The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(41)

A source close to the investigation says that Mazzerole claims to have been in Hartford over the past weekend, and that numerous witnesses corroborate..."

The sound faded out. Trisha pushed the power button and pulled the earbuds out of her ears. Were they still look-ing for her? They probably were, but she had an idea that they'd spent most of today hanging around that guy Mazze-role instead.

"What a bunch of El Dopos," she said disconsolately, and returned her Walkman to her pack. She lay back on the pine boughs, spread her poncho over her, then shuffled her shoulders and butt around until she was close to comfort-able.

A breeze puffed past, and she was glad she was in one of the hammocky dips between the rock outcrops. It was chilly tonight, and would probably be downright cold before the sun came up.

Overhead in the black were a zillion stars, just as forecast.

Exactly one zillion. They would pale a bit when the moon rose, but for now they were bright enough to paint her dirty cheeks with frost. As always, Trisha wondered if any of those brilliant specks were warming other live beings. Were there jungles out there populated by fabulous alien animals?

Pyramids? Kings and giants? Possibly even some version of baseball?

"Who do you call when your windshield's busted?" Trisha sang softly. "1-800-54 - "

She broke off, drawing swift breath in over her lower lip, as if hurt. White fire scratched the sky as one of the stars fell. The streak ran halfway across the black and then winked out. Not a star, of course, not a real star but a meteor.

There was another, and then another. Trisha sat up, the split rags of her poncho falling into her lap, her eyes wide.

Here was a fourth and fifth, these going in a different direc-tion.

Not just a meteor but a meteor shower.

As if something had only been waiting for her to under-stand this, the sky lit up in a silent storm of bright contrails.

Trisha stared, neck tilted, eyes wide, arms crossed over her breastless chest, hands clutching her shoulders with nervous nail-bitten fingers. She had never seen anything like it, never dreamed there could be anything like it.

"Oh, Tom," she whispered in a trembling voice. "Oh Tom, look at this. Do you see?"

Most were momentary white flashes, thin and straight and gone so quickly that they would have seemed like hal-lucinations if there hadn't been so many of them. A few, however - five, perhaps eight - lit up the sky like silent fireworks, brilliant stripes that seemed to burn orange at the edges. That orange might just have been eye-dazzle, but Trisha didn't think so.

At last the shower began to wane. Trisha lay back again and scooted the various sore parts of her body around some more until she was comfortable again... as comfortable as she was apt to get, anyway. As she did, she watched the ever more occasional flashes as bits of rock further off the path than she could ever get dropped into earth's well of gravity, first turning red as the atmosphere thickened and then burning to death in brief glares of light. Trisha was still watching when she fell asleep.

Her dreams were vivid but fragmentary: a kind of mental meteor shower. The only one she remembered with any clarity was the one she had been having just before she woke up in the middle of the night, coughing and cold, lying on her side with her knees drawn all the way up to her chin and shivering all over.

In this dream she and Tom Gordon were in an old meadow which was now running to bushes and young trees, mostly birches. Tom was standing by a splintery post that came up to about the height of his hip. On top of it was an old ringbolt, rusty red. Tom was flicking this back and forth between his fingers. He was wearing his warmup jacket over his uniform. The gray road uniform. He would be in Oakland tonight. She had asked Tom about "that pointin thing." She knew, of course, but asked anyway. Possibly because Walt from Framingham had wanted to know, and a cellular El Dopo like Walt wouldn't believe any little girl lost in the woods; Walt would want it straight from the closer's mouth.

"I point because it's God's nature to come on in the bot-tom of the ninth," Tom said. He spun the ringbolt on top of the post back and forth between his fingers. Back and forth, back and forth. Who do you call when your ringbolt's busted? Dial 1-800-54-RINGBOLT, of course. "Especially when the bases are loaded and there's only one out." Some-thing in the woods chattered at that, perhaps in derision.

The chattering grew louder and louder until Trisha opened her eyes in the dark and realized it was the sound of her own teeth.

She got slowly to her feet, wincing as every part of her body protested. Her legs were the worst, closely followed by her back. A gust of wind struck her - not a puff this time but a gust - and almost knocked her over. She wondered how much weight she had lost. A week of this and you'll be able to put a string around me and fly me like a kite, she thought. She started to laugh at that, and the laugh turned into another coughing fit. She stood with her hands planted on her legs just above her knees, her head down, coughing. The cough started deep in her chest and came out of her mouth in a series of harsh barks. Great. Just great. She put the inside of her wrist to her forehead and couldn't tell if she had a fever or not.

Walking slowly with her legs spread far apart - her butt chafed less when she did that - Trisha went back to the pines and broke off more branches, this time meaning to pile them on top of her like blankets. She took one armload back to her bed, got a second, and stopped halfway between the trees and the needle-floored dip she'd chosen to sleep in.