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Jess McCready has a thing for women in positions of authority.
Well, she has a thing for women in all types of positions, to tell the truth, but there’s something so satisfying about being the thorn in someone’s side, at toeing the line of causing just enough trouble to earn a stern look while skirting more dire consequences.
Makes her feel alive , you know? If a butch flouts the rules and a buttoned-up matron isn’t there to frown disapprovingly, does she even make a sound?
And yeah, the path of least resistance would be to shut up and wear the damn dress out of the house, but shit, she’s already wearing a skirt for every game. With extra innings, that’s three hours easy, and she only forgets she’s wearing it when the ball is in play— her sense of self is pretty much obliterated by the time she makes it back to the locker room. Besides, with the exchange rate of Canadian to American dollars, she’ll still go home with the same amount of cash as everyone else, big whoop. Paper money’s a scam, anyways.
Nothing feels as good as winning, but the terse nod from Sarge comes pretty fuckin’ close.
_
Beverly has no desire to be a babysitter— if she’d wanted children, she supposes she would’ve married the first man who showed interest, and spent her twenties being pregnant. Her interest in baseball is best described as “nonexistent.” And yet, something about the chaperone recruitment flier had piqued her interest; perhaps nostalgia for her years at Sweet Briar, or the sheer possibility of something different after years behind a typewriter. She’s too old to re-enlist, and it feels like the smallest contribution to the war effort, keeping morale up at home and providing wholesome entertainment for so many families who may be missing their fathers or sons. It doesn’t take long for Beverly to feel fiercely protective of these young women; she may not care about their game, but they do, very much, and she finds that she wants them to win, wants them to achieve every bit of their dreams, despite the fact that her paycheck is the same, regardless of the Peaches’ record.
Her schedule doesn’t leave much time for a social life, save for writing letters to old friends over the kitchen table while waiting for curfew, or calling her sister every other Sunday. But it’s gratifying to have a purpose beyond eighty words a minute, and the effusive energy of the ballplayers can’t help but put a spring in her step and a smile on her face, despite her best efforts to the contrary.
_
It’s not a shock that an all-women’s professional baseball league is a hotbed of lesbianism, but it is a comfort. Jess and Lupe hit it off immediately, despite her general dislike of pitchers (cocky, egotistical, more invested in their own performance than the team’s, etc.). Lupe’s marginally more willing to femme it up to avoid fines, but she certainly doesn’t pull it off nearly as well as DeLuca or Shaw. It’s a matter of weeks before they find the bar, sneaking out at night while the others write letters to their husbands or sneak kisses in the dark (Gill needs to learn to keep her eye-fucking in check if she wants to act slick).
“You’re being an idiot,” Jess slurs one evening, a little too drunk and bored. “Dove just wants to keep his fuckin’ forkball legacy alive, he doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Dove’s the only person besides you who even talks to me,” Lupe huffs.
“And Esti,” Jess corrects, crossing her arms.
“Fine, who I want to talk to me.”
“Goes both ways,” Jess scoffs. “This is why everyone has been practicing without you. You think just because, theoretically, it’s possible for you to win without anyone else’s help, that you will .”
“Go fuck yourself,” Lupe laughs, anger edging into her voice.
“I’m just saying, if we started winning more we might have more luck here ,” Jess gestures to the bar, filled with more than a handful of other league players. She can’t deal with striking out multiple times in a day anymore. “Don’t you think you and I deserve a little more respect?”
Lupe sighs.
“For you, hermano, I’ll think about it.”
“Atta boy.”
_
Beverly does not romanticize wartime. That would be inappropriate, nay, disrespectful.
But she has lived long enough to know that there exists a freedom when the boundaries of society are redrawn out of necessity. That watchful eyes are too busy to catch the… indiscretions that may happen when the boys are away and the girls are left to their own devices.
She would not say that the horrors of war were worth any of the benefits, only that the fondness with which she recalls her fellow typists helps very much to ease the pain of remembering the horrors they faced together. And that, upon returning home, it was very difficult to go back to secretarial work, sans the camaraderie of the type of women who would enlist in the Marines of their own volition.
