The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (13 page)

(insane people)

a total idiot, but for awhile she couldn't stop. When she was finally able to, she wrung her socks out, put them back on, and got up. She stood with her hand shielding her eyes, picked out a tree with a large lower branch broken off and dangling in the water, and made that her next goal.

“McFarland winds, McFarland pitches,” she said tiredly, and started off again. She was no longer thinking about berries; all she wanted now was to get out of here in one piece.

There is a point at which people who are cast upon their own resources stop living and begin merely surviving. The body, with all its freshest sources of energy exhausted, falls back on stored calories. Sharpness of thought begins to dull. Perception begins to both narrow and grow perversely bright. Things get wiggy around the edges. Trisha McFarland approached this borderline between life and survival as her second afternoon in the woods wore on.

That she was now moving due west did not trouble her much; she thought (probably correctly) that moving consistently in one direction was good,
the best she could do. She was hungry but for the most part not very aware of it; she was concentrating too fiercely on keeping to a straight line. If she started to wander off to the left or right, she might still be in this stinkhole when it started to get dark, and she couldn't stand that idea. Once she did stop to drink from her water bottle, and around four o'clock she drank the rest of her Surge almost without realizing it.

The dead trees began to look less and less like trees and more and more like gaunt sentinels standing with their gnarled feet in the still black water.
Be seeing faces in them again pretty soon,
she thought. While wading past one of these trees (there were no hummocks for almost thirty feet in any direction), she tripped over another submerged root or branch and this time sprawled full-length, splashing and gasping. She got a mouthful of gritty, silty water and spat it out with a cry. She could see her hands in the dark water. They looked yellowish and tallowy, like things long drowned. She pulled them out and held them up.

“I'm all right,” Trisha said rapidly, and she was almost aware of crossing some vital line; could almost feel herself going over into some other country where the language was different and the money was funny. Things were changing. But—

“I'm all right. Yeah, I'm all right.” And her pack was still dry. That was important because her
Walkman was inside, and now her Walkman was her only link to the world.

Filthy, now soaked all down her front, Trisha pushed onward. The new landmark was a dead tree that split halfway up and became a black letter
Y
against the declining sun. She moved toward it. She came to a hummock, glanced at it briefly, and waded on through the water instead. Why bother? Wading was quicker. Her revulsion at the cold decayed jelly on the bottom had faded. You could get used to anything, if you had to. She knew that now.

Not long after taking her first spill, Trisha began passing the time of day with Tom Gordon. At first this seemed strange—weird, even—but as the long hours of late afternoon went by, she lost her self-consciousness and chattered away quite naturally, telling him which landmark she was heading for next, explaining to him that a fire had probably caused this swamp, assuring him that they would be out soon, it couldn't go on like this forever. She was telling him that she hoped the Red Sox would score about twenty runs in the game tonight so he could take it easy out there in the bullpen when she suddenly broke off.

“Do you hear something?” she asked.

She didn't know about Tom, but
she
did: the steady whapping pulse of helicopter blades. Distant but unmistakable. Trisha was resting on a hummock
when she heard the sound. She jumped to her feet and turned in a complete circle, hand up and shading her eyes, squinting at the horizon. She saw nothing, and before long the sound faded.

“Spaghetti,” she said disconsolately. But at least they were looking. She slapped a mosquito on her neck and got moving again.

Ten or fifteen minutes later she was standing on the half-submerged root of a tree in her filthy, unraveling stockings and looking ahead, both wondering and puzzled. Beyond the straggling line of broken trees where she now was, the bog opened out into a flat, stagnant pond. Running across the center were more hummocks, but these were brown and seemed made of broken twigs and gnawed branches. Sitting on top of several and staring at her were half a dozen fat brown animals.

Slowly the lines on Trisha's forehead smoothed out as she realized what they were. She forgot all about being in the swamp, about being wet and muddy and tired, about being lost.

“Tom,” she whispered a little breathlessly. “Those're beavers! Beavers sitting on beaver-houses or beaver tepees or whatever you call them. They are, aren't they?”

