Steinbeck’s Ghost

by Lewis Buzbee

  The mailing committee was scheduled to work in the library’s A/V room, a small office off the back corner of the main collection. One side of the room was stuffed with DVD players, CD players, reel- to- reel tape decks, and a bulky, old- fashioned 16mm film projector. The walls were crowded with shelves of DVDs, CDs, even record albums, the big black vinyl discs his parents used to listen to.

  Miss Babb was sitting at a small table, surrounded by boxes of envelopes, stacks of bright green flyers, pages of mailing labels. The other chairs were empty.

  “Oh, Travis,” Miss Babb said, looking up and forcing a smile. “Bad news. We’ve canceled the meeting. I tried calling, but you’d left already. I’m sorry.”

  The other four members of the mailing committee had called earlier that day. Everyone had a good “excuse.” Miss Babb said the word excuse as if it tasted sour.

  “You might as well get on home,” she told him. “We’ll reschedule, work up some new flyers.”

  “But I’m here. Can’t we just do it anyway? I mean, we have to, the big council meeting is right around the corner.”

  “That’s sweet, Travis. But we’ll never get through all these on our own. I think we’ll be okay without these fly-ers. Maybe I’m just too worked up about it all.”

  “No,” he said. “We have to do it. I know we can. Every little bit, right? It might take all night, but we can do it.” There was a huge difference between Travis’s normal life—school and home and all that—and his new, improved, and much weirder life—the library and everything around it. In this new, improved, and much weirder life, he had endless energy to work on anything. At home, his mom had to beg to get him to load the dishwasher or take out the trash. But at the library, he couldn’t wait to get started.

  “I can’t ask you to stay that late.”

  “You can ask my parents.”

  Travis called his mom at work. He always started with his mom. She was the stricter of his parents, and it sometimes seemed easiest going straight to the heart of it. He hated getting permission for something from his father, only to have his mom take it back.

  Miss Babb explained everything, promised to give Travis a ride home, ten o’clock at the very latest. Travis swore he’d done his homework already. And this was true, he’d done it at lunch, but he would have lied if he hadn’t. The library could not wait. Homework was important, sure. But the library, that needed to be taken care of now.

  “Okay, then,” Miss Babb said. “Dig in.”

  She thumbed one flyer from the stack, folded it into three parts, slid it into an envelope, licked the flap and sealed it, then peeled off a mailing label and attached it.

  Travis stood over her.

  “I bet we can do them all, every single one,” he said. “I’ve got a system.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said. “What do you bet?”

  “Take- out sushi for dinner. You pay.”

  “Sushi?” she said, her head cocked to one side.

  “Heck, yes. I’ve been eating sushi since I was born. I mean, we’re only a few miles from the ocean. Please tell me you like sushi.”

  Miss Babb looked from the stacks of envelopes and flyers to Travis, back again.

  “You’re on,” she said.

  Travis showed her what to do. One of them would take the envelopes out of the boxes, and stack them so that the flaps were open and tiered like escalator steps. The other would take small stacks of flyers, five or ten, and fold them into threes, but not too creased. The top flyer would slip off easily enough, then it could be zipped into the top envelope. Wet paper towels from the rest room were faster for sealing the envelopes, and no one ended up with the dreaded “mint- glue mouth.” When a stack of envelopes was done, Travis would flat-ten it, putting in the final creases, and when all of the envelopes were done, they would add the mailing labels.

  Travis set up two stations to run his system.

  “Piece of cake,” Miss Babb said. She was obviously delighted, relieved.

  “Piece of sushi, you mean.”

  “I give. You win. Sushi it is.”

  The flyers flew and the envelopes enveloped, and Travis and Miss Babb talked about, well, about everything—the library and the weather and new movies and old movies. Pretty soon they were deep into the mailing.

  While they ate—California rolls with crab and avocado, and unagi nigiri, Travis’s favorite, broiled eel on a piece of sticky rice and wrapped with a seaweed belt—Travis spelled out his idea for the benefit reading.

  “Funny you should mention it,” Miss Babb said. “I was just thinking the same thing today. Now I know it’s a good idea. If you had it, too, it’s gotta be good.”

  He showed her the list of writers he’d drawn up. There were twenty- three so far, all of whom lived between Salinas and San Francisco. He figured at least four or five of them would come to their aid.

  “We may think alike,” she said. “But you actually do the work. This is great, Travis.”

  “The only one I couldn’t find,” he said, munching his last piece of unagi, “is Ernest Oster. I’d love to invite him, he’d be perfect. I mean his book is all about Steinbeck and everything, and he’d be great, I just know it. But I can’t find anything.”

  “Yes, that is a shame.”

  The library closed at eight on Tuesdays, and to night was emptied and locked up by 8:05. Only Travis and Miss Babb remained. It was cool being in the library alone in the dark. Creepy, but cool.

  In the fourth grade Travis’s favorite book was From the Mixed- up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. He read it at least five times and did a huge book report on it, including a diorama that showed James and Claudia sleeping in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. James and Claudia had sneaked into the museum, having run away from their home in Connecticut in search of adventure—Claudia’s idea— and hid out in the museum for an entire week, sleeping in a four- hundred- year- old bed that probably belonged to a king. For baths, they splashed around in a big fountain, then scooped up all the coins museum- goers had thrown into it for luck.

