BRAT and the Kids of Warriors

by Michael Joseph Lyons

  Pointing, she said, “Closet.”

  “Schrank,” said Ingrid.

  “Toys,” she said, pointing to a pile of yesterday’s playthings.

  “Kinderspielzeug,” replied Ingrid.

  Rabbit jumped onto her bed, pointing at the same time.

  “Okay, Kirsten. That’s enough language lessons for now,” said Mrs. McMasters, semi-amused by her antics. “You’ll have plenty of time to play with your new nanny later.”

  “Nanny! Ya mean she gets to stay?” Rabbit bounced up and down on the bed, thrilled to have found a new best friend.

  “Come along, dear,” her mom sweetly insisted.

  They all made their way back to the living room. Mrs. McMasters began a litany of roles and responsibilities, including how the children were to interact with their nanny. Queenie could tell that Ingrid was pretending to pay attention to what was being said, but not understanding a word of it. She shot a “didn’t I tell ya” look at Jack.

  Jack just stood there, taking it all in. He’d liked Ingrid from the start, but she puzzled him. He could see she’d picked up on Queenie’s attitude.

  When his mom finished listing all the new rules, Ingrid reached into her small, yellow purse for a wrapped package. As she started to unwrap it, Rabbit bounced up and down on the couch next to her and said, “Here, I’ll help you.”

  Rabbit grabbed the package and tore it in two. What looked like light yellow, green, pink, and blue pieces of chalk tumbled into Ingrid’s cupped hands.

  “Saure Stücke,” Ingrid said. She held them out to Queenie first. Jack could tell his sister was about to refuse, but Mrs. McMasters gave Queenie the look, and she reluctantly accepted one.

  Rabbit grabbed one next, but then wasn’t sure what to do with it. She looked up at Ingrid and shrugged her shoulders.

  Ingrid pretended to eat one.

  That was all the information Rabbit needed. She immediately popped an end of the light-blue stick in her mouth. Jack reached for another of the three-inch-long candies. It was the perfect blend of sweet and sour.

  “Oh, Saure Stücke means sour sticks!” Rabbit shrieked with delight. She had no idea what Saure Stücke really meant. She’d just chosen something that rhymed in English. But from that moment, sour stick became the McMasterses’ name for their favorite German candy.

  As Jack savored his light-pink sour stick, he glanced at Queenie. She might not be happy with these new arrangements, but she was enjoying her third piece of Ingrid’s gift.

  Later that afternoon, Queenie condescended to play a rare game of checkers with Jack. The conversation soon got around to Ingrid.

  Queenie scoffed, “Mom told me she’s only seventeen! I told her how ridiculous that was, and that she needed to find someone older.”

  “Older? Please! I like that she’s young. And she seems nice. Did you see her eyes?”

  “Yeah. They’re beautiful. So what?” Queenie wasn’t giving an inch.

  “That’s not it. When she was having fun with Rabbit, her eyes almost danced. But they turned into cold, purple stones once or twice. I think when she’d realized I’d noticed, she immediately turned the bright eyes back on. There’s something about her, nothing bad, but something I can’t put my finger on. Like she’s hiding something. I gotta figure her out.”

  “Forget about figuring her out. She can try and buy us off with all the German candy she wants, but I’m not learning German just to talk to her.”

  That was a battle Queenie would lose.

  From the very first day, Ingrid only spoke to them in German, and she insisted they use that language, too. When they replied to her in English, she pretended not to hear. They knew she understood some English; she spoke to their mom in very bad English as well as German. But that never happened with the kids.

  As the days passed, Queenie’s hatred grew. She did everything she could to resist Ingrid’s requirement that they speak to her in German. And she complained to her mother.

  “Mom, this is totally ridiculous! It’s just not normal. All my friends with nannies have ones that speak English. Why do we have one who only talks to us in German? I know she can speak at least a little English. I hear her talking to you. Why can’t she do that with us?”

  “Our family is our family; we are not your friends’ families. We do things our way, they do things their way. So you’d better learn to speak to her in German.” And that’s all Mrs. McMasters ever replied.