She wonders, sometimes, if it’s foolish to base so much of her identity on what amounted to scarcely a year’s service, before being unceremoniously sent back home. But some of these girls may only get to play for a season (if the league even lasts that long), and it will more than likely be the most remarkable thing they do in their lives.
Beverly can’t help but be fond of them all, their impetuousness and wide-eyed wonder. When you’re young and hopeful, you’ve yet to realize how fleeting that happiness can be. Not that they’re children— save for Esti— but her Rockford Peaches are, by and large, exuberant in a way that rarely exists beyond the veil of forty.
The around-the-clock duties of chaperoning remind her of her military service; there’s never truly a moment of idleness, though a good smoke break does come close.
“Need a light?”
Beverly hides her startle, managing to keep her unlit cigarette in her mouth, and turns to face the source of her interruption.
Ms. McCready, natch, holding out her cigarette with a grin.
“I suppose it’s prudent to save matches,” Beverly sighs. “There is a war on, after all.”
Jess beckons her in close, shielding them both from the summer breeze on the porch with her hand and touching the end of her cigarette to Beverly’s, a facsimile of a kiss, before scampering off the side of the porch to hoot and holler about something or another.
The routine of Ms. McCready’s insolent wink as she hands over her fines has become as much of an uplift to Beverly as her morning cup of coffee or her afternoon cig. This push beyond their assigned roles, conscious or not (she thinks Jess probably flirts as easy as she breathes, although her brand of charm exists in a different category to the Gretas and Maybelles of the world) throws her off kilter, and she steadies herself against the siding of the house, thinking about steady ships in rough water.
_
A shortstop is her team’s mindreader, anticipating every ball in play, filling whatever role the hit demands. All the better if the others don’t even notice her, if they take her competence for granted. Things work smoother that way, when people don’t recognize they’re being played.
Still, even the best diplomats sometimes can’t avoid war. Or DeLuca’s right hook, as it were.
“It looks worse than it is,” Jess grumbles, as Sarge sits her down in the kitchen with a scowl that brooks no argument.
“You should know by now that looks matter more to the people that pay your checks, anyhow,” Sarge tsks, tilting Jess’s chin up to get a better look at the bruise. Her hands are soft and warm, and Jess feels her pulse pound beneath her jaw in response to Sarge’s Bev’s closeness. She can smell her perfume, mixed with the lingering scent of cigarettes and powder.
The moment is broken by Bev walking briskly away to the icebox, returning with a cold T-bone.
“This should help with the swelling.” She presses the steak to Jess’s cheek, the cold (and only the cold, not her proximity certainly, or the way her pupils have gotten twice as big in the time they’ve been in here together) making her shiver.
“Helluva waste of a ration.”
Sarge shrugs.
“Professional ballplayers need more protein than the average woman. And some of us learned to work the system long ago.”
Her frown deepens,, as if to say “ I thrived within these structures, disappearing in plain sight. Why must you insist on being a ghost, hovering around the outskirts always ?”
It’s all the same though, isn’t it?
Unfelt, unheard, unseen.
_
Jess and Esti discover that they can sing together more easily than they can speak; on the afternoons they have off, they trade songs from their homelands: “Red River Valley” for “Suavecito;” “When You And I Were Young, Maggie,” for “Veinte Años.” She’s a sweet kid, and Jess likes having something to do with her hands, and strumming the guitar beats applying nail polish. They work up some solid harmonies, and when sheet music from one of the other league member’s composition of an official song makes the rounds, their rehearsals take on a purpose, Esti beaming with pride as she sounds out the words, one by one.
Jess catches out of the corner of her eye Lupe’s scowl, and Sarge’s quiet nod of approval. She sings a little louder, just because.
“She’s really not that bad,” Jess huffs, as she and Lupe make their way downtown a few nights later.
“Sarge? Pfft, you just have a weird thing for the uniform.”
“I do not — Esti, you dumbass. I don’t know why you’re so hard on her.”
“I came here to play baseball, not to babysit. If you want to, knock yourself out,” Lupe frowns.