  Even though nothing too exciting happened in the book—the paintings did not come to life, there were no ghosts or zombies—Travis loved it. He used to dream about being alone in a big museum at night. Being here in the library now was pretty close; he felt sneaky, adventurous.

  “Okay,” Miss Babb said. “It’s time to have some fun.”

  She hauled out a beige, cloth- covered suitcase and opened it. Inside was a turntable; Travis recognized it from his father’s old record albums. Miss Babb was always busy, always doing something, but now that the library had closed and they were alone, she seemed both more relaxed and more full of energy somehow. She was practically dancing as she set everything up.

  “This is a record player,” she said. “A little bit of the old magic. And this,” she said, slipping a big black plate from a cardboard sleeve, “is a record album, thirty- three and a third r.p.m. It’s from a time before”—she paused for dramatic effect—“computers ruled the world.”

  At first they listened to recordings of old radio shows, from way before television—Fibber McGee & Molly, The Lone Ranger, Charlie McCarthy, W. C. Fields. Travis was amazed at the vivid pictures that sprang up in his head when he listened to these old shows. He was stuffing and sealing envelopes, but he saw everything those characters did.

  Then Miss Babb put on a record of poets reading their own poems, really old recordings, with scratches and pops and hisses. Travis didn’t “get” the poems, but it wasn’t about “getting” them, Miss Babb said, it was about the words the poets used, about those words sinking into your body. It was about the plea sure of that.

  But the best was last.

  “Now, Travis,” Miss Babb said. “You have to understand that what I’m about to play is a bit risqué. That is, it’s totally inappropriate. For anyone. And that’s why it’s so funny. I give you Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

  Travis had watched Monty
Python reruns on TV with his dad. Monty Python was a group of comedians from En gland, perhaps the silliest people who had ever lived. Listening to them in the bright room in the dark library, they were even funnier.

  Miss Babb actually fell out of her chair once, she was laughing so hard, and at one point Travis thought he might never breathe again. All Miss Babb had to say was, “She turned me into a newt,” and Travis would start laughing all over again.

  They finished the very last envelope at ten minutes to ten. Travis called his mom and told her he was on his way home, and he and Miss Babb scrunched his bike into the back of her Volvo. Travis didn’t ask her to drive by the Steinbeck House. He knew the window would be lit, the writer at his desk.

  All the way home, he and Miss Babb sang Python’s “Finland, Finland, Finland, country that I love,” and repeated, word for word, the “How Do You Know She Is a Witch?” sketch. He could not get enough of “She turned me into a newt.”

  Miss Babb parked in front of Travis’s house, but before he could get out, she put her hand on his wrist. She’d turned serious on a dime.

  “Travis, I have to tell you something. I actually know Ernest Oster. He’s a very nice man. But I can’t tell you where to find him. I made him a promise years ago. I promised not to tell anyone where he is. He’s a very private person, and I can’t break that promise.”

  Miss Babb looked at Travis, right at him, as if she were testing him. It made him a little uncomfortable, but he knew this was a big moment, so he kept his eyes steady, did not look down or away.

  “But,” she said, “you have a great idea. And the time might be right for Ernest to come out of hiding. Don’t ask me any more questions about him, okay? I already feel like I’m cheating. Just listen. You can find him. And it’s easy. Everything you need to know is in the library. And that’s all I can say. Deal?”

  They shook on it.

  Travis and his parents had to park blocks away from City Hall. Normally Oldtown Salinas was deserted at night, the streets and sidewalks empty, most of the businesses closed. To night, though, the place was jumping, streams of people headed in the same direction. The city council’s only agenda item to night was the library, and Travis couldn’t believe all these people were here to save it. Just awesome, he thought.

  The city council’s chamber was a squat, glass- walled building—Travis thought it looked like a bottle cap— right next to the sidewalk on Lincoln Street, but tonight it was impossible to see. News vans, their white antennae aimed at the sky, blocked the view. There were news crews from all over: local stations, San Francisco stations, national stations, even one painted with what looked like Swedish words.

  Between the vans and the building, the sidewalk was filled with people milling about and talking in small clusters. In the dusky blue evening, the crowd looked to Travis like a school of sardines, hundreds of individuals moving as one.

  Spots of intense white light punctuated the little plaza, where reporters interviewed citizens.

  Hubbub, Travis thought. It’s a hubbub, a brouhaha. He loved these words; they sounded like what they were.

  He spotted the Save Our Library banner and pulled his parents toward it. Miss Babb, Hil and his parents, Jack, and all the others were there.

  Miss Babb, of course, had a plan. She’d applied for a slot on the agenda for the Save Our Library committee. Three of its members would be allowed to speak for two minutes each. There were so many people who wanted to speak to night, the time limit was absolute.