  Queenie held out, not speaking or listening to Ingrid, for about a week. Then, reluctantly, Queenie gave in.

  Early communications involved Queenie talking a blue streak of German and then trying to show what she was saying with motions.

  “Zeit zum Mittagessen,” Ingrid said one day.

  When the kids only gave her blank stares, she put her hand up to her mouth and pretended she was eating.

  “Essen, essen, essen, verstanden?” she said, as she put their lunch on the table.

  “Eat,” Rabbit yelled out, delighted with herself.

  It didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out that essen meant eat. Ingrid had gotten pretty good at making a guessing game out of what she was saying. And it usually resulted in a lot of foolishness and laughter.

  “Mittagessen,” she said again. Then she started making this big karate-chopping motion with her hand.

  At first they had no idea why she was doing it. Then they figured out that her karate chopping meant to cut the word into pieces. That’s because the Germans are always jamming two or three words together into a single, long word. So she took Mittagessen and karate chopped it in half so it became mittag/essen.

  She again said, “Essen.” They knew that meant eat. Then she took the word Mittag and started pointing to her watch. She adjusted the big hand and the little hand to the 12 position. Everyone started guessing.

  “Twelve o’clock,” Jack yelled. Ingrid kept shaking her head. Wrong!

  “Noon,” yelled Rabbit. Wrong again.

  “Noon/eat, noon/eat, noon/eat,” Queenie repeated, trying to figure it out.

  Finally Jack got it. “Noon/eat means lunch!”

  Before they finished eating that day, they’nd figured out that Zeit zum Mittagessen meant Time to eat lunch. After winning that guessing game, they were so happy they went around all afternoon saying, Zeit zum Mittagessen. And none of them ever forgot what those words meant or how to say them.

  No matter what the conversation was about, Ingrid kept using the word verstanden. She would say, “Essen, essen, essen, verstanden?” It only took the kids about a week of hearing “blah . . . blah . . . blah, verstanden,” “blah . . . blah . . . blah, verstanden,” “blah . . . blah . . . blah, verstanden,” for them to finally figure out that verstanden meant something like, “So, you understand?” or “Did you get it? ”

  Little by little, the kids picked up a lot of German. Little by little, Queenie started to like Ingrid.

  The McMasters household fell into a new rhythm. On school days, Mrs. McMasters got the kids up, gave them their breakfast, and (like any good drill sergeant) got them out the door in time to catch the school bus. Ingrid didn’t have to get up and start work till ten o’clock on school days. While the kids were at school, she picked up the place, made the beds, and then most days made her way to the basement to do the laundry. Next to the coal-fired boiler that heated the whole building, there was a room that contained a bunch of washing machines, and outside of it there were clothespins hanging from clotheslines strung the entire length of the basement hallway. Whenever the kids played in the basement, they’d run in and out of the clean laundry drying on the lines. Once Ingrid started doing the family’s laundry, Mrs. McMasters never set foot in The Glass House basement again.

  Jack knew that doing the laundry was a bit of a social thing for Ingrid. There were usually other nannies or maids down there doing laund
ry, too. They all sat around chatting as the machines worked on the dirty clothes.

  If no one else was around, Ingrid would talk to the old German man who lived in the basement. His job in the winter was to keep the furnace fires going. Jack liked to watch him, too. Seeing him shovel in big chunks of black coal reminded Jack of the boiler room on the USS Upshur. Jack tried to ask Ingrid what the man would do once the furnace was turned off in the spring. She pantomimed planting and weeding, making it look like a lot of work.

  Ingrid always had the laundry done by the time the children got home from school. She got them a snack and took care of anything they needed. As far as dinners were concerned, Mrs. McMasters never gave up control. Occasionally she let Ingrid help, but she remained the master chef. No one was ever allowed to interfere with her fine art of cooking. And, of course, cleanup remained the kids’ responsibility.

  “Why can’t Ingrid do the dishes?” demanded Queenie one night.

  “Because I say so,” came Mrs. McMasters’s response, in a tone suggesting one’s life might be in danger for asking such an impertinent question. No McMasters child ever brought up the topic again.

