they had to go all the way to River Bend to church too.

  Well, that word religion brings up Manzanita, our left field.

  I’m not saying she was peculiar in the head. Nothing queer about Manny. Except one thing and it was God. She got the spirit down to the tent revival in River Bend when we was 9. Or maybe 8. No, I’m sure we was 9. She was talking in tongues and we none of us felt right about it.

  Many grownups got the spirit that day, with the music and the good preaching, but no other little children, she was the only one.

  It was more like she got the heebie-jeebies than the spirit. But she insisted to believe it was really God in her heart.

  Manny was never a fanatical or anything. She just got the spirit that time. She was still normal and regular to the naked eye.

  But it was hard to know could we trust her judgment 100 percentage on the ball field. She might get the spirit with a fly heading straight for her, and lose the game for Barlow. There wasn’t much chance of it. But still.

  See how regular we all was? Very regular.

  Then Shazam come to Barlow with her sports talent and her quick reflexes and her bad arithmetic and reading. And her poor old grandmother in her tumbledown house out there by the gravel pit. And those dresses somebody must of homemade for her. The lavender one she wore on Tuesdays and Thursdays was probably the worst, it was from a bedspread I would bet anybody. And her mother that hadn’t got up on her feet yet. And this Shazam that had the real name of Shirley was the best sports athlete we ever saw.

  It was in friendliness we pitched in to help Shazam. Brita Marie even took her to the Gospel Church one time and you should of seen her not knowing when to stand up and sit down and she asked how come we say Amen, what does it mean, and all of us Christian girls not a single one amongst us could tell her what Amen is for.

  When Brita Marie told her there was a Christmas play about the baby Jesus getting born, she wanted to be in it. We girls was all being in it so we said Come on, it will be fun. Well, not Lola and Lila, for their church is different. But all the rest of us.

  That is how much we helped Shazam try to get regular.

  Now that’s enough about Shazam.

  My main thing to remember in that whole winter of snow and mud and almost no outdoor practice was the long throw. Coach he says, “The long throw over to first, that could win us the game, Darlene. You keep that in mind. And study your studies so you can be on that field with us next May. How much is eight times nine?”

  I tell him 72 and he says Good for you Darlene.

  When the parents of everybody on both teams had their first meeting, Brita Marie’s uncle got chose to be base umpire. The plate ump was a man from up on the Ridge, a dad of a boy. They aren’t allowed to be dads of the team girls on account of they could be favored.

  Shazam, center field

  Them puka shells my dad give me. Pretty shells all on the necklace string I had them these many years. I look at them in the night with the flashlight. When the fire dream come I cant go back to sleep I look at them.

  Hallie, right field

  I kept my ball wrapped in my glove and I tied it up tight with twine when I wasn’t using it. To get the glove shaped into a basket to always hold the ball right. My glove was a J.C. Higgins, personally endorsed by Bob Feller for all fielding positions, Bob Feller was in the World Series right then at the same time I got it from the catalogue with cherry picking money, $5.65 which I earned in 2 days in the summertime.

  And it was my glove that made Shazam start to come close to me at first.

  But it wasn’t only just the glove or Shazam, it was partly me, too. That wrong dress she had on that first day that somebody had worked so hard to sew, planning the buttons to go all down the dress in a row. And those boy’s shoes she was wearing was all spit-and-polished so shiny. I wanted to like her for that.

  And also after the first couple of days she always called me Hallie. She began by calling me Beautiful Hair when she heard that name, but when I said would she call me Hallie in trade for me calling her Shazam like she wanted, she did it.

  Coach Rayfield and his wife had us up to their house for weenies and Kool-Aid and announced the team, and Mrs. Rayfield had gone and baked a big apple spice sheet cake with a softball diamond on the green and brown frosting. She had decorated it with frosting drawings of all of us in our positions and our names over our heads like holy halos. There was Ila Mae, pitcher, Audrey, catcher. At first base there was big tall Wink, then Brita Marie at second, Alva our shortstop, and Darlene at third. In the outfield Mrs. Rayfield had put green grass and the three of us, Shazam at center, between Manny at left and me at right.

  And that left out Lola and Lila from the starting players. We knew Lila couldn’t catch or hit worth a darn, but Lola was pretty good and she was counting on being something more than a manager and general sub, which is where she ended up. Mrs. Rayfield had put Lola and Lila as managers over at our team’s bench on the side of the cake.

  That cake wa
s the first we heard for sure about Lola. We felt bad for her, but we wanted to win that game.

  When Coach announced the team, he made special care to announce them. “We’ll be rich with two managers, right, gals? And they’re our important sub players, too. Let’s hear a cheer for our managers and subs, Lola and Lila, the swell job they’re gonna do.”

  We cheered, “Yea, Lola! Yea, Lila! Yea, yea, Lola and Lila!” They were really happy. But a cheer is only a cheer. It is only loud words. It wouldn’t make me feel any better if I was Lola.

  Then Coach said, “And my Dotty she’ll come up to be our first-base coach,” and we all got respectful in respect of Coach’s hero daughter down at the state college. Everybody knew her name was on the bat in the trophy case for being MVP of 1940.

  Coach Rayfield knew by heart who had won all the Bat games from the year 1899 and he recited them to us up at his house that day. He even remembered what years there wasn’t enough girls to make a team and they played as best as they could anyway. The total was the Ridge had won 26 games and Barlow had won 23. “But Barlow has more assists and more double plays if you look at the record overall,” says Coach. “You all know what that means?” He looks around at us all, scattered about his front room with plates of cake on our laps.

  “It means we got teamwork down the hill here in Barlow, that’s what it means. It means we ain’t merely nine girls standing on a field watchin’ the sun move across the sky and puttin’ our gloves to the ground every now and then. It means —” He looks hard around the room. “It means every player on the field helps her team, because the team ain’t nothin’ without the cooperation of all a you. You hear that?”

  Coach felt like a friend to all of us, standing there by the woodstove, all wound up with his pep. We all of us nodded our heads and said we heard it. Then we cheered 3 cheers for the Barlow Pioneers. And Mrs. Rayfield went into the bedroom and come out with 11 brand-new Wilson softball caps in bright red with a big white B on them, and she passed them around.