Steinbeck’s Ghost (14 page)

He didn’t know if he was running because the outboard had started up again, or if the outboard started up again because he was running toward it. They happened at the same time. He wound his way around the pilings that supported the lab, and suddenly he was outside on a cramped beach. The day’s light was awfully bright. A small red- and- white dinghy traced a steep arc of wake out into the bay, its two occupants dark against the horizon. In seconds the dinghy had rounded the corner of the aquarium and was gone.

At Travis’s feet, a burlap sack squirmed, reeking of the ocean. Oster came running up.

They opened the sack, carefully, their faces turned away as if it might explode. Inside was a writhing mass of fish, crustaceans, shellfish, seaweed.

When they fetched Mike and the boys down to the beach, all anybody could say was, “Wow.” Mike and the boys guessed the sack belonged to a party fishing without permits.

“They probably got spooked by the Harbor Patrol and dumped it here,” Mike said.

“Did you see that?” Oster asked.

“Yes,” Travis said.

They looked at each other. The expression on Oster’s face told Travis that he knew what Travis was thinking. But they just held on to the look for a second without a word. It was Steinbeck and Doc in that boat, Travis was thinking. He was ready now to be convinced, no more doubts. Everywhere he turned, it seemed, Steinbeck’s world was coming to life.

“Look at these beauties,” Mike said. “The bounty of the ocean, my friends. We’re gonna have us a barbecue tonight.”

I
T WAS A QUIET RIDE HOME.
Travis was thinking about the boat and Steinbeck and Doc, and he got the very strong feeling that Oster was, too. There was so much to say, and yet silence seemed the only appropriate response. The sun setting at his back, Travis watched the hills of the Santa Lucias turn orange and pink and blue.

Halfway to Salinas, Oster pulled into the parking lot of a small general store. He got out of the car and walked to the back of the lot where weeds choked a fence. He stared out into the valley that opened on either side of the narrow road. He was looking far into the Corral.

Travis sat in the car, watching him, knowing that what Oster saw was completely different than what he saw. Looking into the Corral, Travis saw the unknown; Oster saw his past.

Travis got out and followed him. The silence had passed now, and he just had to talk.

“This is weird, I know,” Travis said. “You’re probably going to think I’m crazy. But back there, at the lab, for just a minute, I thought it was Doc and Steinbeck in the boat. I mean … I don’t know what I mean.”

Oster didn’t move, he just stared.

“I thought the exact same thing,” he said. “And yes, it is weird.”

“Can I tell you something else?” Travis said. He stared into the valley, too.

“Shoot.”

“Sometimes, lately, it’s like …”

Travis had no idea how to say what he wanted to say. Could he really tell Oster about Steinbeck’s ghost, about Gitano, the Watchers? Camazotz was one thing, but the rest, that was just crazy.

“Go ahead,” Oster said.

“Okay. It’s like this. It’s like all the books I’ve been reading, they’re coming to life or something. I mean, the more I read Steinbeck—and your book, too—” He paused for a long time. Oster waited. “What I mean is, the more I read, the more the world changes. Actually changes.”

“Books do that.”

If anybody else had said this, it would have made Travis feel like a little kid. As if they were saying to him, it’s okay, children have such “vivid” imaginations. But Oster said it with seriousness, with confidence. With respect. Travis knew that Oster understood.

On a nearby ridge line the Watchers appeared, black against the sky.

Travis lurched forward, started to speak. Held back. Spoke.

“Do you see them?” Travis asked.

“The Watchers? Yes. Yes, I do. I haven’t seen them in years, since I was last here, but there they are.”

They stood watching until the Watchers retreated from the ridge, moving deeper into the Corral.

“T ere’s something in the Corral,” Travis said. “And it’s pulling me there. Something I need to know. I want to learn more about this place.”

“I think we can arrange that.”

If he was truly losing his mind, Travis no longer cared. At least he wasn’t alone.

The days went on as before, going to school and hanging out with Hil when Hil wasn’t at soccer. He saw his parents in the mornings and late at night, but they were starting to work more again, starting to come home later and later. When they were at home, they were tired. Travis had never seen them watch so much TV.

The rest of the time, he read. He read during lunch at school, during free period, and at home. He scurried through his homework to get to his reading. He continued to reread
The Pastures of Heaven
, and went through
The Long Valley
a second time. Travis had always loved to read, but now it was something bordering on obsession. Books, he knew, had led him to the mysteries that surrounded him; perhaps books would offer up the answers he was seeking.

He became fascinated with two of the odder characters from these books—Johnny Bear, the powerful but dim- witted giant who could remember and mimic perfectly every conversation he had ever heard; and Tularecito, the little frog, a dwarfish man who believed that gnomes lived underground, and who could draw and sculpt perfect renditions of the living world. In the stories about them, Johnny Bear in
The Long Valley
, and Tularecito in
Pastures
, they were shunned by everyone because of their special gifts. No one understood the things they saw and did.

He wanted to know as much as he could about these places and these characters before he saw Oster again. There was another stuff - n-fold session at the end of the week.

Until then, the rest of his life was reading. He took some ribbing from the other kids—“Hey, bookworm,” “Earth calling Travis.” Even Hil got in on it, started calling him Shakespeare all the time, and one day that week Hil made a paper mask of Travis’s face that he attached to the front cover of
The Pastures of Heaven
. “So I can remember what you look like,” he said.

But Travis didn’t care what the other kids thought. He couldn’t help himself. The kind of reading he was doing wasn’t about escaping from the real world. His reading had unlocked a door, and was leading him into a mystery about the real world. A
real
mystery about the
real
world.