  On the nights Queenie and Rabbit did dishes, Jack got an earlier start on his nightly shoe-polishing job. When Jack and Queenie did the dishes, Ingrid got Rabbit her bath and into her pajamas. After the dishes were put away and Jack had finished the shoes, Ingrid made sure the other two got their baths and were ready for bed.

  The final act of most nights belonged to their father. The kids would gather on the couch in their PJs, and he would read them a story. Lt. Col. McMasters was a very, very good reader of very, very long stories. Since coming to Germany, they had gotten most of the way through Oliver Twist. Everyone liked to listen to the stories, even Mrs. McMasters. Naturally she was much too busy to sit on the couch and listen with the others. There was always some critical chore in the living room, dining room, or kitchen that needed her attention. But they all knew she was listening. They knew it because every once in a while, in the middle of a really good part, their father would lower his voice to a dramatic whisper, and from another room would come, “Hey, speak up! I can’t hear!”

  Every time, they all roared with laughter.

  17

  Call from the School

  It was mid-February when Kevin Duncan was escorted into their class. Jack studied the look on his face. Except for the no-nonsense flattop crewcut and blond hair, this must have been the way he looked coming in that first day. Kevin was doing his best to show nothing, but once he’d been at his desk for a while, Jack had a chance to read his eyes. Jack knew right away the kid’s brain was fully engaged . . . and that the boy was no fool.

  Kevin had just moved in to one of the houses on The Circle up from The Glass House. He’d be riding the same bus as Jack and Charlie. His family had just come in from Fort Knox, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out his dad was also a tanker.

  There wasn’t much snow on the playground, so the teachers let the students go outside for morning break. Jack got there late because he’d made a pit stop at the bathroom. Coming out of the door, he spotted Charlie on the far side of the playground and headed that way. Kerrigan and his guys materialized out of nowhere. There was a nasty sneer on Kerrigan’s face.

  Jack tensed. Things started to close in. His system was flooded with panic. Think fast, Jack.

  But he couldn’t help himself. He began shutting down. His brain was stuck on a single thought: Why me? Why me? Why does he hate my guts?

  “McMasters, you’re such a candy-ass! I’m just gonna have to pound ya.” Kerrigan’s eyes were filling with an eerie delight at the idea of cleaning Jack’s clock.

  Somewhere, way in the back of his mind, Jack knew he needed to resist shutting down. A distant voice urged, Do something, Jack! But pinpricks of light started flashing in his eyes. He’d been holding his breath. It took all his effort just to suck in a small breath. Clear your head, Jack!

  Somehow Mr. Reynolds’s advice came back to him. He stood taller and did his best to look tough. He snapped the blue rubber band against his wrist. Then he half spit out the words, “Kerrigan, you’re—a—complete—nutter!”

  Kerrigan’s face turned angry red. He gathered his strength and took a swing. Fortunately, he hesitated just long enough for Jack to get his fists up and partially duck the punch. It hit Jack on the shoulder, causing no real damage. Jack punched back, but being off balance, he didn’t connect with any real force either.

  Having no idea what possessed him, Jack screamed, “You’re a total nutter, Kerrigan!”

  Unfortunately, his brain then retreated into the ozone. Instead of concentrating on Kerrigan, he was wondering, Where’d I come up with the word nutter? I’m not even sure what it means.

  Kerrigan’s fist hit him in the eye, launching him off his feet. As his head smacked the ground, his brain began to short-circuit, but out of instinct, he rolled into a ball to protect himself. Good thing, too, because Kerrigan started kicking him. Pain shot through Jack’s back as the second blow connected for real. He had to get out of there—now.

  Forcing his eyes open, he rolled away, trying to get back on his feet. Just as his vision cleared, he witnessed the strangest scene. Kevin Duncan was racing toward him from across the playground and flew through the air, crashing straight into Ryan Kerrigan.

  Jack staggered to his feet.

  Duncan and Kerrigan were sprawled on the ground. But, lighting quick, Duncan jumped back on his feet and calmly said, “Get up, scumbag!” He didn’t kick Kerrigan while he was down. He just stood there and waited till Kerrigan got back up.

