Steinbeck’s Ghost (16 page)

“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 road. 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.

“Right there,” Oster said. “Right where the road breaks. That’s as close as I got. But it had to be there. Back then, there were several old foundations, all clustered together, like you’d find in a town. But now, just look at it, it’s all been plowed up, plowed under.”

“I can see it,” Travis said. “Right where you’re pointing, a perfect place for a town. It had to be there.” At least, he wanted it to be there.

From the day Oster had received Steinbeck’s letter, he needed to find the town. Something awful had happened here, and he had been determined to find out what it was.

Travis was having a hard time imagining something awful happening in a place so beautiful.

Oster never did find out what had happened, though. And he found no proof of the town’s existence. He spent weeks in the records department of Salinas’s City Hall, but no piece of paper anywhere mentioned it.

He came to the Corral frequently while he was writing the book. He hiked all over, looking for some kind of evidence, any kind of relic. Even trash heaps, there were a lot of those. Trash heaps were always good evidence for how and where any group of humans lived. What we threw away said much about what we valued.

He stopped in at farm houses, barns, anywhere he could find people. He asked a thousand questions. No one knew anything. Perhaps, he began to feel, the town had only ever existed in Steinbeck’s imagination.

Then one day—must have been spring; the air was crisp, the hills lime- green—he came upon an old campsite in a narrow ravine. There wasn’t much to it, a fi re pit, broken bottles, sharpened sticks. He was digging through the ashes when a rifle shot screamed down at him. He actually saw and felt the pop of dust in the hillside next to him before he heard the shot. Then he heard the sound of its resounding echoes.

He froze, put his hands in the air. Silence. He started to speak, to apologize for trespassing, but all he got out was, “Hey, there,” when he heard the snap and crack of the rifle’s breech, then another shot—puff and boom.

The rifle’s breech cracked open again.

Oster turned and carefully walked away from the fire pit, down the hill. His body shook the whole way. But he could see his car.

That’s when the third shot cried past him, over his shoulder. It was too precise a shot to be a miss; it was a warning.

A dire warning is what they call it in books, Travis thought.

Oster never went back to the Corral. He sensed that he’d asked too many questions, gotten too close to something that was being kept hidden. He was frightened. Today was the first time he’d been back.

Travis’s hand was shaking. Oster stared out over the valley.

“Look,” Oster said. “It’s a scary story, you don’t have to tell me. If you’re afraid, we can go. I’m pretty sure we won’t get shot at today. But if you want …”

“No, no,” Travis said. And he wasn’t afraid for himself, he discovered. It was just Oster’s story; he was more afraid for Oster, Oster from a long time ago.

“Now what?” Travis asked. “Are we going to go look for the town?”

“I hadn’Thexpected all these houses and farms out here. Look at all those fences. The whole place, it’s owned. I don’t see how we can even get close.”

“But we’ve got to keep looking, don’t you think?” Travis said. “For something. If we’re right, well, if I’m right, coming up here is something I’m supposed to do. It ain’t no picnic.”

“Well,” Oster said. “What do you say to a little hike? If I remember correctly, up at the top of this mountain, or pretty close by, around here somewhere, there’s one of the sandstone bluffs. You still game?”

“We’ve come this far,” Travis said.

Travis ate all three of his sandwiches. Real fast.

I
T HADN’T RAINED SINCE LAST SPRING.
That was the way it worked in California. The rains started in late October or early November, and continued through April. After that, no rain at all. It was almost time for the first rains again.

Travis smelled the dust with every step he took. The leaves and grass and branches crackled and broke underfoot, and every step brought the dust to his nose. The earth was quiet, dormant. Waiting. That smell, Travis thought, that’s the smell of Salinas, of California. The smell of waiting for rain.

He didn’t know if he loved the smell because of the smell itself, or because it meant the rains would soon come.

Two months from now these hills would be such a bright green that it would hurt to look at them. The hills, and the life that depended on them, would be refreshed.
Vibrant
, that was the word. Or
verdant
, another good word. And then, only a few months after the rains had soaked the hills, the green would fade. By June the hills would be the color of gold, as intensely yellow as the intense green of spring. All through the summer, the grass would fade from gold, duller and duller as summer marched to autumn. And then the hills would be this color again, brown almost. No, not brown. The grass would be so dead it was transparent, invisible, and the brown of the hills would show through. Then the rains would come again.

Travis followed Oster up one steep ravine after another. Every time they got to the top, another ravine rose above them. Oster would stop and turn, look with a question at Travis. Travis would nod and they would continue.

After some time they came to a grove of oak on a flat terrace. They sat on a fallen oak trunk, and Oster pulled some water bottles from his knapsack—“before backpacks we had knapsacks, same thing,” he said. They gulped down the water. Even this high up, they could not see the broad valley. The trees were dense here.

They both turned at the same time. The clopping sound had come from above. At first there was nothing but the careful clop- clop, then a shuddering of scrub brush, and then, behind the brush, a reddish shape appeared. When the pony stuck its head out of the brush, Trav is a l most laug he d .

