out of the shelter, went to the stream, and drank again. It was cold and delicious, tasting not like poison but like the nectar of the gods. She crawled back to her shelter, alternately hot and cold, sweaty and shivery, and as she lay down again she thought, I'll probably be dead by morning. Dead or so sick I'll wish I was dead.
The Red Sox, now down by a score of eight to five, loaded the bases with just one out in the bottom of the ninth. Nomar Garciaparra hit a deep drive to center field. If it had gone out, the Sox would have won the game by a score of nine to eight. Instead, Bernie Williams made a leaping grab at the bullpen wall and snared Garciaparra's bid. One run scored on the sacrifice fly, but that was all. O'Leary came up and struck out against Mariano Rivera, completing an undistinguished night and ending the game. Trisha pushed the power button on her Walkman, saving the batteries. Then she began to cry, weakly and helplessly, with her head in her crossed arms. She was sick to her stomach and queasy in her bowels; the Sox had lost; Tom Gordon never even got in the stupid game. Life was the puppy-shits. She was still crying when she fell asleep.
At the Maine state police barracks in Castle Rock, a short telephone call came in just as Trisha was going against her better judgment and drinking from the stream for the second time. The caller gave his message to the operator and to the tape-recorder which preserved all incoming calls.
Call commences 2146 Hours
Caller: The girl you're looking for was snatched off the trail by Francis Raymond Mazzerole, that's M as in microscope.
He's thirty-six years old, wears glasses, has short hair dyed blond. Got that?
Operator: Sir, can I ask you to-
Caller: Shut up, shut up, listen. Mazzerole is driving a blue Ford van, what I think is called an Econoline. He is in Connecticut by now at least. He is a bad scumbag. Run his record and you'll see. He'll fuck her a few days if she doesn't give him any trouble, you could have a few days, but then he'll kill her. He's done it before.
Operator: Sir, do you have a license number
Caller: I gave you his name and what he's driving. I gave you all you need. He's done this before.
Operator: Sir
Caller: I hope you kill him.
Call ends 2148 Hours
Traceback put the origin of the call at a pay telephone in Old Orchard Beach. No help there.
Around two o'clock the next morning-three hours after police in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey had begun looking for a blue Ford van driven by a man with short blond hair, wearing eyeglasses-Trisha awoke with more nausea and cramps. She knocked her shelter over backing out of it, fumbled her jeans and underwear down, and voided what seemed like a huge quantity of weak acid. It hurt her down there, hurt with a deep itching sting that felt like the worst case of prickly heat she'd ever had.
When that part was over she crawled back to Trisha's Pukin' Place and grabbed hold of the same tree. Her skin was hot, her hair was matted with sweat; she was also shaking all over and her teeth were chattering.
I can't vomit any more. Please God, I can't vomit any more. It'll kill me if I go on vomiting.
This was when she actually saw Tom Gordon for the first time. He was standing in the woods about fifty feet away, his white uniform seeming almost to burn in the moonlight which fell through the trees. He was wearing his glove. His right hand was behind his back and Trisha knew there was a baseball in it. He would be cupping it against his palm and twirling it in his long fingers, feeling the seams go by, stopping only when they were exactly where he wanted them and the grip was right.
'Tom,' she whispered. 'You never got a chance tonight, did you ?'
Tom took no notice. He was looking in for the sign. That stillness spun out from his shoulders, enveloping him. He stood there in the moonlight, as clear as the cuts on her arms, as real as the nausea in her throat and belly, all those nasty butterflutters. He was stillness waiting for the sign. Not perfect stillness, there was that hand behind his back turning the ball and turning the ball, searching for the best grip, but all stillness where you could see; yeah, baby, stillness waiting for the sign. Trisha wondered if she could do that-just let the shakes run off her like water off a duck's back and be still and conceal the churning inside her.
She held onto the tree and tried. It didn't happen all at once (good things never did, her Dad said), but it did happen: quiet inside, blessed stillness. She stayed that way for a long time. Did the batter want to step out because he thought she was taking too long between pitches? Fine. It was nothing to her, one way or the other. She was only stillness, stillness waiting for the right sign and the right grip on the ball. Stillness came from the shoulders, it spun out from there, it cooled you and focused you.
The shivers eased, then stopped entirely. At some point she realized that her stomach had also settled. Her bowels were still crampy, but not as bad now. The moon was down. Tom Gordon was gone. Of course he had never really been there at all, she knew that, but
'He sure looked real that time,' she croaked. 'Real as real. Wow.'
She got up and walked slowly back to the tree where her shelter had been. Although she wanted nothing except to huddle on the pine needles and go to sleep, she set up the fans of branches again, then crawled in behind them. Five minutes later she was dead to the world. As she slept, something came and watched her. It watched for a long time. It was not until light began to line the horizon in the east that it went away ... and it did not go far.
Sixth Inning
WHEN TRISHA woke up, the birds were singing confidently. The light was strong and bright, the way it looked at midmorning. She might have slept even longer, but hunger wouldn't allow it. She roared with a vast emptiness from the top of her throat all the way down to her knees. And in the very middle it hurt, actually hurt. It was as if she were being pinched somewhere inside. The feeling frightened her. She had been hungry before, but never hungry enough for it to hurt this way.
