Steinbeck’s Ghost (12 page)

With the reading of some words on a page, the world popped from two dimensions into three. Three? No, four. Time, too, counted. There was depth and time in the world, and he suddenly understood this fact.

In this briefest of moments—“How long does it take to read a sentence?” he said—there was one other sweeping change, the biggest of all for Oster.

Before that sentence, he’d just been a kid. After it, he was a writer, and he knew, at least then, that he always would be a writer.

“You can’t unring the bell,” Oster said.

Was that what had happened when Travis remembered the word
Camazotz
, he’d rung some bell that had changed the world? He didn’t want to unring the bell.

“What was the first thing you wrote?”

That night, after reading the first two chapters of Steinbeck, Oster started his own short story. This was not something it had ever occurred to him to do before.

The story was about a young boy, obviously Oster himself, who, while swimming in a local pond one day, is almost drowned. The hand of some dark, deep- dwelling creature tried to pull him under. When he tries to explain this to the adults—his parents, the fireman, the police chief—they all laugh it off as impossible. But the boy knows what has happened; death came looking for him, and he barely escaped.

That story was exceedingly melodramatic, horribly written. As it should be for a first story. The adults are all idiots; the boy is heroic and misunderstood. A train wreck of a story. But a story, and he finished it.

After that night, after Oster’s world cracked open, he continued to write stories, and he continued to read Steinbeck. In six months he read everything Steinbeck had published up to that point, and he wrote countless stories—all of them horrible.

Every night Oster sat at a makeshift desk in front of the window of his attic bedroom, from where he watched the other kids riding bikes and playing tag and acting as if nothing had changed.

Travis didn’t see the A/V room at all anymore. He was in the attic bedroom in Waukegan, looking out the window, west toward California and Salinas. And at the same time he was in the window in the attic in the Steinbeck House, and he was Steinbeck looking out at Corral de Tierra. And he was also in his own bedroom, looking west toward Salinas at the Steinbeck House. The connection between the three of them—Steinbeck and Oster and Travis—was suddenly clear to him. Maybe that’s what it took to be a writer: You had to sit and stare out the window for a long time until you started to write stories. Maybe, if he sat in his own window long enough, Travis would write his own stories.

“What then? Is that when you moved to Salinas?” Travis asked.

No, not for some time yet. When he was done with reading Steinbeck, Oster read anything else Mrs. French put in his hands—Hemingway, Faulkner, Ellison—any book about the real world.

Oster wrote and read and made plans to leave Waukegan.

“But when did you meet Bradbury?”

He was a senior in high school, and it was practically an accident.

Bradbury was an established, much published writer by then, and during a visit to Waukegan, he was asked to speak to some of the English classes at Oster’s high school. Afterward, he ate lunch with a select group of seniors. Oster’s favorite teacher, Mrs. Weinberg, invited Ernest. The lunch was nice, everyone asked all the right questions, but as soon as the last lunch bell rang, the other students went back to their classes and their ordinary lives.

Oster didn’t leave; he still had a raft of questions. Bradbury, a short, smiling, laughing, easy- to- read fellow, had a few hours to kill. Bradbury didn’t drive, never had, only ever took the train, and the next one didn’t leave for several hours. Would Oster care to join him for a cold soda? Oster skipped his classes for the afternoon.

“You played hooky with Ray Bradbury?” Travis was too delighted by this—what an idea!

“It was great, one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Oster said.

They ended up in a nearby park, on a broad lawn next to a shallow lake pocked with ducks. They drank their sodas and talked. Oster mostly listened. The afternoon seemed to go on forever.

Oster could no longer remember everything Bradbury told him that day. But a few things had always stayed with him.

Writers, Bradbury told him, should only eat sandwiches for lunch; that way they could eat and read at the same time. Oster should take a typing class; that would save him lots of grief and money. A writer had to read anything and everything, and make up his own mind about what he read. College was fun, but it had nothing to do with being a writer. Life, that was for writers.

