Latest Update: March 11, 2001 by Ben Marcus

SUNDAY MARCH 11, 2001 23:00. SEABRIGHT BREWERY.

The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls into Monterey Bay. I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer-and what trees and seasons smelled like-how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. There were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding-unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.

From both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into the bed of the Salinas River. IN the winter of wet years the streams ran full-freshet, and they swelled the river until sometimes it raged and bolted, bank full, and then it was a destroyer. The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down; it toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It trapped cows and pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown water and carried them to the sea.

Wow, good stuff. Steinbeck rules. ItÍs one thing to read Steinbeck and know the Salinas Valley and know that he absolutely nails the place when he describes it.

ItÍs another thing entirely to spend a Sunday in March reading Steinbeck while driving up the Salinas Valley and turning west in the Santa Lucia mountains, then crossing 101 and going east into the Gabilan Mountains, and following the rural roads for a hundred miles, all the way from San Miguel to Hollister, while reading Steinbeck and listening to his books on tape and also a little bluegrass.

Wow, IÍve seen a lot of rural places in my day and some of the great ones: Ozark Mountains, Texas Hill Country, British Columbia and the Hollister Ranch, but that land in the Gabilan Mountains on a spring day, with lots of fresh, green grass and the rivers flowing and the sky blue and fog creeping over the coast range-itÍs enough to make you want to run home and slap your momma.

That was what I did today. Not slap my momma, but drive up the Salinas Valley, through the Santa Lucia side for a little while, then back down through the Gabilan Mountains, sometimes reading East of Eden, sometimes listening to Tortilla Flats on tape, sometimes listening to really good, absolutely appropriate bluegrass music on KUSP.

Today was a good day, it was a Steinbeck day. It was a day to drive through one of the richest agricultural valleys in the world in full bloom, and once again put myself into the mind of a killer.

Mason Thorpe is the guy who I was thinking of, the rapist/murderer in this murder mystery I keep yapping about. Mason Thorpe is the pivotal figure. He is the man who poses as a woman on the Internet to lure a conniving woman to his house, where he rapes and kills her. Then he takes on the personality of the murdered woman on the Internet and attempts to set up a third woman, to rape and kill her. At some point, Mason Thorpe realizes he is in love, in a very Hitchcockian way, with the first woman he raped and killed, and he begins to wonder if he isnÍt in love with the third woman. And there the suspense lies. Mason Thorpe communicates online with the third woman, pretending to be two women, and then tries to set up a liaison with the third woman, as a man, chatting on the Internet.

Will he rape and kill the woman? Or will he kill her husband, as she wants, and set her free? ThatÍs where the suspense lies.

So, thatÍs the guy IÍm working on. He is a surfer/fisherman/hunter who was born 100 years too late. He isnÍt entirely comfortable with the modern world, although he is thoroughly modern. He lives in Santa Cruz in a nice house on East Cliff Drive near the harbor. Once a week, usually on the weekends, he drives from Santa Cruz through the Salinas Valley and up into those Santa Lucia Mountains in the west to tend a patch of gourmet marijuana worth a million dollars.

So thatÍs what I did today. I woke up in the van in front of the fancy house belonging to the Wayne guy who started HardCloud. He isnÍt around and IÍm sleeping there because itÍs familiar and comfortable and there happens to be a Port a Potty leftover from the construction on WayneÍs house, which appears to be all done. I think there are other reasons I am sleeping around there, probably that Mason Thorpe, in the murder mystery, lives on that street and IÍm sleeping there looking for things to use in the book.

I found one this morning. I woke up to the sad moaning of the Mile Buoy, a sound from my youth in Santa Cruz which I hadnÍt heard in a while. The Mile Buoy was loud this morning and I think in the book, that sad moaning from the middle of the ocean will inspire a ghastly dream, in which Mason Thorpe imagines himself at the bottom of the sea with a ghostly Monica Cole holding her arms out to him, looking at him with those sad eyes he saw just before he dropped her, alive, into the ocean.

I also came up with a good image for that scene. Mason Thorpe is torn between keeping Monica Cole alive and killing her. It is Mason ThorpeÍs pleasure to rape Monica, because she is sexy and selfish and evil and deserves to die. Monica Cole was willing to kill an innocent man, and have her own husband killed, just to afford a house in Belvedere.

But Mason Thorpe also might be in love with Monica Cole. He got to know her well online-woman to woman-and when it comes to killing her, he canÍt bring himself to kill such a beautiful thing with his bare hands. ñThe ocean has always been stronger than me,î he says to himself. ñThe ocean can take her.î And with that he drops her, alive, into the ocean. Her sad eyes will haunt him to the edge of obsession and beyond.

So, that was what I had to think about today. IÍve read a little bit of Steinbeck and vaguely remembered that quote about the Salinas Valley above. I had enough subliminal Steinbeck in my head to want to look into it further, hoping to find some words and characters and situations that would help me develop the Mason Thorpe character better. I pictured him driving up to his pot plantation and out through Big Sur listening to Steinbeck Books on Tape. Mason Thorpe isnÍt a literate man, but he loves the Salinas Valley and those mountains, and even the most illiterate monkey who loves such a place will eventually read Steinbeck, and be in awe.

