Steinbeck’s Ghost

by Lewis Buzbee

  The three of them ate breakfast together.

  And when Travis came home from school, his dad was still in his pajamas and his mom was already home. She was in the garage planting bulbs in pots, and surprise of all surprises, his dad was in the living room playing music. He’d spent all day unpacking and arranging his gear.

  “Jeez,” his dad said, “these cathedral ceilings have great acoustics.”

  His dad showed Travis some new chords on the acoustic guitar, and they practiced Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm,” one of their favorites. His mom kept thinking up excuses to come back into the house and listen to them rehearse. She tracked dirt in from the garage.

  Travis hadn’t seen a living room this messy in ages.

  SIXTEEN

  THE FIRST PLACE THEY TOOK HIL WAS THE CASTEL. Oster pulled his old Dart into the country club parking lot again.

  “But—” Travis said.

  “You know,” Oster said. “I was really mad the other day when that guy kicked us out of here. And I’ve been mad since. I’m not going to let these people own everything, and the view, too. We have a right to see it. And there it is.”

  The Castle hovered over the valley.

  “Holy cow!” Hil said. He was sitting forward, his head hanging over the front seat. That huge Hil- smile.

  They walked around behind the club house, back behind the kitchen. No one would see them here, and the view was spectacular, unobstructed. Below them a foursome swung furiously at little white balls. None of the golfers looked up at the Castle, not once.

  Oster was telling Hil about the sandstone, how the Castle was created. Hil was asking two tons of questions.

  The rain had once again left the air clean, filled with the scent of new life. In one week, so much had changed. The native sweet grasses were already sprouting under the dead stalks of last spring’s growth. The hills wore a thin but brilliant coat of new green. In a couple of weeks, with a little more rain, the color of the surrounding hills would put the fake- green of the golf course to shame. The rains were early this year, and heavy.

  “Big T,” Hil was saying, suddenly next to Travis. “We have to go up there, get close to the Castle. It’s awesome.”

  “Can’t,” Travis said. “Look at all the fences. These people bought it all up, put fences around it, and now they play golf. Look.”

  Hil followed Travis’s hand along the fence lines. The golf course was fenced in, and beyond that, ragged parcels of land were fenced in, one from another, the fence lines reaching up to the impossible sternness of the Castle’s base. Everything around the Castle was owned, private property. But the Castle itself, it seemed, was too wild, too big to be tamed.

  Hil was practically jumping up and down with frustration.

  “It’s not fair, man,” he was saying. “Not fair at all. You guys are looking for a mystery, and there it is, big as a battleship. But it’s all locked up. That’s one gigantic gyp.”

  He put his head down on the fake ranch- style fence rail.

  “Dude,” Travis said, and patted him on the back.

  “Gentlemen,” Oster said. He made a clicking noise in his throat, like a rider calling his horse.

  Travis and Hil looked up.

  “It’s true,” Oster said. “It’s not fair at all. But it happens all the time. They—whoever ‘they’ are, people with no imagination is my guess. Anyway, ‘they’ are always buying up the mystery and putting fences around it. They think they can own it, keep it all to themselves. And to a certain degree, they can, they do. I hate to say this, but it’s been going on forever. So much of the mystery—the beauty and strangeness of the world—so much of it has been bought and fenced.”

  Travis thought of the stone wall around Bella Linda Terrace, how it kept things out and kept things in, too. The Corral, in Steinbeck’s version, refused to be fenced in, and that was why, Travis knew, the lives of the people who’d come here, in the stories at least, had all gone wrong. It wasn’t a curse that plagued the Corral, as much as the people trying to buy up and own—how did Oster put it?—the beauty and strangeness of the world. Maybe that was what was wrong with Bella Linda Terrace, the beauty and strangeness of the world hadn’t found a way through the stone wall just yet.

  The three of them leaned on the fence rail and stared at the Castle. In the shortening light of the November afternoon, the Corral was painted with a golden wash.

