Steinbeck’s Ghost (21 page)

“Sí, sí,” Hil was saying now. “Sí, sí, muchas gracias.”

Travis found it hard to speak. Not that he didn’t want to, he was simply too surprised.

The figure before them was Johnny Bear, but the flesh- and- blood version of the statue they’d seen last week. His legs were bowed, shortish, but his arms hung long from his broad shoulders. His black hair was matted and messy, and on his face he wore a silly open grin, almost like a bear’s. He swayed back and forth, dressed all in denim. In his left hand, he held the weapon, an ornately carved slingshot. Johnny Bear smiled and swayed.

And then he spoke, and what he said stunned Travis.

“Sí, sí. Sí, sí. Muchas gracias.”

It wasn’t what he said, but how it sounded. The voice that came out of Johnny Bear was not Johnny Bear’s. It was Hil’s, perfectly Hil’s. It carried every tone and shade of Hil’s voice, and with the sound of the words, Travis could almost see Johnny Bear become Hil.

Travis felt Hil shudder.

Johnny Bear spoke again, “Thank you, friend. Gracias, mi amigo.” This time it was Oster’s voice. Not an echo of Oster’s voice, not an imitation: Oster’s voice. He stood exactly like Oster when he spoke.

Travis knew now who had called them last week, the voice of Gitano, and that other voice, the one pleading for help.

A change shimmered over Johnny Bear. He seemed to shrink a little, turn his head in a feminine way.

A woman’s voice, soft but firm. “Come, children, come now. It’s time for lessons.” A schoolteacher’s voice.

Johnny Bear turned and shot up the hill, crashing through the thick oak and into the manzanita. Gone.

Travis and Oster bolted after him and had just got to the edge of the meadow, when they heard Hil.

“Wait, wait, wait. Wait just a minute.”

His voice was a leash that pulled them back.

“Who. Was. That.”

Hil stood with his hands on his hips. He wasn’t so much looking at Travis and Oster as through them.

“We’ll explain later,” Travis yelled. “Come on. We’ve got to catch up.”

“No,” Hil said. “No, we don’t. We have to tell me who—that—was. I’m totally freaked out.”

“Okay,” Travis said. “But then we go.”

The three of them huddled in the open sunlight. Travis and Oster did their best to explain Johnny Bear. Again.

“So,” he said. “This guy, the guy who just saved our lives, is a character out of a book, and we have no idea how that happened, and we’re gonna go after him, and for all we know, there may be tons of other characters roaming around. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Yes,” Oster said. “That’s about it.”

“Cool,” Hil said. “Let’s get going.” And he ran off into the manzanita scrub.

From a ridge not too far away, the schoolteacher’s voice rang out.

“Come, children, it’s time for lessons.”

The golden afternoon was moving on, away from the hills, over the ocean, toward China.

F
ROM THE BASE OF THE SCREE SLOPE, THEY COULD HEAR THE VOICES IN THE CAVE.
But it wasn’t until they’d reached the sandstone bluff and stood outside the cave’s mouth that Travis could make out the words.

“Tularecito has escaped from Napa,” a deep official-sounding voice said. “He’ll come back here, you know he will.”

“He’s not dangerous, and you know that, Bert. We’ll leave him be,” a different voice said.

“He darn near killed me.”

“You should have left his holes alone, Bert. He was just diggin holes, looking for his gnomes. Gentle as a foal. Now, Bert, don’t.”

Travis and Hil and Oster had sidled up next to the cave’s mouth. Travis peeked in. Johnny Bear stood over a small fire, speaking to himself, swaying. Thin gray smoke filled the upper aspect of the cavern and drifted into a deeper recess.

“Hello?” Travis said. “May we come in?”

He stepped into the cave. Oster and Hil followed.

Johnny Bear turned and grinned.

Across the fire from Johnny Bear was the rock- cobbled statue of him. It was such a precise likeness, Travis had a hard time knowing which was which. Hil went up to the statue and ran his hands over it.

Johnny Bear turned and grinned.

“Whiskey?” he said. “Food? Cheese?” This voice seemed to be Johnny Bear’s own. It came from inside him and matched the expression on his grinning face.

He spoke again, this time in Spanish. “Està muerta la culebra, ¿no?” This voice, Travis heard in the words, came from a hundred years ago.

“The snake is dead,” Hil said. “That ’s what he ’s Thelling us.”

“Cheese,” Oster said. “Yes. Cheese and bread.”

Oster pulled packets of waxed paper from his knapsack and held them out to Johnny Bear. He took them gently from Oster’s hands and offered a little bow.

“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.