The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon Read online

Page 7

  What was a little Sunny Treat between friends?

  And now, sitting here in the growing grayness, listening to the drip of water all around her in the woods, watching the trees blur into shapes which would soon become threat-ening, listening for amplified shouts ("COME TO THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!") or the distant barking of dogs, she thought: I can't pray to the Subaudible. I just can't. She couldn't pray to Tom Gordon, either - that would be ludi-crous - but perhaps she could listen to him pitch. . . and against the Yankees, at that. WCAS had their Sox on; she could put hers on, too. She had to conserve her batteries, she knew that, but she could listen for awhile, couldn't she?

  And who could tell? She might hear those amplified voices and barking dogs before the game was over.

  Trisha opened her pack, reverently removed her Walk-man from its inner pocket, and settled the earbuds into place. She hesitated a moment, suddenly sure the radio would no longer work, that some vital wire had been jog-gled loose in her tumble down the slope and this time there would be only silence when she pushed the power button. It was a stupid idea, maybe, but on a day when so many things had gone wrong, it seemed like a horribly plausible idea, too.

  Go on, go on, don't be a chickenguts!

  She pushed the button and like a miracle her head filled with the sound of Jerry Trupiano's voice. . . and more importantly, with the sounds of Fenway Park. She was sitting out here in the darkening, drippy woods, lost and alone, but she could hear thirty thousand people. It was a miracle.

  " - comes to the belt," Troop was saying. "He winds. He fires. And. . . strike three called, Martinez caught him look-ing!

  Oh, that was the slider and it was a beaut! That caught the inside corner and Bernie Williams was just frozen! Oh my! And at the end of two and a half innings, it's still the Yankees two, the Boston Red Sox nothing. "

  A singing voice instructed Trisha to call 1-800-54GIANT for some sort of auto repair, but she didn't hear it.

  Two and a half innings already played, which meant it had to be eight o'clock. At first that seemed amazing, and yet, given the faded quality of the light, not so hard to believe, either. She'd been on her own for ten hours. It seemed like forever; it also seemed like no time at all.

  Trisha waved at the bugs (this gesture was now so auto-matic she didn't even realize she was doing it) and then delved into her lunchbag. The tuna sandwich wasn't as bad as she had feared, flattened and torn into hunks but still rec-ognizably a sandwich. The Baggie had sort of kept it together.

  The remaining Twinkie, however, had turned into what Pepsi Robichaud would likely have called "total sploosh. "

  Trisha sat listening to the game and slowly ate half of her tuna sandwich. It awoke her appetite and she easily could have gobbled the rest, but she put it back in the bag and ate the splooshed Twinkie instead, scooping up the moist cake and the nasty-tasty white creme filling (that stuff was always creme and never cream, Trisha mused) with one fin-ger.

  When she had gotten all she could with her finger, she turned the paper inside out and licked it clean. Just call me Mrs. Sprat, she thought, and put the Twinkie wrapper back into her lunchbag. She allowed herself three more big swal-lows of Surge, then went prospecting for more potato chip crumbs with the tip of one grimy finger as the Red Sox and Yankees played through the rest of the third and the fourth.

  By the middle of the fifth it was four to one Yankees, with Martinez gone in favor of Jim Corsi. Larry McFarland regarded Corsi with deep mistrust. Once, while talking baseball with Trisha over the telephone, he had said: "You mark my words, sugar - Jim Corsi is no friend of the Red Sox. " Trisha got giggling, she couldn't help it. He just sounded so solemn. And after awhile Dad had gotten gig-gling, too. It had become a catch-phrase between them, something that was just theirs, like a password: "Mark my words, Jim Corsi is no friend of the Red Sox. "

  Corsi was a friend of the Red Sox in the top of the sixth, though, getting the Yankees one-two-three. Trisha knew she should turn off the radio and conserve the batteries, Tom Gordon wasn't going to pitch in a game where the Red Sox were three runs behind, but she couldn't bear the thought of disconnecting Fenway Park. She listened to the seashell-murmur of the voices even more eagerly than to the play-byplay guys, Jerry Trupiano and Joe Castiglione. Those people were there, actually there, eating hotdogs and drink-ing beer and lining up to buy souvenirs and sof-serve ice cream and chowder from the Legal Seafood stand; they were watching as Darren Lewis - DeeLu, the announcers some-times called him - stepped into the batter's box, the bright banks of lights casting his shadow behind him as daytime gave up overhead. She could not bear to exchange those thirty thousand murmuring voices for the low hum of mos-quitoes (thicker than ever as dusk advanced), the drip of rainwater from the leaves, the rusty rick-rick of the crick-ets . . . and what other sounds there might be.

