Steinbeck’s Ghost

by Lewis Buzbee

  “You know, Doc,” Johnny Bear said. “I always say, ‘the simpler the better.’ Bread and cheese, ain’t nothing beats it. Now, let’s eat.”

  This voice was clear, full of laughter.

  Johnny Bear sat in front of the fire. He held out the thick wedge of cheese to Hil. Hil sat, then Oster and Travis, too. Johnny Bear passed a crude knife to Hil, who hacked off a slab of cheese.

  Travis remembered that in the story “Johnny Bear” from The Long Valley, Johnny Bear always had a story to tell. Sometimes the other characters bribed him with whiskey, and sometimes they just had to ask, but he always obliged.

  “Do you have a story for us?” Travis asked.

  In the light of the kindling fire, Johnny Bear’s face flashed light and dark.

  “All I go is stories, Doc. That’s all there is,” he said in the same voice as before, but which now seemed troubled, anxious.

  Stories? Doc? Could this be the voice of Steinbeck himself? Travis wondered. The library had several audio recordings of Steinbeck reading his own work, but Travis had never checked them out. Now he wished he had. It didn’t matter, really, for Travis knew what he believed. It wasn’t his intuition that was telling him this was Steinbeck’s voice. Johnny Bear’s imitations were so precise, so chillingly perfect, that even here in the dark of the cave, Travis could almost see Steinbeck talking to his best friend Doc Ricketts. They were in Doc’s lab.

  Then there was silence in the cave, while the four of them munched on bread and cheese. They watched Johnny Bear eat, looking back and forth from one to the other. Travis was a hive of questions, but he kept the silence. Now seemed the right time to listen. Dusk had come, and the fire in the cave was all the brighter for it.

  Oster rustled in his knapsack.

  “Whiskey, Johnny?” he asked. He held out a quart of Old Tennis Shoes. “Story, Johnny?”

  Johnny Bear stood, took the bottle from Oster. He took a quick slug, offered it to Oster, who sipped at it. He took the bottle back and slipped it into his pocket. Johnny Bear’s shoulders scrunched; he made himself smaller.

  “I’ll draw you a picture. A pretty picture. I draw real good pictures.” This voice croaked, tinted with a Spanish accent. Then the voice changed when Johnny Bear coyly turned his head. The schoolteacher. “Come now, class. The lesson is about to begin, and we don’t have much time.”

  There was a scrabbling sound from the rear of the cave, the sound of rock underfoot. It sounded to Travis like a hibernating animal stirring from a long slumber.

  Hil put his hand on Travis’s wrist, squeezed it. Oster sat up straight, his hand on his knapsack.

  The man that emerged from the shadows was the opposite of Johnny Bear. He was much shorter, though just as wide, and where Johnny Bear had short legs and long arms, this man’s leg were lanky stilts, his arms stubby. But his hands, like Johnny Bear’s, were large and powerful. He was dressed in little more than rags. His face was broad and flat and, when he stepped into the fire’s glow, seemed as bland and simple as the face of a frog. He did not smile, as Johnny Bear did, but he was not frightening.

  “You are Tularecito?” Oster asked.

  The man nodded. “I am the little frog. I will draw you a picture. I draw good pictures, Miss Morgan tells me so.”

  “Tularecito is quite gifted,” Johnny Bear said in the schoolteacher’s voice.

  In The Pastures of Heaven, Miss Morgan was Tulare-cito’s teacher, the only one in the Corral who understood him. Johnny Bear’s gift was mimicry; Tularecito’s was art—painting, sculpting. Tularecito, it was obvious now, had created the statue of Johnny Bear.

  Travis turned to Hil, but Hil put up a hand. “I know,” Hil said. “At least I think I do.”

  Tularecito joined them by the fire. He stirred the outer ring of ash with a sharpened stick. He placed his hands into the ash, too, rubbed it into his fingertips.

  “Why are you here?” Travis asked. “Why did you bring us up here?”

  Tularecito looked up at Johnny Bear. The voice that erupted from Johnny Bear was the voice they’d just heard, the one Travis hoped was Steinbeck’s voice.

  “I can’t tell that story, Doc, it’s too awful, too horrible, I’m not ready.”

