Bat 6 Read online

What a wonderful feeling it was, modeling our caps in Coach’s front room, all looking at each other and saying how good they fit and how we would take good care of them till next May 28.

  We gave 3 cheers for Mrs. Rayfield for such a good time at her house.

  Shazam came over to sit beside me when it was time for seconds on cake. She says, “Your piece and my piece is neighbors on the cake, huh.”

  I said, “Yeah, they sure are neighbors. The outfield is our neighborhood,” I made a joke. “Manny and me and you,” I said.

  “We can be in cahoots,” says Shazam, serious and secret.

  And she scoots over close to me on the bench. Anybody could see she was lonely. She didn’t have a complete home like the rest of us, only her grandmother.

  She says, “I can come to your place to practice.” I look at her and she says, “We can trade off using your glove.” I sat there not wanting to be rude and Shazam says, “I can come anytime, my grammama don’t care.”

  Well, the whole first snow melted and the ground stayed hard, and my mom got it arranged so Shazam could come on a day Coach Rayfield had to go to a meeting of all teachers and we did not have team practice. I arranged to bring home a fielder’s glove from the sports box so we would each have one. My mom sent a note to school on Monday that Shazam should take home to tell her grandmother she was invited for Wednesday, and the sun was shining that day on the cold ground. Even in November.

  When we got to my house, my mom was beating up batter for ginger cookies. She said my dad would hit fungoes to us when he got home, so we went out past the woodshed to throw till he come home. I told Shazam about my dad’s hearing, which is only half, ever since the war when he was at Iwo Jima. You can even yell on his right side and he hardly hears you. I had to tell her so she would talk to his left side.

  She said, “The Japs got him over there.”

  Even though she said that bad word, I said Well, that was true, but it wasn’t like they killed him. He’s still alive, he’s still my dad, he just can’t hear as clear as normal people.

  She said again, “The Japs got him.” I decided she’d see when he got home that it wasn’t so bad.

  I said to her, “We can’t say that word you said. Not since the war.”

  She said, “Well, they got him, didn’t they?”

  I said yes but we still can’t say that word.

  She said, “Let’s play ball.” We backed off and began to throw and catch.

  When my dad got his G.I. Bill he went down to the state college and he studied some courses on business. I mention this because of it made 2 differences. 1, he used to be only a sawyer at the mill. But after he studied on the G.I. Bill, he come back and they hiked him up to foreman and assistant boss of part of the mill due to his education he got down at the college. And we got our furnace fixed and a bigger hot water heater and other things besides. Because he made more money. By the time Shazam come over that day we’d had a refrigerator for 2 years, it was even hard to remember the old icebox. 2, my dad he felt so bad being away from us, first in the war and then down there at the college, he always played with us now as a lot of dads do not.

  I did not mention these things to Shazam due to her not having a real home like me, I did not want to make her feel bad. With Shazam you never knew if she would be lurchy or steady about things. Instead I showed her the place where we seen the bear tracks last winter at the edge there, out where the fir trees begin.

  She did not believe me at first but then I promised I would show her the plaster cast we made of that footprint. That bear paw print was in the front room right beside the radio.

  We threw back and forth for a while, we could see our breaths in the air. Shazam could throw and catch for hours if you wanted her to.

  When my mom had the ginger cookies out of the oven she hollered out to us to come get some. While we were in the house, Shazam wanted to see my room and I showed her. She saw my bedspread my mom made with the red and blue rickrack stripes on it and the bedside table my dad made for me. She saw on my wall the photograph of me and my sister at the beach and the scenic calendar we got from the Flying Horse gas station. And the curtains at the window matching the bedspread, I hemmed those after my mom sewed them.

  Shazam she stands in the middle of my bedroom and says, “My father is long gone at the bottom of the sea, you’ll never see him alive.”

  “Pardon me?” I said, with this sudden information.

  “That’s the whole truth,” she said, solemn in her face.

  We none of us girls knew this. I guess she told me first due to me having her over to my house.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. I did not know what else to say.