  Travis looked up at the mini- mansion planted below the Castle. It was new and perfect and huge, and stood like a conquering hero. Except. Except that the wooden fence along the back side of the property, a brand- new fence, had already collapsed in one section, collapsed under the weight of a small rockslide. A fence was no match for the Castle.

  “Bu- ut …” Hil said, stepping back from the rail. Both his hands were turned up, and he wore an expectant look. He was waiting for the punch line.

  Travis and Oster stared at him.

  “Bu- ut …” Hil said again. He was rolling his hands, as if that would get his friends started.

  Oster straightened up.

  “But,” Oster said. He shot a finger at Hil, who smiled and crossed his arms. “But a fence cannot stop the mystery. Right?”

  “Right,” Hil said. “Because you two guys …” And he rolled his hands again.

  “We still found it,” Travis said. “Despite the fences.” “Precisely,” Oster said. “The way I see it, the people who put up the fences, because they’ve lost their imaginations, well, they only see the big things. They see the Castle and put a fence around it. And they forget to look in the small places. People like us, we know where to find the small places.”

  “Show me,” Hil said. And they were off .

  They drove through the Corral with the windows open. Hil, in the front seat now, was like a puppy out for his first car ride, his head hanging out the window.

  They came to the end of the road, where they’d had lunch last week, but instead of stopping to eat, they hiked up the ravines toward the sandstone bluff .

  Maybe it was the change the rains had brought, or maybe it was the fact that without a marked trail they wandered up a different series of ravines, but it all looked different to Travis today. The world was fresh, and the new green was everywhere.

  They came to an open meadow high above the valley. There was a circle of gnarled oak around the flathexpanse of the meadow, but in the center of that circle of trees, one lone oak stood straight and tall. The trees that ringed it were bent and shaped by the wind and the steep slopes from which they grew. The lone oak was unshaped by the world, and because of this, seemed powerful, magnetic, more alive.

  Travis, Hil, and Oster, without a word between them, headed straight for this tree and planted themselves at its trunk. They opened their packs and shared a meal.

  While they ate, Oster and Travis filled in more details for Hil. Hil ate and nodded, and drew on the ground with a stick, as if figuring out a math problem.

  Then, as often happens during a shared meal, a comfortable silence landed among them. It was out of this silence that Hil spoke.

  “I recognize this place,” he said. “I’ve never been here before, but I know it. It’s inside me already.”

  “The Corral can be like that,” Oster said.

  Travis was happy listening to the two of them, watching how they were getting to know each other, these friends of his.

  “It’s all your fault,” Hil said, looking right at Oster. It was an accusation, but a warm one.

  Oster pulled back, his eyes wide, his mouth stuffed with tortilla.

  “Me?” he mumbled.

  “Yeah,” Hil said. “Your book. Travis made me read it. Finished it in one night. It’s way cool. I loved it. And I know this place already because you showed it to me first. I know what can happen here—crazy frog hunts and gnomes in the woods, all that stuff . I’ve never been here before but it’s familiar. Because of your book. I like that.”

  “Thanks, Hilario,” Oster said. H
e looked away. “That means a lot to me. I guess it’s why people write books.”

  “So,” Hil said. “Why don’t you write another one?”

  Oster smiled.

  “Well, I did,” Oster said. “But it wasn’t very good, I guess. I guess I only had one book. I’ll take that.”

  “I know,” Hil said. “Big T told me all about it. But that was stupid. Just because one person said so, doesn’t make it true. It’s like those fences. You let that one person build a fence around you. Not fair.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Oster said.

  Travis jumped in.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why don’t you write another book?”

  “But I did,” Oster said.

  “Listen carefully,” Travis said. “Why don’t you? Present tense. A new one.”

  “What was wrong with that one anyway?” Hil said.

  “They said—” Oster began.

  “There’s that ‘they’ again,” Hil said.

  “I think it was Steinbeck’s ghost. I’ve been thinking about it lately. It was the ghost I got wrong. ‘They’ wanted something simple—a ghost story, a murder mystery. A plot with an answer. So I gave them one. A green ghost who floated around and looked like Steinbeck’s corpse. Like Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol, you know, a specter. An apparition. I gave them what they wanted and they hated it. It was all wrong, and I knew it. Even back then.”

