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.
AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT
FIRST, 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.
STEPHEN KING
Longboat Key, Florida February 1, 1999
