The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Bottom of the Ninth

AT SOME POINT late in the game, Trisha thought she came briefly, blearily awake. Jerry Trupiano was announcing-it sounded like Troop, at least, but he was saying that the Seattle Monsters had the bases loaded and Gordon was trying to close the game out. "That thing at the plate's a killer," Troop said, "and Gordon looks afraid for the first time this year. Where's God when you need him, Joe?"

"Danvizz," Joe Castiglione said. "Crying real tizz."

Surely that was a dream, had to have been-one that might or might not have been mixed with a little smidge of reality. All Trisha knew for sure was that when she next awoke completely, the sun was almost down, she was feverish, her throat hurt badly each time she swallowed, and her radio was ominously quiet.

"Fell asleep with it on, you stupid thing," she said in her new croaky voice. "You big dumb asshole." She looked at the top of the case, hoping to see the little red light, hoping she had just moved the tuning by accident when she started sliding off to one side (she had awakened with her head cocked against one shoulder and her neck aching fiercely), knowing better. And sure enough, the red light was out.

She tried to tell herself the batteries couldn't have lasted much longer, anyway, but it didn't help and she cried some more. Knowing the radio was dead made her feel sad, so sad. It was like losing your last friend. Moving slowly and creakily, she stowed the radio back in her pack, did the buckles, and put the pack back on. It was almost empty, yet seemed to weigh a ton. How could that be?

I'm on a road, at least, she reminded herself I'm on a road. But now, with the light of another day slipping out of the sky, not even that seemed to help. Road, shmoad, she thought. The fact of it actually seemed to mock her, began to seem like a blown save opportunity, somehow-like when a team got just an out or two away from sewing up the win and then the roof fell in. The stupid road could go on through these woods for another hundred and forty miles, for all she knew, and at the end of it there might be nothing; just another scruff of bushes or another hideous bog.

Nevertheless she began to walk again, slowly and wearily, with her head down and her shoulders so slumped that the pack-straps kept trying to slip off like the straps of a shell did if the top was too big. Only with a shell top, you only had to brush the straps back up. With the pack-straps you first had to pick and then lift.

About a half hour before full dark, one of them slipped off her shoulder entirely and the pack came askew. Trisha thought briefly of just letting the damned thing fall and walking on without it. She might have done just that if there had only been the last handful of checkerberries inside. But there was the water, and the water, gritty as it was, soothed her throat. She decided to stop for the night instead.

She knelt down on the crown of the road, slipped off the pack with a sigh of relief, then lay down with her head on it. She looked at the dark mass of the woods to her right.

"You just stay away," she said as clearly as she could. "Stay away or I'll dial 1-800 and call the giant. Do you understand me?"

Something heard her. It might or might not understand, and it did not reply, but it was there. She could feel it. Was it still letting her ripen? Feeding on her fear before it came out to feed on her? If so, the game was almost over. She was nearly out of fear. She thought suddenly of calling to it again, of telling it she didn't mean what she'd just said, that she was tired and it could come get her if it wanted. But she didn't do it. She was afraid that it might take her up on it if she did.

She drank a little water and looked up at the sky. She thought of Bork the Dork saying the God of Tom Gordon couldn't be bothered with her, that He had other fish to fry. Trisha doubted if that was exactly so. but He wasn't here, that seemed certain. Maybe it wasn't couldn't so much as wouldn't. Bork the Dork had also said, I must admit he is a sports fan ... not necessarily a Red Sox fan, however.

Trisha took off her Red Sox cap-now battered and sweatstained and smeared with bits of the forest-and ran her finger across the bent brim. Her best thing. Her father had gotten Tom Gordon to sign it for her, had sent it to Fenway Park with a letter saying Tom was his daughter's favorite player, and Tom (or his accredited representative) had sent it back in the stamped, self-addressed envelope her father had provided, autographed across the visor. She guessed it was still her best thing. Other than some murky water, a handful of dried, tasteless berries, and her dirty clothes, it was just about her only thing. And now the signature was gone, blurred to nothing but a black shadow by rain and her own sweaty hands. But it had been there, and she was still here-for the time being, at least.

