The Brooklyn Nine

by Alan Gratz

  The national anthem played, and Kat cried. She cried for her father, she cried for her mother, she cried for Hattie. But most of all she cried for herself, because she knew Connie was right. She knew she was going to stay.

  Seventh Inning: Duck and Cover

  Brooklyn, New York, 1957

  1

  There was a trick to flipping baseball cards. Just the right flick of the wrist, just the right release, just the right spin so that it fluttered and floated to the ground and landed heads-up on the picture side or tails-up on the stats side. There was a knack to it, an art, and Jimmy Flint was the undisputed card-flipping king of PS 161.

  “You gonna flip sometime this century, Clyde?” Eric said.

  Eric Kirkpatrick was the biggest, ugliest kid in the fifth grade. Legend had it he’d been held back not once, but twice. He was also just about the only Yankees fan in the whole neighborhood, probably just because everybody else was a Dodgers fan. But Jimmy didn’t care about any of that right now. Jimmy had taken three straight cards from him, and now Eric’s beloved Yogi Berra card was facedown on the playground cement. All Jimmy had to do was land his next card faceup beside it and both cards would both be his.

  “Stay back! Give him room!” Jimmy’s friend Ralph said, pushing away the small circle of watchers their game had attracted.

  Jimmy drew the next card from his stack—Jim Gilliam, second baseman for the Dodgers. Jim Gilliam was just about his favorite baseball player of all time, the Brooklyn Dodger who’d taken over at second base for Jackie Robinson when Jackie moved to the outfield. Jimmy had a special fondness for second base; his mother had played second for the Grand Rapids Chicks back when there was a women’s league, and Jimmy himself had spent the last three months of one of those seasons at second base, growing inside her. He figured if ever there was a born second baseman, he was it.

  “Come on, already! Recess is about to end!”

  Jimmy kissed his card, took a moment to get the angle just right, and flicked it. Time slowed as it fluttered end over end, then settled to the ground. It was faceup. He’d won!

  The boys around them erupted, cheering and clapping him on the back. Jimmy added both the cards to his stack and his friend Ralph raised Jimmy’s hand like he was a winning prizefighter.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—the undisputed winner and champeen, Jimmy Flint!”

  “Gimme that back,” Eric said.

  “What?”

  “Gimme that card back. You cheated.”

  “Cheated how?” Ralph demanded. “He won fair and square!”

  “Back off, monkey boy,” Eric said.

  Jimmy’s black friend took a step back with the rest of the crowd, and Jimmy couldn’t blame them. He was right in Eric’s sights, though, and there was nowhere for him to run.

  “Bet you come from a long line of cheaters, don’t you, Skinflint? Bet your dad was a cheater. But—oh, that’s right, you don’t know who your dad is, do you?”

  Jimmy clenched his fists, but he knew he would never take a swing. Eric would wipe the pavement with him. The circle of boys hid them too well for him to call for help too; Jimmy couldn’t see Mrs. Holloway at all.

  Eric stepped closer. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen your mom around the neighborhood in a while either. She off looking for your dad?”

  Eric’s friends snickered.

  “My mom’s in California. She’s a scout for the Dodgers!”

  “You sure about that, Skinflint?” Eric flicked a finger at the Keep the Dodgers pin on Jimmy’s jacket. “Or did she finally skip town for good like your stupid ball team?”

  “Get bent!” Jimmy said, then immediately wished he hadn’t.

  “What’s that?” Eric said. “Did I just hear you tell me to get bent?”

  The class bell rang, and Mrs. Holloway called for everyone to come inside. Eric Kirkpatrick shoved Jimmy and he fell, losing his stack of cards and scraping his hands on the cement. Eric kicked the loose cards around with his sneaker and took back all of the ones he’d lost, including the Yogi Berra card.

  “You’re the one who’s going to get bent, Skinflint,” Eric said. “After school.”

  “Skinflint’s going to get bent!” one of Eric’s goons repeated as they walked away.

  Back in the classroom Jimmy sulked at his desk. The rest of the class was buzzing because Mrs. Holloway had turned on the radio. The only other time Jimmy could remember listening to the radio in class was two years ago, when Johnny Podres had twirled a shutout to beat the Yankees in game seven of the 1955 World Series. It was the only World Series the Dodgers had ever won—and the way things were going, the only World Series they would ever win. At least for Brooklyn.