  Another man’s voice came in. Doc’s?

  “You’ve got to, John, people need to know the truth, you know that. The truth matters.”

  “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I’m ready.”

  “Someday, John. Promise me. Someday you have to tell that story.”

  “Someday, Doc.”

  When he spoke, Johnny Bear became the people whose voices he borrowed, and Travis saw those figures as clearly as any photograph, perhaps even more so. He could see the worn- out chair and the green- shaded lamp in the lab, and the two men talking there. He was listening to Doc and Steinbeck.

  Tularecito stood and moved to the blank cave wall. In one hand he carried a pile of ashes that he stirred with the other. Oster stoked the fire, and the cave was bathed in light.

  Travis felt for the cell phone in his backpack. He knew his parents were out there, in Salinas, knew the whole town was just over the ridge, not far away. But this cave seemed the only place in the world right now.

  The first few strokes of charcoal and ash were easy to make out, the silhouette of the Santa Lucias and then the Castle. While Tularecito drew on the cave wall, Johnny Bear spoke.

  The first voice was in Spanish. “Ave María Purísima, por aquí se hallan las verdes pasturas del Cielo a que nos mandó el Señor.”

  Hil translated instantly. “Holy Mother, these are the pastures of Heaven, all green, where God is leading us to.”

  “The Corral,” Travis said. “It’s the Corral. He’s the first Spanish soldier in the valley. From chapter one.”

  The drawings came more quickly. Each stroke of Tularecito’s fingers seemed to create an entire world on the cave wall. The valley grew, became peopled, houses sprang up, farms flourished and failed.

  Johnny Bear did all the voices, some in En glish, some in Spanish, some, it seemed, in German. Hil translated the Spanish as best he could. Oster and Travis called out the bits of The Pastures of Heaven they recognized.

  The shape of a school house emerged on the cave wall. A moon appeared, a band, people dancing outside in the night.

  Johnny Bear hushed. Two voices, a boy’s and a girl’s, teenagers.

  “No, Jimmie, I will not kiss you, my daddy says—”

  “Oh, your daddy. Just one kiss, Alice, please, I do love you so. I won’t tell.”

  Tularecito waved a rag- covered arm across the wall, and the drawing disappeared. The shape of another house, an orchard, the moon again.

  Travis knew this story. Shark Wicks hated the thought that some boy might kiss his daughter and take her away. Shark Wicks, like everybody who moved into the Corral, wanted the world to stay the same forever. His daughter did not kiss Jimmie Munroe that night at the dance, but everyone in town told Shark she had kissed Jimmie, and Shark chose to not believe his daughter. He went after Jimmie Munroe with a shotgun, but the sheriff showed up in time, and Jimmie wasn’t hurt. Travis knew this story already.

  Johnny Bear crouched, his arms over his face, the voice of the teenage boy again, filled with fear. The voice sounded like quick water ran through it. “No, Mr. Wicks, I never did, please don’t, please don’t.”

  Another voice, ragged, terrifying: Wicks. “How dare you, you little skunk, how dare you touch my Alice. I’ll show you.”

  The next sound from Johnny Bear was tremendous, blew everyone back from the fire. A shotgun blast.

  The figure of the murdered Jimmie Munroe appeared on the cave wall. Shark Wicks stood over him with a shotgun. Another figure, a sheriff , appeared next.

  This was not how the story ended in the book.

  Johnny spoke again. The sheriff : “Now, Shark, what are we gonna do with you? Why’d you have to go and do that?”

  Shark’s voice again, but no longer terrifying, rather
terrified. “We’ll take care of it, you’ll see. Jimmie here, why Jimmie was just trying to protect my daughter from some Mexican and got himself shot. Why, he’s a hero.”

  Tularecito erased the drawing, but another immediately took its place. A small house, but square, an adobe house, a stand of corn and beans next to it, a dog in the yard.

  Johnny Bear threw his chest out. This voice had a heavy Spanish accent, but spoke perfect English.

  “No, señor, no, you have the wrong man, señor. I do not know your daughter. Now leave my home, leave my family.”

