The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(48)

That had hurt worse than barking her shin. She looked at her palm and saw little beads of blood oozing up through the caked dirt. Trisha leaned forward on her forearms, pushing aside the grass, knowing what had stabbed into her hand, needing to see it just the same.

It was the ragged stump of the other gatepost, broken off about a foot out of the ground, and she'd really been quite lucky not to hurt herself any more than she had; a couple of the splinters sticking up from that post were a good three inches long and looked as sharp as needles. A little beyond the stump, buried in the white and wiry old grass underlying this June's aggressive new green, was the rest of the post.

Last chance. Late innings.

"Yeah, and maybe somebody expects an awful lot from a kid," she said. She unshouldered her pack, opened it, yanked out the remains of the poncho, and tore off one of the strips.

This she knotted around the stump of the broken-off gatepost, coughing nervously as she did it. Sweat ran down her face. Noseeums came to drink it; some drowned; Trisha didn't notice.

She stood up, reshouldering the pack, and stood between the remaining upright post and the blue strip of plastic marking the downed one.

"Here's where the gate was," she said. "Right here." She looked straight ahead, in a northwest direction. Then she about-faced and gazed southeast. "I don't know why any-180 one would put a gate here, but I know that you don't bother unless there's a road or a trail or a riding-path or something.

I want..." Her voice trembled toward tears. She stopped, gulped them back, and started again. "I want to find the path. Any path. Where is it? Help me, Tom."

Number 36 didn't reply. A jay scolded her and some-thing moved in the woods (not the thing, just some animal, maybe a deer - she had seen lots of deer over the last three or four days), but that was all. Before her, all around her, was a meadow so old that it could now pass for just another forest clearing unless you looked closely. Beyond this she saw more woods, more clenches of trees she could not name.

She saw no path.

This is your last chance, you know.

Trisha turned, walked northwest across the open space to the woods, then looked back to make sure she had held a straight line. She had, and she looked forward again.

Branches moved in a light breeze, casting deceptive dapples of light everywhere, creating what was almost a disco-ball effect. She could see an old fallen log and went to it, slipping between the closely packed trees and ducking under the maddening interlacing branches, hoping... but it was a log, just a log and not another post. She looked further and saw nothing. Heart thumping, breath coming in anxious, phlegmy little bursts, Trisha fought her way back to the clearing and returned to the place where the gate had been.

This time she faced southeast and walked slowly once more to the rim of the woods.

"Well, here we go," Troop always said, "it's the late innings and the Red Sox need base-runners."

Woods. Nothing but woods. Not so much as a game-trail -  at least not that Trisha could see - let alone a path.

She pushed in a little further, still trying not to cry, knowing that very soon she wouldn't be able to help it. Why did the wind have to be blowing? How could you see anything with all those little puppy-shit dots of sunlight spinning around?

It was like being in a planetarium, or something.

"What's that?" Tom asked from behind her.

"What?" She didn't bother turning. Tom's appearances no longer seemed especially miraculous to her. "I don't see anything."

"To your left. Just a tiny bit." His finger, pointing over her shoulder.

"That's just an old stump," she said, but was it? Or was she just afraid to believe it was a -  "I don't believe so," said Number 36, and of course he had baseball player's eyes. "I think that's another post, girl."

Trisha worked her way to it (and it was work; the trees were maddeningly thick here, the bushes heavy, the going underfoot littered and treacherous), and yes, it was another post. This one had rusted nips of barbed wire running up the inside like sharp little bowties.

Trisha stood with one hand on its eroded top and looked deeper into the sun-dappled, deceptive woods. She had a dim memory of sitting in her room on a rainy day and work-ing in an activity book Mom had bought her. There was a picture, an incredibly busy picture, and in it you were sup-posed to find ten hidden objects: a pipe, a clown, a diamond ring, stuff like that.

Now she needed to find the path. Please God help me find the path, she thought, and closed her eyes. It was the God of Tom Gordon she prayed to, not her father's Subaudible. She wasn't in Malden now, nor in Sanford, and she needed a God that was really there, one you could point to when -  if - you got the save. Please God, please. Help me in the late innings.

She opened her eyes as wide as she could and looked without looking. Five seconds went by, fifteen seconds, thirty. And all at once it was there. She had no idea what, exactly, she was seeing - perhaps simply a vector where there were fewer trees and a little more clear light, perhaps only a suggestive pattern of shadows all pointing the same way - but she knew what it was: the last remains of a path.

I can stay on it as long as I don't think about it too much, Trisha told herself, beginning to walk. She came to another post, this one leaning at an acute angle; one more winter of frost and freeze, one more spring of thaw and it would fall and be swallowed in the next summer's grass. If I think about it too much or look too hard, I'll lose it.