Bradbury talked, and Oster soaked it in. What struck Oster today, more than forty years later, was that Bradbury had taken his wish to be a writer with seriousness and respect. And he’d been uncommonly generous; he didn’t hold anything back. If Oster had any doubts about becoming a writer, Bradbury dispelled them that day.

“Is that when you came to Salinas?” Travis asked.

No, Oster went to college, not far from Waukegan, where he studied chemistry—he’d always loved science— and where he met Eve. They were married in 1962 and had two children, Kristen and Nicole, who both lived now in San Francisco. Eve had died two years ago, of breast cancer. Oster still missed her every waking moment.

Just after Kristen was born, they up and moved to Salinas. Back in Waukegan, Oster had been writing the whole time, nights while he worked as a chemist during the day, but he and his wife decided to take a chance. They saved up as much money as they could and moved to Salinas in 1968. He was going to write his first novel.

“But why did you come here?” Travis said. “I’m not sure I’d move here if I was from someplace else.”

Travis had such a strong image of Bradbury and Oster’s world in his head, he couldn’t imagine anyone leaving it behind.

“Steinbeck,” Oster said. “That simple.” He knew what book he wanted to write,
Corral de Tierra
, and he knew he could only write in California, knew he needed to see and feel and smell this landscape to write it.

Travis knew the rest, Oster told him.
Corral
was published, the second book was rejected, he had a family to take care of. End of story.

It was dark when they finished. All the envelopes had been stuffed, sealed, and labeled. Miss Babb had ordered in Thai food for them, and empty Styrofoam and plastic cluttered the table.

“Did you ever meet him?” Travis asked. “Steinbeck?”

“I’m afraid not. I had hoped to, but no. He was living in New York then, had been for a long time. Still, I kind of hoped he would come back to Salinas at some point. I arrived in the summer of 1968. He died in December that year.”

Oh, Steinbeck came back after that, Travis thought. I can’t prove it, but I’ve seen him, just a few blocks from the library.

“I think I would have liked to meet him,” Travis said.

“Really, now?” Oster smiled, a tight, sly smile. “I can get you close. Have you ever been to the aquarium?”

“Tons.”

“How’d you like to go again? There’s someone I want you to meet.”

O
STER WOULD PICK UP TRAVIS IN BELLA LINDA TERRACE LATE SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
Afternoons were the best time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Oster claimed. That’s when all the tired tourist families gave up and went in search of sugary snacks to revive them. In the afternoon, he said, you had the place all to yourself, could really see the fish.

Miss Babb called Travis’s parents to set up the outing with Oster, and she assured them that Oster was a good friend of hers and completely reliable.

So they were ready to go on that front, but first there had to be a family meeting. That Thursday night, in the immaculate living room, his parents—they were speaking as “your parents,” a unit of one—wanted to go over some things with him. They were thrilled, they told him, that he was so involved with the library and that he had shown so much responsibility and initiative and overall maturity. They had faith in Oster, based on Miss Babb’s word, and thought the trip to the aquarium would be a “wonderful experience” for him.

And they wanted him to know that they had full confidence in Travis. They wanted him to know that they trusted him and knew he would act responsibly, and that they weren’t worried at all. Which was, of course, their way of saying that they were worried, weren’t really that confident, and had some grave doubts about the whole enterprise. So Travis waited for the “but.”

“But,” they said. They actually said it simultaneously, as if they’d been rehearsing. Then they looked at each other and laughed a little.

“But,” his mom said, “we’d feel safer if you took this with you.”

Travis half expected his mom to pull a shiny revolver from her purse, but it was only a cell phone.

“Just in case,” his dad said. “And it’s not for yakking to all your friends, okay? It’s so you can call us anytime, for any reason whatsoever.”

A year ago Travis had hounded his parents for a cell phone—a lot of kids at school were getting them— but they’d refused. No matter how many strains of “please, please, please” Travis sang, no phone appeared. Rather than being thrilled with the appearance of the phone now, however, Travis was a little disappointed. It just wasn’t the same to be given a phone for security reasons. It made the phone feel like homework instead of a cool new gadget. The phone was shiny and red, and Travis wished he was more excited about it.

“Deal?” his mom asked.

“Deal.”

