Read Online Steinbeck’s Ghost by Lewis Buzbee - Free Book Online Page B

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.
    A minute later the first car pulled in. When the first committee members arrived—Jack Ray and Theodore, both in shorts and Tshirts—seven cars were waiting in line.
    The line never ended. All day long the cars kept coming, and so did the volunteers. A circus, Travis thought, a real riot. The cars got washed and dried—vacuumed for two bucks extra—but not without a lot of fun.
    It was Miss Babb who started the water fights. Late in the afternoon, she came up to Travis, who was taking a break, and asked him if he was hot and tired and needed some refreshment. When he said, “Oh yeah,” she lifted one of the hoses and let him have it full blast, right in the chest. Travis shook his hands and looked down at his shirt. Then slowly, very slowly, he leaned over, picked a soapy rag out of a bucket and threw it right at her, bull’seye. At that moment, Travis felt water stinging him from behind. It was his dad brandishing one of the other hoses, and Travis ran after him with fistfuls of soapy rags. Within minutes, every volunteer, and several customers, were drenched and bubbly.
    All day long there was music and food and talk talk talk. And laughter. They took turns passing out flyers in front of the Safeway and the Colonel Foxworthy’s Coffee Emporium and the Mango Tango juice bar. Everyone they talked to seemed concerned about the library, almost angry. More than five hundred flyers were passed out.
    Near the end of the day, Travis was sitting alone under the banner, tired and wet, when he realized that it was still noisy at the car wash. The talking wouldn’t stop. Hil’s dad and Travis’s mom stood talking with Miss Babb, and everyone’s hands were flying everywhere, and Travis knew they were talking about the library. Hil and Jack Ray were looking at one of the flyers and pointing to it, obviously coming up with better information and designs for the next one.
    When he’d first heard about the library closing, Travis had felt completely alone. Now, he knew, he was part of something huge, and he figured that, with everyone working together, the library might stand a chance of winning. He’d played soccer when he was in third and fourth grade, and the coaches were always talking about teamwork. For the first time he felt like he knew what a team really was: each person working toward the same goal.
    The last car was dried and buffed a little after six. An enormous moon, bursting orange, rose from behind the lime