“We’d probably play better if our fastest runner wasn’t miserable all the time, just sayin’,” Jess crosses her arms.
“Well I’d play better if I got laid,” Lupe laughs. “So, can you forget about it, for the time being, at least?”
Lupe’s right, at least as much about the fact that Jess doesn’t want to think about Esti, or Sarge, for that matter, when they have better things to do. The Peaches are hot shit right now, and there’s nothing Jess loves more than being a winner.
_
Jess wakes in the middle of the night (damn cicadas, she doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to them) and sees that Carson’s fallen asleep in Greta’s bed. She knows a)that she won’t be able to convincingly fake sleep until they realize their mistake, and b) that Greta will freak the fuck out if they get caught, so she heads downstairs to wait for the sun to rise.
(One does not survive sinking ship after sinking ship without threat assessing at every turn, making an escape plan from the moment her feet leave dry land, so to speak.)
Might as well make coffee, in times such as these.
She turns on the lamp, lights the stove, and begins the ritual.
Before the grounds have fully percolated, Jess’s idle humming is interrupted by soft footsteps. She turns, only to be met by the sight of Bev wielding a frying pan.
“I thought you might be an intruder—” she lowers the would-be weapon.
“Doing you the favor of making you a cuppa joe?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Bev shrugs. Her hair is down and she wears a cotton nightgown, looking twenty years younger without her tightly pinned updo and perpetual frown.
Jess grabs two mugs, and pours.
It’s a bold assumption, that Bev would join her, rather than returning to grab the hour or two more of sleep before rising to start the day at 0500 (she still keeps a military schedule, after all these years), but Jess has never been timid.
“Can’t sleep?” Bev asks, taking the cup with a nod of thanks. No sugar, no cream, no nonsense.
“Bugs are too loud. And it’s too hot here.”
“You’re a long way from home. You must miss it.”
Does she? Parts, maybe.
“I miss the accents.”
Bev laughs.
“Is it all you dreamed?”
Jess shrugs.
“Now that we’re winning? Maybe.” She sighs. “It beats the hell out of working at the meatpacking plant.”
Bev gives her a once over, quick enough to be chalked up to a trick of the light.
“And here I thought you ladies couldn’t smell worse than when you got done with a double header.”
If Jess were at home, the sun would be rising by now, but summer nights aren’t so short this far south. Still, it’s a clear night, and the stars shine brightly enough to see from the porch. Bev joins her outside, and they sit on the porch swing, not quite touching. Jess listens to the crickets and the cicadas, and she doesn’t want to scream with rage, for once.
In an hour the sun rises, late but welcome, breaking the spell.
_
“So… Canada …” Greta’s eyes flash in a manner she must have picked up from a movie-star, crafted in a lab to entice innocent passers-by into falling at her feet. She crosses her legs, taps her fingers on her lap, the picture of interest. “That’s an awful long way to get here, huh?”
“Closer than Idaho ,” Jess scoffs, not looking up from changing the strings of her guitar.
“Still,” Greta sighs, faux-dreamy. “How did they find you?”
“When you’re good enough, people find out.” Jess sets her old Martin next to her on the mattress, leaning back on her elbows.
“You know, I’ve been practically all over the world, but never to Canada, isn’t it funny?”
Greta is coquettish with most people, but she’s usually smart enough not to waste her time with Jess.
“Did you want something, Gill?”
“I just didn’t know if you had anyone special back home, or…”
“A husband and six kids,” Jess deadpans. “I write to him every night, how have you missed it?”
Greta blanches for a moment, clearly upset enough to not be thinking clearly if she almost falls for it.
“I’m fucking with you,” Jess chuckles. “You may like ‘em married, but I don’t.”
Greta’s facade cracks, fear and fury threatening to spill out in equal measure.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Jess rolls her eyes. She’s got patience in spades for people who deserve it, but Greta’s biggest enemy is herself.