Every book, Travis knew, had a mystery at its heart. In most books, though, the mysteries were easy to solve. Who had killed the school gardener? Where was the lost crystal? Could a vampire be repelled with garlic? These were mysteries with straight answers. The math teacher killed the gardener in a fit of jealousy and was sent to jail. The lost crystal was hidden in the cave of Inum Ortem, and once it was put back in the Mask of Trat’Ottrat with the five other crystals, the kingdom of Yrruc would be saved from the forces of darkness. Contrary to popular belief, garlic did not repel vampires, and everyone in the old mansion was eaten. Easy- peasy mysteries. Simple. Done.

Travis had read a lot of books like this. But the books he was reading now were opening up deeper mysteries. Mysteries that couldn’t be solved, mysteries that didn’t end, that continued long after the last page was turned.

At the end of
A Wrinkle in Time
, Meg and Charles Wallace found their father in another dimension and returned with him to their own. But they still didn’t know what “IT” was, and knew even less about the shape of the universe, even though they’d traveled through it and arrived safely back to their own world. Meg and Charles Wallace had only one choice after their unsettling journey, a journey whose mystery seemed unfathomable: they had to leave the safety of what they knew and return to the perils of the unknown. So they did.

In Steinbeck’s own books, there were mysteries that could never be solved. Who were the Watchers? Had Gitano really worked on the ranch when he was a boy, and why did he steal the horse at the end and where did he go? How did Johnny Bear and Tularecito come into their powers, and what did those powers mean? Every story in Steinbeck carried an unfathomable mystery, and Steinbeck wasn’t the kind of writer who offered simple answers to difficult mysteries. Steinbeck’s mysteries lingered.

But the one mystery that would not let him go, the reason Travis kept reading
The Pastures of Heaven
: Where was this place? Steinbeck called it the Pastures of Heaven, or Las Pasturas del Cielo, sometimes Happy Valley; everyone else called it the Corral. It was a real place, Travis knew, and there had once been a town there, but there was not a single record of that town anywhere. Travis had looked online: nothing. However, he’d spent a long time looking for Oster and found nothing at first, and still, there was Oster, a real person.

And at the heart of the
Pastures
mystery was another one, possibly even bigger: What was the curse that shadowed the Corral? Why had everyone who moved there lost everything they most wanted?

The great thing about an unsolvable mystery was just that, it was unsolvable. It was as if the book never ended.

So Travis read. He took to reading at his desk at night, looking west across Salinas toward the Corral. As he read from the book, he looked up occasionally and wondered about the real. world out there.

Oster and Miss Babb were already in the A/V room, folding and stuffing, when Travis got there. Miss Babb was dressed to kill, Travis thought, way too fancy for the library.

“Oh, Travis, good, you’re here,” she said. She seemed a little out of breath. “I’ve got great news. I’ve just met with some wealthy library patrons, and guess what? I collected almost thirty thousand dollars. Eek!”

And she screamed a little and clapped her hands, and stood up and took Travis’s hand and twirled him around, and they were both laughing, and Oster was applauding.

“Thirty thousand dollars,” she said. “Can you believe it? And all I had to do was talk and eat some fancyschmancy hors d’oeuvres. The mushrooms stuffed with bacon were amazing.”

“That is so awesome.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I am so awesome, aren’t I? Look upon me, ye mighty rich ones and despair for your wallets.”

“That’s our Charlene,” Oster said. “Saving the world one check at a time.”

The first order of business was dinner. They decided on Indian food, delivered from The Clay Oven. Travis was psyched; he loved naan bread.

They stuffed and folded while they waited.

“So, you guys,” Miss Babb said. “How was the aquarium?”

Travis and Oster looked at each other. Both looked as if they’d just seen a tap- dancing spider.

“What?” Miss Babb said. “What is it?”

“It was awesome,” Travis said. And together they told her about the aquarium tour and going to Doc’s lab.

“It was really informative,” Travis said, wrapping it up.

“But?” Miss Babb said.

“But what?” Oster said. He looked over at Travis. “We went. We had a nice time.”

“Nice? Informative?” Miss Babb said. “I don’t think so. You guys are holding back something, I can tell. C’mon. Dish.”

Travis looked over at Oster and shrugged his shoulders. Oster shrugged, too.

“Okay,” Travis said. “But you’ll be sorry you asked.”

Together they spilled the beans—about Steinbeck and Doc, and the Watchers that night on the edge of the Corral.

“What I’m thinking,” Travis said, “is that I’ve stuffed too many envelopes or something. What I’m thinking is that I’m a little crazy.”

“But,” Oster said, “it’s better saying it out loud. No, Travis is not crazy, and neither am I. We saw what we saw, and no matter how I try to explain it away, it’s too obvious to ignore. Something is going on. And I’d swear the Watchers want us to follow them. Don’t quote me on that. I have to confess, I’m a little freaked out, too.”

Miss Babb was staring at the wall across from her, staring into the space between Oster and Travis. She had her hand on her chin, the classic thinking pose. She was shaking her head back and forth just a little bit.

“Honestly, men,” she said, looking up now, as if stepping back into the room again. “If I didn’t know you guys any better, I would say you were crazy. But I do know you. And I must confess, I’ve seen the Watchers myself. Many times. Like you, I don’t know who they are or what they mean. But I know this, they’re there. And you can’t ignore them. So. When are you going back? Into the Corral, I mean.”

“How’s Saturday?” Travis asked.

“Sounds good, I suppose,” Oster said. “Saturday seems like a good day for hieing off into the mysterious world at our peril.”

“Peril?” Travis said. “I’m ready for peril. Definitely ready.”

“It’s a deal then,” Miss Babb said. “You guys be careful, okay? How I wish I could go with you, but my family and all, just no time. You’ve got to promise to give me the end of this story.”

Just then, the naan bread and curry arrived.