  “I just found this out now,” Miss Babb said. Everyone huddled around her and her clipboard as if this were the big game and there was only time to draw up one last trick play. “As committee chair, I’ve made an executive decision. I’m hoping that the following members will speak on our behalf. I’m just another whiny librarian, so I’m leaving myself out. I want readers to speak. Jack, will you briefly describe the committee, what we’ve done, how much money? Constancia, will you speak about the literacy program and career counseling?”

  Miss Babb looked up from her notes. She looked at Travis.

  If this were a book, Travis thought, he would have said, “Gulp.”

  “And Travis, I’d like you to talk about the library’s books and how they make you feel connected. What you said at the first meeting. But be brief, okay?”

  Gulp.

  Miss Babb looked around the huddle.

  “Any objections?” No one spoke. “Any seconds?”

  “Second,” Hil yelled.

  “The motion is carried. Excellent, everyone.”

  Travis expected silence then, but another sound reached him, low at first, moving up through his legs and into his chest. He felt it before he heard it. It grew louder with every pulse, moving in from around him, closing in on him.

  “Save our library, save our library, save our library …” The chant grew louder and louder, and soon took over the plaza. The reporters stopped yakking to watch.

  “Save our library …”

  It was a sound—not the words or their meanings, but the volume and breath of it—that Travis had never heard before. This wasn’t the sound of a hundred people chanting. This was the sound of a strange animal’s roar. Everyone here was one small part of a bigger creature, and that creature was growling and singing at the same time.

  “Save our library …”

  Travis was chanting, too, they were all chanting. The sound came from inside him, and from outside him, and it flowed through him.

  Everyone smiled while they chanted.

  A few sharp, staticky words from portable loudspeakers outside the chamber doors shattered the chant. The chant drifted off in waves, like the tide going out.

  “ … in an orderly fashion, please. Slowly, please. The first two rows are reserved for to night’s speakers. Orderly, please, don’t push, please …” And slowly, because there was no other way to fit this many people into the squat, round building, they all squeezed in.

  On the far side of the chamber, nine men and women sat behind a curved table, each with a glass of water and a microphone in front of them. They talked in whispers to one another, occasionally waving to someone in the audience. Travis half expected the council members—a silly thought, he knew—to be dressed like British judges, in black robes and powdered wigs. But these were just people. Citizens of Salinas, like everyone else.

  The room was filled to overflowing, and the fire marshall, the only one there in uniform, escorted handfuls of people away from the crowded exits. He assured them that they’d be able to hear from outside; loudspeakers had been set up. News camera lights heated the chamber, but the open doors allowed a breeze.

  Travis shut his eyes and listened to the babble of voices. There was no meaning in any of the words, just sound bouncing off the walls. Argle- bargle.

  It required much pounding of the mayor’s gavel to quiet the assembly.

  Travis had forgotten to be nervous until everyone was quiet and the meeting started. He made up, rather quickly, for his forgotten nerves. What on earth was he going to say?

  He turned from his front row seat to the back of the room. His parents and Miss Babb and Hil all waved at the same moment, and when Travis saw them his breath caught. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he just went ahead and laughed.

  The Save Our Library committee was second on the agenda, after three speakers from the library’s administration, each of whom received substantial applause.

  Jack followed, describing the Save Our Library committee. When he announced how much they’d raised so far, over ten thousand dollars, and how they raised it, there was an immense crash of clapping and whooping and shouting.

  After Hil’s mom spoke, several people in the audience were wiping tears from their eyes.

  Travis stood before the microphone. He feared he would never utter another word as long as he lived. But then …

  “I once,” he said slowly, “got a book from the library that had green marker all over the pages, and I lo
ved that.”

  And he talked, talked about the green marker and thinking about who had scribbled in the book and who else had read it before he had. He talked about feeling connected.

  Or at least he thought he talked about those things. He didn’t really hear himself speaking. For a long time after the meeting he tried and tried to remember what he had said, but couldn’t. He couldn’t remember the faces of the city council members, couldn’t see or hear the crowd around him. All a big blank.

  His turn at the microphone must have gone okay, though, because people were applauding—he heard Hil whistle through his fingers—and he was sitting down and felt instantly relaxed. and exhausted.

  The parade of speakers continued for an hour and a half. Everyone was in favor of saving the library, of course. Travis realized you’d have to be an idiot to show up tonight and say, “Gee, I think they should close the library, libraries are stupid.”

  The cheering only got louder as the night moved on.

  There was a brief recess. The council, the mayor said, would convene, then return with their decision on the matter before them. “The matter before them” was whether or not the city council would call for an election on a sales-tax increase in support of the library.

  The chamber was hot and stuffy, airless; the evening breeze that trickled into the room only proved how hot and stuffy the chamber was. But no one left during the recess, and Travis understood why. He felt that he, too, had to stay, wanted to stay, because if he left, something bad might happen, some trick might get pulled. No, he was in it for as long as it took.

  Miss Babb wriggled her way to Travis and Jack and Constancia, thanked them all. She grabbed Travis by both shoulders.

  “You,” she said. “You were great. You know why I picked you. Because you get it. You know how important this is.”

  The intense chatter of the room stopped when the city council filed into the chamber. The silence in the chamber, Travis saw on their faces, terrified them. They looked like white mice dropped into a box of snakes.