The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(3)
Now, as her mother and her brother fought in the front seat - about the outing, about Sanford Middle School, about their dislocated life - Trisha looked at the signed cap her Dad had somehow gotten her in March, just before the season started, and thought this: I'm in Sanford Park, just walking across the playground to Pepsi's house on an ordinary day. And there's this guy standing at the hotdog wagon. He's wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt and he's got a gold chain around his neck - he's got his back to me but I can see the chain winking in the sun. Then he turns around and I see... oh I can't believe it but it's true, it's really him, it's To m Gordon, why he's in Sanford is a mystery but it's him, all right, and oh God his eyes, just like when he's looking in for the sign with men on base, those eyes, and he smiles and says he's a little lost, he wonders if I know a town called North Berwick, how to get there, and oh God, oh my God I'm shaking, I won't be able to say a word, I'll open my mouth and nothing will come out but a little dry squeak, what Dad calls a mousefart, only when I try I can speak, I sound almost normal, and I say...
I say, he says, then I say and then he says: thinking about how they might talk while the fighting in the front seat of the Caravan drew steadily farther away. (Sometimes, Trisha had decided, silence was life's greatest blessing.) She was still looking fixedly at the signature on the visor of her base-ball cap when Mom turned into the parking area, still far away (Trish is off in her own world was how her father put it), unaware that there were teeth hidden in the ordinary tex-ture of things and she would soon know it. She was in San-ford, not in TR-90. She was in the town park, not at an entry-point to the Appalachian Trail. She was with Tom Gordon, Number 36, and he was offering to buy her a hot-dog in exhange for directions to North Berwick.
Oh, bliss.
First Inning
MOM AND PETE gave it a rest as they got their packs and Quilla's wicker plant-collection basket out of the van's back end; Pete even helped Trisha get her pack settled evenly on her back, tightening one of the straps, and she had a moment's foolish hope that now things were going to be all right.
"Kids got your ponchos?" Mom asked, looking up at the sky. There was still blue up there, but the clouds were thick-ening in the west. It very likely would rain, but probably not soon enough for Pete to have a satisfying whine about being soaked.
"I've got mine, Mom!" Trisha chirruped in her oh-boy-waterlesscookware voice.
Pete grunted something that might have been yes.
"Lunches?"
Affirmative from Trisha; another low grunt from Pete.
"Good, because I'm not sharing mine." She locked the Caravan, then led them across the dirt lot toward a sign marked TRAIL WEST, with an arrow beneath. There were maybe a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs with out-ofstate plates.
19. "Bug-spray?" Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the trail. "Trish?"
"Got it!" she chirruped, not entirely positive she did but not wanting to stop with her back turned so that Mom could have a rummage. That would get Pete going again for sure. If they kept walking, though, he might see something which would interest him, or at least distract him. A raccoon.
Maybe a deer. A dinosaur would be good. Trisha giggled.
"What's funny?" Mom asked.
"Just me thinks," Trisha replied, and Quilla frowned - "me thinks" was a Larry McFarland-ism. Well let her frown, Trisha thought. Let her frown all she wants. I'm with her, and I don't complain about it like old grouchy there, but he's still my Dad and I still love him.
Trisha touched the brim of her signed cap, as if to prove it.
"Okay, kids, let's go," Quilla said. "And keep your eyes open."
"I hate this," Pete almost groaned - it was the first clearly articulated thing he'd said since they got out of the van, and Trisha thought: Please God, send something. A deer or a dinosaur or a UFO. Because if You don't, they're going right back at it.
God sent nothing but a few mosquito scouts that would no doubt soon be reporting back to the main army that fresh meat was on the move, and by the time they passed a sign reading NO. CONWAY STATION 5. 5 MI., the two of them were at it full-bore again, ignoring the woods, ignoring her, ignoring everything but each other. Yatata-yatata-yatata. It was, Trisha thought, like some sick kind of making out.
It was a shame, too, because they were missing stuff that was actually pretty neat. The sweet, resiny smell of the pines, for instance, and the way the clouds seemed so close - less like clouds than like draggles of whitish-gray smoke. She guessed you'd have to be an adult to call some-thing as boring as walking one of your hobbies, but this really wasn't bad. She didn't know if the entire Appalachian Trail was as well-maintained as this - probably not - but if it was, she guessed she could understand why people with nothing better to do decided to walk all umpty-thousand miles of it. Trisha thought it was like walking on a broad, winding avenue through the woods. It wasn't paved, of course, and it ran steadily uphill, but it was easy enough walking. There was even a little hut with a pump inside it and a sign which read: WATER TESTS OK FOR DRINKING.
PLEASE FILL PRIMER JUG FOR NEXT PERSON.
She had a bottle of water in her pack - a big one with a squeeze-top - but suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh, from its rusty lip. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains.