Steinbeck’s Ghost

by Lewis Buzbee

  But what else could Travis say that would make any sense? That he was going off into the hills in search of a lost town? That he was going with some old guy who once wrote a book thirty years ago? That the Watchers were leading him there? That this all had something to do with the library, but not really? That he was on a journey he needed to follow on his own, without Hil? At least for now. None of it made any sense, not even to Travis.

  So he lied again. And Hil didn’t even ask him to come to next week’s game.

  And his parents? Aargghh! They both had “killer” deadlines on Monday. They needed to “fortify” their “positions,” had to “ambush” the competition, find new “strategies.” Travis couldn’t tell if they were going to work or going to war.

  When his parents got involved in the library campaign—the meetings, the car wash, going to Sheila’s, all that—Travis hoped they had finally returned to their senses. But it was like one of those happy dreams that, when you wake up, leaves you feeling sadder because it was, after all, only a dream.

  When he went down to breakfast that morning , there was a note on the kitchen table and an overstuffed picnic basket. Have a great time with Ernest, the note said, and be careful up there. Call them on the cell if he was going to be later than seven.

  Travis ate a bowl of Lucky Charms the size of a basketball, and watched cartoons until his eyes began to vibrate. At eleven he went out to the front porch to wait for Oster. Time to get out of Camazotz.

  When he and Oster stopped at the main gate of Bella Linda Terrace, Hil’s family pulled up next to the Dart on the passenger side. Travis didn’t see them at first, but Hil called out, “Hey, Big T,” and when he turned, Hil was waving and making his usual goofy faces. Then Hil’s face stopped, shut down, and he looked at the floor of the car. Travis knew what had happened. Hil had seen the lie he’d been told. Travis wasn’t going anywhere with his family.

  Travis was waving, trying to get Hil’s attention, when the light changed, and the two cars headed off in opposite directions.

  “So, Travis. Tell me more about you,” Oster said. “I’m afraid we’ve talked too much about myself. I know you like to read.”

  Facts. Travis started with facts. When he was born and where. Where he’d grown up, where he lived now. Where he went to school, then and now. His favorite movies, TV shows, games. His friends, the old gang from Salinas, and Hil, of course, his best friend. If they were still friends.

  The more he talked, the more confused the facts became. One fact led into another, and these facts had to have other facts to explain them. And suddenly the facts weren’t just facts anymore, they were stories. But no one story ended and offered the chance for a new story to begin. They all connected. A never- ending story.

  Pretty soon Travis was talking about his parents. Not where they came from or what they did, but how complicated everything was, how much he missed their old life.

  “And,” he heard himself saying, “it was great downtown. My mom was a teacher, and my dad was a bartender and he played in a band, and we all hung out all the time. Then they went back to college, and they got new jobs, and we got this great new house, and everything’s supposed to be perfect.”

  He stopped talking. He was afraid he might start yelling.

  “Supposed to be perfect?” Oster asked. He was driving, looking straight ahead, but he raised one eyebrow: a big question, a complicated one.

  “I hate it,” Travis said. “I hate it all. I hate the new house, and the new jobs, and I just hate it all.”

  Silence again. They were driving past the Salinas Valley Vegetable Exchange. Trucks, two trailers long and heaped with lettuce, were creeping out the front gate onto Highway 68, headed east. By tomorrow this lettuce would be halfway around the world.

  “I don’t blame you,” Oster said. “Not at all. Life is short, Travis. You’re learning that now, and that’s important. Maybe you always knew it. Most people don’t learn that until it’s too late. You know what’s important. You, your parents, your family. The library. You want to have it now. You don’t want to wait until everything is supposed to be perfect.”

  Oster’s voice was different when he said this—slower, deeper, more … what was it? More intense. He remembered Oster’s story about Ray Bradbury, that important afternoon they’d shared together in Waukegan, the things Bradbury had told him about writing and life. And Travis thought, This is one of those moments: important. Travis knew he should be paying attention with all his might, and he was.