  It was the other sounds she was most afraid of.

  Other sounds in the dark.

  DeeLu singled to right, and one out later Mo Vaughn got hold of a slider that did not slide. "Back back WAYYY BACK!" Troop chanted. "That's in the Red Sox pen! Some-one - I think it might have been Rich Garces - caught it on the fly. Home run, Mo Vaughn! That's his twelfth of the year and the Yankee lead is cut to one. "

  Sitting on her tree-trunk, Trisha laughed and clapped her hands and then resettled her signed Tom Gordon hat more firmly on her head. It was full dark now.

  In the bottom of the eighth, Nomar Garciaparra hit a two-run shot into the screen on top of the Green Monster.

  The Red Sox took a five-to-four lead and Tom Gordon came on to pitch the top of the ninth.

  CHAPTER 5

  Trisha slid off the fallen tree to the ground. The bark scraped against the wasp-stings on her hip, but she hardly noticed. Mosquitoes settled with immediate hungry intent on her bare back where her shirt and the tatters of the blue poncho had rucked up, but she didn't feel them. She gazed at the last held glimmerglow in the brook - fading tar-nished quicksilver - and sat on the damp ground with her fingers pressed to the sides of her mouth. Suddenly it seemed very important that Tom Gordon should preserve the one-run lead, that he should secure this victory against the mighty Yankees, who had lost a pair to Anaheim at the start of the season and had hardly lost since.

  "Come on, Tom," she whispered. In a Castle View hotel room her mother was in an agony of terror; her father was on a Delta flight from Boston to Portland to join Quilla and his son; at the Castle County state police barracks, which had been designated Rally Point Patricia, search-parties very much like the ones the lost girl had imagined were coming back in after their first fruitless sallies; outside the barracks, newsvans from three TV stations in Portland and two in Portsmouth were parked; three dozen experienced woods-men (and some were accompanied by dogs) remained in the forests of Motton and the three unincorporated townships which stretched off toward New Hampshire's chimney: TR-90, TR-100, and TR-110. The consensus among those remaining in the woods was that Patricia McFarland must still be in Motton or TR-90. She was a little girl, after all, and likely hadn't wandered far from where she had last been seen. These experienced guides, game wardens, and Forest Service men would have been stunned to know that Trisha had gotten almost nine miles west of the area the searchers considered their highest priority.

  "Come on, Tom," she whispered. "Come on, Tom, one two three, now. You know how it goes. "

  But not tonight. Gordon opened the top of the ninth by walking the handsome yet evil Yankee shortstop, Derek Jeter, and Trisha remembered something her father had once told her: when a team gets a lead-off walk, their chances of scoring rise by seventy percent.

  If we win, if Tom gets the save, I'll be saved. This thought came to her suddenly - it was like a firework bursting in her head.

  It was stupid, of course, as dopey as her father knocking on wood before a three-and-two pitch (which he did every time), but as the dark drew deeper and the brook gave up its final silver tarnish, it also
seemed irrefutable, as obvious as two-and-two-makes-four: if Tom Gordon got the save, she would get the save.

  Paul O'Neill popped up. One out. Bernie Williams came up. "Always a dangerous hitter," Joe Castiglione remarked, and Williams immediately ripped a single to center, sending Jeter to third.

  "Why did you say that, Joe?" Trisha moaned. "Oh cripes, why did you have to say that?"

  Runners on first and third, only one out. The Fenway crowd cheering, hoping. Trisha could imagine them leaning forward in their seats.

  "Come on, Tom, come on, Tom," she whispered. The cloud of minges and noseeums were still all around her, but she no longer noticed. A feeling of despair touched her heart, cool and strong - it was like that hateful voice she had discovered in the middle of her head. The Yankees were too good. A base hit would tie it, a long ball would put it out of reach, and the awful, awful Tino Martinez was up, with the most dangerous hitter of all right behind him; the Straw Man would now be down on one knee in the on-deck circle, swinging a bat and watching.

  Gordon worked the count on Martinez to two and two, then threw his curveball. "Struck him out!" Joe Castiglione shouted. It was as if he couldn't believe it. "Aw, man, that was a beauty! Martinez must have missed it by a foot!"

  "Tw o feet," Troop added helpfully.

  "So it all comes to this," Joe said, and behind his voice Trisha could hear the volume of the other voices, the fan voices, begin to rise. The rhythmic clapping started. The Fenway Faithful were getting to their feet like a church con-gregation about to sing a hymn. "Two on, two out, Red Sox clinging to a one-run lead, Tom Gordon on the mound, and - "

  "Don't you say it," Trisha whispered, her hands still press-ing against the sides of her mouth, "don't you dare say it!"

