The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(34)

Operator: Sir -  Caller: I hope you kill him.

Call ends 2148 Hours Traceback put the origin of the call at a pay telephone in Old Orchard Beach. No help there.

Around two o'clock the next morning - three hours after police in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey had begun looking for a blue Ford van driven by a man with short blond hair, wearing eyeglasses - Trisha awoke with more nausea and cramps. She knocked her shel-ter over backing out of it, fumbled her jeans and underwear down, and voided what seemed like a huge quantity of weak acid. It hurt her down there, hurt with a deep itching sting that felt like the worst case of prickly heat she'd ever had.

When that part was over she crawled back to Trisha's Pukin' Place and grabbed hold of the same tree. Her skin was hot, her hair was matted with sweat; she was also shak-ing all over and her teeth were chattering.

I can't vomit any more. Please God, I can't vomit any more. It'll kill me if I go on vomiting.

This was when she actually saw Tom Gordon for the first time. He was standing in the woods about fifty feet away, his white uniform seeming almost to burn in the moonlight which fell through the trees. He was wearing his glove. His right hand was behind his back and Trisha knew there was a baseball in it. He would be cupping it against his palm and twirling it in his long fingers, feeling the seams go by, stop-ping only when they were exactly where he wanted them and the grip was right.

"Tom," she whispered. "You never got a chance tonight, did you?"

Tom took no notice. He was looking in for the sign.

That stillness spun out from his shoulders, enveloping him. He stood there in the moonlight, as clear as the cuts on her arms, as real as the nausea in her throat and belly, all those nasty butterflutters. He was stillness waiting for the sign. Not perfect stillness, there was that hand behind his back turning the ball and turning the ball, searching for the best grip, but all stillness where you could see; yeah, baby, stillness waiting for the sign. Trisha wondered if she could do that - just let the shakes run off her like water off a duck's back and be still and conceal the churning inside her.

She held onto the tree and tried. It didn't happen all at once (good things never did, her Dad said), but it did hap-pen: quiet inside, blessed stillness. She stayed that way for a long time. Did the batter want to step out because he thought she was taking too long between pitches? Fine. It was nothing to her, one way or the other. She was only still-ness, stillness waiting for the right sign and the right grip on the ball. Stillness came from the shoulders, it spun out from there, it cooled you and focused you.

The shivers eased, then stopped entirely. At some point she realized that her stomach had also settled. Her bowels were still crampy, but not as bad now. The moon was down.

Tom Gordon was gone. Of course he had never really been there at all, she knew that, but -  "He sure looked real that time," she croaked. "Real as real. Wow."

She got up and walked slowly back to the tree where her shelter had been. Although she wanted nothing except to huddle on the pine needles and go to sleep, she set up the fans of branches again, then crawled in behind them. Five minutes later she was dead to the world. As she slept, some-thing came and watched her. It watched for a long time. It was not until light began to line the horizon in the east that it went away... and it did not go far.

Sixth Inning

WHEN TRISHA woke up, the birds were singing confidently.

The light was strong and bright, the way it looked at mid-morning.

She might have slept even longer, but hunger wouldn't allow it. She roared with a vast emptiness from the top of her throat all the way down to her knees. And in the very middle it hurt, actually hurt. It was as if she were being pinched somewhere inside. The feeling frightened her. She had been hungry before, but never hungry enough for it to hurt this way.

She backed out of her shelter, knocking it over again, got to her feet, and hobbled to the stream with her hands planted in the small of her back. She probably looked like Pepsi Robichaud's grandmother, the one who was deaf and had arthritis so bad she had to use a walker. Granny Grunt, Pepsi called her.

Trisha got down on her knees, planted her hands, and drank like a horse at a trough. If the water made her sick again, and it probably would, so be it. She had to put some-thing in her stomach.

She got up, looked dully around her, hitched up her jeans 131. (they had been okay when she put them on, long ago and far away in her Sanford bedroom, but they were loose now), then started downhill along the course of the stream. She no longer had any real hope that it would take her out, but at least she could put some distance between her and Trisha's Pukin' Place; she could do that much.

She had gotten perhaps a hundred paces when the tough tootsie spoke up. Forgot something, didn't you, sugar? Today the tough tootsie also sounded like a getting-tired tootsie, but her voice was as cold and ironic as ever. Not to mention cor-rect.

Trisha stood where she was for a moment with her head down and her hair hanging, then turned around and labored uphill to her little camp of the night before. She had to stop twice on the way and give her pounding heart a chance to slow down; she was appalled by how little strength she had left.

She filled her water-bottle, stuffed it and the shredded remains of her poncho into her pack, gave a tearful sigh at the pack's weight when she lifted it (the damned thing was all but empty, for goodness' sake), and then set off again. She walked slowly, almost plodding now, and although the going was downhill she still had to stop and rest every fif-teen minutes or so. Her head throbbed. All the world's col-ors looked too bright, and when a bluejay called from a branch overhead, the sound seemed to punch into her ears like needles. She pretended Tom Gordon was with her, keeping her company, and then after awhile she didn't have to pretend anymore. He walked along beside her, and although she knew he was a hallucination, he looked as real by daylight as he had by moonlight.