  “When did you know? You know,” Travis said.

  “Well, I suppose I’m like you a little bit. I’ve probably always known it. Some people are different that way. You and me, we’re different. Not better, mind you: different. And it doesn’t help us much either. I’ve always known life is short—that one day the things you love can disappear. But I’ve had to learn the same lesson over and over.”

  “I don’t get it,” Travis said.

  “It is very complicated. And I don’t mean too complicated for a kid. It’s complicated for the smartest people.”

  They were passing the Spreckels turnoff now. Oster nodded that way.

  “See,” Oster said. “Two years ago, my wife died. Eve. We’d been together forever. Like you and your family. In that whole time—longer than you can imagine right now—there wasn’t one day that passed I didn’t know how lucky I was. My wife, my daughters, all of us together. I knew it. But when she died, I was filled with regret. I kept thinking of all the stupid things I’d done that kept me away from my family. Like working. I worked too much. And for what? She was still dead. All that working didn’t change anything.”

  Oster drove without looking at Travis, who was watching him closely. He wanted to understand what Oster was saying. He felt very close to understanding it.

  “But my parents, I mean …”

  Silence filled the car again.

  “It’ll be okay, I think,” Oster said. “I’ve met your parents, I’ve heard you talk about them. They get it, Travis, they do. Your parents know what’s important. Most likely, you get it from them. They’re just confused right now. They’re lost a little bit. We all get that way now and then. They’ll figure it out.”

  Rows of valley oak flashed by the window.

  His parents were a little confused right now. Travis never imagined he would think this about his own parents, but there it was.

  “How can I help them get unconfused?” he asked.

  “Simple. Talk to them. Tell them what you just told me. It’s hard, I know. But it’s all you can do. How can they know if you won’t tell them.?”

  At the turnoff to Corral de Tierra Road, they pulled into a vacant lot on the other side of the street from the general store. A billboard planted in the middle of the lot shouted COMING SOON! with a painting of a proposed shopping center, El Paso de Corral de Tierra.

  The developers, smaller writing said, were PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE ARRIVAL OF A STATE-OF-THE-ART SHOPPING CENTER, A DEVELOPMENT THAT WILL PROVIDE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY SERVICES TO THE PEOPLE OF THE HIGHWAY 68 CORRIDOR, AS WELL AS ATTRACT TOURISTIC THE SPIRIT AND AESTHETICS OF THE LUMINOUS WORLD OF JOHN STEINBECK.

  “Gobbledygook,” Travis said. “What does it even mean? I mean, touristic’? Is that a real word?”

  “It means they’re gonna build some stores here. Whether we like it or not.”

  The billboard painting showed rows of shops that looked like every other shopping center in the world.

  “But it’s ugly,” Travis said. “And what does it have to do with Steinbeck? It’s stupid.”

  “It’s stupid, all right.”

  “Why can’t we use this money for the library?”

  Oster started to speak, but Travis cut him off .

  “Because libraries are free,” Travis said. “Can’t make any money off of them.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You know,” Travis said. “I’ve read a lot of Steinbeck. There’s no place in Steinbeck that ever looked li
ke this”— the buildings were angular and modern, painted purple and green—“and I don’t remember a single Mango Tango franchise in any of his books.”

  “Good thing we came today. Might all be a postcard tomorrow.”

  Behind the empty lot, dark groves of oak marched up steep hills into the Corral. Despite the vivid painting, Travis could not imagine the reality of an ugly shopping center in such a beautiful place.

  They got back in the Dart and headed up into—where were they going? All those names for it. And all those different versions of it. There was Corral de Tierra the valley, as well as Corral de Tierra the town that no longer existed. There was Steinbeck’s fictional town, Oster’s fictional version of Steinbeck’s fictional town. Was this a hunting ground for California Indians, the stumbled- upon Eden of a Spanish conquistador, the dark lure of the Watchers, Travis’s deep imagining of all these? Or the site of a new shopping center?