"God, if You can't be a Red Sox fan, be a Tom Gordon fan," she said. "Can you do that much, at least? Can you be that much?"

She dozed in and out of consciousness all night, shivering, falling asleep and then snapping awake, sure that it was there with her, It, that it had finally come out of the woods to take her. Tom Gordon spoke to her; once her father also spoke to her. He stood right behind her, asking her if she'd like some macaroons, but when she turned around no one was there. More meteors burned across the sky, but she couldn't tell for sure if they were really there or if she was only dreaming them. Once she took out her radio, hoping the batteries had come back a little-sometimes they did, if you gave them a chance to rest-but she dropped it into the high grass before she could check and then couldn't find it no matter how much she combed her fingers through the tangles. Eventually her hands returned to her pack and felt the straps still threaded snugly through the buckles. Trisha decided she had never taken the radio out in the first place, because she never could have refixed the buckles and straps so neatly in the dark. She hacked her way through a dozen coughing fits, and now they hurt way down in her ribcage. At some point she hoisted herself up enough to pee, and what came out was hot enough to burn and make her bite her lips.

The night passed as nights of deepening sickness always do; time grew soft and strange. When the birds at last began to chirrup and she saw a little light beginning to strain through the trees, Trisha could hardly believe it. She lifted her hands and looked at her dirty fingers. She could hardly believe she was still alive, either, but it seemed she was.

She stayed put until the day was light enough to see the ever-present cloud of bugs around her head. Then she got slowly up and waited to see if her legs were going to support her or give way and spill her back down again.

If they do I'll crawl, she thought, but she didn't have to crawl, not yet; they held her. She bent and hooked a hand into one of the pack-straps. When she straightened back up again, dizziness roared through her and a squadron of those black-winged butterflies clouded her sight. At last they faded and she managed to get the pack on.

Then there was another problem-which way had she been going? She was no longer entirely sure, and the road looked the same in both directions. She stepped away from the log, looking uncertainly back and forth. Her foot clipped something. It was her Walkman, all tangled up in the earphone cord and wet with dew. Apparently she had taken it out after all. She bent down, picked it up, and looked at it stupidly. Was she going to take off the pack again, open it, and put the Walkman back inside? That seemed too hardon a par with moving a mountain. On the other hand, throwing it away seemed wrong, like admitting she had given up.

Trisha stood where she was for three minutes or more, looking down at the little radio-tape player with her feverbright eyes. Throw it away or keep it? Throw it away or keep it? What's your decision, Patricia, do you want to stick with the waterless cookware or go for the car, the mink coat, and the trip to Rio? It occurred to her that if she were her brother Pete's Mac PowerBook, she'd be throwing up error messages and little bomb icons all over the place. She was startled into a laugh at this image.

The laughter almost immediately turned into coughing. It was the worst bout by far, doubling her over. Soon she was barking like a dog with her hands planted just above her knees and her hanging hair swaying back and forth in a filthy curtain. She somehow kept her feet, refusing to give in and fall, and as the coughing fit was tapering off, she realized that she ought to clip the Walkman to the waistband of her jeans. That was what the clip on the back of the case was for, wasn't it? Sure, you bet. What an El Dopo she was.

She opened her mouth to say, Elementary, my dear Watson-she and Pepsi sometimes said that to each other and when she did, something wet and warm came slobbering out over her lower lip. She wiped up a palmful of bright red blood and looked at it, her eyes widening.

I must have bit something in my mouth when I was coughing, she thought, and immediately knew better. This had come from deeper inside. The idea scared her, and fright brought the world into sharper focus. She found herself able to think again. She cleared her throat (gently; it hurt too much to do it any other way) and then spat. Bright red. Oh jeez, Louise, but there was nothing she could do about it now, and at least she was clearheaded enough to figure out how to make sure of her direction on the road. The sun had gone down on her right. She turned now until the rising sun was winking through the trees on her left, and immediately saw she was pointed the right way. She didn't know how she could have been confused in the first place.