I woke up to the sound of the Mile Buoy, and thought it might make a good device in the book and drove south, hoping to find more. In the book, Mason Thorpe is going to have a kind of mystical connection with KPIG radio, in that the radio station has a tradition of playing songs that match Mason ThorpeÍs mood or situation. It doesnÍt happen all the time, but it has happened enough to make Mason Thorpe go ñHmmmm.î In the book, Mason Thorpe drowns Monica Cole on a Friday evening and then is up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to drive to Big Sur. Mason Thorpe is like Monica Cole in a lot of ways. He hates crowds and congestion and so he drives out of Santa Cruz and through the Salinas Valley before sunrise so he doesnÍt have to look at hoards of weekend families in SUVs. As he drives he listens to KPIG to see if the DJs are commemorating the deed he did the night before.

First they play ñDriving Southî by Jimi Hendrix, a nice little instrumental appropriate to his situation. Mason Thorpe thinks the connection is on and then is certain when KPIG plays ñPsycho Killer.î Mason Thorpe is a little ashamed of the song, because he is a Psycho Killer, but maybe that song inspires an interior debate in which Mason Thorpe argues the morals and ethics of killing a woman who was so vain and evil and selfish.

KPIG plays a very eclectic array of music, and so a little later, they start to play ñStand By Your Man.î When Mason Thorpe hears the lyric, ñSometimes itÍs hard to be a woman,î he bursts out laughing and shuts of f the radio: He canÍt stand it.

Then he puts in a Book on Tape of East of Eden, and hears someone read the line from above.

Anyway, that was what I was thinking about today as I drove toward Salinas. IÍve been looking for a bookstore that sells the DVD of Strangers on a Train and also Steinbeck books on tape. IÍve been striking out on all of them, but while driving through Salinas I passed a place IÍve seen a million times before, and a dim bulb went off over my head.

ñHmmmmm. I wonder if the National Fricking Steinbeck Center-the museum dedicated to the life and work of John Steinbeck- would have any Steinbeck Books on Tape?î

It was Sunday, the place was open and they did indeed have Steinbeck books on tape. They had Steinbeck Everything: t-shirts, coffee cups, lapel pins.

My ATM card didnÍt work-itÍs a long story-so I drove around lovely Salinas for 10 or 15 minutes, then found a bank with an ATM that ate my card.

Fortunately, they took checks, so I bought Tortilla Flats and Of Mice and Men on tape. I had to buy the actual book version of East of Eden, but that was the one I wanted. It had the description of the Salinas Valley quoted above. Those are the first paragraphs of the book. He absolutely nails the place.

ItÍs nice to have someone so eloquently describe impressions youÍve had yourself. I grew up staring up the maw of the Salinas Valley and looking at the Santa Lucia Mountains, IÍve driven 101 a million times and By Golly I was once married to a little gal from Salinas, so I know the place pretty well. All those things that Steinbeck describes are things IÍve felt. Most people think Salinas is a joke and a dreary, Mexican trash place. Just this morning there was an e-article in www.SfGate.com that described Salinas as the absolute worst place for women in the entire United States. The worst, even worse than New York City.

Well, I see more than that in Salinas and so does Mason Thorpe. He thinks Salinas is an honest place, where simple men and women work hard and make an honest living. The truth is, Salinas might look shabby but it is in the middle of one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. Monterey County produces a billion dollars in strawberries and grapes and artichokes and agriculture a year, and that doesnÍt include all the Big Sur Holy Weed, IÍm sure.

Mason Thorpe loves the Salinas Valley. It is good, honest, earth, and in the right light in the right season it is one of the most beautiful places he has ever seen, and Mason Thorpe has been everywhere. Mason Thorpe sometimes imagines himself stopping by the side of the road and eating handfuls of dirt.

Today, putting my mind in the mind of a killer, I stopped at the National Steinbeck Center and then drove out of Salinas. That fact about Salinas being one of the worst places in the United States for women holds true for Mason Thorpe, as he remembers raping and killing one of his victims in a seedy motel somewhere in Salinas.

I drove out of Salinas and up to Jolon Road. This time I didnÍt go west over the mountains to Big Sur, but south toward Lake San Antonio. I took a couple of detours, one to San Lucas and saw a dead boar along the side of the road. Mason Thorpe uses pig hunting as his cover for spending so much time in the bush.

Near Lockwood I saw a whole bunch of Bradley Fighting Vehicles taking target practice on the side of the road. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is a small, armored vehicle that goes into the field to support Abrams Tanks. They have a 25 mm chain gun and also can fire TOW missiles. They also hold troops within, and all in all they are nasty little vehicles. Today they were firing the chain guns and there were louder booms that must have been from tanks.