  “The Japs sent him to the bottom of the sea at Pearl Harbor, he’ll never come back. You don’t know how that is.” Her mouth went a tight sideways way I only saw a couple of times before.

  She was right. I didn’t know how it was. I tried to say comforting words. “Your dad would be proud of how you play ball,” I told her. I was catching on to no wonder she was stunted like. In her way of going along.

  “That was December 7, 1941, I was just little, I never seen my father again this whole time since.”

  I told her again how he’d be proud. “He’d be proud of your good sports talent,” I said. I was starting to feel guilty having a father.

  “He is still at the bottom of Pearl Harbor in that ship Arizona. The Japs bombed it without no warning, they went and killed all them dead soldiers fighting for our freedom.”

  That word. I already told her we couldn’t say it. It was so long ago, and good Christians are supposed to forgive and forget. But it was not my dad that was at the bottom of a harbor leaving me to grow up wacky.

  “The whole Navy tried to save him, them Japs made my mom a widow.” She closed her arms around her stomach tight and got that look of a frying pan on her face.

  I just stood there making a sympathy face, for I didn’t know what to do.

  “I’d still have my father like you do. My mom she ain’t had time to get on her feet yet. The Japs took him away just like that.” She kept her arms tight around herself. I stood there in my pretty bedroom feeling so sorry for this queer peculiar girl. It was 7 years and she was still so mad.

  We heard the pickup come rattling up the driveway with my dad coming home from down at the mill, and we went out there. My dad said hi to Shazam and she said hi back. He brought out the bat and our other 2 softballs, one of them was coming unstitched.

  I didn’t know how Shazam would be with my dad, her being so concentrated on not having her own just 3 minutes ago. But she took to him right off. She hopped along beside him all the way out to the field.

  We backed way off close to the woods. My dad he kept hitting the ball between us so we could practice knowing which ones was for center field and which was for right, and we practiced calling Mine when we went for it.

  I was so glad I invited Shazam over to catch flies. Even though I just found out about her dead father. I never saw her so happy before as I saw her out there in the field with me and my dad. The Utsumis’ cow was clinking her cowbell over in the pasture, and the sky was clear glassy blue.

  Once when my dad turned around to chase the unstitched ball where it went crooked, Shazam hollers “Slugger!” to him and he didn’t hear her. She repeats “Slugger!” again and he still did not hear. She was trying to be buddies. It looked like she needed a buddy so bad.

  After we caught fungoes for a while, it was nearly dark. Shazam could borrow my bike to go home and ride it to school the next day, but my dad would not let her. It was more than four miles out to the gravel pit. He said, “Nothing doing. It’ll get dark before you get up that road, you could get hit by a car. You get your coat while I start the pickup.” Shazam did not have a coat but she picked up the old sweater she had laid down on the porch.

  My mom come out on the porch and said to Shazam how nice it was she could come over to play. She handed Shazam a paper sack of gin
ger cookies. “You take these to your grandma, Shirley. You tell her I said hello.”

  Shazam took the sack of cookies and she said to my mom, “I could catch better if I had my own glove.” My mom made no look on her face about Shazam not even saying thanks for the cookies.

  “Sure you could, honey” was all she said. Shazam got in the pickup with my dad.

  Old Mr. Utsumi was coming across the pasture with my dad’s hayfork in his hand, he had fixed it for him by putting a new handle into the metal shaft, same as he had done with 2 shovels. He was walking his old limping walk he’s had ever since his ankle was broke that time in the icy winter, and he was carrying his tall walking stick in his other hand.

  My dad waved to Mr. Utsumi from the window of the pickup, and my mom told Shazam she hoped she could have a glove of her own by spring. My mom handed me a sack of cookies for Mr. Utsumi to take back across the pasture to his old wife, Mrs. Utsumi, and Shazam and my dad they went rumbling out of the driveway. When Mr. Utsumi gave me the repaired hayfork I gave him the cookies and he said thank you and limped off across the pasture, lifting his walking stick up and down.

