Top of the Ninth

TRISHA WALKED all that Sunday with the low, hazy sky beating down on her. In the morning the wet woods steamed, but by early afternoon they were dry again. The heat was immense. She was still glad of the road, but now she wished for shade, as well. She felt feverish again, and not just tired but outright exhausted. The thing was watching her, pacing her through the woods and watching her. The feeling didn't leave her this time because the thing didn't leave her. It was in the woods to her right. A couple of times she thought she actually saw it, but perhaps that was only the sun moving through the tree-branches. She did not want to see it; she had seen all that she wanted to in that single flash of lightning the night before. The fur of it, the enormous cocked ears of it, the hulk of it.

The eyes, too. Those black eyes, big and inhuman. Glassy but aware. Aware of her.

It won't leave until it's sure I can't get out, she thought wearily. It's not going to let that happen. It's not going to let me get away.

Shortly after noon she saw that the puddles in the road ruts were drying up and replenished her water supply while she could, straining the water through her hat and into the hood of her poncho, then pouring it into the plastic bottles. The water still had a hazy, dirty look, but such things no longer caused her much concern. She thought if woods-water was going to kill her, she probably would have died when it first made her sick. What did concern her was lack of food. She ate all but the last few nuts and berries after filling her bottles; by breakfast tomorrow she would be scrounging at the bottom of the pack, as she had scrounged for the last few potato chips. She might find more stuff alongside the road, but she wasn't hopeful.

The road went on and on, sometimes fading a little and sometimes clarifying for a few hundred yards. For awhile bushes grew up on the crown between the ruts. Trisha thought they were blackberry bushes-they looked like the ones from which she and her Mom had picked hatfuls of fresh sweet berries in the Sanford toy woods, but it was a month too early for blackberries. She also saw mushrooms, but did not trust any enough to eat them. They weren't in her mother's field of knowledge, nor had they studied them in school. In school they had learned about nuts and not taking rides from strangers (because some strangers were nuts), but not mushrooms. The one thing she was sure of was that you would die-and horribly-if you ate the wrong kind. And skipping them was really no big sacrifice. She now had little appetite, and her throat was sore.

Around four in the afternoon she stumbled over a log, fell on her side, tried to get up, and found she couldn't. Her legs were trembling and felt as weak as water. She took off her pack (struggling with it for an alarming length of time), and finally got free of it. She ate all but the last two or three beechnuts, almost gagging up the last one she attempted. She fought for it and won, stretching her neck like a baby bird and double-gulping. She tamped it down (at least for the time being) with a swig of warm, gritty water.

"Red Sox time," she muttered, and dug out her Walkman. She doubted if she could pick them up, but it wouldn't hurt to try; it would be one o'clock or so on the West Coast, a sure day game, and just starting.

There was nothing at all on the FM band, not even a faint whisper of music. On the AM she found a man babbling rapidly away in French (he chuckled as he did so, which was disquieting), and then, down near 1600, at the very foot of the dial, a miracle: faint but audible, the voice of Joe Castiglione.

'All right, Valentin leads away from second," he said. "The three-one pitch . . . and Garciaparra hits a long high drive to deep center field! It's hack ... it's GONE! Red Sox lead, two to nothing!"

"Way to go, Nomar, you the man," Trisha said in a hoarse, croaky voice she hardly recognized as her own, and pumped her fist weakly at the sky. O'Leary struck out and the inning ended. "Who do you call when your WINDshield's BUSted?" sang voices from a world far away, one where there were paths everywhere and all gods worked behind the scenes.

" 1-800," Trisha began. "54-"

She trailed off before she could finish. As her doze deepened she slid further and further to her right, coughing from time to time. The coughs had a deep, phlegmy sound. During the fifth inning, something came to the edge of the woods and looked at her. Flies and noseeums made a cloud around its rudiment of a face. In the specious brilliance of its eyes was a complete history of nothing. It stood there for a long time. At last it pointed at her with one razor-claw hand-she is mine, she is my property - and backed into the woods again.