  Tularecito continued to draw. A man in a sombrero next, and then Shark Wicks again, his shotgun aimed at the man in the sombrero. And with the fewest of deft strokes, a crowd of men surrounded the one in the sombrero.

  Johnny Bear dropped to all fours, his voice a growl.

  “That’s him, boys, that’s the one that hurt my daughter and killed Jimmie Munroe. Here’s the shotgun that proves it. Let’s get him. Nobody’ll ever miss another Mexican.”

  There were no more voices, no more sounds from Johnny Bear.

  Tularecito worked in silence.

  Travis could hardly stand to watch the images that flew onto the cave wall. But he could not look away.

  Next to the adobe house, a tree appeared, and around that tree a crowd of men who carried torches. At the foot of that tree, a sombrero.

  Off to one side, from behind the adobe, another man in a sombrero looked on. He was leading a mule on which a small boy rode.

  There was no doubt at all who the boy on the mule was. It wasn’t that the boy looked like Gitano, but that the story Gitano had told him in the alley now made sense. What Gitano had seen that long- ago day in the Corral, what had kept him from ever returning, was this story Tularecito and Johnny Bear were telling together. Travis got to his knees, reached for the cave wall, pointed at the boy on the mule.

  “That’s Gitano,” Travis said. “This is what he saw in the Great Mountains. This is why he never went back. This is why he came to me.”

  Travis sat down. He looked at his finger. Where he had touched the drawing, a bit of the ash remained.

  Tularecito’s hand flashed angrily across the drawing, and when he stepped back, Travis saw the dangling, lifeless body of the farmer hanging from the tree.

  Hil gasped. Oster was muttering. Travis’s legs were shaking, his face was hot.

  Johnny Bear straightened again, spoke one last time, Steinbeck’s voice.

  “There you go, Doc. The truth at last. The horrible truth. There never was a curse on the Corral. It’s not an evil place. Not the place, Doc, the people. There’s your story. Now what are you going to do with it?”

  Johnny Bear took out the Old Tennis Shoes and drank deeply from it, then curled himself into a rough corner of the cave, turned away from them.

  “Oh my God,” Oster said. “Oh my God.”

  “Tell me what that was. Tell me what it means,” Hil whispered.

  Travis tried . The story of Shark Wicks wasn’t as Steinbeck had written it. He had been afraid to write the truth then. The real Shark Wicks, at least the person he’d been based on, had killed Jimmie Munroe, and to cover it up, he and a group of white farmers from the valley lynched a Mexican farmer. They blamed him for killing Jimmie, who, they said, was defending Shark’s daughter. Shark knew that back then, the law, and everyone else, would look away. They cared more about a white man’s reputation than a Mexican’s life. It was horrible.

  The picture of the hanged man glowed on the wall.

  The fire was dying out, and there was no more kindling. Tularecito had gone to the back of the cave and disappeared into what ever place he had come from. The cave seemed empty now, and cold.

  “Why?” Hil said. “Why did they bring us up here?”

  “I don’t quite know,” Oster said.

  “The story,” Travis said. “It’s all about the story. I think Steinbeck had one more story to tell. At least the truer end of one story.”

  Hil stirred the ashes of the fire with a twig.

  “It was real, wasn’t it?” Hil said.

  “We shared food with them,” Oster said. “We shared shelter with them. And the story, we shared their story. Is there anything more real than that?”

  Hil and Travis shook their heads and stared into the fire. No, Travis thought, there was nothing more real than that.

  “That story, the lynching,” Hil said. “Mr. Oster, could that be true, could it really have happened?”

  “Ernest, please.”

  “Ernest. Did things like that happen here?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Oster said. “People can be very cruel. Almost anywhere on this planet, not just here. They can be. That’s why we have to tell such stories. To remember. To remind us that people can be cruel. But also that we don’t have to be.”

  Travis looked at Hil. He wondered if it was any different for Hil to hear this story, because Hil’s family was Mexican. He wondered if he would have felt differently himself if his family had been Mexican. Yes, Travis was white and Hil was brown, but they were more the same than they were different. Did it make a difference why someone was killed so viciously? No, the color of someone’s skin, or the background of someone’s family, had nothing to do with it. It was a cruel and awful story: men killing other men for stupid reasons.