  It was hard to say which was which; one place and all places. Travis had looked at many maps of the area— topographical maps at the library, satellite maps and photographs online, road maps in the glove compartment of his dad’s car. But no map gave him the sense of the place he got from reading, or from what he saw now in front of him.

  They drove along a narrow curving road, up and over a slight rise. Gates and mailboxes hinted at houses behind the thick stands of old trees—sycamore, willow, eucalyptus, birch.

  Travis and Oster scanned it all. Oster was smiling.

  “My, my,” was all he said.

  They passed the entrance to the Corral de Tierra Country Club. A parking lot, club house, and tennis courts looked down on the road.

  “My, my,” Oster said again.

  Travis remembered something in the last chapter of The Pastures of Heaven, and he was trying to put the memory into words when Oster veered off the road onto the shoulder.

  “T ere it is,” Oster said, pointing out the driver’s window. “Right there, beyond the tennis courts. It’s the Castle.”

  Far away, on the highest peak, a sand- colored bluff broke the reign of black- green manzanita scrub. The bluff was hard to make out from this vantage, more of a smudge than a castle. But he knew what it looked like; he’d seen the photo on his library copy of The Pastures of Heaven.

  For a second he realized his library books were probably overdue. Not that it would matter, he thought, if the library was closing. And then he had a horrible thought: What would happen to all those books if the library did close? Would they just put them out on the sidewalk, or worse, keep them locked up and unread in the empty building?

  “Let’s go check it out,” Oster said.

  He spun the car around and headed back to the country club, passing through the iron gate. At the far end of the parking lot, they got out of the car. The Castle, still far away, seemed much closer than it could be. If this were a book, Travis thought, you would say it dominated the horizon. You would say it was awe- inspiring.

  “Corral de Tierra, a fence of earth,” Oster said. “That’s what it means, literally. My god, it’s beautiful.”

  The Castle was a corrugated rock face on the steep side of a mountaintop. The rock face must have been several hundred feet tall, several hundred wide. The corrugations in the rock face looked like enormous pillars, and the top edge of the bluff was harshly geometrical. No wonder it was called the Castle. It looked as if human hands had created it.

  “What’s it made of?” Travis asked. “How did it happen?”

  “It’s sandstone. Very soft, porous. All the hills up and down the coast have sandstone running through them, from when this area was ocean bottom. When the ground cover falls away—like here, it’s too steep for plants and trees—the rain and wind erode it, cut it into these shapes. There are hundreds of little cliffs like that back in these hills. But this is the granddaddy.”

  The sky and its now gathering clouds leaped over the Castle.

  “My, my,” Oster said. Travis knew from the tone of this “my, my” that it was said with some irritation. “Look, look there, just below it. That house.”

  At the foot of the Castle sat an enormous house, at least three stories. It was done up in the style of an English mansion.

  “How dare they?” Oster said. “Right in front of it.”

  There was a darkness in Oster’s voice Travis had not heard before.

  “It’s butt ugly,” Travis said.

  “Got that right.” Oster spit on the ground.

  “I was just remembering,” Travis said. “At the end of Pastures—he kind of jumps into the future in the last chapter? And he predicts that one day the valley will be all golf courses and big houses with big gates around them.”

  As if the world needed to make this point clear, a golfer on the fairway below them shouted, “Fore.”

  “You’re right,” Oster said. “I’d forgotten that. Well, Steinbeck was a pretty sharp guy.”

  There was someone behind them, coming their way. They turned to greet him, a young man in khaki shorts and a green polo shirt. On the shirt’s breast was the embroidered logo of the country club.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “How can I help you today?”

  “Oh, no thanks,” Oster said. “Just enjoying the view.”

  Travis watched the young man’s eyes. He couldn’t see anything there.

  “And you are club members?” When he said this, the young man glanced at Oster’s car.