  But he did. "And the always dangerous Darryl Straw-berry coming to the plate. "

  That was it; game over; great Satan Joe Castiglione had opened his mouth and jinxed it. Why couldn't he just have given Strawberry's name? Why did he have to start in with that "always dangerous" horsepucky when any fool knew that only made them dangerous?

  "All right, everybody, fasten your seatbelts," Joe said.

  "Strawberry cocks the bat. Jeter's dancing around third, try-ing to draw a throw or at least some attention from Gordon.

  He gets neither. Gordon looks in. Veritek flashes the sign. To the set. Gordon throws. . . Strawberry swings and misses, strike one. Strawberry shakes his head as if he's disgusted. . . "

  "Shouldn't be disgusted, that was a pretty good pitch,"

  Troop remarked, and Trisha, sitting in the dark bugblown armpit of nowhere, thought, Shut up, Troop, just shut up for a minute.

  "Straw steps out. . . taps his cleats. . . now he's back in.

  Gordon with the look to Williams on first. . . to the set. . .

  he pitches. Outside and low. "

  Trisha moaned. The tips of her fingers were now so deeply pressed into her cheeks that her lips were pulled up in a strange distraught smile. Her heart was hammering in her chest.

  "Here we go again," Joe said. "Gordon's ready. He fires, Strawberry swings, and it's a long high drive to right field, if it stays fair it's gone, but it's drifting. . . it's drifting. . .

  driffffting. . . "

  Trisha waited, breath caught.

  "Foul," Joe said at last, and she began to breathe again.

  "But that was toooo close. Strawberry just missed a three-run homer. It went on the wrong side of the Pesky Pole by no more than six or eight feet. "

  "I'd say four feet," Troop added helpfully.

  "I'd say you've got stinky feet," Trisha whispered. "Come on, Tom, come on, please. " But he wouldn't; she knew that now for sure. Just this close and no closer.

  Still, she could see him. Not all tall and ginky-looking like Randy Johnson, not all short and tubby-looking like Rich Garces. Medium height, trim. . . and handsome. Very handsome, especially with his cap on, shading his eyes. . .

  except her father said almost all ballplayers were handsome.

  "It comes with the genes," he told her, then added: "Of course a lot of them have nothing upstairs, so it all balances out. " But Tom Gordon's looks weren't the thing. It was the stillness before he pitched which had first caught her eye and her admiration. He didn't stalk around the mound like some of them did, or bend to fiddle with his shoes, or pick up the rosin bag and then toss it back down in a little flump of white dust. No, Number 36 simply waited for the batter to finish all of his fiddle-de-diddling. He was so still in his bright white uniform as he waited for the batter to be ready.

  And then, of course, there was the thing he did whenever he succeeded in getting the save. That thing as he left the mound. She loved that.

  "Gordon winds and fires. . . and it's in the dirt! Veritek blocked it with his body and that saved a run. The tying run. "

  "Stone the crows!" Troop said.

  Joe didn't even try to dignify that one. "Gordon takes a deep breath out on the mound. Strawberry stands in. Gor-don wheels. . . deals. . . high. "

  A storm of booing rose in Trisha's ears like an ill wind.

  "Thirty thousand or so umps in the stands didn't agree with that one, Joe," Troop remarked.

  "True, but Larry Barnett behind the plate's got the final say and Barnett said it was high. The count runs full to Dar-ryl Strawberry. Three and two. "

  In the background the rhythmic clapping of the fans swelled. Their voices filled the air, filled her head. She knocked on the wood of the tree-trunk without realizing she was doing it.

  "The crowd's on its feet," Joe Castiglione said, "all thirty thousand of them, because no one has left the joint tonight. "

  "Maybe one or two," Troop said. Trisha took no notice.

  Neither did Joe.

  "Gordon to the belt. "

  Yes, she could see him at the belt, hands together now, no longer facing home plate directly but looking in over his left shoulder.

  "Gordon into the motion. "

  She could see this, too: the left foot coming back toward the planting right foot as the hands - one wearing the glove, one holding the ball - rose to the sternum; she could even see Bernie Williams, off with the pitch, streaking for second, but Tom Gordon took no notice and even in motion his essential stillness remained, his eyes on Jason Veritek's mitt, hung behind the plate low and toward the outside corner.

  "Gordon delivers the three. . . two. . . pitch. . . AND - "

  The crowd told her, the sudden joyous thunder of the crowd.

  "Strike three called!" Joe was nearly screaming. "Oh my goodness, he threw the curve on three and two and froze Strawberry!