  “How was it wrong?” Travis asked.

  “Steinbeck’s ghost would be different,” Oster said.

  “How?” Travis asked.

  “His ghost would be bigger. He’d be a spirit, the spirit of this land, this valley. Or a tree, more likely. Steinbeck’s ghost would be the spirit of a great tree.”

  They looked up at the tree.

  “Like this one,” Hil said, no question in his voice.

  “That’s perfect,” Travis said. “Why don’t you write that?”

  “Maybe I will.”

  They packed up their picnic and litter, and got ready to move on. Hil was busy inspecting the tree.

  “Uh, Big T,” Hil said. “Someone named Jess has been up here. Look.”

  He was pointing to a spot on the tree where three initials had been carved: ?.?.?.

  “Can’t spell his name either,” Hil said.

  “That’s no name,” Travis said. “Those are initials. John Ernst Steinbeck.”

  “Those could be his initials, I guess,” Oster said. “He used to come up here all the time. It’s possible.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hil said. “Look, these are fresh. Brand-new.”

  The wood where the bark had been scraped away was blond, still moist. The edges of the initials were sharp, clearly defined. At the base of the tree was a scattering of shavings.

  “Cool,” Hil said.

  It was then they heard the dry rasp of the rattler’s tail.

  The snake shouldn’t have been there. It was too far from the rocks where it usually hid. And it was the wrong time of day, too early for hunting, and almost the wrong time of year, too late in the season. But there it was, not two feet from Travis and Hil. Much too close. Coiled and rattling. Anxious to strike.

  Travis felt Oster’s hand on his shoulder, soft, warning. He heard Oster’s quick intake of breath, which, better than any words, urged him to keep still. He could not look at Hil, could only look at the snake. But all the same, he knew that Hil was frozen, too.

  The tree breathed behind them. A cool breeze riffled the leaves. For a moment, even the rattler was quiet.

  Travis’s knee twitched; dead grass crackled under his foot.

  The rattle shook to life again, quick- quick. The snake’s head rose from it’s coil, back at first, away from them. Then it would snap forward, Travis knew.

  The rock thwacked the snake’s head at that moment, the moment of lever, of swinging back to snapping forward. The snake fell away from them. Clearly dead.

  It took several, well, seconds probably, but it felt closer to weeks, before Travis or Hil or Oster could move, turn to where the rock had come from. First they had to stare at the snake, watch its lifeless body sink into the dead grass and the new grass. Then they could breathe again.

  They turned as one. The rock had flown in from behind them—they heard it smack the snake’s skull before they saw it on the ricochet. They didn’t have to think about where they turned to because something deep inside each of them, a deep and unthinking animal place, had perfectly reconstructed the rock’s trajectory.

  At first, Travis saw only a big rock, about twenty feet away. He tried to look around the rock, but did not realize that what he was looking around was what he was looking for. The rock was a man. And this was no statue either, but a living, breathing person.

  “Johnny Bear,” he whispered. “It’s Johnny Bear.” He spoke as quietly as if the man were as dangerous as the snake.

  Hil said nothing, but Travis knew his brain was spinning.

  Travis looked back to Oster, who turned to check that the snake was still dead, then turned back around.

  “Thank you,” Oster yelled over the still meadow. “Gracias, mi amigo.”

  “Sí, sí,” Hil was saying now. “Sí, sí, muchas gracias.”

  Travis found it hard to speak. Not that he didn’t want to, he was simply too surprised.

  The figure before them was Johnny Bear, but the flesh- and- blood version of the statue they’d seen last week. His legs were bowed, shortish, but his arms hung long from his broad shoulders. His black hair was matted and messy, and on his face he wore a silly open grin, almost like a bear’s. He swayed back and forth, dressed all in denim. In his left hand, he held the weapon, an ornately carved slingshot. Johnny Bear smiled and swayed.

  And then he spoke, and what he said stunned Travis.