The pony stepped forward. Its front legs poked out of the scrub.

Stillness invaded the terrace.

The pony nodded and nickered. Its mane was black and stiff and short. It nodded again.

Travis held out his water bottle and splashed some into the dust.

The pony leaned forward, about to take a step, then pulled back. It stepped forward again, removing itself from the scrub. It inched toward them and the water, its nose close to the ground. Travis heard sharp bursts of air from its nostrils.

When the pony reached the muddy pit where Travis had poured the water, it sniffed at it and licked tenderly. It nickered and snorted and stomped one hoof.

Travis cupped his hand and poured water into it, held it out to the pony. Travis could smell the clean, cool water.

The pony inched forward and slurped the water in Travis’s hand .

The pony stomped his hoof again, and Travis refilled his offering. The pony drank like this for several minutes.

“Gabilan.” He was dying to say the name aloud, so he did. He knew he might scare off the pony, but he had to say it. Gabilan, Jody’s colt in
The Red Pony
. The two animals were identical—red coat, black mane and tail, white forelegs like little socks, white blaze between black glittering eyes.

The pony pulled back, tilted its head sideways. He was looking at Travis with one wild eye. They measured each other for a long time.

Gabilan—Travis could think of it no other way— pony- hopped in place on his front legs, then seemed to collapse, cutting away from Travis, spooked, climbing fast into the scrubby hillside.

Travis looked at Oster, whose hand was poised in midair, as if he’d been turned to stone. They were both too stunned for a moment to say anything, as if saying anything would break the spell of what had just happened. Silence. Then Oster spoke.

“Gabilan,” he said. “You may be right. No, you have to be right. The mystery’s here, Travis.”

Perhaps the shouting had reached the pony’s sensitive ears first—why it had run off —but it was only now that Travis and Oster heard it. A man’s voice, but far away, not the next ravine, maybe the one beyond that.

“I am Gitano, and I have come back.” Later, both Travis and Oster would agree this is what they heard.

But now they stood quietly, putting on their packs, and together raced after the voice. They crossed several ravines before they heard the voice again. It was farther away now, up the hill, moving up and away.

“I am Gitano, and I have come back.”

Breathless, the both of them, they looked to each other, locked eyes, and with no outward sign, agreed to follow the voice.

The voice stayed well ahead of them. Travis knew they would never catch up, that the voice was in control of this chase. He also knew who belonged to the voice. Gitano, the man outside the library, the character from
The Red Pony
. It seemed impossible. Not impossible that such a man existed—Travis had seen him, he believed in him—but impossible that he should be up here.

By the time they broke out of the oak grove into the open air, the voice had dissolved. Travis sensed that the voice would not return. Which did not matter at all. Oster was right, the mystery was here, and they were following it.

Oster, breathing heavy, his hands on his knees, simply pointed. There it was.

It wasn’t the Castle, but close enough. The sandstone bluff was enormous, as wide and as high as the school’s gymnasium. The bright rock, almost white against the dark manzanita forest, seemed to pulse, vibrate. It was rock, Travis knew, inanimate, but it certainly seemed alive.

Since they’d been in the oak grove, making their way up the steep ravines—how long had they been climbing?—the thin clouds had continued to thicken and gather. The air was warm, but the sky was gray.

Travis and Oster were doing what they seemed to be doing a lot lately—they stared.

“May I saw wow again?” Travis said to the air.

“Please do.”

“Wow,” he said.

The face of the bluff had been carved into rounded columns, like bowling pins. The entire surface of the bluff was beaded with small holes. Travis could almost hear the rain beating against the rock, creating the holes. He could almost see the gushing water cascading over the top of the bluff , how it shaped and shaved the columns.

In the center of the bluff , at its base, was a dark opening.

“A cave.” Travis said the word as if he’d invented it.

“Let’s go. Who can resist a cave? And besides, I don’t think we’re here by mistake.”

Oster was right; they’d been brought here—by Gi-tano’s voice, by the pony, by the Watchers, a very long trail.

They began the long scramble to the base of the bluff . The slope that led to it was a long patch of scree, not solid ground but loose stones that gave way under Travis’s feet. With every step, he slid back down. The only way to make progress was to pump his legs like mad.

He stopped to suck in some air.

Oster was far ahead of him, nearly to the base. And he wasn’t breathing hard; in fact, he was whistling.

Oster wasn’t attacking the scree head- on. He walked zigzag up the mound of loose stones, cutting back on his path every six or seven steps. The scree held under his weight. It was a very Tortoise and the Hare moment for Travis .

Oster looked down at him.

“Walk like a cow,” he said. “Or a goat. When cows go up a hill, they don’t attack it, takes too much effort. They zigzag. Cows are smarter than they look.”

And he went on ahead.