  But this time their teacher tuned in to hear a very different enemy, one far scarier to Jimmy than the dreaded Yankees:

  Sputnik. The first man-made spacecraft, built and launched by the Russians.

  It was everywhere on the radio, on every station. The Russians had beaten the Americans into space.

  “It’s a satellite,” Mrs. Holloway explained. She drew a crude picture of the Earth on the blackboard, then drew a circle around it, punctuated by a small white dot. “It circles the Earth like our moon does, only much faster and much closer.”

  “It looks like a baseball Duke Snider hit into orbit,” Ralph said. That got some laughs, but Jimmy wasn’t in the mood.

  “Wait—” the NBC announcer said. “Our observers tell us Sputnik is just now passing over the Eastern Seaboard!”

  Half of Jimmy’s class left their desks and rushed to the windows to look for it, but Mrs. Holloway waved the students back to their seats. “Sit down. Sit down. You won’t be able to see it right now. You’ll have to wait until sundown, and you’ll probably need binoculars or a telescope.”

  They might not be able to see it, but they could hear it. The radio played the signal live as it passed overhead, a speck in the sky.

  Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep, beep, beep, beep—

  It was monotonous. Endless. Inhuman. Jimmy got goose bumps.

  Ralph leaned forward to whisper in Jimmy’s ear. “Man, that’s creepy.”

  “What—what does it mean?” Betsy Walker asked.

  “It means the Commies can drop atomic bombs on us from space!” Eric said from across the room. Mrs. Holloway’s fifth-grade room exploded into chatter and she tried to calm them down again.

  “Children, children! Please, calm down.” Mrs. Holloway shot Eric an exasperated look. “The Russians are not going to drop atomic bombs on us from space, or anywhere else. Because they know if they do, we’ll drop atomic bombs right back on them.”

  “But then we’ll all be dead!” Betsy Walker wailed.

  “Yes, and no one wants that, now, do they?” Mrs. Holloway said.

  The radio announcer signaled that the station was going to a commercial, with more Sputnik news to come. “And later, of course, more of our ongoing coverage of the crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, where federal troops—”

  Mrs. Holloway switched off the radio. “Enough of that. You’ll have nightmares enough as it is. Please open your arithmetic books.” The students moaned, but did as they were told.

  Jimmy still heard the beep, beep, beeeeeeep of Sputnik in his head, but if he couldn’t figure some way to sneak out after school the Russians didn’t matter: Eric Kirkpatrick was going to kill him first. While he was supposed to be working on long division Jimmy calculated the many ways Eric could devise to bring him down. When he was supposed to be learning about adjectives in English class, Jimmy outlined how Eric could modify his face. In music he noted that Eric could beat him like a wood block; in science he experimented with the hypothesis that Eric would dissect him. By the time social studies came around at the end of the school day, Jimmy was convinced he would end up stuffed in a locker like a mummy in a sarcophagus.

  Which gave him an idea.

  That afternoon Jimmy stood in darkness, straining to hear the slightest sound
in the hallway. School had been out for almost an hour, and in the silence all he could hear was the echo of Sputnik’s robotic laugh in his head: beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep—beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep—

  A door handle ka-chunked somewhere down the hall, and Jimmy held his breath. Eric couldn’t have hung around this long looking for him, could he? Jimmy closed his eyes and said a silent prayer as a pair of sneakers squeaked down the hall, closer and closer and closer, until they stopped just outside his locker.

  “Psst. Hey, Jimmy. You still in there, man? The coast is clear.”

  “You sure?” Jimmy whispered.

  “I followed them all the way to the soda shop. They’re gone, man.”

  Jimmy torqued his shoulder around to reach the latch and opened his locker.

  Ralph shook his head at him. “Man, I can’t believe you stuffed yourself in your own locker.”

  “Better than getting pounded by Eric Kirkpatrick,” Jimmy said when he had worked his way out. “Now I just sneak down the back stairs and—”

  The doors down the hallway ka-chunked, and Jimmy froze.