  “Sí, sí. Sí, sí. Muchas gracias.”

  It wasn’t what he said, but how it sounded. The voice that came out of Johnny Bear was not Johnny Bear’s. It was Hil’s, perfectly Hil’s. It carried every tone and shade of Hil’s voice, and with the sound of the words, Travis could almost see Johnny Bear become Hil.

  Travis felt Hil shudder.

  Johnny Bear spoke again, “Thank you, friend. Gracias, mi amigo.” This time it was Oster’s voice. Not an echo of Oster’s voice, not an imitation: Oster’s voice. He stood exactly like Oster when he spoke.

  Travis knew now who had called them last week, the voice of Gitano, and that other voice, the one pleading for help.

  A change shimmered over Johnny Bear. He seemed to shrink a little, turn his head in a feminine way.

  A woman’s voice, soft but firm. “Come, children, come now. It’s time for lessons.” A schoolteacher’s voice.

  Johnny Bear turned and shot up the hill, crashing through the thick oak and into the manzanita. Gone.

  Travis and Oster bolted after him and had just got to the edge of the meadow, when they heard Hil.

  “Wait, wait, wait. Wait just a minute.”

  His voice was a leash that pulled them back.

  “Who. Was. That.”

  Hil stood with his hands on his hips. He wasn’t so much looking at Travis and Oster as through them.

  “We’ll explain later,” Travis yelled. “Come on. We’ve got to catch up.”

  “No,” Hil said. “No, we don’t. We have to tell me who—that—was. I’m totally freaked out.”

  “Okay,” Travis said. “But then we go.”

  The three of them huddled in the open sunlight. Travis and Oster did their best to explain Johnny Bear. Again.

  “So,” he said. “This guy, the guy who just saved our lives, is a character out of a book, and we have no idea how that happened, and we’re gonna go after him, and for all we know, there may be tons of other characters roaming around. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “Yes,” Oster said. “That’s about it.”

  “Cool,” Hil said. “Let’s get going.” And he ran off into the manzanita scrub.

 
; From a ridge not too far away, the schoolteacher’s voice rang out.

  “Come, children, it’s time for lessons.”

  The golden afternoon was moving on, away from the hills, over the ocean, toward China.

  SEVENTEEN

  FROM THE BASE OF THE SCREE SLOPE, THEY COULD HEAR THE VOICES IN THE CAVE. But it wasn’t until they’d reached the sandstone bluff and stood outside the cave’s mouth that Travis could make out the words.

  “Tularecito has escaped from Napa,” a deep official-sounding voice said. “He’ll come back here, you know he will.”

  “He’s not dangerous, and you know that, Bert. We’ll leave him be,” a different voice said.

  “He darn near killed me.”

  “You should have left his holes alone, Bert. He was just diggin holes, looking for his gnomes. Gentle as a foal. Now, Bert, don’t.”

  Travis and Hil and Oster had sidled up next to the cave’s mouth. Travis peeked in. Johnny Bear stood over a small fire, speaking to himself, swaying. Thin gray smoke filled the upper aspect of the cavern and drifted into a deeper recess.

  “Hello?” Travis said. “May we come in?”

  He stepped into the cave. Oster and Hil followed.

  Johnny Bear turned and grinned.

  Across the fire from Johnny Bear was the rock- cobbled statue of him. It was such a precise likeness, Travis had a hard time knowing which was which. Hil went up to the statue and ran his hands over it.

  Johnny Bear turned and grinned.

  “Whiskey?” he said. “Food? Cheese?” This voice seemed to be Johnny Bear’s own. It came from inside him and matched the expression on his grinning face.

  He spoke again, this time in Spanish. “Està muerta la culebra, ¿no?” This voice, Travis heard in the words, came from a hundred years ago.

  “The snake is dead,” Hil said. “That ’s what he ’s Thelling us.”

  “Cheese,” Oster said. “Yes. Cheese and bread.”

  Oster pulled packets of waxed paper from his knapsack and held them out to Johnny Bear. He took them gently from Oster’s hands and offered a little bow.