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 gametrail-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 working in an activity book Mom had bought her. There was a picture, an incredibly busy picture, and in it you were supposed 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.
With that in mind, Trisha began following the few remaining posts of those planted by a farmer named Elias McCorkle in the year 1905; these marked the wood-drag trail he had made as a young man, before the drink got him and he lost his ambition. Trisha went with her eyes wide, never hesitating (to do so would give thought a chance to creep in and likely betray her). Sometimes there would be a stretch where there were no posts, but she did not stop to hunt through the heavy underbrush for their remains; she allowed the light, the shadow-patterns, and her own instinct to guide her. She walked in such steady fashion for the rest of the day, weaving through heavy clumps of trees and high bramble-chokes with her eyes always on the faint trace of the path. She went on for a good seven hours, and just when she was thinking she'd be sleeping again beneath her poncho, huddling there to keep the worst of the bugs at bay, she came to the edge of another clearing. Three posts, leaning drunkenly this way and that, marched to the middle of it. The remains of a second gate still hung from the last of these posts, mostly held up by the thick twining of grass around its lower two crossbars. Beyond it, a pair of fading ruts grown over with grass and daisies headed south, curving back into the forest again. It was an old woods road.
Trisha walked slowly past the gate and to where the road seemed to begin (or finish up; it all depended, she supposed, on which way you were pointing). She stood still a moment, then dropped to her knees and crawled along one of the ruts. As she did it she started crying again. She crawled across the old road's grassy crown, letting the tall grass tickle beneath her chin, and went up the other rut, still on her hands and knees. She crawled like a person who is blind, calling through her tears as she went.
'A road! It's a road! I found a road! Thank You, God! Thank You, God! Thank You for this road!'
Finally she stopped, slipped off her pack, and lay down in the rut. This was made by wheels, she thought, and laughed through her tears. After a little while she rolled over and looked at the sky.
Eighth Inning
A FEW MINUTES LATER, Trisha got up. She walked along the road another hour, until the dusk was thick around her. Off in the west, for the first time since the day she got lost, she could hear thunder rumbling. She would want to get in under the thickest clump of trees she could find, and if it rained hard enough she would still get wet. In her present mood Trisha hardly cared.
She stopped between the old wheelruts and was beginning to unshoulder her pack when she saw something ahead in the gloom. Something from the world of people; a thing with corners. She resettled her packstraps and crept toward the right side of the road, peering like a person who has grown nearsighted but is too vain to wear spectacles. In the west, thunder rumbled a little louder.