She stood on tiptoes, holding the trunk of the tree for balance, staring and delighted. Beavers lounging on top of their stick-houses . . . and were they watching her? She thought they were, especially
the one in the middle. He was bigger than the others, and it seemed to Trisha that his black eyes never left her face. He appeared to have whiskers, and his fur was a luxuriant dark brown, shading almost to auburn around his plump haunches. Looking at him made her think of the illustrations in
The Wind in the Willows.

Finally Trisha stepped off the root and got moving again, her shadow trailing out long behind her. At once the Head Beaver (so she thought him) got up, backed away until his hindquarters were in the water, and slapped down smartly with his tail. It made a whacking sound that was incredibly loud in the still hot air. A moment later they were all diving off the stick-houses, going into the water in unison. It was like watching an aqua-diving team. Trisha gazed at them with her hands clasped against her breastbone and a big grin on her face. It was one of the most amazing things she had ever seen in her life, and she understood that she'd never be able to explain why, or how the Head Beaver had looked like a wise old schoolmaster or something.

“Tom, look!” She pointed, laughing. “Look at the water! There they go! Yeah, baby!”

Half a dozen
V
s formed in the murky water, moving away from the stick-houses in bow-waves. Then they were gone and Trisha started moving again. Her current landmark was an extra-large
hummock with dark green ferns growing all over it like wild hair. She approached it along a gradual arc instead of walking in a straight line. Seeing the beavers had been great—totally ghetto, in Pepsiese—but she had no desire to encounter one while it was swimming underwater. She had seen enough pictures to know that even little beavers had big teeth. For awhile Trisha uttered a shriek each time a submerged bit of grass or weed brushed against her, sure it was the Head Beaver (or one of his minions), wanting her out of the neighborhood.

Keeping the beaver-condos always on her right, she approached the extra-large hummock—and as she drew closer, a sense of hopeful excitement began to grow in her. Those dark green ferns weren't
just
ferns, she thought; she had been fiddleheading with her mother and grandmother three springs in a row, and she thought those were fiddleheads. Fiddleheads were over in Sanford—had been for at least a month—but her mother had told her they came into season quite a bit later inland, almost up until July in especially marshy places. It was hard to believe anything good could come out of this smelly patch of creation, but the closer Trisha got, the surer she became. And fiddleheads weren't just good; fiddleheads were
delicious.
Even Pete, who had never met a green vegetable he liked (except for frozen Birds Eye peas nuked in the microwave), ate fiddleheads.

She told herself not to expect too much, but five minutes after the possibility first occurred to her, Trisha was sure. That was no mere hummock up ahead; that was Fiddlehead Island! Except maybe, she thought as she drew closer, wading slowly through water that was now thigh-deep, Bug Island would be a better name. There were
lots
of bugs out here, of course, but she kept replenishing her mudpack and had pretty much forgotten about them until now. The air over Fiddlehead Island absolutely
shimmered
with them, and not just minges and noseeums. There were a gazillion flies as well. As she drew closer she could hear their somnolent, somehow shiny buzz.

She was still half a dozen steps away from the first bunches of plump furled greens when she stopped, hardly aware of her feet settling into the muddy mulch under the water. The greenery bordering this side of the tussock was shredded and torn; here and there soggy uprooted bunches of fiddleheads still floated on the black water. Further up she could see bright red splashes on the green.

“I don't like this,” she murmured, and when she next moved it was to her left instead of straight ahead. Fiddleheads were fine, but there was something dead or badly wounded up there. Maybe the beavers fought with each other for mates or something. She wasn't yet hungry enough to dare meeting a wounded beaver while gathering an early supper.
That would be a good way to lose a hand or an eye.

Halfway around Fiddlehead Island, Trisha stopped again. She didn't want to look, but at first she couldn't look away. “Hey, Tom,” she said in a high trembling voice. “Oh hey, bad.”

