Steinbeck’s Ghost

by Lewis Buzbee

  The library was packed. Not with committee members, not with reporters, but with readers. The checkout line was ten people deep. The career center’s tables were all in use. Adults swam quietly through the main collection, and kids, tons of them, were doing their homework and reading and staring into space. It was as if everyone was trying to eat up the last of a wonderful dessert before the waiter took it away. Every last spoonful.

  Travis and Miss Babb sat in little chairs at a little table in the kids’ section. Outside, dark clouds had gathered; these clouds had traveled thousands of miles across the Pacifi c and down from Alaska. While Travis loved the hushed sense the sky brought to the busy library, he was worried about tomorrow’s Halloween. It never rained on Halloween, at least not that he could remember.

  “It’s working,” Miss Babb said. She had a thick file of loose papers on her knees. “That’s the important thing. I want you to know that. Every little thing we’ve done, and everyone else has done, it’s working. We may yet save the world.”

  Travis had to smile. He sensed from the way Miss Babb was talking that there was new, real hope for the library.

  “All these,” she said, slapping the file with the palm of her hand. “These are newspaper articles from all over the world about the library. And we helped. You helped. All those press releases you’ve been sending out, without those we wouldn’t have these.”

  They looked through the file, articles from Iceland and Japan and North Dakota, and from unknown places in cyberspace. Miss Babb had been right, people did care about Steinbeck’s library. Amazing.

  “These are great,” he said. “But what’s the news? You said it was urgent.”

  “Okay.” She sat up straight and took a deep breath. “The city council may take another vote. Hidalgo and Doyle, the council members? They both called the library, and the different committees, even ours. They say that the mayor and the council can be swayed. It’s too embarrassing to them for the library to close. Thanks in part to all these articles. They think an election on a new library- tax measure would turn out differently now. And the best news of all: they’ll keep the library open until after the election. Not dead yet.”

  “Awesome .”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  “Me?”

  “You have plans for Halloween?”

  “Uh—”

  “Listen. Here’s the deal.”

  They needed to keep up the pressure, she said, get more people involved. Momentum was on their side. If Travis was going trick- or- treating, he could pass out fly-ers, let people know what was happening. He could collect donations, too, like UNICEF. Raise some money. Maybe get some other kids to help him. Get the word out, that was the phrase she kept using.

  Would he sacrifice his Halloween?

  “Even better,” he said. “Hil will help. I’ll make him, and I’ll see if I can go from class to class tomorrow, get other kids to sign up.”

  The minute he said this, he knew it was a great idea. He also knew it was going to be embarrassing, standing up in front of all those kids. What was he thinking?

  “Excellent, Mr. Williams.” Miss Babb was almost dancing in her chair. “You do have the best ideas. Now, let’s get to work.”

  In the A/V room, he and Miss Babb taped Save Our Library signs to the backs of twelve plastic pumpkins, the kind with handles, and stuffed each one with a hundred flyers. Miss Babb would drop the pumpkins at school in the morning, if he and Hil could meet her there.

  While they worked, she told him in greater detail all that had happened with the library campaign. Money was pouring in from everywhere. Regular people had sent in checks for five and ten dollars, sometimes more. Bill Murray, the actor, had donated a “huge chunk of change,” and other Hollywood people followed. Did he know who Bill Murray was?

  Travis and his dad had watched Ghostbusters, Caddy-shack, and Stripes over and over. Bill Murray was, Travis thought, the funniest human on the planet.

  Oh, and the reading. She’d almost forgot. The reading would happen—Travis’s idea, by the way—in November, downtown at the Maya Cinema. Laurence Yep had called that day to confirm; he was honored, he said, to be invited.

  “And what about Mr. Oster?” she asked. “Have you convinced him?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “By the way, how was your trip to the Corral? Any more strange sightings?”

  And Travis just opened up, told her everything about their trip. Telling her all this didn’t help him solve anything, but he felt better having it out there. He asked her if she thought the statue of Johnny Bear might make good publicity for the library somehow.