  “No, not members,” Oster said. “Just enjoying the view. I hope—”

  “I’m sorry, then, gentlemen, I’ll have to ask you to leave. This is private property. Members only.”

  Oster put up a hand and started to speak. He dropped his hand. It was clear, Travis saw, that this young man was official and serious.

  “Well, good day, then,” Oster said.

  They got into the car and drove off . The man in the green shirt watched after them until they were back on the main road.

  “Fine. If we’re not wanted here, that’s okay. Anyhow, we got more important business. Now, let’s go look for that town,” Oster said. “I’ll show you where I think it was. If I can find it. Who.- ee., it.’s been ages.”

  They drove farther into the valley, and the road straightened itself across a plain. Trees crowded the narrow way. On either side, broad paths, guarded by rail fences, showed an occasional jogger or horse and rider.

  Then they were following a large creek, and the road twisted and swerved and cut back on itself. The creek was low, barely a trickle in the rain- dry autumn. Travis knew that in the spring this creek would be a tumbling, green- and- white monster, swift and treacherous.

  The road here was a tunnel; they could see nothing of the surrounding hillsides, nothing of the nearby homes.

  Without warning, the road began to rise, and the car was splashed with bright sun. They rose up and up, clinging to the side of an exposed hill. Patches of prickly pear cacti barricaded the sides of the road. And just as suddenly, the road plunged down again and around a curve, and the world opened up into a spectacular view.

  Before them was a broad valley, surrounded on three sides by sinuous hills. Here and there, pods of horses munched on grass, lazy in the warm day. At the far end of the valley, a red- tailed hawk glided close above the final ridge.

  Oster pulled the car onto the shoulder.

  “Well,” he said. “This is it. Easy to see why he called it heaven. And this is only the half of it.”

  It was just like Travis remembered. Remembered? No, read. He had read the words on the page, black on white, and it was as if he had made this place spring to life, as if his reading had created the world.

  “Go ahead,” Oster said. “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow!”

  They continued through the valley. The fields on either side of the road were brilliant green, as green as emeralds, a green obviously inspired by heavy irrigation. The fields were fenced all the way to the roa
d. Large houses and outbuildings rested against the feet of the bordering hills. Horses, a few cows, some goats.

  They drove up the valley, rising again on another twisting road. Travis was afraid they were leaving it already, but the road ended at a yellow sign, DEAD END. Oster parked, got out, and stretched. Travis got out and turned around, not ready for what he saw.

  They had entered the valley, not at one end of it, but from the side, and stretching out in front of him now, southward, the valley ran far away, rising and falling over gentle slopes until, miles in the distance, it ended at another ridge of the Santa Lucias. This view he had never imagined, had not read out of a book. The world surprised him.

  They ate lunch by the side of the road. Travis was anxious to get going, follow wherever Oster led him, learn what he could about this town, this valley. But he could wait.

  They saw no one else the entire time, except for a school bus that came up to the end of the road, laboriously turned around, and drove away without so much as a wave. It was Saturday, and the bus was empty of children. It made no sense at all.

  While they ate, Oster explained all he knew of the Corral. He started by telling Travis many things Travis already knew. He spoke slowly, his eyes focused far away. Travis knew that Oster had to walk around in the story for a while, get used to it. Travis let him wander. Stories had to be told from the beginning.

  Oster told him again about coming to Salinas to write a novel, and traipsing around the valley, and getting scared off .

  Then he backed up from there and retraced his steps. The town, he’d been looking for the town of Corral de Tierra. No one else in Salinas would admit to its ever having been here, but Oster knew better. He’d read Steinbeck’s book.

  The town Steinbeck described wasn’t much of one—a general store, a short string of two- story houses, a blacksmith. The tiniest Western- movie town imaginable, bleak wooden buildings on a muddy road. Travis looked into the near section of valley and could almost see it, where the road broke sharply.