Steinbeck’s Ghost (6 page)

The ride home was a snap, no traffic, no wind, a great night for a bike ride, and Travis thought that perhaps he’d never ridden his bike any faster. He was racing home, trying to get there before his parents had time to invent new punishments for him. But he was also way too excited to ride any other way.

So much had happened in the last few days—the library, Gitano, and yes, that really was Steinbeck’s ghost—but he didn’t know what to do with it all. He wasn’t afraid of what was happening, and was pretty sure zombies and ghouls weren’t suddenly going to be chasing him down the street. He knew these things were all connected—but how, and why? What did this mean? His brain was an enormous hamster wheel with hundreds of hamsters spinning around and around. So he pedaled to keep up with the hamsters, pedaled and panted and flew all the way home.

He shot off Natividad and was zooming down Boronda, about to glide through the gates of Bella Linda Terrace, when he saw them.

On the ridge of the Gabilan foothills closest to Bella Linda Terrace, three black silhouettes stood looking over the valley, toward the Santa Lucia Mountains, toward Corral de Tierra. The figures were as still as stone, but they were definitely human. No movement at all, just watching.

He skidded the bike to a stop.

All the not- thinking he’d done on the bike ride, all the not- thinking he’d pedaled into himself, vanished. He knew who these figures were, and he knew it immediately. There was a Steinbeck story, “Flight,” where a man was being chased by sheriff ’s deputies through the Santa Lucia Mountains near Big Sur, and all during the chase, whenever the man looked up, he found three black figures standing on ridge tops high above him. The man knew they were not chasing him, they were simply watching him.

Travis knew that the figures on the ridge below Fremont Peak were Steinbeck’s Watchers. And that story, “Flight,” was in
The Long Valley
, which he had in his backpack.

He gazed up at the Watchers. They were not looking at him. They were looking far away, into the west. Then they turned in unison and disappeared from the ridge, as if they’d been waiting for Travis to arrive.

Travis knew what he had to do, if he could just get his feet to cooperate. He was going to go home, turn on all the lights, and watch some mindless television until he fell asleep. Maybe even beg his parents for a Gamebox.

His parents!

He pumped all the way home and, just as he was about to cruise into the driveway, heard a car honking behind him. Travis tore into the house before his parents could say anything, grabbed the note he’d left for them off the kitchen table, and slammed into the bathroom.

The note had said he was at Hil’s, and that wouldn’t work anymore. He had to think of something else—he was just out riding around Bella Linda Terrace. That’d do. His parents believed him, but they weren’t happy he had been out after dark. They gave him the “better be more careful” lecture. Standing there in the kitchen with them, he really wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t. It was a lie, a stupid lie at that, and he had to stick to it.

After a late dinner, Travis and his parents watched a silly cop show together, but he couldn’t relax, couldn’t get everything out of his head. He kept wanting to talk to his parents, tell them everything that had happened. But just like over the weekend, he kept his mouth shut. How did you even begin to tell your parents about ghosts and Watchers? So he watched some cops shoot at guys and drink coffee and drive recklessly: TV.

Later, in his room, he sat at his desk for a long time and looked out at Salinas, a pearl- string of lights along the highway, and at the barely visible outline of the Santa Lucias, to where the Watchers had been watching.

He got into bed, cracked open
The Long Valley
, and turned to the story called “Flight.”

A
FTER SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, HIL AND TRAVIS COM-PLETELY SCOPED OUT THE CAR WASH SCHEME.
Hil was an excellent planner, and between the two of them, they had, they imagined, everything covered. Hil would contact the Old Stage shopping center, two blocks from the entrance to Bella Linda Terrace, and get permission to use the corner of their parking lot at the intersection of Natividad and Boronda. He would arrange to have a banner made and, with his father, figure out a way to raise it: Car Wash—Save Our Library—$5.00, and the big sun. Travis would collect the other materials, the towels and hoses and soap. He figured his parents would help with this.

