The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (26 page)

“All of it,” he said, as if it didn't really matter. And then, again: “You did a good job.”

“I was stupid to get off the path like I did, wasn't I?”

He looked at her with slight surprise, then pushed up his cap with the hand that wasn't flipping the ringbolt back and forth. He smiled, and when he smiled he looked young. “What path?” he said.

“Trisha?” That was a woman's voice, coming from behind her. It sounded like her mother's voice, but what would Mom be doing out here in the woods?

“She probably doesn't hear you,” said another woman. This voice she didn't know.

Trisha turned. The woods were darkening, the shapes of the trees blurring together, becoming unreal, like a backdrop. Shapes moved there and she felt a momentary prick of fear.
The wasp-priest,
she thought.
It's the wasp-priest, he's coming back.

Then she realized she was dreaming and the fear passed. She turned back to Tom, but he was no longer there, only the splintered post with the ringbolt in the top . . . and his warmup jacket lying in the grass,
GORDON
printed across the back.

She glimpsed him on the far side of the clearing,
a white shape like a ghost. “Trisha, what's God's nature?” he called.

To come on in the bottom of the ninth,
she wanted to say, but no sound came out.

“Look,” her mother said. “Her lips are moving!”

“Trish?” That was Pete, sounding anxious and hopeful. “Trish, are you awake?”

She opened her eyes and the woods rolled away into some darkness which would never entirely leave her now—
What path?
She was in a hospital room. There was a thing up her nose and something else—a tube—running into her hand. Her chest felt very heavy, very full. Standing by her bed was her father, her mother, her brother. Behind them, looming large and white, was the nurse who had said
she probably doesn't hear you.

“Trisha,” her Mom said. She was crying. Trisha saw that Pete was also crying. “Trisha, honey. Oh honey.” She took Trisha's hand, the one without the thing in it.

Trisha tried to smile, but her mouth was too heavy to go up, even at the corners. She moved her eyes and saw her Red Sox hat on the seat of the chair by her bed. Smeared across the visor was a dim blackish-gray shadow. Once it had been Tom Gordon's signature.

Dad,
she tried to say. Nothing came out but a cough. It was only a little cough, but it hurt enough to make her wince.

“Don't try to talk, Patricia,” the nurse said, and Trisha could tell both by the nurse's tone and posture that she wanted the family out of here; in another moment she would make them leave. “You're a sick girl. You've got pneumonia. Both lungs.”

Her Mom seemed to hear none of this. She was sitting on the bed beside her now, stroking Trisha's wasted arm. She wasn't sobbing, but tears welled steadily from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Pete stood next to her, crying in the same silent fashion. Trisha was touched by his tears in a way she wasn't by her mother's, but she still thought Pete looked quite remarkably dorky. Beside him, beside the chair, stood her Dad.

This time Trisha didn't try to speak, only fixed her father with her eyes and mouthed it again, very carefully:
Dad!

He saw and bent forward. “What, honey? What is it?”

“I think that's enough,” the nurse said. “All her signs are up, and we don't want that—she's had all the excitement she needs for awhile. If you'll just help me out, now . . . help
her
out—”

Mom got to her feet. “We love you, Trish. Thank God you're safe. We'll be here, but you need to sleep now. Larry, let's—”

He took no notice of Quilla. He remained bent over Trisha, fingers lightly tented on the sheet. “What is it, Trish? What do you want?”

She moved her eyes to the chair, to his face, back to the chair. He looked puzzled—she was sure he wasn't going to get it—and then his face cleared. He smiled, turned, picked up the hat, and tried to put it on her head.

She raised the hand her mother had caressed—it weighed a ton, but she managed. Then she opened the fingers. Closed them. Opened them.

“Okay, hon. Okay, right.”

He put the cap in her hand, and when she closed her fingers on the visor, he kissed them. Trisha began to cry at that, as soundlessly as her mother and brother.

“All right,” the nurse said. “That's it. You'll really have to—”

Trisha looked at the nurse and shook her head.

“What?” the nurse asked. “What
now
? Goodness' sake!”

Trisha slowly transferred the cap to the hand with the IV needle in it. She looked at her father as she did it, making sure he was looking at her. She was tired. Soon she would sleep. But not yet. Not until she had said what she had to say.

He was watching, watching closely. Good.

She reached across her body with her right hand, never taking her eyes from her father, because he was the one who would know; if he understood, he would translate.

Trisha tapped the visor of her cap, then pointed her right index finger up at the ceiling.

The smile which lit his face from the eyes down was the sweetest, truest thing she had ever seen. If there was a path, it was there. Trisha closed her own eyes on his understanding and floated away into sleep.

Game over.

F
IRST
, I
TOOK
some liberties with the Red Sox's 1998 schedule . . . small ones, I assure you.

There is a real Tom Gordon, who does indeed pitch in the closer's role for the Boston Red Sox, but the Gordon in this story is fictional. The impressions fans have of people who have achieved some degree of celebrity are
always
fictional, as I can attest of my own personal experience. In one particular the real Gordon and Trisha's version of him are the same: both point skyward after the final out of a successful save has been recorded.

In 1998 Tom “Flash” Gordon recorded forty-four saves to lead the American League. Forty-three of them came consecutively, an American League record. Gordon's season came to an unfortunate conclusion, however; as Bork the Dork says, God may be a sports fan, but He doesn't seem to be a Red Sox fan. In Game Four of the Divisional Playoff against the Indians, Gordon surrendered three hits and two runs. The Red Sox lost, 2–1. It was Gordon's first blown save in five months, and it
ended the Red Sox's 1998 season. It did not, however, detract from Gordon's extraordinary accomplishments—without those forty-four saves, the Red Sox probably would have finished fourth in their division instead of winning ninety-one games and compiling the American League's second-best record in 1998. There's a saying, one that most closers like Tom Gordon would probably agree with: some days you eat the bear . . . and some days the bear eats you.

The things Trisha eats to stay alive can indeed be found in the woods of northern New England during the late spring season; had she not been a town girl, she might have found lots more supplies—more nuts, roots, even cattails. My friend Joe Floyd helped me with this part of it, and it was Joe who told me that fiddleheads grow right into early July in the marshes of the northern backwoods.

The woods themselves are real. If you should visit them on your vacation, bring a compass, bring good maps . . . and try to stay on the path.

S
TEPHEN
K
ING

Longboat Key, Florida

February 1, 1999

VIRGINIA SHERWOOD

S
TEPHEN
K
ING
is the author of more than thirty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. Among his most recent are
Bag of Bones, Storm of the Century
(a screenplay), and
The Green Mile
. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Originally published in hardcover in 1999

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dennis V. Drinkwater of Giant Glass for permission to reprint the Giant Glass commercial jingle. Lyrics from “Gotta Get Next to You (Jus' Slip Me a Taste)” by Richie “Records” Tozier, copyright © 1998 Soul Fine Music. Used by permission.

SCRIBNER, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
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Copyright © 1999 by Stephen King

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Scribner, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-04285-8

ISBN: 978-0-6848-3583-9 (eBook)

Pocket Books Export Edition Printing December 1999

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Front cover illustration by Lisa Litwack
Front cover photos by Tony Stone images