It was the severed head of a small deer. It had rolled down the slope of the tussock, leaving a trail of blood and matted fiddlehead ferns behind. It now lay upside down at the water's edge. Its eyes shimmered with nits. Regiments of flies had alit on the ragged stump of its neck. They hummed like a small motor.

“I see its tongue,” she said, and her voice was far away, down an echoing hallway. The gold suntrack on the water was suddenly too bright, and she felt herself swaying on the edge of a faint.

“No,” she whispered. “
No,
don't let me, I
can't.
”

This time her voice, although lower, seemed closer and more
there.
The light looked almost normal again. Thank God—the last thing she wanted was to faint while standing almost waist-deep in stagnant, mucky water. No fiddleheads, but no fainting, either. It almost balanced.

She pushed ahead, walking faster and being less careful about testing her footing before settling her weight. She moved in an exaggerated side-to-side motion, hips rotating, arms going back and forth across her body in short arcs. She guessed if she had a leotard on, she'd look like the guest of the day on
Workout with Wendy.
Say, everybody, today we're doing some brand-new exercises. I call this one “Getting away from the torn-off deer's head.” Pump those hips, flex those butts, work those shoulders!

She kept her eyes pointed forward, but there was no way not to hear the heavy, somehow self-satisfied drone of the flies. What had done it? Not a beaver, that was for sure. No beaver ever tore a deer's head off, no matter how sharp its teeth were.

You know what it was,
the cold voice told her.
It was the thing. The special thing. The one that's watching you right now.

“Nothing's watching me, that's crap,” she panted. She risked a glance over her shoulder and was glad to see Fiddlehead Island falling behind. Not quite fast enough, though. She glimpsed the head lying at the edge of the water one last time, the brown thing wearing a buzzing black necklace. “That's crap, isn't it, Tom?”

But Tom didn't answer. Tom
couldn't
answer. Tom was probably at Fenway Park by now, joking around with his fellow teammates and putting on his bright white home uniform. The Tom Gordon walking through the bog with her—this endless bog—was just a little homeopathic cure for loneliness. She was on her own.

Except you're not, sugar. You're not alone at all.

Trisha was terribly afraid the cold voice,
although not her friend, was telling the truth. That feeling of being watched had come back, and stronger than ever. She tried to dismiss it as nerves (anyone would have jumpy nerves after seeing that torn-off head) and had almost succeeded when she came to a tree which had been scored with half a dozen diagonal cuts through its old dead bark. It was as if something very big and in a very bad frame of mind had slashed at it on its way by.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Those are claw-marks.”

It's up ahead, Trisha. Up ahead waiting for you, claws and all.

Trisha could see more standing water, more hummocks, what looked like another green, rising hill (but she had been fooled that way before). She saw no beast . . . but of course she wouldn't, would she? The beast would do whatever beasts did while they were waiting to spring, there was a word for it but she was too tired and scared and generally miserable to think of it . . .

They lurk,
said the cold voice.
That's what they do, they lurk. Yeah, baby. Especially special ones like your new friend.

“Lurk,” Trisha croaked. “Yes, that's the word. Thank you.” And then she started forward again because it was too far to go back. Even if something really was waiting up ahead to kill her, it was too far to go back.

This time what looked like solid ground turned
out to
be
solid ground. At first Trisha wouldn't let herself believe it, but as she drew closer and still couldn't see water cutting through that mass of green bushes and scrubby trees, she began to hope. The water in which she was wading was shallower, too: only up to mid-shin instead of to her knees or thighs. And there were more fiddleheads growing on at least two of the hummocks. Not as many as there had been back on Fiddlehead Island, but she picked what there were and gobbled them down. They were sweet, with a faintly acrid aftertaste. It was a
green
taste, and Trisha thought it absolutely delicious. She would have picked more and stored them in her pack if there had been more, but there weren't. Instead of mourning this, she relished what she had with a child's single-mindedness. There was enough for now; she would worry about later later. She snacked her way toward solid ground, biting off the furled nubbins and then nibbling on the stalks. She was hardly aware of wading through the bog now; her revulsion had passed.