“I know Carson told you about the bar, Greta,” Jess whispers reassuringly. “I’m not in the business of ratting anyone out, alright? You don’t have to butter me up or anything. Quit being weird. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“You have a healthy relationship with anger,” Greta redirects, standing and floating around the room. “What’s that like? To not have bottled up rage threatening to destroy you, at every waking moment?”
Jess pouts thoughtfully, and she takes a deep breath through her nose, trying to anticipate what it is, exactly, that her teammate needs.
“Wanna learn to box? I’m also a big proponent of screaming for catharsis, but the prairies at home are better for that.”
“Yeah, sure, let’s hit some shit,” Greta nods, and Jess braces herself to bear the brunt of decades of repression. She likes physical pain, keeps her from thinking too much.
_
Beverly’s heart sinks when she gets the call from the police station. Dismay need not require surprise, and it takes every ounce of her will to keep a calm demeanor and matter-of-fact tone when engaging with the police.
It would be in all parties’ best interest— What price might make you willing to look the other way— and then, a hurried negotiation; out of sight is out of mind for the people of Rockford, and if public safety is a concern here, surely a contrite exile would be better for Ms. DeLuca than the stain of incarceration. She may never come back from that delinquency.
Finally, finally , Beverly gets assurance that they can make this incident go away, just this once .
She has enough time to vomit and get cleaned up before the police arrive with Jo, and she has to explain the situation to the girls, most of them sympathetic and outraged on her behalf (Miss Cohen, noticeably outraged for entirely different reasons).
“I would’ve picked you up myself, but Miss McCready and Miss García are currently using it to retrieve Miss González,” Beverly apologizes to Jo, pulling her aside once her things are packed and she’s almost ready to head to South Bend. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.”
Jo’s lip quivers, but she stays strong, somehow looking both older and younger than her years.
“You did more than most people would. I won’t forget it.”
“I’ll be rooting for you.” Beverly gives Jo’s hand a squeeze, trying to convey all the warmth and care she can. “You’re still one of my girls.”
“Yeah, well, sorry for ruining everyone’s shot at the championship. I’m not gonna hit any less hard just because I’m playing for the Blue Sox.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
_
Jess’s satisfaction at beginning to mend the rift between Lupe and Esti sours quickly when they return to the house to find Jo gone and Carson’s husband present.
Greta’s gone silent with rage and worry, Carson is preoccupied with the aforementioned spouse, and Shirley gives Lupe and Jess a look that can only be described as “disgusted” when they walk through the door, leaving her to get the lay of the land from Maybelle.
“... and Sergeant Beverly paid out of pocket to keep Josephine’s name out of the papers, I mean, talk about a kindness, you know I think we all would’ve contributed if we’d needed to, but still, why would she go to such great lengths?”
(Jess can think of a few reasons. Not important right now.)
Jess responds by way of a low whistle.
“ And Carson’s husband just showed up from overseas as a surprise! She must be so happy” ( sure ) “but I really hope it doesn’t distract us from the final series.”
Jess nods, and Maybelle returns to the throng,comforting Ana and Terri.
“Talk about a bullet fucking dodged,” Lupe mutters, hooking her thumbs into her pockets.
“I told you,” Jess looks up at the ceiling. “I know when to jump from a sinking ship.”
_
Beverly knows substantially more about baseball than she does when she started this job, but she still does not care about baseball. Differentiating the positions feels like trying to identify a GI out of a line up; they’re all roughly the same, does it really matter?
And still, win or lose, she will be sad when the season is over, and the house is empty. The league has rented it year round, and offered her clerical work between now and the next season, should she choose to stay on. That will, of course, require working around substantially more men, but she’ll manage.
She will miss the reminders of the young woman she once was, of the camaraderie of a common goal. And, she admits to herself, she will miss the idle distraction of Miss McCready’s Jess’s lanky frame lingering in doorways and on porch steps, holding her gaze just a little longer than is strictly necessary. Beverly has had her share of dance partners, has lived more and seen more than many women before her, and yet, her heart still leaps into her throat at the sight of Jess gallantly dusting off the base as her teammates hoist Jo on their shoulders and bring their girl home.
