The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (9 page)

Paul O'Neill popped up. One out. Bernie Williams came up. “Always a dangerous hitter,” Joe Castiglione remarked, and Williams immediately ripped a single to center, sending Jeter to third.

“
Why
did you say that, Joe?” Trisha moaned. “Oh cripes, why did you have to
say
that?”

Runners on first and third, only one out. The Fenway crowd cheering, hoping. Trisha could imagine them leaning forward in their seats.

“Come on, Tom, come
on,
Tom,” she whispered. The cloud of minges and noseeums were still all around her, but she no longer noticed. A feeling of despair touched her heart, cool and strong—it was like that hateful voice she had discovered in the middle of her head. The Yankees were too good. A base hit would tie it, a long ball would put it out of reach, and the awful,
awful
Tino Martinez was up, with the most dangerous hitter of all right behind him; the Straw Man would now be down on one knee in the on-deck circle, swinging a bat and watching.

Gordon worked the count on Martinez to two and two, then threw his curveball. “
Struck him out!
” Joe Castiglione shouted. It was as if he couldn't believe it. “Aw, man, that was a beauty! Martinez must have missed it by a foot!”

“
Two
feet,” Troop added helpfully.

“So it all comes to this,” Joe said, and behind his voice Trisha could hear the volume of the other
voices, the fan voices, begin to rise. The rhythmic clapping started. The Fenway Faithful were getting to their feet like a church congregation about to sing a hymn. “Two on, two out, Red Sox clinging to a one-run lead, Tom Gordon on the mound, and—”

“Don't you say it,” Trisha whispered, her hands still pressing against the sides of her mouth, “don't you
dare
say it!”

But he did. “And the always dangerous Darryl Strawberry coming to the plate.”

That was it; game over; great Satan Joe Castiglione had opened his mouth and jinxed it. Why couldn't he just have given Strawberry's
name
? Why did he have to start in with that “always dangerous” horsepucky when any fool knew that only
made
them dangerous?

“All right, everybody, fasten your seatbelts,” Joe said. “Strawberry cocks the bat. Jeter's dancing around third, trying to draw a throw or at least some attention from Gordon. He gets neither. Gordon looks in. Varitek flashes the sign. To the set. Gordon throws . . . 
Strawberry swings and misses,
strike one. Strawberry shakes his head as if he's disgusted . . .”

“Shouldn't be disgusted, that was a pretty good pitch,” Troop remarked, and Trisha, sitting in the dark bugblown armpit of nowhere, thought,
Shut up, Troop, just shut up for a minute.

“Straw steps out . . . taps his cleats . . . now he's back in. Gordon with the look to Williams on first . . . to the set . . . he pitches.
Out
side and low.”

Trisha moaned. The tips of her fingers were now so deeply pressed into her cheeks that her lips were pulled up in a strange distraught smile. Her heart was hammering in her chest.

“Here we go again,” Joe said. “Gordon's ready. He fires, Strawberry swings,
and it's a long high drive to right field, if it stays fair it's gone, but it's drifting . . . it's drifting . . . driffffting . . .
”

Trisha waited, breath caught.

“Foul,” Joe said at last, and she began to breathe again. “But that was
toooo
close. Strawberry just missed a three-run homer. It went on the wrong side of the Pesky Pole by no more than six or eight feet.”

“I'd say four feet,” Troop added helpfully.

“I'd say you've got
stinky
feet,” Trisha whispered. “Come on, Tom, come on,
please.
” But he wouldn't; she knew that now for sure. Just this close and no closer.

Still, she could see him. Not all tall and ginky-looking like Randy Johnson, not all short and tubby-looking like Rich Garces. Medium height, trim . . . and handsome.
Very
handsome, especially with his cap on, shading his eyes . . . except her father said almost all ballplayers were handsome. “It comes with the genes,” he told her, then added:
“Of course a lot of them have nothing upstairs, so it all balances out.” But Tom Gordon's looks weren't the thing. It was the stillness before he pitched which had first caught her eye and her admiration. He didn't stalk around the mound like some of them did, or bend to fiddle with his shoes, or pick up the rosin bag and then toss it back down in a little flump of white dust. No, Number 36 simply waited for the batter to finish all of
his
fiddle-de-diddling. He was so still in his bright white uniform as he waited for the batter to be ready. And then, of course, there was the thing he did whenever he succeeded in getting the save. That thing as he left the mound. She loved that.

“Gordon winds and fires . . . and it's in the dirt! Varitek blocked it with his body and that saved a run. The
tying
run.”

“Stone the crows!” Troop said.

Joe didn't even try to dignify that one. “Gordon takes a deep breath out on the mound. Strawberry stands in. Gordon wheels . . . deals . . . 
high.
”

A storm of booing rose in Trisha's ears like an ill wind.

“Thirty thousand or so umps in the stands didn't agree with that one, Joe,” Troop remarked.

“True, but Larry Barnett behind the plate's got the final say and Barnett said it was high. The count runs full to Darryl Strawberry. Three and two.”

In the background the rhythmic clapping of the fans swelled. Their voices filled the air, filled her head. She knocked on the wood of the tree-trunk without realizing she was doing it.

“The crowd's on its feet,” Joe Castiglione said, “all thirty thousand of them, because no one has left the joint tonight.”

“Maybe one or two,” Troop said. Trisha took no notice. Neither did Joe.

“Gordon to the belt.”

Yes, she could see him at the belt, hands together now, no longer facing home plate directly but looking in over his left shoulder.

“Gordon into the motion.”