In one of those weird moments, Travis’s brain connected this new piece of information with something very far away. Zigzag, that was Miss Babb’s approach to saving the library. She wasn’t running straight up the hill to knock down the people in charge. She was roaming from side to side, slowly and surely. She knew how steep the hill was.

“Wait for me.” And, like a cow, Travis zigged and zagged up the scree in no time flat.

The view from the base of the bluff was, well, it was … Travis had run out of words. Not even
wow
fit this. The valley, the Corral, it filled the world. There was nothing else.

The sky was growing darker still, and the breezes up here cooled Travis. He ran his hands over the granulated limestone.

“Grab a handful of rocks,” Oster said. “Let’s pepper a few into the cave. Rattlers always like you to knock first.”

They stood back from the edge of the cave’s mouth and chucked in a few rocks. Travis heard nothing but pings.

Oster leaned in, shined a flashlight around, chucked more rocks. No noise, no rattle.

The entrance to the cave was about the size and shape of a man, easy to squeeze through. The actual cavern was larger, taller and wider, but it was hard to say how far back into the hillside it went.

Oster ducked into the cave, Travis followed close. Without thinking about it, he reached behind him and felt in his backpack for the cell phone. Just in case.

The darkness overwhelmed them for an instant, blacker than black and infinite. The flashlight beam swept across the cave, which was much bigger than Travis imagined, ten or twelve feet tall, and it went back into the hillside dozens of feet.

They both froze when they saw the man. He was enormous, silent and still.

Travis wanted to run but couldn’t feel his feet.

“My, my,” Oster said. “My, oh my. Scared the be-jeezus out of me.”

It wasn’t a man, but a statue of a man. Travis laughed out loud.

“Will you look at that?” Oster said. He crouched, moving closer, but very slowly, toward the statue. “It’s amazing.”

The statue was made of hundreds of small flat stones, each layered upon the others. The stones were fitted so well, it was almost impossible to see them individually. All the little stones made one solid figure, and that figure seemed sturdy, unbreakable.

Travis stepped back. The stone man was well over six feet tall. His shoulders were as broad as two ordinary men. His legs were as round and solid as tree trunks, his hands were like catcher’s mitts. The figure wore a plain shirt and pants, all made of stones. Even his bare feet were made of stones, each strange, square toe perfectly articulated.

What most struck Travis was the stone man’s face. It was broad and flat, as wide open as a plate. The eyes were quiet, though, almost searching, almost glinting. There was a solid brow over the eyes. The hair was uneven, tousled, as if uncombed for a long time.

Oster put out a hand to touch it, but Travis grabbed it and pulled back. Sturdy as the statue appeared, Travis was afraid it might collapse.

“How did they do this?” Travis asked.

“Johnny Bear,” Oster said. “It’s Johnny Bear.”

“What?”

“It’s a statue of Johnny Bear. I’d recognize him anywhere. In
The Long Valley
, you know, the story ‘Johnny Bear.’ You remember, the giant simpleton? Strong as an ox. Has the power to recite any conversation he’s ever heard. In the voices of, I mean, he does the voices perfectly.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Travis said. “But why? Who? Why up here?”

“I have no idea. But it’s amazing.”

The statue’s open mouth seemed ready to speak.

“It is Johnny Bear,” Travis said. “You’re right. But I don’t get it, don’t get it at all.” Travis sort of expected he’d be getting used to all these mysteries by now, but he wasn’t. Each one he stumbled upon, or was called to, whatever was happening, surprised him still.

“And that, my young friend, is why they call it a mystery.”

They pored over the statue with their eyes. Every detail was perfect.

There was nothing else in the cave, no signs of life— no bones, no scat, no nests. They agreed the cave was still being used by humans; otherwise, there’d be animal life, insect life.

It seemed safe enough for now, though, and a good place to rest. They sat at Johnny Bear’s feet, and Oster served up a snack, fresh bread and cheese. Travis hadn’t realized how hungry he’d grown.

“Who would do this?” Travis said. “It’s beautiful, amazing. But why all the way up here where no one can see? Maybe we should tell Miss Babb. Might be cool publicity.”

Oster pondered a slab of cheese on the blade of his pocketknife.

“You think? Just yet?” Oster asked. “I don’t know. Seems to me this is just the beginning. What was that voice? Why did it bring us up here? I don’t have a clue. But I don’t want to give up right now.”

Travis told Oster all he knew about Gitano, where he’d seen him, what he found in
The Red Pony
. He promised to go looking for him downtown. Maybe Gitano would talk to him. Maybe Gitano could off er a clue.

They could see well enough in the cave now to stop using the fl ashlight. Even so, the hole of sky visible from the cave’s mouth continued to grow darker.

“Is this place cursed, do you think?” Travis asked. “Not the cave, but the whole Corral.”

A cursed valley? A mysterious cave? A crazy statue that seemed beyond any explanation? Travis thought he should probably be freaking out—totally freaking out— right about now. But the dark, still quiet of the cave hushed his nerves, cast a blanket of calm over him.