AS TWILIGHT thickened toward true dark, Trisha came to a rocky open place that looked out over a small, blue-shadowed valley. She surveyed this valley eagerly, hoping to see lights, but there were none. A loon cried from some-where and a crow called crossly back. That was all.
She looked around and saw several low rock outcrops with drifts of pine needles lying between them like hammocks.
Trisha put her pack down at the head of one of these, went to the nearest stand of pine, and broke off enough boughs to make a mattress. It would hardly be a Serta Perfect Sleeper, but she thought it would do. The coming dark had brought on now-familiar feelings of loneliness and sorrowful home-sickness, but the worst of her terror was gone. Her sense of being watched had slipped away. If there really was a thing in the woods, it had gone off and left her to herself again.
Trisha went back to the stream, knelt, drank. She had had little stomach-cramps off and on all day, but she thought her body was adapting to the water, nevertheless. "No problem with the nuts and berries, either," she said, then smiled.
"Except for a few bad dreams and such."
151. She went back to her pack and her makeshift bed, got her Walkman, and settled the earbuds into place. A breeze puffed by her, cold enough to chill her sweaty skin and make her shiver. Trisha dug out the ruins of her poncho and fluffed the dirty blue plastic over her like a blanket. Not much in the way of warmth, but (this was one of Mom's) it's the thought that counts.
She pushed the power button on the Walkman, but although she hadn't changed the tuner's setting, tonight she got nothing but wavers of faint static. She had lost WCAS.
Trisha worked her way across the FM dial. She got faint classical music up around 95 and a Bible-thumper yelling about salvation at 99. Trisha was very interested in salva-tion, but not the kind the guy on the radio was talking about; the only help from the Lord she wanted right now was a helicopter filled with friendly waving people. She tuned further, got Celine Dion loud and clear at 104, hesi-tated, then kept on rolling the tuner. She wanted the Red Sox tonight - Joe and Troop, not Celine singing about how her heart would go on and on.
No baseball on the FM, in fact nothing else at all. Trisha switched to the AM band and tuned up toward 850, which was WEEI in Boston. 'EEI was the Red Sox flagship station.
She didn't expect perfect reception or anything, but she was hopeful; you could pick up a lot of AM at night, and 'EEI had a strong signal. It would probably waver in and out, but she could put up with that. She didn't have a lot else to do tonight, no hot dates or anything.
'EEI's reception was good - clear as a bell, in fact - but Joe and Troop weren't on. In their place was one of the guys her Dad called "talk-show idiots." This one was a sports talk-152 show idiot. Could it be raining in Boston? Game canceled, empty seats, tarp on the field? Trisha looked doubtfully up at her piece of the sky, where the first stars were now shining like sequins on dark blue velvet. There would be a zillion of them before long; she couldn't see so much as a single cloud. Of course she was a hundred and fifty miles from Boston, maybe more, but - The talk-show idiot was on the line with Walt from Fram-ingham.
Walt was on his car phone. When the talk-show idiot asked where he was now, Walt from Framingham said, "Somewhere in Danvers, Mike," pronouncing the town's name as Massachusetts people all did - Danvizz, making it sound not like a town but something you'd drink to settle an upset tummy. Lost in the woods? Been drinking straight from the stream and shitting your brains out as a result? A tablespoon of Danvizz and you'll feel better fast!
Walt from Framingham wanted to know why Tom Gor-don always pointed to the sky when he got a save ("You know, Mike, that pointin thing" was how Walt put it), and Mike the talk-show sports idiot explained it was Number 36's way of thanking God.
"He ought to point to Joe Kerrigan instead," Walt from Framingham said. "It was Kerrigan's idea to turn him into a closer. As a starter he was for the birds, you know?"
"Maybe God gave Kerrigan the idea, did you ever think of that, Walt?" the talk-show idiot asked. "Joe Kerrigan being the Red Sox pitching coach, for those of you who might not know."
"I do know, numbwit," Trisha murmured impatiently.
"We're mostly talking Sox tonight while the Sox enjoy a rare night off," said Mike the talk-show idiot. "They open a three-game set with Oakland tomorrow - yes, West Coast here we come and you'll hear all the action here on WEEI - but today is an open date."
An open date, that explained it. Trisha felt an absurdly huge disappointment weigh her down, and more tears (in Danvizz you called them tizz) began to form in her eyes. She cried so easily now, now she cried over anything. But she had been looking forward to the game, dammit; hadn't known how much she needed the voices of Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano until she found out she wouldn't be hearing them.
"We've got some open lines," the talk-show idiot said, "let's fill em up. Anybody out there think Mo Vaughn ought to stop acting like a kid and just sign on the dotted line? How much Mo' money does this guy need, anyway?