The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(40)
"Except for a few bad dreams and such."
151. She went back to her pack and her makeshift bed, got her Walkman, and settled the earbuds into place. A breeze puffed by her, cold enough to chill her sweaty skin and make her shiver. Trisha dug out the ruins of her poncho and fluffed the dirty blue plastic over her like a blanket. Not much in the way of warmth, but (this was one of Mom's) it's the thought that counts.
She pushed the power button on the Walkman, but although she hadn't changed the tuner's setting, tonight she got nothing but wavers of faint static. She had lost WCAS.
Trisha worked her way across the FM dial. She got faint classical music up around 95 and a Bible-thumper yelling about salvation at 99. Trisha was very interested in salva-tion, but not the kind the guy on the radio was talking about; the only help from the Lord she wanted right now was a helicopter filled with friendly waving people. She tuned further, got Celine Dion loud and clear at 104, hesi-tated, then kept on rolling the tuner. She wanted the Red Sox tonight - Joe and Troop, not Celine singing about how her heart would go on and on.
No baseball on the FM, in fact nothing else at all. Trisha switched to the AM band and tuned up toward 850, which was WEEI in Boston. 'EEI was the Red Sox flagship station.
She didn't expect perfect reception or anything, but she was hopeful; you could pick up a lot of AM at night, and 'EEI had a strong signal. It would probably waver in and out, but she could put up with that. She didn't have a lot else to do tonight, no hot dates or anything.
'EEI's reception was good - clear as a bell, in fact - but Joe and Troop weren't on. In their place was one of the guys her Dad called "talk-show idiots." This one was a sports talk-152 show idiot. Could it be raining in Boston? Game canceled, empty seats, tarp on the field? Trisha looked doubtfully up at her piece of the sky, where the first stars were now shining like sequins on dark blue velvet. There would be a zillion of them before long; she couldn't see so much as a single cloud. Of course she was a hundred and fifty miles from Boston, maybe more, but - The talk-show idiot was on the line with Walt from Fram-ingham.
Walt was on his car phone. When the talk-show idiot asked where he was now, Walt from Framingham said, "Somewhere in Danvers, Mike," pronouncing the town's name as Massachusetts people all did - Danvizz, making it sound not like a town but something you'd drink to settle an upset tummy. Lost in the woods? Been drinking straight from the stream and shitting your brains out as a result? A tablespoon of Danvizz and you'll feel better fast!
Walt from Framingham wanted to know why Tom Gor-don always pointed to the sky when he got a save ("You know, Mike, that pointin thing" was how Walt put it), and Mike the talk-show sports idiot explained it was Number 36's way of thanking God.
"He ought to point to Joe Kerrigan instead," Walt from Framingham said. "It was Kerrigan's idea to turn him into a closer. As a starter he was for the birds, you know?"
"Maybe God gave Kerrigan the idea, did you ever think of that, Walt?" the talk-show idiot asked. "Joe Kerrigan being the Red Sox pitching coach, for those of you who might not know."
"I do know, numbwit," Trisha murmured impatiently.
"We're mostly talking Sox tonight while the Sox enjoy a rare night off," said Mike the talk-show idiot. "They open a three-game set with Oakland tomorrow - yes, West Coast here we come and you'll hear all the action here on WEEI - but today is an open date."
An open date, that explained it. Trisha felt an absurdly huge disappointment weigh her down, and more tears (in Danvizz you called them tizz) began to form in her eyes. She cried so easily now, now she cried over anything. But she had been looking forward to the game, dammit; hadn't known how much she needed the voices of Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano until she found out she wouldn't be hearing them.
"We've got some open lines," the talk-show idiot said, "let's fill em up. Anybody out there think Mo Vaughn ought to stop acting like a kid and just sign on the dotted line? How much Mo' money does this guy need, anyway?
Good question, isn't it?"
"It's a stupid question, El Dopo," Trisha said pettishly. "If you could hit like Mo, you'd ask for a lot of money, too."
"Want to talk about Marvelous Pedro Martinez? Darren Lewis? The surprising Sox bullpen? A nice surprise from the Red Sox, can you believe it? Give me a call, tell me what you think. Back after this."
A happy voice began singing a familiar jingle: "Who do you call when your windshield's busted?"
"1-800-54-GIANT," Trisha said, and then dialed away from 'EEI. Maybe she could find another game. Even the hated Yankees would do. But before she found any baseball, she was transfixed by the sound of her own name.
" - is fading for nine-year-old Patricia McFarland, miss-ing since Saturday morning."
The news announcer's voice was faint, wavery, sliced and diced by static. Trisha leaned forward, her fingers going to her ears and pressing the little black buds deeper in.
"Connecticut law enforcement authorities, acting on a tip phoned in to state police in Maine, today arrested Fran-cis Raymond Mazzerole of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and questioned him for six hours in connection with the McFar-land girl's disappearance. Mazzerole, a construction worker currently employed on a Hartford bridge project, has twice been convicted of child molestation, and is being held pend-ing extradition to Maine on current charges of sexual assault and child molestation there. It now seems that he has no knowledge of Patricia McFarland's whereabouts, however.