  “Travis,” she said, “that is one of the spookiest stories I’ve ever heard. I mean, a real story. I don’t think I could’ve done it. What do you think it is?”

  He had no idea, he told her, and neither did Oster. But they were going back. They were on to something, that much was certain.

  “Yes,” she said. “It might help. We could tell everyone that it’s Steinbeck’s ghost come back to make sure we save the library. Wow, that’d be so great.”

  She said it, she said “Steinbeck’s ghost.”

  “Look, you must have a cell phone,” she said. “Take a picture when you go back. I’ll think about it. There’s got to be some way to use this statue. Plus, I’m dying to see it.”

  When they were finished, they stood together outside the library.

  “Getting the word out,” Miss Babb said.

  “Consider it got out.”

  The clouds had pulled back a bit. A break in the lid of gray iron, north by Castroville, showed a patch of gold and orange where the sun reflected off the ocean.

  Travis stood over his bike. It wasn’t dark yet, technically, and so he didn’t need a ride home. He and Miss Babb kept talking.

  Gitano ambled out from the alley, crossed in front of them, headed toward Lincoln Street. His bindle bounced on his shoulder.

  “Do you see that man?” Travis asked. He couldn’t believe he’d asked her.

  “Him?” she said. “He’s harmless. He’s been hanging around for weeks now. Seems to believe he lives he re.”

  “That’s Gitano,” he said. “Remember, I just told you. I saw him here, and then in the Corral, we heard his voice. It was his voice we followed.”

  “Ooooh, aaaah. Did you feel that, just now? Goose bumps. Absolutely true, no doubt about it, not from some breeze kind of goose bumps. More like people-walking- on- your- grave goose bumps. Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. You should read The Red Pony again,” Travis said.

  “I will, I’ll read it to night. Oh, Travis, this is so weird.”

  Travis knew she believed him. He could feel her goose bumps across the space between them. They looked at each other with eyes as big as baseballs, but when they turned back to Gitano, he was .gone.

  When he got to the Steinbeck House, the sky had closed over again, blackened. Rain was coming soon; you could feel it.

  He parked his bike across the street and looked up, and there was Steinbeck’s ghost, seated at his desk in the yellow- lighted window. He was writing furiously, the pen bouncing along the page. Travis watched long enough to see him flip two pages worth of writing.

  “I don’t know why you’re here,” Travis said to the air. “But I’m glad you are.”

  That was when he figured out what to be for Halloween. The idea was too simple to pass up.

  Crossing 101 on the way home, the sky blew open. The rain was intense, wind- thrashed, soaking. Travis couldn’t have cared less. The world needed the rain.

  FOURTEEN

  TRAVIS WAS SURPRISED AT HOW MANY KIDS VOLUNTEERED TO HELP SAVE THE LIBRARY. After visits to five homerooms, three eighth grade and two seventh, all twelve pumpkins were spoken for. They should have brought more pumpkins. That was 1,200 flyers. He couldn’t have done it without Hil.

  That morning, Hil was waiting for him at the usual corner and immediately started
to describe his grand plan. After Travis had called last night to ask for his help, Hil stayed up late working it all out. They’d go from room to room together and put on a little show. Make people laugh. Hil knew it was easier to get people to do things for you when they were laughing. By the time they got to school, they had it all sketched out.

  Travis had almost fainted with relief when Hil volunteered last night on the phone. He couldn’t really imagine doing it alone, standing in front of a bunch of kids he barely knew and asking them to sacrifice their Halloween, possibly their last Halloween ever, to help save a library. A dork. He would be a dork. A library dork. Fear of dorkdom wouldn’t stop him, he knew that, he just didn’t like the idea of being a dork on display.

  It wasn’t that Travis considered himself a dork, or even close to being one. He was a normal enough kid, which at school meant he had some friends, got along with practically everybody, and only got picked on as much as anybody else. But he also knew that the specter of dorkdom could strike at any minute, your standing could plummet in an instant. One good pantsing in front of a table full of girls, you were a dork. Suddenly finding a teacher calling on you to help with a project—dork. Worst of all, should the stomach flu hit, and you found yourself barfing in the cafeteria—dork for life.