  Johnny Bear snored, turned in his deep slumber.

  “But what do we do with it?” Travis asked. “Now that we’ve got the story. It was over a hundred years ago. What are we supposed to do with it all? We have no proof. Oh, sure, these characters came out of some book and told us this horrible story. No one will believe us.”

  Travis couldn’t help it, he was pounding the ground with his fist.

  “We tell the story,” Oster said. “We write it down. We say, oh, this is just a story, and that way they’ll believe it. We remember for everyone else. It’s why we have stories.”

  Johnny Bear shook and grunted and rolled over. He got to his hands and knees, then ponderously stood.

  “Whiskey?” he said.

  He went to the mouth of the cave and looked out, took the Old Tennis Shoes from his pocket and drained the bottle in one pull. Then he stepped out into the night. He swung the bottle out over the hillside, sailing it high and far, and after a long time, there was the sound of it breaking on rock. Then Johnny Bear raced down the scree.

  When he got to the cave’s mouth, all Travis heard was Johnny Bear crashing through the undergrowth. He was gone.

  It was night now, but still bright. The full moon had risen from behind the sandstone bluff .

  The Watchers appeared on a faraway ridge; they turned from Travis and disappeared into the west. He wanted to call to Hil and Oster, to show them the Watchers, but it was too late. Without being able to give a reason for it, other than he felt it deeply in the air around him, Travis knew he would never see the Watchers again.

  Hil and Oster came up behind Travis. He took a last glimpse inside the cave. The fire was out.

  “Jeez, you guys,” Hil said. “We better book. My mom’s gonna kill me.”

  Travis took out his cell phone and punched for his parents. They were glad to hear from him, and promised to call Hil’s folks. Travis loved standing out here in the full- moon night, and he also liked hearing his parents’ voices and knowing they were just on the other side of the mountain.

  “A sugar moon,” Oster said, pointing up. “That’s what we used to call a moon like this.”

  Because the sugar moon was so bright, they did not need their flashlights to guide them down the ravines to the valley floor.

  During the drive back to Salinas, they talked and talked and talked. And, as people do at such times, they simply told the story of what had happened to them over and over again. To make sure they remembered it, to make sure it was real. It was real, they all agreed, everything they’d seen that day. They couldn’t figure out why it had happened, but they knew it had. And they all believed it had been about
the story; they all believed that Steinbeck had one more story he needed to tell.

  Instead of taking the freeway around Salinas, Oster kept on Highway 68 and went straight through town to the Steinbeck House. He parked in front, and they all got out. Travis prayed that Steinbeck’s ghost would be there; he wanted his friends to see it, wanted them to have that gift just once.

  The attic bedroom windows were lighted yellow. Young Steinbeck sat at his desk, staring out the windows, a pen to his lips. He capped the pen and put it in his pocket, then closed the ledger he’d been writing in, stood up, and walked away from the desk. The yellow lights went out.

  Every time he went to the library, for months after, Travis rode by the Steinbeck House. The windows were never lighted again.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE WIND HAD DIED. Outside Travis’s window, the world was still, and quiet ruled the house. The Santa Lucias were a dark blue gash against the golden, ocean- inspired sunset. It was cooler outside, too. Travis could feel the first bite of true autumn hovering at his window. He knew his astronomy; the world had turned, and the shadows stretched ahead, and the days would be shorter.

  At dinner he could barely keep his eyes open, and there was a moment when he thought maybe the mashed potatoes would make a nice pillow. It was just him and his parents, but they’d been up at the Corral all day, with Hil and his parents, Oster and Miss Babb. They had explored and talked, all of them together, and then they talked some more. When he and his parents got home, they had a lovely dinner—his mom’s burgers were even better than Sheila’s—and things felt pretty good. But there’d been so many words that day, so many stories, and he needed the quiet. His parents, too, Travis could tell, thought the quiet was pretty nice.

  He excused himself and went to his room and sat at his desk in his window and enjoyed the silence for an hour. He looked out the window and stared at the Santa Lucias.

  After some time his thinking slowed down enough that he could make out individual words and sentences, his brain no longer a whirl of voices.