  Partway across the pasture he turned around and waved. He had a cookie in his hand. The sun was on his old wrinkled face, and I thought how it was good he didn’t hear Shazam say that bad word.

  That was shocking news about Shazam’s father. I asked my mom if she knew before. “Yes,” she said. And she went on fixing supper. “How come you never said?” I said to her. She pointed me to the fork and knife drawer and said I should set the table. “I don’t want to talk about war tragedies,” she said, and I set the table. Everybody had war tragedies, and I agreed with my mom, I did not want to talk about them either. And her with her own husband deaf on one side.

  But still. Your very own father. Absolutely dead forever.

  My dad he said Shazam sure was a strange one, he kind of shrugged his shoulders about her. Well, not kind of. Really shrugged. He shook his head how sad it was for her getting moved around so many times in her life with her mother that wasn’t on her feet yet. “But she has her grandmother out there by the gravel pit takes good care of her, she come out to the pickup to say thanks for bringing Shirley home safe.”

  Then he shrugged his shoulders again.

  Well, I had done my good deed of having her over after school. And of course I called the girls that night and said about her dead father in Pearl Harbor and we some of us agreed on how tragedy could make a person loony. Not everybody thought that way. Audrey said, “Listen, crumptillions of children had fathers die in the war and they’re normal people in despite of it.” Audrey had a point.

  I did not mention over the phone that word Shazam said. You would not say that word on the party line, there might be others listening in, or maybe even old Mr. or Mrs. Utsumi might be picking up the phone to make a call. You never know.

  And even off the phone I decided I would not tell anybody. I was grown up enough to keep that bad secret. And I had told Shazam she couldn’t say it anymore. I had done my part.

  But thanks to God she didn’t say it where our neighbors would hear. Old Mr. and Mrs. Utsumi. They even had to go away to a camp for the whole war just for being Japanese. And besides that, their son lost his life fighting in Italy on our side, the Germans killed him. His name is on the brass memorial over by the school. The whole war just broke old Mr. Utsumi’s spirit, in my dad’s opinion. Old Mr. Utsumi didn’t hardly take much interest in anything when they came back. Old Mrs. Utsumi does her gardening, we can see her all bent over among her flowers and vegetables over there acrost the pasture.

  Poor old soul. My mom makes my sister or me go over and check on the Utsumis every single cold day in the winter because of that time 2 years before when we didn’t know for 3 days Mr. Utsumi had broke his ankle falling on the ice trying to get to the barn. It was only when my mom noticed no smoke coming up their chimney and she sent my sister over to find out. Well, old Mr. Utsumi was propped up on the bed and the fire was out. Their woodpile was froze and old Mrs. Utsumi couldn’t pry any wood loose to build a fire.

  Old Mrs. Utsumi managed to milk the cow herself while her husband was laid up, but her poor old arms was too weak to chop the ice off the woodpile. The only warm thing they had to keep them alive was cow’s milk.

  So my dad went over and chopped through the ice on their woodpile and built them a big fire in their stove to start with. My mom made them hot food, and my dad took Mr. Utsumi down to River Bend to get a cast on his leg.

  Well, since that cold winter went by, Mrs. Utsumi made some embroidery pillowcases for my mom and they always share vegetables from their garden, and plus the iris bulbs Mrs. Utsumi gave my mom.

  And if Shazam had said that word right where old Mr. Utsumi could hear her? Oh, Lord.

  But then poor Shazam didn’t have a father to teach her right from wrong.

  And it was because of Japan she didn’t have a father.

  It would be a terrible thing to lose your very own father forever. But to lose your very own son forever like the Utsumis! Out of all the bad things that could happen, which of those would be the very worst?

  The only thing my mom ever said, the whole time, was about Shazam’s father himself. And it stunned me. “That child might be better off he’s at the bottom of the sea. He can’t get himself or nobody else in trouble.” I went bug-eyed. She wouldn’t say anything more. Hard as I tried, she wouldn’t.

  Alva, shortstop

  Well, I got down on my knees.

  Dear God,

  Oh what my ma told me, I promised her I wouldn’t say a word to anybody, and I’ll keep my promise. Like they say, take it to the Lord in prayer.