  He remembered a book he’d read late last year, another Miss Babb selection, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. Jerry Renault went to a scary private school, uniforms and all, and most of the time he kept his head underwater, just hoping to get by. But when the school’s annual chocolate sale started, he rashly decided to go against the grain and refused to sell the chocolates. He figured a rebellion against the school’s rather evil teachers would make him cool in the eyes of the students. But no, The Vigils, the school’s secret society of upperclass-men bullies, decided Jerry’s rebellion would not be tolerated, and Jerry became—at least for a while—the laughingstock of the school, the dork of all dorks.

  The threat of dorkdom waited around every corner. You just had to be careful, part of you always on guard, and Travis was worried he might have set himself a dork trap. But he also figured that with Hil on his side, the chances of dorkdom would be lowered. Hil was too funny to be a dork.

  Not only that, Hil was great with adults.

  “Okay, Big T,” Hil said as they approached the main office. “Let me butter him up.”

  Hil and Travis marched into the vice principal’s office before the first morning bell, and by the time the second bell rang, the vice principal, the known- to- be-cruel Mr. Sdao, had agreed to let them skip class and go off on their merry pumpkin way. When they left his office, Mr. Sdao had an odd look on his face, as if his prized pony had been stolen and he couldn’t be happier about it.

  Miss Babb was waiting for them in the main office, the plastic pumpkins stacked on a rolling cart. She hugged Travis and Hil, and they were off .

  The first class was their own homeroom, the mildly insane Mr. Brock. During his history classes, Mr. Brock was known for the use of a long wooden pointer, which he turned into a rifle or a spear or an oar or a telescope, what ever the lesson called for. He’d leap about the room, gesturing madly, trying to bring history to life, although most of the time he just looked crazy. Still, his classes were never boring.

  A few weeks earlier, Mr. Brock had made the library closing into a manic play. He became Don Quixote tilting with his spear at the terrifying windmill monster. Don Quixote was supposed to represent the library, the windmill monster the faceless city bureaucracy. Nobody quite understood the play, but it was funny nonetheless.

  When Hil and Travis rolled in the pumpkins, everyone was sitting up and paying attention. It was always good to have a break from the regular class, no matter how exciting the teacher.

  Mr. Brock said a few words about the library, then introduced Travis. Travis stepped in front of Mr. Brock’s desk, smiled. He thought he was going to be ner vous, but found he wasn’t. He guessed that if he could speak to the city council of Salinas in a jam- packed, overheated room, he could probably handle a bunch of eighth graders.

  “Hello,” he said. “T anks for listening. I want to talk to you about the public library. I’ve been going to the library since before I could read. And I still go there today. I bet a lot of you could say the same thing. Anyway, I could go on about all the reasons the library is closing, and how many different ser vices the library offers”—Hil was making a silent blah- blah- blah gesture with his hands. Travis, as planned, shot Hil one of Mr. Brock’s patented silence- ray gazes. It was a perfect imitation of Mr. Brock, and everyone laughed, especially Mr. Brock.

  “But it’s better to show than tell,” Travis said. “So Hilario and I are going to show you. First, what the world would be like without libraries.”

  Hil and Travis faced each other, then slower than slow, went into an agonizing Camazotz handshake. After the handshake they went about their Camazotz day, but this world was so tedious, so gray, that soon both of the actors had fallen still in their tracks, unable to move.

  Hil popped up, beaming.

  “And now,” Travis said, “what the world is like with libraries.”

  Hil and Travis met on the street again, with a hug instead of a handshake, and they mimed talking to each other with great animation about all the exciting things around them. Travis went off into his library day with a huge smile on his face, stopping now and then to stare into the future, pondering the bounties of the world.