Just then the phone rang, and Travis nearly jumped up, but it wasn’t the cell phone, it was the house phone. He and his parents waited, letting the machine pick up; they’d always been a let’s-see- who- it- is sort of family.

“Hey, dude, it’s Hil. Call me to night, I want to ask you something.”

“Can I call him back on
this
?” Travis asked, pasting on his biggest, fakest, oh- please grin. “I mean, I have to try it out. Just to be safe.”

“T is once,” his mom said.

He went up to his room and punched the numbers.

“Yo, Hil, guess what I got,” Travis said, and then they talked about the phone for a long time. Travis was apparently more excited about it than he’d thought. It was a pretty cool thing. Hil was jealous; he was
dying
for a cell phone, but thought Travis’s phone might be good for his own cause. The more his friends got phones, he figured, the closer he was to getting one of his own.

“So, anyway, Alexander Graham Bell,” Hil said. “The reason I called was to ask if you wanted to come to my soccer game on Saturday. It’s the first game of the season, and we’re playing the Strikers, and I hate that team, and we need all the help we can get. It’ll be cool. My dad’s gonna take us all out for ice cream after. Marianne’s Ice Cream, which, as you know, is the creamiest ice cream in town. Root Beer? Pumpkin? Licorice? C’mon, you know you like it.”

Oh. He really wanted to see Hil play. Hil was small but fast, very fast, perhaps the sneakiest player on the field, cutting through clumps of other players and emerging with the ball.

“Oh, man,” Travis said. “I can’t. I, uh, I’m going down to King City with my parents to see my aunt and uncle all day. Bummer. Maybe next week?”

“Sure,” Hil said. “That’s cool. Next week. Okay, gotta book. See you tomorrow.”

Travis didn’t even have an aunt and uncle in King City. Why had he lied to his best friend? The lie just sort of leaped out of his mouth, and what was worse, he knew he’d see Hil tomorrow at school, and he’d have to repeat the lie at least one more time—to his face.

Maybe it was the cell phone’s fault, maybe he wasn’t used to talking on it, and so he … no, he knew what was wrong.

Suddenly Travis realized what it was. He didn’t want Hil to know what he was doing. It was important to Travis, at least for now, to keep Oster all to himself. But he didn’t like the feeling at all.

He closed the new phone and dumped it into his backpack.

When Oster pulled up in his dusty Dodge Dart, a car much older than Travis, almost as old as his parents, his parents invited him in, gave him a glass of iced tea, chatted with him in the kitchen. They were “vetting” him, his father’s word.

It was strange to watch Oster and his parents together at the breakfast bar. He knew so much about Oster, knew of his inner world and his imagination. He had spent hours wandering through his book, and now he knew about his past and his writing career, even his wife’s death. And yet here was Oster, chatting with his parents about the weather and the library and Spreckels and Bella Linda Terrace.

When it was time to go, his dad tried to push some money into Oster’s hand.

“No, not at all,” Oster said. “Today’s special admission. A free behind- the- scenes tour from my friend Mike. Mike McKenzie. Then Mike’s gonna show us a rare piece of … let’s call it Steinbeckiana. Something very few people get to see. Turns out, me and Travis are both big Steinbeck fans.”

But Oster wouldn’t say more, didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

“Got your phone?” his mom asked, and they were out the door.

When they got in the car, Oster, looking straight ahead, said, “I see what you mean about Bella Linda Terrace, Travis. This is a very strange place. It’s like a movie set; you could open the front door, and there’d be nothing behind it. Like you said totally Camazotz.”

Highway 68 was a two- lane road that followed an old river course between the Salinas Valley and the Monterey Peninsula. Valley oak and sweet grasses lined the road. To the north, out Travis’s window, the low mesas of Laguna Seca faded into a hazy sky. To the south, steep folded hillsides hid the Corral de Tierra. There were no Watchers tod ay.

Travis’s mind was—once again—bursting with a million questions. He wanted to know about Oster and this place, the Corral, everything he’d seen there. But he held the questions back. He was watching Oster to see how he reacted to driving by the Corral. Travis still couldn’t understand why Oster had never returned to a place he had spent so much time thinking about.