Slowly, gingerly, like someone walking on a freshly rinsed tile floor, Trisha got moving again. This is probably it, she thought. Today's probably my last chance, maybe even this morning's my last chance. I may be too weak and sick to walk by this afternoon, and if I can get on my feet after another night out here, it'll be a blue-eyed miracle.

Blue-eyed miracle. Was that her mother's or her father's?

"Who gives a rat's ass?" Trisha croaked. "If I get out of this, I'm going to make up some sayings of my own."

Fifty or sixty feet north of the place where she had spent that endless Sunday night and Monday morning, Trisha realized she still had her Walkman in her right hand. She stopped and went carefully and laboriously about the task of getting it clipped to her waistband. Her jeans were absolutely floating on her now, and she could see the sharp jut of her hipbones. Lose a few more pounds and I'll be able to model the latest Paris fashions, she thought. She was just wondering what to do with the headphone attachment when a sudden rough rattle of distant explosions split the still morning air-it sounded like a puddle of soda being sucked up through a giant straw.

Trisha cried out, and she was not alone in her startlement; a number of crows cawed, and a pheasant exploded through the brush in a ruffled whir of indignation.

Trisha stood, wide-eyed, the forgotten earbud headphones penduluming at the end of their cord by her scabby, dirty left ankle. She knew that sound; it was the rattle of backfires through an old muffler. A truck, maybe, or some kid's bucket of rods. There was another road up there. A real road.

She wanted to run and knew she must not. If she did, she would blow out all her energy in one burst. That would be dreadful. To faint away and perhaps die of exposure within actual sound of traffic would be like blowing the save when the opposing team was down to their last strike. Such abominations happened, but she would not let it happen to her.

She began to walk instead, forcing herself to move slowly and deliberately, listening all the while for another series of those rattling backfires, or a distant engine, or a horn. There was nothing, nothing at all, and after an hour of walking she began to think she had hallucinated the whole thing. This hadn't seemed like a hallucination, but ...

She topped a rise and looked down. She began coughing again, and more blood flew from her lips, bright in the sun, but Trisha took no notice-did not even put her hand up. Below her the rutted track she was on ended, T-squaring into a dirt road.

Trisha walked slowly down and stood upon it. She could see no tire tracks-it was hardpan-but there were real ruts here, and no grass growing down the middle. The new road ran at right angles to her road, roughly east and west. And here, at last, Trisha made the right decision. She did not turn west for any other reason than that her head had begun to ache again and she didn't want to be walking directly into the sunshine ... but she did turn west. Four miles from where she stood, New Hampshire Route 96, a patched ribbon of hot-top, ran through the woods. A few cars and a great many pulp-trucks used this road; it was one of the latter which Trisha had heard backing off through its ancient exhaust system as the driver downshifted for Kemongus Hill. The sound had carried better than nine miles through the still morning air.

She began to move again, and with a new feeling of strength. It was perhaps forty-five minutes later that she heard something, distant but unmistakable.

Don't be stupid, you've gotten to a place where anything's mistakable.

Perhaps so, but ...

She cocked her head like the dog on Gramma McFarland's old records, the ones Gramma kept up in the attic. She held her breath. She heard the thump of blood in her temples, the wheeze of her breath in her infected throat, the call of birds, the rustle of the breeze. She heard the hum of mosquitoes around her ears ... and another hum, as well. The hum of tires on pavement. Very distant, but there.

Trisha began to cry. "Please don't let me be making it up," she said in a husky voice that was now down to little more than a whisper. "Aw, God, please, don't let me be making that u-"

A louder rustling noise commenced behind her-not the breeze, not this time. Even if she might have convinced herself (for a few cruddy seconds or so) that it was, what about the snapping sound of branches? And then the grinding, splintering sound of something falling - a small tree, probably, that had been in the way In Its way. It had let her get this close to rescue, had allowed her to come within actual hearing of the path she had so casually and carelessly lost. It had watched her painful progress, perhaps with amusement, perhaps with some sort of god's compassion that was too terrible to even think about. Now it was through watching, through waiting.

Slowly, both with terror and with a strange sort of calm inevitability, Trisha turned to face the God of the Lost.