Steinbeck’s Ghost by Lewis Buzbee Page A

to meet the next day and work out the car wash details, then fetched his bike.
    Deep into the alley, Travis spotted a small fire under a willow tree. Gitano was sitting before the fire, and perched on the fire was an open tin can. Gitano stirred it slowly with a stick. The scent of pork and beans rose up to Travis.
    Travis wasn’t sure if he was happy to see Gitano. He kept wanting to see him, wanted to ask him questions. He couldn’t shake the idea that Gitano and the boy in the window, all of it, everything that had started with his return to the library, were all connected somehow. But what would you say to this tired old man? Hello, can you tell me about Camazotz?
    Gitano looked at him and smiled, then gulped down a heap of beans from a wooden spoon.

    He wanted to ride past the Steinbeck House. And then again, he didn’t. So he rode the blocks around it for a while. But that was crazy, too. The boy in the window was just a boy in the window, as Gitano was just an old man down on his luck and eating beans in an alley. What else could it be? If the boy wasn’t in the window, that would be fine with Travis, he’d have his answer. And that answer was that the world was still the same old world.
    Travis stopped in front of the house. The light was on in the attic window; the boy was at the desk, his head down, not looking up. He was concentrating.
    Night was coming on. It was much darker than the last time Travis was here—man, he was going to be so late—and because of that, because the night outside was darker, the lights inside brighter, and the contrast between the two sharper, he could see the attic in more detail. It was clear that the boy was writing something. Every once in a while, he’d bring the pen to his face, tapping the end of it against his cheek; he was thinking. Then the pen would disappear, return to the paper.
    The boy’s head was moving back and forth now, slowly, following the trail of words he left on the page. Occasionally, he’d look up at the ceiling; occasionally, he’d look out the window. Travis waved once when he did this, but the boy didn’t respond. Then, as the image of the boy came into sharper focus, Travis saw, quite clearly, that this boy had large ears, ears that stuck way out. Just like Steinbeck.
    Travis actually felt a chill down his spine. And then he said out loud the words he’d been dying to say out loud, “It
is
Steinbeck’s ghost.” The words rang in the air, and the world stayed pretty much the same. The words sounded true, and there was no denying them.
    Travis did a little dance on the sidewalk, a sort of goofy, Hilario kind of dance, to see if that would rouse the figure in the window. But no, the boy kept writing. Travis was sure of this: The boy in the window was writing something. A police car came around the corner a block away, and Travis jumped on his bike and headed off . He wasn’t doing anything wrong, he knew that, but it was a good excuse to get away, get on home.

    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