  One of Kerrigan’s gang was about to sucker-punch Kevin from behind, but by then Charlie was there. He punched the guy in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Arriving late to the action, Sam and Jayla were now shoving another one of Kerrigan’s guys. Kerrigan, by now crazed, came at Kevin. But cool as a cucumber, Kevin just punched his lights out—boom, boom, boom. Kerrigan went down.

  To Jack, the fight seemed to last forever; it really was over in a flash. But even the shortest fight is long enough for a swarm of kids and teachers to gather.

  This time it wasn’t just Jack who got hauled off to the principal. It was all of them.

  Shaking his head, Mr. Reynolds said, “I don’t have room for half of Mrs. Campbell’s class in my office.” He quickly ushered Jack and his crew, along with Kevin, into a separate room. Kerrigan and his gang were told to remain in his office.

  Jack’s eye was developing a most excellent shiner. But for some reason he felt great. Looking right at Kevin, he said, “Whoa, thanks, man! Sorry to get you in trouble your first day.”

  “My pleasure.” Kevin raised his shoulders in an innocent shrug. “It was bound to happen, one way or another.”

  “You’re outta control,” Charlie said, grinning at Kevin.

  “You certainly are,” said Jayla, delighted with the whole thing.

  In fact, they all were.

  “Best fight this year,” said Sam, looking right at Kevin. “You took Ryan Kerrigan out! That’s big.”

  “It is?” he asked.

  All talking at once, they filled him in on Kerrigan and his gang. He listened, all the while rubbing his hand over his flattop, a thoughtful look on his face.

  “Well, I guess now they know who we are, too,” he said, with a little smile. And it was obvious they were all going to be serious friends.

  Mr. Reynolds came in and, as usual, kept his cool. “Mr. Duncan, it looks like you’ve met Jack McMasters and the others.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, very respectful and standing a bit straighter.

  “It only took Jack about ninety minutes to end up back in my office on his first day. You, Mr. Duncan, seem to have tied his record.” But Reynolds had a twinkle in his eye.

  “Yes, sir.”

 
“I understand the original fight was between Jack and Ryan. How’d you managed to get involved?”

  The other kids stayed quiet. They all knew that with adults, the less said the better, especially when you’re in trouble. But they looked at Kevin, who finally said, “Well, sir, I just kinda figured it seemed wrong to kick a guy when he’s on the ground.”

  Reynolds kept his eyes locked on Kevin, but Kevin didn’t offer up anything else. Finally Reynolds said, “Seems like you live by that rule. The way I hear it, you didn’t kick Ryan Kerrigan when he was down. Seems like you waited till he was back on his feet before you dealt with him.”

  Kevin looked Mr. Reynolds in the eye but didn’t respond.

  Reynolds turned to Jack. “This time I can’t just let it go. The fighting has to stop, Jack. I’ve told Ryan the same thing. All your parents have been called to come and pick you up. Just sit tight until they get here.”

  He reached for the door but turned back. Looking directly at Kevin, he said, “Well, at least you know how to choose the right friends.” Then he was gone.

  Even with him gone, the room remained quiet.

  Until Jayla seemed to come to life. She shuddered. “Arghhh! My ol’ man is really gonna lose it. I can hear it now, ‘Fighting! Have—you—lost—your—mind, young lady! You’re in so much trouble.’” Warming to her own imitation of her father, she continued in the same gruff voice, “‘Shannel! You’d better start getting something through this renegade child’s thick head about how to act like a lady, instead of a hoodlum!’” She started laughing.

  That got them all laughing.

  “And what about my mom?” smirked Sam. “I get to hear, ‘Samantha Sands, I raised you better than this! Wait till your father gets home!’”

  For a long time the nervous laughter didn’t stop.

  “Thank goodness it’s only Tuesday. I need to get paroled before the Saturday movie,” said Jayla. “Like that will happen.” This time she pretended to be her mother. “‘The next movie you’ll see, young lady, will be in college.’”