  It is about Shazam’s mother. It is too terrible to say.

  If it is too terrible to say in front of You, but if You already know about it because You already know everything, then how can both of those things be true? I am always so confused about that. It don’t make good sense. But I know I can talk to You about it.

  It was after we found out about Shazam’s father dying from when she told Hallie, and then Shazam’s mother was coming here to visit for Christmas, and my mother just bursted it out to me, she could not hold it in no longer.

  Well, You already know. Isn’t it awful? Even my ma said, “Poor little thing” about Shazam. Well, I tell You this for sure, I would never in my life say, “Poor little thing” about Shazam before. But then I heard this terrible part about her mother.

  Her mother. Floy. You know how she was. She did not even finish her high school years because she took to sin. My ma actually said, “She couldn’t keep her bloomers on.” You know how she got so flirty with that Takashima boy in the berry patch.

  Why didn’t she stop there God?

  Isn’t it tragic? How she went down to Portland and she got herself — this is the worst part — when she got herself in the family way by a boy she met? That boy, he had already stole a car once, his name was Buzz? And he tried to brush her off and he went in the Navy, remember that?

  And she followed him to his base in San Diego, remember?

  Pregnant with child at such a young age!

  If You can do anything why didn’t You save her from her sin? Isn’t that what You are supposed to do?

  I’m not blaming You God. I am just asking.

  And she named the baby Shirley, after Buzz’s mother. Think of that! Imagine if You were a boy and You made a girl have a baby, and then she named the baby after Your very own mother. Wouldn’t You marry her then? Just for naming the baby? Well, this Buzz the car stealer would not.

  Well, then when her mother sent her some money to go all the way to Honolulu, Buzz said they would get married if she went there.

  So she went there, I guess they got married. Child and all.

  And then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and he was on his ship, the Arizona, and kerplooey, the ship sunk to smithereens. No more Buzz.

  Poor Shazam. Her mother a sinner and her crook father dead. No
wonder she gets so tangled in her face.

  Wouldn’t that make anybody a problem child God?

  My ma would not of told me if she didn’t have a sad place in her heart for that poor orphan girl of sin. My ma she kept the secret from the day Shazam showed up here till now. It just come tumbling out of her when she found out Floy came here for Christmas to be with her daughter and her mother out there by the gravel pit in their little puny house with no indoor plumbing. My ma she shook her head with pity.

  How will I keep this bad secret and not tell no one?

  In a way, everybody should know about it, so they could all be understanding to Shazam. In another way, nobody should know because of her shame. If nobody knows, nobody can call her bad names for her parents not being married when she was had by her mother.

  I don’t think Shazam knows all that bad part. About how Floy couldn’t keep her bloomers on. Your own mother would never tattle such a thing on herself, would she? How could Shazam stay alive if she knew?

  But still, she is a odd one for sure. But if I keep remembering that secret gossip I will be nice to her from pity in my heart.

  I wonder if Coach Rayfield knows about Floy. He keeps saying Shazam has not had opportunities like us. And he says she has the determination of a good sports athlete, and he says also we need to be thankful for 2 things: 1, she come here to play us a great game next May, and 2, she come here to teach us niceness to a person so different.

  Now that is the end of my talking about Shazam and her tragedy.

  Next. Thank You for making me ever getting better at pivoting to be the best shortstop I can be. I even work on it sometimes when we go in the big indoor room for our little weensie practices.

  I know You didn’t make the 3rd-grade teacher break her leg slipping in the dead raccoon guts on her back porch and get a cast put on so she hobbles with a crutch. But I know You made her ask me would I do chores for her such as getting her book sack and taking it in the school from her car parked at the maple tree swing. And her violin case on Thursdays for music day. And You made her tell me I should always be ready to help her exactly when the bell rings for both recesses and after school and also be there at 7:43 A.M. at her car to help her with her things. I know You told her I would be worth 30¢ every school day just to help her. I know You wanted me to get a good glove so I can be a good shortstop.