She could see this, too: the left foot coming back toward the planting right foot as the hands—one wearing the glove, one holding the ball—rose to the sternum; she could even see Bernie Williams, off with the pitch, streaking for second, but Tom Gordon took no notice and even in motion his essential stillness remained, his eyes on Jason Varitek's mitt, hung behind the plate low and toward the outside corner.

“Gordon delivers
the three . . . two . . . pitch . . . AND—
”

The crowd told her, the sudden joyous thunder of the crowd.

“
Strike three called!
” Joe was nearly screaming. “
Oh my goodness, he threw the curve on three and two and froze Strawberry! The Red Sox win five to four over
the Yankees and Tom Gordon gets his eighteenth save!
” His voice dropped into a more normal register. “Gordon's teammates head for the mound with Mo Vaughn pumping his fist in the air and leading the charge, but before Vaughn gets there, it's Gordon with the quick gesture, the one the fans have gotten to know very well in just the short time he's been the Sox closer.”

Trisha burst into tears. She pushed the power button on the Walkman and then just sat there on the damp ground with her back against the tree-trunk and her legs spread and the blue poncho hanging between them in its hula-skirt tatters. She cried harder than she had since first realizing for sure that she was lost, but this time she cried in relief. She was lost but would be found. She was sure of it. Tom Gordon had gotten the save and so would she.

Still crying, she took off the poncho, spread it on the ground as far under the fallen tree as she thought she could wriggle, and then eased to her left until she was on the plastic. She did this with very little awareness. Most of her was still at Fenway Park, seeing the umpire ringing Strawberry up, seeing Mo Vaughn starting for the mound to congratulate Tom Gordon; she could see Nomar Garciaparra trotting in from short, John Valentin from third, and Mark Lemke from second to do the same. But before they got to him, Gordon did what
he always did when he secured the save: pointed at the sky. Just one quick point of the finger.

Trisha tucked her Walkman back into her pack, but before she put her head down on her outstretched arm she pointed briefly up, the way Gordon did. And why not?
Something
had brought her through the day, after all, horrible as it had been. And when you pointed, the something felt like God. You couldn't point to dumb luck or the Subaudible, after all.

Doing this made her feel better and worse—better because it felt more like praying than actual words would have done, worse because it made her feel really lonely for the first time that day; pointing like Tom Gordon made her feel lost in some heretofore unsuspected fashion. The voices which had poured out of the Walkman's earbuds and filled her head seemed dreamlike now, the voices of ghosts. She shivered at that, not wanting to think about ghosts out here, not in the woods, not cowering under a fallen tree in the dark. She missed her mother. Even more, she wanted her father. Her father would be able to get her out of here, would take her by the hand and lead her out of here. And if she got tired of walking he would carry her. He had big muscles. When she and Pete stayed weekends with him, he would still pick her up at the end of Saturday night and carry her to her little bedroom in his arms. He did that even though she
was nine (and big for her age). It was her favorite part of their weekends in Malden.

Trisha discovered, with a miserable species of wonder, that she even missed her boogery, endlessly complaining brother.

Weeping and hitching in big watery gusts of air, Trisha fell asleep. The bugs circled around her in the dark, moving closer and closer. Finally they began to light on the exposed patches of her skin, feasting on her blood and sweat.

A puff of air moved through the woods, ruffling the leaves, shaking the last of the rainwater from them. After a second or two the air fell still. Then it was not still; in the dripping quiet came the sound of twigs breaking. That stopped and there was a pause followed by a flurry of moving branches and a rough rasping sound. A crow called once, in alarm. There was a pause and then the sounds began again, moving closer to where Trisha slept with her head on her arm.

T
HEY WERE
behind Dad's little house in Malden, just the two of them, sitting in lawn chairs that were a little too rusty, looking out over grass that was a little too long. The lawn-dwarves seemed to peer at her, smiling secret, unpleasant smiles from deep in their clumps of weeds. She was crying because Dad was being mean to her. He was never mean to her, he always hugged her and kissed the top of her head and called her sugar, but now he was, he was being mean, all because she didn't want to open the cellar bulkhead under the kitchen window and go down four steps and get him a can of beer from the case he kept down there where it was cool. She was so upset that her face must have broken out, because it was all itchy. Her arms, too.

“Baby bunting, Daddy's gone a-hunting,” he said, leaning toward her, and she could smell his breath. He didn't need another beer, he was drunk already, the air coming out of him smelled like yeast and dead mice. “Why do you want to be such a little chickenguts? You don't have a single
drop
of icewater in your veins.”

Still crying, but determined to show him she did
so
have icewater in her veins—a little, anyway—she got out of the rusty lawn chair and went over to the even rustier bulkhead door. Oh, she just itched
all over,
and she didn't want to open that door because there was something awful on the other side—even the lawn-dwarves knew, you only had to look at their sly smiles to get that. She reached for the handle, though; she grasped it as behind her Dad jeered in that horrible stranger's voice to go
on,
go
on,
baby bunting, go on,
sugar,
go on,
toots,
go on and
do
it.

She pulled the door up and the stairs leading down to the cellar were gone. The stairwell itself was gone. Where it had been was a monstrous bulging wasps' nest. Hundreds of wasps were flying out of it through a black hole like the eye of a man who has died surprised, and no, it wasn't hundreds but
thousands,
plump ungainly poison factories flying straight at her. There was no time to get away, they would all sting her at once and she would die with them crawling on her skin, crawling into her
eyes,
crawling into her
mouth,
pumping her tongue full of poison on their way down her
throat
—