The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Stephen King

(5/18/23-5/18/23)

JN:     

        (You’ll see why later, but each chapter is titled with an inning, beginning from 1st inning to 2nd inning, etc.) On another outing with older brother Pete and mom Quilla, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland couldn’t take their bickering anymore and stopped in the woods to pee. Since her parents divorced and Quilla took custody, Pete and Quilla argued constantly. The move took him from a school where he fit in and brought him to one where he had few friends and was frequently bullied. To force fun upon them, Quilla took them on outings to various places, and Quilla and Pete always started their bickering in the car ride. To ignore them, Trisha imagined conversations between her and Tom Gordon, her and her father’s favorite baseball player from the Boston Red Socks. He was known for pitching when the Sox were up by a couple of runs and needed to close. Once they got to the Appalachian Trail, Trisha found she could only avoid them by physically avoiding them, so she did until she got lost. 
        At first, she gathered her bearings and walked in the direction she thought was right, only to find out a mile later that she had chosen wrong. Nonetheless, she stayed calm, but a close encounter with a snake and the constant bugs started to get on her nerves. Finally, she tried screaming aloud, and with the screaming came the crying. When she was all cried out, she gathered herself again and began searching for high ground, walking in whatever direction she thought was best. She almost fell off a cliff, imagined herself dying, and cried some more as she clung to a tree (a pretty appropriate response for a nine-year-old). As she looked around, the mosquitos continued to cloud her, and in her alarmed state, Trisha fainted. 
          Sometime later, Trisha awoke and gathered her bearings once more. With some sprinkles here and there, Trisha thought about survival and figured she should find a creek to lead her out. She found one at the bottom of a valley and began working her way down it when she slipped, tumbling a long way down. An old log stopped her fall, a log that had a wasp nest infested in it. The wasps attacked Trisha to add insult to injury, and she ran away toward the stream until they left her alone. Very hurt but still able to walk, she followed the stream she worked so hard to reach and turned on her walkman to discover that a search party was actively searching for her. She also discovered that the Sox were playing and listened intently as Tom Gordon pitched the final inning. She listened for all she was worth, believing that if Tom Gordon saved the game with the Sox up one, then the search party would also save her. Like before, the cool, calm, and collected Gordon pitched riskily but true, striking out the last batter and winning the game. Tears came once more but this time out of relief rather than fear. With that, nighttime was close enough, and sleep found Trisha despite being still surrounded by hordes of bugs. 
          The bugs eventually woke her up in the dead of night, and Trisha immediately ran to apply mud to her entire body to soothe the itching. She then discovered the fear that came from being in the woods alone at night, and every single thing in the forest became a threat. One thing in particular, she was certain, was a creature deciding whether to kill her or not. Imagining Tom Gordon there guiding her, she waited and waited. Eventually, the creature could not be heard, and during her imaginary conversation with Tom Gordon, she once again fell asleep. 
          The next morning, she followed the stream until it led to a bog and then a swamp. From there, things went from bad to worse as she waded through the mud for the next couple of hours. She did find some edible plants as well as freshwater, but the water upset her stomach and left her vomiting and diarrheal. She heard a helicopter or two in the distance but neither were close enough to find her. Night came, Trisha listened to the Sox lose, and then fell asleep while something watched her from afar. 
          The next morning, with the search party narrowing after reports came of Trisha being kidnapped, Trisha took another big gulp of water and continued following the stream. Her stomach hurt from hunger, but she managed to find edible berries and nuts. Never having tasted anything as good, she gorged until she couldn’t and then walked some more. She ran into a hallucination of three cloaked figures, two white and one black. The one with a black hood had a face made of wasps and assured her that the creature in the forest was watching her. Trisha did her best to convince herself that it was indeed just a hallucination after the figures disappeared although her hope slightly dwindled when she saw a deer’s guts sprawling around. Despite her fears, the night still came. She turned on the radio, but no baseball played tonight so she slept under the stars without entertainment. The following day was much the same. She managed to catch a fish and eat it raw, and other than that she didn’t find any civilization or sign that she would be saved. 
          Days passed after she decided to go north toward Canada. She spent these days deliriously walking, talking constantly to hallucinations, which much of the time was Tom Gordon. She had little knowledge of what was real or fake, all she knew was that she had to keep going. And in the end, it paid off. She came to a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a post (a sign of humans). With this post came another post and another post, and suddenly there was a path. Sick, exhausted, and delirious, she followed this path until it turned into a road. Once she reached it, she fell down in tears. She kept along the road until she came upon an old abandoned truck. As night came, she decided not to sleep in it since it had too much dust that she would be breathing in. She slept for a couple of hours outside until a storm woke her up. Lightning flashed and in the distance, Trisha saw the creature that she had sensed ever since the beginning, a monstrous creature with horns. She fled to the truck, where fortunately sleep found her once more. In the morning, she was fine and assured herself she hallucinated the creature until she discovered a distinct circle around the entire truck. 
          It was too late for fear to claim her, however, so she continued walking down that road for another day, and the creature didn’t bother her throughout the night. The walkman ran out of batteries, and her only source of hearing of the world was gone, but she kept going the next day too. At some point during the day, she heard a rumble, the sound of a truck. Eager to start into a full sprint but smart enough not to, she slowly edged to the intersecting road until she came upon the dirt path that a truck had been on an hour ago and turned on it. She walked some more until she had another rumble in the distance. At the same time, she heard the sound of leaves crunching behind her. The creature had arrived.
          Turning around, she saw that this creature was a large black bear. In her mind, however, this was the creature infested with wasps, the creature that wanted her dead. In her mind, the creature beckoned her to run to the sound so that it could rip her to shreds. Instead, she thought about Tom Gordon, about how calm he was when all of the pressure was on him. So Trisha stood her ground. When the black bear came closer, she stood her ground. When the black bear went on its hind legs, towering over her, she stood her ground. Then she took her walkman as if she were going to pitch it, and right as she was about to throw it, the bear stumbled backward. Then a shot ran out as the rumble had finally arrived in the shape of a hunter. The bear decided its meal to not be worth the risk, and the hunter grabbed Trisha just as she collapsed. 
          Sometime later, she awoke in the hospital surrounded by her parents and Pete. She suffered from pneumonia in both lungs and would likely require extensive care for quite some time. She looked at her parents and brother and tried to communicate with them that she did it; she survived. While Pete and Quilla didn’t understand, Trisha felt her dad understood that she had done it: she did what Tom Gordon did (and she did much, much more. Have a great day! Bears are scary, so stay safe and remember: if it's brown, stay down. If it's black, fight back. If it's white, goodnight)