Every time I see the American military in action-that 24 hours on the USS Independence and today-I wonder why any sane nation would want to mix it up with us. The American military has all the good toys and they are so damned dangerous. Saddam Hussein was an idiot for provoking us. Our guys couldnÍt believe their luck that he was such an idiot, and that theyÍd get to take all those toys into the desert and a real shootinÍ war.

ThatÍs my take, anyway.

After watching the shooting at Lockwood I made it to Lake San Antonio, but didnÍt go in. I couldnÍt get KPIG so I listened to KUSP and NPR. KUSP was playing some great bluegrass which seemed custom-made for my drive through the country. When I got to the gate at Lake San Antonio there was a sign that said ñNo Firearms.î I still have my shotgun in the car, although I did get a trigger lock for it, and as I was turning around, a woman on KUSP was singing about her daddy with a shotgun in his arms.

Mason Thorpe would have smiled.

I drove and drove and made it back to Highway 101 at some point, I think it was Bradley. I crossed Highway 101 and drove into the Gabilan Mountains, then headed back north.

I had done this before a few years ago from San Ardo, but this time I was farther south. IÍm sure IÍm not the only person to have driven 101, looked off to the east and wondered what was out in them thar hills.

Well, as IÍve already said, that area out there is rural, rancher California as good as it gets. Today it was all lit up green from the rain and the streams were flowing and it was just unfrickingbelievably spectacular.

There werenÍt many cars on the road and every time a pickup truck went by, the drive would wave. There were a lot of cattle in the hills and occasionally IÍd get a view from up high looking west into the Santa Lucia Mountains, wondering where exactly Mason Thorpe grows his world-class weed.

I do know that, as uncomfortable as he is in the modern world, Mason Thorpe is thoroughly modern in his pot-growing operation. He has video monitors which scan his plot and a satellite hook-up that beams images back to his house in Santa Cruz. He has motion detectors all around and a system of alarms and sound effects that hopefully will scare away animals and rip-offs.

While driving along Highway 198 to Highway 25, there was a show on NPR about The Drug War. As I listened to it and heard what the minimum sentences were these days, I wondered about Mason Thorpe and how careful he must be to avoid getting caught, both as a pot grower and a rapist/murderer. I decided he never smoked what he grew, ever. Pot made him dumb and paranoid, and he couldnÍt afford to be either.

Mason Thorpe is like the paisanos in Tortilla Flats. When he wants to alter his consciousness, he drinks wine. On the drive out to the Big Sur Mountains he buys wine from a roadside winery, and spends the weekend up with his plants, drinking wine, reading, napping and surfing the Internet. He spends the whole weekend up there, because he hates to be in civilization on summer weekends.

Pot makes you dumb and paranoid, and Thorpe debates the ethics of what he is doing. The pot he grows is the highest quality and very expensive. He is confident that young kids arenÍt running their grades with it, and he is sure that itÍs mostly people over 30 who are enjoying ThorpeÍs crop. He doesnÍt feel bad about what he does at all. He works hard, works smart and puts hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local economy. Mason Thorpe feels he is earning a more honest living than most, and it is certainly a more romantic living: hidden away in the beautiful mountains, reading good books, listening to good music and growing good pot.

When Thorpe leaves, the puts a 200-pound sack of pot on his back and walks west, out toward the ocean, where he has another car stashed away. He drives that car back to Santa Cruz, and sells his pot for $4,000 a pound. Mason Thorpe makes a tremendous amount of money growing marijuana, and he is very careful about everything he does.

So, thatÍs what I was thinking as I drove out through the Salinas Valley and back through the Gabilan Mountains. At sundown I poked into Pinnacles National Monument, a place I hadnÍt been since childhood. I made it into Tres Pinos and Hollister at dark and considered staying in San Juan Batista. But I pushed on and got to Kinkos on 41st Avenue to check e-mail. Not much there.

Today as I was driving on rural roads and in traffic jams and suck, I started to read East of Eden. I read the introduction and the first few chapters, and in the introduction I found a few things that made me feel better about my current, ahem, itinerant situation. Steinbeck said this about himself: ñI have always been a mobile unit in wish if not in actuality. I even go through the form of establishing a home. But itÍs only a place to go away from and come back to.î Which is kind of how I am. I wonder if Steinbeck ever slept in his van.

Steinbeck also kept journals of his research and travels as he was writing his novels, which is kind of what I am doing here. He published two of them. I may have to go back there and buy everything. I love doing research, especially on a day like today. Holy cow, that was something.

Steinbeck is good, but so am I. Hope I get to write this murder mystery as I am scheming it. The research is fun, and so will the writing be, if I ever get to do it.

P.S. IÍve been writing all this in the Seabright Brewery, with surfing and snowboarding videos playing on a big screen. ñI know that dude,î I keep saying to myself as I see dudes I know. But then I went into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

ñWho is that dude? Do I know that dude?î I also said to myself.

Age sucks. I need to get in the water, a lot.