  But Hil. Oh, Hil. He was laughing and dancing about the room like a ballet dancer who’s had too much sugar. This wasn’t Hil who was leaping about with the goofi est smile in the world, it was some other creature that inhabited his body. He was ecstatic. When he did a fl irty, twinkle- toes pirouette right in front of Mr. Brock, the entire class lost it. Travis himself broke down in great gales of laughter, tears streaming from his eyes.

  Hil and Travis took their bows. Mr. Brock was yelling, “Bravo, bravo!”

  Travis made his pitch. He knew it was Halloween … the library needed … pretty simple … they’d still get a lot of candy.

  Five people in their homeroom volunteered. After similar per for mances in the other homerooms, more volunteers stepped forward, and soon all the buckets were claimed. It was surprising to Travis who volunteered. It wasn’t just the brainiacs or the wallfl owers. There was a jock here, a cool guy there, a cheerleader, all over the board, a complete slice of the school’s makeup. Travis knew thaTheach of the volunteers had some deep tie to the library, deep enough to pull these kids from their otherwise unbreakable roles. And he knew what that tie was. No matter what role these kids played in their normal lives, when they sat down to read, the world cracked open for them, became more real than normal.

  When school let out, every last bit of cloud had fl ed the sky, and the day was warm and toasty. A perfect night for Halloween.

  This was the first Halloween either of his parents had missed. Even when his dad was bartending and taking classes at the same time, he always arranged to have Halloween off . For the last few years, his parents didn’t go trick- or- treating with Travis, but they did dress up— his dad was always a zombie rock star and his mom a zombie schoolteacher. They stayed home and gave out candy, and they were all together at the end of the night.

  But there was another message on the machine when Travis came home from school. His parents had to work late again. They were so, so, so sorry, they said, they just couldn’t help … But Travis deleted the message before his mom fi nished talking. He knew their apologies were sincere, but that didn’t make up for them not being around, noTheven close. Ack! It was horrible; his parents had been turned into an answering machine.

  Travis would not, he decided, “heat up something” as his mom suggested. He was going to eat nothing but candy all night.

  In his room he stood in front of the closet mirror and considered his costume. Both he and Hil had changed their minds about being hoboes. The hobo costume was the easy way out, they agreed, and Ha
lloween should be more fun than that. Neither Hil nor Travis would let on; both costumes were going to be surprises.

  Travis had gone through his drawers and closets, and his parents’ room, too, and found what he needed. He wore an old pair of blue jeans, some clunky, old- fashioned shoes of his dad’s stuff ed with socks, and a white shirt with black suspenders. He parted his hair in the middle and put gel on it to keep it down. It made him look old-fashioned. He looked exactly how he wanted to look. He was the ghost of young Steinbeck.

  Of course he couldn’t tell anyone that, it was too confusing a costume, requiring long explanations. Instead he’d tell everyone he was a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter was someone who did all the writing for someone who couldn’t actually write, and Travis thought his idea was funny—ghost, writer, get it? Even if people didn’t get the joke, the word ghost would probably be enough to satisfy them.

  The only problem with the costume was the shirt. He found lots of white shirts, but they all had regular collars. Steinbeck’s ghost wore a collarless shirt, and Travis knew that was the fashion of the time, almost a hundred years ago. He found a white, long- sleeved linen shirt in his dad’s closet that was perfecThexcept for the collar.

  He took a pair of scissors and carefully cut off the collar. He was right: perfect.

  But if Travis was going to be a ghostwriter, the shirt had to look like it belonged to a ghost who wrote a lot.

  He found his old calligraphy set and smudged black ink all over the shirt.

  He stared at himself as young Steinbeck for a moment longer, tried to see out of those eyes that looked out of the window, and imagined writing all those stories. Then he got to work on the makeup.

  He made a pa le wa sh of his sk in with smudged clown-white. Then he darkened around his eyes with black eyeliner borrowed from his mom, bleeding it into gray on his cheekbones, around his nose, along the line of his jaw. Very ghost- ish, ghosty? No, ghostiferous, that was a good word. He smudged and tweaked until he had the makeup just right, until he was unmistakably a member of the undead.