When they were done planning, they walked around Bella Linda Terrace and hit every house with a flyer. Travis noticed something he’d not seen before. Every house in Bella Linda Terrace had a satellite dish—including his own—and every dish pointed to the same spot in the sky. The houses looked as if they were scanning the galaxy for news from the Mother Planet. Travis pointed this out to Hil.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know, the more we talk about it, the weirder this place gets. I’m gonna blame you, T. You started it. Because of you, I know I live on this really strange planet. Before you, I was perfectly happy here.”

They agreed, though, that it was better to travel this weird planet together. With every block, Hil and Travis expanded their ideas for the Camazotz video game, imagining the unexpected worlds behind the dull facade of each neighbor’s house.

Travis and his parents ate at Sheila’s again that weekend. Halfway through their burgers and fries, Travis brought up the library closing. He knew he had to be careful.

“You hear about the library?” he asked them.

That seemed safe enough.

“I know,” his dad said. “It’s horrible. I love that place.”

“Do you remember,” his mom said, “how we used to go there every Saturday?”

“Of course I remember,” he said. She talked about the library as if it were an extinct dinosaur. “The last time we went was only a few months ago.
Before
we moved.”

“Maybe we could go again,” his dad said. “That’d be nice.”

“It’s just so stupid,” Travis said. “How could they close the library? I mean, it’s the library. People need to have free access to all that information.”

His mom looked at him with really big eyes.

“That’s true,” his dad said. “But you know, the taxes are already so high. There’s just not enough money.”

“But that’s not the whole picture,” Travis said. “The state’s cut off so much money we used to get from them for things like fire and police. And libraries. The state’s making us pay for their poor planning.”

His mom’s eyes got a lot smaller then; Travis couldn’t see into them. His dad looked at his mom, but she only looked at Travis.

“Good point. I guess,” his dad said. “But you have to understand, Travis.” This was a bad sign. If his dad used his name, and started with “you have to understand,” he was obviously going to say something Travis did not want to understand.

“The world’s changing,” his dad went on, “and there’s just not that kind of money anymore. At least not around here. We pay taxes, and they’re killing us. I’ll miss the library, too; I wish we could save it. But I’m sorry to say, I don’t think we can. It’s a different world nowadays, Travis. I don’t like it either.”

His dad looked out at Main Street. Travis looked, too. The world, at least here in Oldtown, looked pretty much the same.

“But we have to do something,” Travis said. He felt himself rising up in his chair. “I mean, we have to try. We love the library.”

“Well, yes, we do. I know that.” His dad turned to him. “But what?”

“We can have a car wash.”

Travis’s mom and dad looked at each other, a weird surprise on their faces, as if Travis had just sprouted ears and a tail.

“Ooooo-kaaaay,” they cooed.

Travis spelled it out for them, the car wash plan. He made sure they knew it wasn’t only about the money, but publicity, too.

Instantly his dad got into it, and Travis felt the old spark he used to see in his dad,
before
the new job. On one of the restaurant’s paper place mats they sketched out everything.

“She,” his dad called, and Sheila, the owner and his dad’s old boss, came out from behind the long wooden bar. Travis had always loved the bar here, not just for the cherries and olives his dad used to give him, but because it looked old enough to belong in a Wild West saloon.

“What’s up, Don, Lyndsay? And Travis, my handsome man. You look like you need a favor. Don’t ask for your job back, though. I got enough trouble.”

She put a glass of olives and cherries in front of Travis. Sheila was pretty and funny and smart, and she always treated Travis like a friend.

“Towels, She,” his dad said. “We need lots of towels.”

Sheila agreed to rent more towels from her supplier— the bar used about three hundred a week. His dad offered to pay, but Sheila refused. It was a noble cause, she said. She loved the library, too.

While Travis and his dad were working on the car wash plan, his mom grew quieter and quieter, and sat back with her arms folded. She was onto him, Travis knew. She was going to sit back and wait until Travis slipped up. Then she’d pounce. Travis clearly knew way too much about the library.

“Who else is gonna help with the car wash?” his dad asked.

His mom leaned forward, her arms still crossed. He was the bird in the birdbath, she was the cat. He was doomed.