But dwelling never won any wars, so she swallows the feeling down and claps with the rest of the crowd when De Luca clears home, and the season is officially over.
_
Jess doesn’t cry when they lose, though a part of her still wants to kick and scream and break something at how close they came. She’s moved by every emotion under the sun thinking about this stupid fucking team and all the people on it (or not on it, in Jo’s case), and all the feelings make her itchy. And she doesn’t cry when Bev gives back the fines and says out loud the reason for her kindness, not just to Jess, but to all of them, though an uncomfortable lump in her throat swells at the gesture, and the only response she can offer is a look of wide-eyed wonder.
The only reasonable reaction to the chafing vulnerability is to get well and truly shitfaced.
Bev is officially off-duty, and joins them, holding her bourbon with ease (Jess knew she liked her for a reason).
The radio blares through the house, and the girls dance and sing with each other. Too much joy makes Jess feel stuffy, so she escapes to the porch for a smoke.
“Need a light?”
Beverly’s voice is gravelly with bourbon and mirth, and Jess feels her cheeks heat in the dark (why is it that a hot second baseman from Racine sitting in her lap barely makes her pulse rise, and here she is blushing at a vocal timbre?).
“Well, there is a war on,” Jess chuckles (it’s easy to forget, isn’t it? When this is the happiest she’s ever been, maybe the happiest she will ever be).
She leans in and Bev touches the end of her cigarette to Jess’s, the embers casting a faint orange glow on their faces. Bev’s eyes shine against the darkness, and Jess holds her breath so long she nearly chokes on her inhale.
“Careful, or I’ll have to waste another match,” Bev chides. As they finish their cigarettes, strains of “The Nearness of You” wafts from the radio onto the porch.
Jess begins to hum along, swaying to the music.
“I love this one.”
Bev nods, not yet taking her leave, though her cigarette is long extinguished.
More than a little tipsy, Jess turns towards her, a wicked smirk on her face.
“Dance with me.”
Bev sighs.
“Only because I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever you would do if I respectfully declined would be somehow worse.”
She holds out her hands, and Jess takes them, her feet stumbling when she realizes Bev means to lead.
“Since we’re already breaking rules,” she whispers in Jess’s ear, and maybe this is the reason all along why things at the bar had never progressed beyond a bit of fun.
The song ends, a raucous hornline blaring as the ballad fades out.
“Jess!” Lupe calls from inside. “Show me again how you can open beer bottles with your teeth!”
_
Jess wakes with a headache, unable to sleep in despite her hangover. The house is aflutter with activity already, half the team desperate to get home as soon as possible, the other half planning their next adventure until spring training comes around again. She and Lupe talk about going to New York, or maybe Toronto, as Maybelle gives her tearful goodbyes and Carson goes to get a proverbial thing.
She runs her hand over the bills in her pocket, ruminating on just how to use the unexpected money, as everyone leaves and she and Lupe make their way downtown to live it up at a hotel and spend one more night as celebrity ballplayers before departing for parts unknown. After two hours of attempting to make up her mind, Jess leaves Lupe at their hotel, with a promise to return in the morning to catch the next train to anywhere that trains can go from Rockford, Illinois.
“Did you forget something, Miss McCready?” Bev asks. The last of the girls have left, and she’s traded her chaperone’s uniform for a simple gingham dress, though the chignon remains steadfast as ever.
“I budgeted for the fines, you know, wasn’t really planning for this money—”
“It’s alright, heaven’s knows I don’t need it—”
“It should be plenty to buy you dinner, don’t you think?”
Bev frowns, only half-upset.
“I think you and I both know that’s hardly appropriate.”
Jess shrugs, unwilling to give up quite so easily.
“I at least owe you a steak. And contrary to what appearances may suggest, I’m quite the cook.”
“Don’t you have a train to catch?” Bev’s voice tries to maintain her stern affect, but her eyes wander to Jess’s forearms and hands, lazily returning to her face.
“Not until the morning. I told you the nights were longer here, didn’t I?”
“Hmm, what’s the saying? Show, don’t tell?”
Jess grins.
“That I can do.”