  “You sure they didn’t follow you back?” Jimmy whispered.

  “Yeah. Positive,” Ralph said.

  Multiple sneakers squeaked their way closer.

  “Um, pretty sure?” Ralph amended.

  “Run!” Jimmy said, and the moment they took off they heard the other sneakers pick up the pace. Jimmy and Ralph dashed out the back doors, leaped down the flight of stairs to the sidewalk, and flew down Crown Street. A quick glance back over his shoulder told Jimmy all he needed to know—Eric and his gang were after them.

  “Split up!” he cried when they hit the corner of Nostrand Avenue. Ralph took a right and Jimmy took a left toward Montgomery and Ebbets Field. At Ludlam Place Jimmy ducked down the bottom steps of a brownstone and hid, knowing he couldn’t outrun the gang forever. He did his best to fade into the stone wall of the stairwell as they ran past, and it seemed to work. He waited until they had turned the corner down the street just to be sure, then doubled back.

  As he ran home, Jimmy kept one eye on the sidewalks and one eye on the skies. He couldn’t decide which was worse: Eric Kirkpatrick or the Russians.

  2

  Jimmy got to school early the next morning, hoping to avoid meeting Eric and his friends. Between Sputnik and Eric Kirkpatrick, Jimmy hadn’t even been able to sleep. Nobody was in the hallway, and the clock on the wall told him class wouldn’t start for another hour, but it was worth the wait. He put his book bag in his locker and went inside Mrs. Holloway’s room to practice his card flipping, secure in the thought that he had at least delayed his beating until the first recess of the day.

  He was in his seat talking with Ralph about The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin on television when Eric Kirkpatrick came into class, right before the bell. Eric watched Jimmy the whole way to his seat, and Jimmy knew he’d only made things worse by playing keep-away. As bad as it sounded, maybe he should just have let Eric and his gang beat him up yesterday, or come to school on time and let them catch him in the hall. Then again, maybe if he stayed away from Eric long enough he’d just give up.

  Across the room, Eric popped his knuckles and grinned at Jimmy.

  Or maybe not.

  The bell rang and Mrs. Holloway began setting up the film screen. Yesterday the radio, today the projector—it was shaping up to be an interesting week. Usually Jimmy was as excited as the other students in the class to have a film, not so much because they liked films, but because they could close their eyes and pretend to be watching while they napped. Today, though, Jimmy was too focused on self-preservation.

  “Today’s film is called Duck and Cover,” Mrs. Holloway said, “and what with all the talk about Sputnik and the Russians, the principal thought we should start showing it again. This film should answer a lot of the questions you had yesterday about an atomic attack. Alice, if you would please get the lights?”

  The lights went off, and the classroom resounded with the fake farting noise their pants and skirts made when they all slouched down in their seats at the same time. A girl in the back corner giggled.

  “Pay attention, please,” Mrs. Holloway said.

  The film began with a cartoon turtle in a helmet walking down a path, enjoying a nice spring day. His name was Bert the Turtle, a song told them. Behind Jimmy, Ralph snickered. If he hadn’t been so wound up, Jimmy would have too. This was kids’ stuff.

  Suddenly a monkey dangling from a tree hung a firecracker in the turtle’s face. Bert ducked into his shell. The firecracker exploded.

  “Bad monkey!” Ralph said, and the class laughed. Mrs. Holloway shushed them again.

  When the smoke cleared, the tree and the monkey were gone. But Bert the Turtle, the narrator told them, was safe because he had ducked and covered.

  The film then showed a classroom not unlike Jimmy’s, where the teacher was showing them how to duck under their desks and cover their heads when an atomic bomb exploded.

  “We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous,” the narrator told them. “Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it, just as we are ready for many other dangers that are around us all the time.”

  “Yeah, like Eric Kirkpatrick,” Ralph whispered.

  Jimmy didn’t know how Ralph could joke around right now. All he could think about as he watched was Sputnik circling overhead. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep—

  “You will know when it comes,” the narrator said. “There is a bright flash, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything you’ve ever seen.” The film went white, and then cartoon houses and trees were knocked down and thrown around. This was what Sputnik could do: Drop a bomb that would blow up his house, his block, his school, Ebbets Field—everything. Kill his mom, his grandmother, his great-grandfather. Him.