They stopped at a traffic light at Corral de Tierra Road. Both of them looked down the narrow, oak-shrouded lane that curved into the valley.

“Well, there she is, Travis. You ever been up there?”

“It’s hard to say. I think so, a long time ago, probably with my folks. I don’t think I’ve been, though, since I read your book.”

“Maybe you and me’ll go up there someday. I might be ready to go back.”

The light changed to green. The weekend traffic crawled to the ocean.

Cannery Row was all noise and smells. They walked past T-shirt shops, jewelry stores, fancy restaurants and hotels, a cigar store with a ceiling of whirling fans, ice-cream parlors. Giant cranes in one vacant lot were hard at work on a Saturday. Tourists, like flocks of shorebirds, skittered about, gift- shop bags in tow.

Beyond the Row, Monterey Bay was quietly beautiful, broad and blue and calm. The bay, Travis knew, would still be this way, long after the last salt water taffy machine stopped pulling.

Seagulls cawed, laughing, mocking.

“He’d roll over in his grave,” Oster said.

“Steinbeck?”

“You bet. He was here again in sixty- two. Hated what had happened to it.”

“Was it like this then?”

“Heavens, no. Back then, and later, when I first came here, it was just tacky souvenir shops, a few artist studios. But nothing like the old Row. All the factories had long been closed, no more sardines. And all his old friends were dead and gone. But now …”

“Now?”

“I love the aquarium. You do, too, we all do. And it’s great for the city. But all the rest, the ritzy hotels and such. Not his style at all. A little too Disney for him. He’d hate himself.”

“Hate himself?”

“Yes. It’s all his fault. His books made this place famous. People all over the world know about Cannery Row. Without Steinbeck, this is just a bunch of old sardine canneries. But he’d laugh, too.”

“Laugh?” Travis asked. They were passing a vacant lot that would soon be another hotel. Through the empty frame of the building, he could see the bright blue and dark blue speckled bay. He spied an otter floating on its back, cracking open a sea urchin on its belly.

“He’d laugh out loud. You see, the people around here, in Salinas and Monterey, the ones with money at least, they hated Steinbeck. Drove him out of Salinas. He told the truth about life, about the cruel and foolish things people do. And nobody likes to see the truth about themselves. Even when I first moved here, and for years after, people wouldn’t talk about him, still got angry whenever his name came up. Even after he was dead.”

“But now,” Travis joined in, “they love him. He makes them lots and lots of money.”

“Truckloads. You’ve got it, young man. That’s the truth. Look over there. See that little park?”

Between two buildings, a neat little park rose on terraced stairs toward the top of a hill. Three tiny white houses filled one side of the park.

“Now those houses,” Oster said. “Those are the kinds of shacks that used to cover this whole area, back when the canneries were open. Where the workers lived.”

Travis had seen these before, on a field trip. It just wasn’t a school year without a field trip to the aquarium.

“Those are the ones Steinbeck wrote about in
Tortilla Flat
, right?” Travis asked.

“Exactly. And they’re the real thing. Imagine that. Danny and Pilon and the gang might have actually lived in one of those shacks. If they’d been real people, that is. But look, over there. See that tree?”

A giant black cypress tree shaded one half of the park. Under it, a homeless man slept with his arms over his face.

“That tree,” Oster said. “That exact tree is in both
Cannery Row
and
Sweet Thursday
. It’s where Hazel or Mack, or any of the boys, used to go to think about things. And to sleep. Whaddya think? Is that Hazel asleep there?”

And it might have been Hazel, or any one of the Row’s “denizens,” as Steinbeck called them. There was a man in overalls, with a big bushy beard, and a grease- stained cap asleep under the cypress, a backpack for a pillow. Travis could swear there was a smile on his face.

“When I first came here,” Oster said, “this was all a vacant lot. As it was back in Steinbeck’s day. And you know what? The rusting boiler they lived in in the books, you know, the old boiler from the sardine cannery? The one with no windows but curtains inside? That was still here. The same one. Can you believe it?”