So he gave up.

“The committee,” he said. “The Save Our Library committee.” He pulled a folded flyer from his back pocket and handed it to his mom.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about this committee.”

There was a tiny smile hiding in her face. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

His parents were pretty mad. About him riding his bike to the library, sure, but mostly mad that he hadn’t told them. He had lied to them, and he knew it and they knew it.

Still, during the excruciatingly long and quiet drive home, they didn’t go ballistic. The word “punishment” had yet to surface. They were being calm—angry but calm.

So Travis played it the same way. He wanted to yell at them, yell that they had stranded him on Camazotz and it wasn’t fair and he was bored out of his gourd and at least they got to go to work and the library was something he cared about, but they wouldn’t know about that, would they, they were always at work. The words rose up in him, but he didn’t let them out.

He would let his parents be right—they
were
right, on one level—and not insist on his being right—oh,
he
was right, too. He had played this game before, waiting, and it felt good to be bigger than his anger. He let his parents do most of the talking.

At home, around the dining room table, the deal was made. His parents knew the library was important to him, and they were beginning to see that they had to give him more freedom, too.

So. He could ride his bike to the library, when it was daylight—by daylight they meant the sun was still visible—and when it wasn’t raining. If it was raining, he had to take the bus. But coming back, especially in the dark, yes, in the evening, too, was another thing. He would have to get a ride back, with Hil’s mom, or maybe Miss Babb, or one of the other committee members. Or he could wait for his parents to come get him.

Agreed? Deal. Pinkie swears all around.

Not bad, Travis thought Not bad at all.

The next meeting of the Save Our Library committee was held in a larger conference room, the Ricketts Room, named for Doc Ricketts, Steinbeck’s best friend. This room was more like a theater, all chairs and no long table, but still too small for the turnout that night. Miss Babb stood at a lectern, and every speaker had to stand to be heard. The original committee members had brought friends, and some new members came because of the flyers. They were thirty-seven altogether.

Travis drove in with Hil and his mom. To go over the car wash with him, and to make his parents happy.

Each of the five subcommittees gave their reports and doled out responsibilities to new volunteers. Over the coming weekend there would be a bake sale in front of the Maya Cinema, a used book sale in front of the library, a tamale sale in the Alisal neighborhood, and an information table in front of the National Steinbeck Center for out-of-town visitors. And the car wash.

Nine people, including Miss Babb, signed up to help with the car wash.

Travis signed up for a new subcommittee, the mailing committee, which would stuff envelopes and mail out flyers to every address in Salinas, and to magazines, newspapers, and libraries and library associations around the world.

Miss Babb had never looked so excited. She seemed to be glowing. At the end of the meeting she hugged Travis and thanked him about a hundred times.

Travis had Hil’s mom drive past the old house on Riker, said he wanted Hil to see it. But honestly, it was because he knew this route would take them past the Steinbeck House. They were going pretty fast down Central, but Travis saw, if only briefly, that the light was on, and the dark shape of the writer sat in the window.

Steinbeck’s ghost. It had to be.

The day was ideal for a car wash. It was the first of October, and Indian summer was hanging on, bright and crisp and dry. The sky was a smooth blue plate.

Hil’s father, a round bald man with tattoos up and down his arms, helped put up the banner. He’d planted two tetherball poles in old car tires he’d filled with concrete, and the three of them stretched the banner across the shopping center’s main corner. The banner was professionally made; it was huge and no one could miss it. The sun design, all yellow and smiling and reading an open book, made Travis happy just looking at it. Theodore, the man in the important looking suit, had done a great job.

The car wash was all set up by ten, but by ten thirty they hadn’t washed a single car. Travis kept stacking and restacking the towels, checking the soapy water.

Then Hil—leave it to Hil—had an idea. Hil’s father pulled his enormous gold truck into the car wash’s orangeconed lane, and Travis began washing it. Hil stood on the sidewalk close to the stoplights and did a crazy dance, pointing all the while to the banner. Once he even dropped to his knees, his hands clasped, a frightful beggar.