  There were two kinds of attacks, they were told—with warning and without warning. When there was a warning, they would hear air raid sirens, and must get to shelters as quickly as possible. “But sometimes the bomb might explode without any warning!” the narrator said. When they saw a flash, they were supposed to duck and cover, no matter where they were. The film showed pictures of students in the cafeteria, boys riding bikes, children playing on playgrounds. They showed families having picnics, people sitting in buses, men driving tractors. Each time the flash came and the people ducked and covered. But if an atomic bomb could knock down buildings and destroy his neighborhood, Jimmy wondered, what would it do to people?

  Bert the Turtle came back at the end. “Remember what to do, friends. Now tell me right out loud—what are you supposed to do when you see the flash?”

  Some kids in the film answered back, “Duck and cover!” but none of Jimmy’s classmates said a word. The movie ended, and the loose end of the film slap-slap-slapped against the empty reel. Mrs. Holloway switched off the film projector and turned on the lights.

  “What are you supposed to do?” Mrs. Holloway asked. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Duck and cover,” Jimmy answered with the class.

  “Right. Let’s practice. Ready? Just like in the film. There’s a flash! Quickly, down under your desks.”

  Jimmy and his classmates slid out of their seats and crawled under their desks. Most of them, at least.

  “Eric, get down under your desk,” Mrs. Holloway said.

  “I ain’t afraid of no atomic bomb. This is sissy stuff.”

  “Don’t be silly. Now duck and cover.”

  Jimmy watched as Eric slid out of his desk and crouched, not really ducking or covering. For his part, Jimmy wasn’t going to play around. He pulled himself as tightly into a ball as he could and shielded his neck and head with his hands.

  “Good, Jimmy. Good, Ralph. Cover your neck better, Betsy,” Mrs. Holloway said, going up and down the rows.

  “Man, this is what you ought to do when Eric Kirkpatrick comes after you,” Ralph whispered. “Duck and cover.”

  Jimmy knew his friend was kidding, but rig
ht now he wasn’t as worried about Eric as he was about the atomic bomb. All he could hear in his head was Sputnik flying overhead.

  Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep—

  Just because he was afraid of the atomic bomb didn’t mean Jimmy was eager to get beat up. At the first recess of the day he avoided Eric by telling Mrs. Holloway he wasn’t feeling well and asking to stay inside. He wasn’t feeling well, not after the film, but it was really just a ploy to buy himself a little more time. Like the Russians, Eric Kirkpatrick could attack at any time, and if Jimmy couldn’t really duck and cover to avoid him, at least he could hide out in his turtle shell a little while longer. He skipped the other two recesses of the day the same way, which amused Eric and his friends to no end.

  “What’s the matter, Skinflint? You scared of something?” Eric asked on the way outside. Jimmy just kept his head down, silently plotting a way to escape that afternoon without being caught.

  Ralph stayed with Jimmy after school while he did everything he could think of to delay leaving the classroom. He volunteered to beat the erasers, wash the blackboard, even sweep up.

  “Man, what you gonna do now?” Ralph asked him when he was finished.

  “I don’t know. Do you think they’d let me spend the night?” he joked.

  “You want me to go check out in the hall, see if they’re there?”

  Jimmy checked the clock. “No. There’s a Keep the Dodgers rally at Ebbets Field I wanted to go to anyway. Maybe if I can slip past them I can lose them again on the way.”

  “Man, you are one brave dude,” Ralph told him.

  Jimmy stepped into the hall, expecting to see Eric and his friends right away—but they weren’t there. He glanced up and down the hallway. They had to be lying in wait for him somewhere.

  “Where are they?” Ralph asked.

  Jimmy went to his locker, half afraid Eric was hiding inside, waiting for him. He wasn’t, of course, but that just meant he was waiting to jump him somewhere else. Jimmy collected his books and headed for the front stairs. Eric and his friends weren’t in the stairwell, but when he reached the bottom step Jimmy froze. Through the bank of doors that led outside to the front steps of the school, he could see Eric Kirkpatrick waiting for him. Suddenly his bravado ran out.